Follow the five ‘Cs’
Clarity! Culture! Commitment! Content! Consultant! Sioned Yates from Access Marketing says how keeping true to the 5 C’s will help business owners benefit and be successful in their marketing.
I read a very interesting article on LinkedIn the other week about how marketing is viewed, from both marketeers’ and non-marketeers’ perspectives and, although it made me chuckle, it was also a powerful message about how difficult it is to agree what marketing actually is.
It got me thinking about how I could help businesses define what marketing means to them – and then help them embed that into their businesses and start to derive real benefits from their marketing function.
So, using my 5C’s here are some tips to hopefully get you thinking:
- Clarity
It is important as a business owner to be clear about what you want to achieve from your marketing. All too often, businesses try and recruit for marketeers with responsibilities and tasks that are simply too much for one person and then get frustrated that the outcomes are inevitably limited.
Ask yourself then, what does marketing success mean for you? And be clear about what you need in your business to drive success.
Do you need a strategist and planner? Someone who can shape the direction of your business and build and execute effective plans? Or do you need a product manager, someone who can manage your product portfolio, review the market, identify new trends and ensure commercial success with margins?
Or would you benefit most from a communications manager who is an expert on delivering your messages effectively to both new and existing customers?
- Culture
As a marketeer, it is so important that the business you are working for believes in marketing and understands the importance it brings to driving sales and building the brand. Not just at the senior level but within the whole business and that everyone in the company has a part to play in driving the marketing success.
And as a business owner it starts with you! If you don’t believe in it, then it will never work!
- Commitment
Being committed to marketing is the key to success. Being committed means not giving up when you don’t get instant results within the first few days or weeks of new activity. Marketing does take time, and being consistent will bring results.
But this is not to say that reviewing results and testing activities shouldn’t happen regularly, it simply means that you must commit to your brand and give your marketing time to work. Looking at the fenestration industry as an example, those big, successful brands have all started out from somewhere and have continuously invested into marketing.
Now, I’m not suggesting that your goals are to be as big as some of those main brands, success can mean something else for you, but please, if anything, invest into it and be 100% committed.
- Content
I’ve previously said that marketing is a hungry department, and it needs to be fed all the time with content. It’s also about the tools you use also. Make sure you invest in creating interesting content that is specific and relevant to your audience. Digital, video content that is trustworthy is key.
Remember to consider the tools you use. The marketing tool box is big!
- Consultant
If you’re not sure what marketing you need for your business, then speak to an expert that can help you understand and define that for you.
Now, clearly, as a consultant myself, I’d love for you to get in contact with me, but in all seriousness, there are some very clever, experienced and passionate marketing consultants out there that can help you define what you need for your business marketing. So, talking to an expert can save you painful frustrations and wasted budgets.