The job as a marketing manager can, in many ways, be quite stressful and at times, I would say frustrating. Marketing is in the middle of everything and everyone in the company has an opinion about what you do. Qualified or not, your colleagues will come with their views on what they think about your email campaign, and that ad and so on. This means that you need to be on your toes on what you do, why you do it, and know what it is that you want to accomplish by doing so. You need to know your mission and most importantly you need stick to it. If you don’t, you’ll end up stressing around trying to fulfill everyone’s need. And that is what I call “mission impossible.”
I’d like to share with you 4 main cornerstones that help me keep my mission top of mind. There are, of course, many other things you need to consider, but by having these 4 areas in place, you have a strong foundation to build out and develop a great marketing machine and achieve results. Everyone can start from here, regardless of budget sizes, resources and company sizes.
1. Business goals
What is your company’s overall strategy? What is it your company wants to accomplish, find out what the pain is. If this is not clear then ask. And ask because getting the answer is crucial for your success in the company. Once you have identified the overall business goals, write down how you see marketing contributing to the business and define some goals that is going to help you tell you if you are on the right path
2. Plan
Then it is time to create a plan of activities that will help support your company’s strategy. Team up with other stakeholders in the company and get input– you can’t do everything alone and you are not the expert on everything. Be realistic and choose activities with the highest return and impact on business goals.
3. Measure
Why? Well, if you can’t track how you contribute to the business and value you bring in, then what is the point of doing all the good things you do? It is always good to have a baseline - something to benchmark your results against. So start of by finding the baseline on all important areas that you have defined will help support the business goals.
If the strategy is to grow markets, your baseline numbers could be in the areas of:
- Website visits, new/repeating visitors, bounce rates, engagement (how long do they visit and how many pages do they read)
- Number of leads
- Number of leads converting to new customers
4. Marketing tools
You need some basic tools to help you on your way. If you don’t know how to work with Google Analytics then take a course – you can also team up with an external person who can help you get started. In addition to this you need a CRM tool to track, manage and execute market communication. Luckily, today you can purchase CRM software on various technology platforms and for a very little cost per month per user. So don’t make this a barrier for you and your company’s success.
