What Has Your Marketer Done for You Lately?
Many people identify themselves as marketers or brand strategists, but sadly not many deliver their promised results. Ultimately, as a business, you hire a marketing or brand specialist for two reasons:
1) To Grow Your Business
2) To Earn Profits
Branding is equal parts discovery and design. Ask yourself these essential questions: Who are you truly? What do you truly stand for? What do you truly do? How does what you do truly fulfill the needs, passions and/or desires
of customers?
Is your marketer adding to your bottom line with effective, quantifiable marketing? Or are you throwing money away on ineffective brochures, direct mailers, websites and social media that are not speaking from that place of authenticity which is the core of your business model?
Luckily, there are marketers out there who get it and deliver results instead of empty promises. We call these people “breakthrough marketers” because they have broken through the mundane, useless and ultimately ineffective marketing “standards” with innovative, creative, results-driven marketing.
So how do you know if you have the right person in place to wave your marketing flag? We have put together a checklist to guide you through the process of determining if your marketer is, in fact, up to the standards of a true breakthrough marketer.
There are five core elements that breakthrough marketers have mastered:
- Breakthrough marketers focus on purpose and action. A great marketer starts with a goal in mind and crafts the marketing strategy to accomplish that specific goal. And that goal needs to motivate perspective customers to take action, whether it is to buy your products or services, enter your contest or attend your event. Going forward, ask yourself this one question in regards to every marketing activity: Why are we doing this? If there is no good answer, don’t do it. It is just that simple.
- Breakthrough marketers craft a strong message that gets attention. Does your tagline sound like everyone else? Does your slogan even make sense? Good marketing is not as much about the words as it is crafting a value proposition for potential customers. In other words, your marketing must go the extra step of explaining to customers how your product or service will fill a need they have or solve a problem. You will not catch customers’ attention unless you show them there is something in it for them. Show them why they should care.
- Breakthrough marketers have a plan. Do you feel like you are throwing darts at a dartboard when it comes to your marketing efforts? Many people in marketing think that each marketing tool stands on its own. Breakthrough marketers create a master marketing plan with campaigns and activities that are all tied to the same ultimate goal of driving a potential customer to take action. And successful marketers take it a step further and share those goals and action plans with the sales team to ensure that everyone is consistently using the same tools and language to bring the plan to a successful end. Not having a solid action plan and having incongruity amongst everyone who deals with customers and potential customers will derail the entire process and slow down your company’s momentum built up to this point.
- Breakthrough marketers engage creatively and keep content fresh. Are you tired of seeing the same stock photos on numerous websites? Growing bored with the same ho-hum posts on social media sites? Today’s marketers have so many great tools at their fingertips yet they choose not to use them. Or maybe they don’t know they are out there? Either way, it doesn’t paint your company’s image the way it should be. Breakthrough marketers are like artists who use the entire palette of color to catch the attention of the potential customer.
- Breakthrough marketers use proprietary analytic software to get optimal results. Breakthrough marketers understand that their job is not done once the brochure is handed out and the website is launched. They understand that delivering consistent direct mailers, e-mail marketing and social media campaigns are only a part of the solution. With that in mind, breakthrough marketers use proprietary back-end analytic software to keep track of the level of engagement received by a specific marketing campaign and accordingly can adapt campaigns to achieve the highest response rates. In marketing, the proverbial bottom line is in the literal bottom line. If the marketing activities are not adding to that bottom line, find a breakthrough marketer who can!
Ultimately, breakthrough marketers are first and foremost strategists. And when they have a firm grip on these core concepts and are doing the job correctly, your clients will remain engaged and empowered. Ultimately your business will grow as a direct result.
Silva Devarj
Owner, Brand Strategist
