The One Critical Question about Marketing Every CEO Should be Asking

Today we have a guest blog from Elizabeth Andreini:

You were probably one of the millions who watched the recent Seahawks Super bowl victory and accompanying ads. What you may not have realized is that a 30-second spot at the 2014 Super bowl costs approximately $4 million, and that’s only airtime, not the cost of creating the ad. Hearing that fact is when most people make snide comments or an uncomplimentary sound about wasting money on marketing. And although I’m a marketer, I agree.

Hopefully you don’t think that is what smart marketing is, spending beaucoup bucks with little chance of a significant revenue impact. That’s like thinking of marketing as a method of transportation and thinking you have to choose between a $100,000+ Tesla car and walking. If you are walking you probably aren’t going to get very far very fast, and at the same time there are a lot of other viable transportation options before you shell out $100,000+ on a fancy  electric car.

Some businesses don’t think that they do marketing or need to do marketing. They expect sales to promote their products (and assume that they are all saying the same thing) or believe their products and services “speak” for themselves. To those CEOs I say look honestly at your sales efforts and ask the question: “How am I getting word out about my company and its services when a sales rep isn’t in the room?” If you don’t have mindshare when your sales rep is outside the room then you are in trouble, maybe not today but tomorrow, or in the next economic downturn.

Marketing isn’t as useless as most Super bowl ads; it serves a purpose by building awareness and knowledge, even preference of your products and services – without having a one on one conversation. It also helps keep you top of mind for potential customers and referrers. Marketing helps create a consistent story about the benefits of your product and services that everyone hears. For those who don’t believe in “marketing” or are uncomfortable with “marketing” then let’s call it what it really is “relationship building.” (Hint: sponsoring events is marketing.)

Marketing helps you remind referral partners and customers that you offer great products and services, tell them about new offerings and help build and maintain strong relationships – and who doesn’t want that?!

Here are some questions to think about:

1. How strong a market presence does my company have when a member of the sales team isn’t in the room?
2. If I look at my company’s sales pipeline, am I relying too heavily on a few referral sources or passive responses to requests for proposals?
3. How many unsolicited inbound leads are coming to our company?
4. How is my company continuing to stay in front of past customers to keep mind share and encourage repeat business or referrals?
5. How effective is my company at rapidly communicating new and special offers to the market? 

ELIZABETH ANDREINI

As the President of Accelerate Marketing, LLC, Elizabeth Andreini, is the “secret

weapon” CEOs turn to at key growth points when they need to transform marketing and

product management to grow their customer base, increase revenue & scale their

business. In addition to providing experienced executive insight and guidance, Elizabeth

often works as an interim CMO or VP to provide the hands-on leadership needed to

rearchitect marketing and product management and improve execution from the inside.

Elizabeth Andreini, founder & president of Accelerate Marketing, LLC 

206-769-3420 or elizabeth@accelerate-marketing.com

www.accelerate-marketing.com

Twitter: @acceler8mkting

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethandreini

Reading List for 2014

Excell Puget Sound has compiled a reading list  for entrepreneurs and business owners.   Our Recommended Book List provides tools and insight for a strong and successful 2014.

 Shannon Bruce, Executive Coach and Group Leader of Excell Puget Sound Kitsap has reviewed her top three all-time books on leadership.

 

Shift: A Guide-book to Above-the-Line Positive Thinking—Cathy & Gary Hawk

I highly recommend this book as a must read resource to create a culture of positivity among leaders and teams. Because this book is based on how to improve your engagement with self and others, it’s applicable for all types of ecosystems and will benefit individuals, families and companies. You will learn a new operating system for interacting with yourself and others that shifts the focus away from negative thinking and drained energy to positive thoughts that restore well-being, vitality and results. The book is both context and content rich, providing the brain science behind the work, while providing instructions on how to use the tool to support ongoing and sustainable behavior change. The greatest impact of this book is that it will support you in taking ownership of your own thoughts and energy to increase your vitality, deepen your relationships with individuals and teams and improve the quality of your outcomes in both life and work. 

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright

People are wired to be in relationship and as a result automatically form tribes. Each tribe has a unique culture that thinks, feels and acts a particular way. This book provides a solid framework for understanding the culture of the five tribal cultures, as named by the authors, to supports leaders in expanding their own leadership capacity as well as understanding how to engage and interact with others at the stage of culture they are operating. The natural result is teams and organizations thrive as you learn now to leverage the culture of the tribes you are interacting, either at home or at work.

The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything—Stephen M.R. Covey

Trust acts as an exponential dividend that accelerates results. This book is a comprehensive resource that looks at trust through multiple lenses starting with self-trust, relationship trust and stakeholder trust (organizational, market and stakeholder trust). It also explores how to develop a solid foundation of trust by strengthening the four cores of credibility which include integrity and intent (character) along with capabilities and results (competencies). As the title suggests, this book will change everything.



Lauren Owen,  Co-founder and Partner, Redpoint Succession and Leadership Coaching,  and Group Leader of Excell Puget Sound SouthSound Group reviews her top 3 books of all times:

Every Family’s Business, by Tom Deans, PhD

I like this book because Deans takes a different approach to family business. Dean’s view? If the majority of your wealth is tied up in your family business, treat it like the important investment it is. Don’t assume that the best thing for your kids (or the business) is having them work in it (and eventually lead it in the future). Deans advocates having yearly tough conversations between you and your successors about what each wants out of the business, including if and when the business should be sold. He includes a list of the questions that should be asked and answered by both parties. Told in a story format, it’s an easy read.

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, by Chip and Dan Heath

The Heath brothers have taken the best of existing research on decisions-making and boiled it down into a four step process. I liked this book so much that I bought it for all my Excell group members, who now incorporate many of the points from the book into how they make decisions (and how they coach each other).

Land on Your Feet, Not on Your Face: A Guide to Building Your Leadership Platform, by Jim Hessler with Steve Motenko

Written by former Excell facilitator and current Boss Show Host, Jim Hessler, this book is entertaining, inspirational and practical. Each chapter, or Plank, starts with a case study and incorporates real life stories from the author’s background in corporate leadership with key points from the best of current psychological studies in leadership effectiveness. The reader is challenged in each plank to apply the principals into his or her leadership practice with assignments called “Making It Real.”

3 Marketing Myths that are Stifling your Company’s Growth

Today we have a guest blog from: Elizabeth Andreini

When talking to CEOs I often find that there is confusion about marketing, which is often not the CEO’s core area of expertise.  Sometimes I hear statements that are misconceptions about marketing, so I thought I would highlight a few, leaving you something to think about as you plan for the coming year.

Myth #1: We don’t really do marketing.

The follow-up question I ask when I hear this statement is: “When you say you don’t do marketing, how to you tell prospective customers about your company?” I may hear the response, “We just focus on building relationships, we don’t advertise.” What is marketing? According to the Oxford dictionary: Marketing is defined as “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.” And what is promoting? Promoting is simply publicizing a product to increase public awareness and sales. The fact that you don’t advertise in magazines, newspapers or online doesn’t mean that you don’t do marketing. You just don’t advertise. Advertising isn’t marketing; it is only part of how you can communicate when marketing. Building a relationship with potential customers and communicating with them to create awareness and preference for your company is another way of saying that you are indeed marketing. 

Myth #2: I know what our customers want.

Really?! Are you exactly the same as your target audience? A 45 year old male product manager planning to expand his product line to include an offering more targeted to women once explained to me that he knew his sales would increase because now he was going to offer it in pink…and even purple. I was so stunned at his assumptions that I was speechless. (Yes, this really happened!) What CEOs need to keep in mind – and ensure other decision makers remember is: Your opinion while interesting, may not be relevant. That sounds harsh, but remember that you probably aren’t your target audience, may not match the profile, have the same needs and your level of product or service knowledge is different from your potential customers.  Reach out to those that are a closer fit to your target audience in the company or friends/colleagues outside the company to better understand what prospective customers values and perceptions are. You might be surprised at what you find out!

Myth #3: I don’t understand this frenzy over social media; we don’t need to do anything with those sites since that’s not how customers buy from us (today). 

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Yelp, Pinterest…the list goes on and on. It seems there is always a frenzied rush to jump on the latest social media trend – or completely ignore it. Companies can easily devote too much time and energy to social media because they want to be seen as innovators that get there first: “We have to get a presence on the new “FaceYouYelpterest” site before our competitors!”  But companies are more likely to ignore these sites because they don’t think their customers interact much using social media. Social media is just a vehicle for communication, and is ONE component in a carefully considered communication strategy. However what does get overlooked and why this is Myth #3, is that the changing demographics of your customers may mean that your future prospective customers will use social media sites to gather product/services information and learn about businesses, even if your current prospects aren’t. Older decision makers are being replaced with younger more internet savvy, smartphone-carrying decision makers. And employee demographics are changing as well. Participating in social media should be a well-considered strategy that plans not just for today’s customers but to attract future customers as well as key employees based on changing demographics.

Here are some myth busting questions you should be thinking about:

1.     How do prospective customers learn about our company and our products or services? How does that align with our “marketing” activities? How can we better communicate to build more awareness?

2.     When we think about our prospective customers, are we assuming we know what they really want because we know the product and service so well? Are we really the same demographic or psychographic profile and how can we get broader feedback which might better inform and improve our perspective?

3.     Are our potential customers looking at and using social media now and which sites are they looking at for information? Which social media sites might future employees be using? How might mobile phones be used to accessed information on our company and its products?

ELIZABETH ANDREINI

As the President of Accelerate Marketing, LLC, Elizabeth Andreini, is the “secret weapon”

CEOs turn to at key growth points when they need to transform marketing and product

management to grow their customer base, increase revenue & scale their business. In

addition to providing experienced executive insight and guidance, Elizabeth often works

as an interim CMO or VP to provide the hands-on leadership needed to rearchitect

marketing and product management and improve execution from the inside.

Elizabeth Andreini, founder & president of Accelerate Marketing, LLC 

Accelerate Marketing, LLC

206-769-3420 or elizabeth@accelerate-marketing.com

www.accelerate-marketing.com

Twitter: @acceler8mkting

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethandreini