We Want You
Irrespective of your organisation’s marketing consultant’s speciality – whether it be poster designers, or programmatic display advertising gurus – the crucial ingredient your consultant requires is YOU!
And the winner will be……………. YOU!
Humans First, Marketers Second
I want to throw some rubbish away first. Out goes, “leave us to run our business and you look after the marketing”.
Human beings require support and affirmation. When left in a vacuum; humans tend to lose focus, become easily distracted, and lack the requisite motivation to excel. Essentially, if we believe no one loves us, we will go in search for someone who does.
As marketing consultants, we are busily trying to increase your organisation’s output through greater sales, phone calls, site visits or whatever you required upon our engagement. We view our marketing efforts as a product we have invented, just like a carpenter, engineer or artist.
As human beings who have created something for you, we yearn for reciprocation in the form of feedback. We want to hear your thoughts. If they are not thoughts of praise, then we really want to hear them, and quickly please.
The Client-Marketer Relationship
Frequently engaging with your marketing consultant will vastly increase their satisfaction, performance, and ensures the marketing product created meets your requirements. This will – in turn – increase the likelihood of reaching your goals.
If you run your organisation successfully, you will have a superior understanding of the target market than any of your consultants. It is, therefore, imperative that you sufficiently engage, and provide feedback to your consultants given that our roles entail interacting with said target market. Your level of engagement will alter the outcome of success or failure for any marketing product.
A marketing consultant requires information pertinent to the creation of a successful product. It may include:
• Who uses your product or how they use it
• How your product is delivered
• How you answer the phone
• The process of handling enquiries
• What product pays the bills
• What salesperson pays the bills
• What negatives do you get
…and a thousand other pieces of information that makes your organisation work, which will be helpful in creating a beautiful marketing product.
Effective Communication is Key
The best interaction we can have is at your place of business. What we learn from walking in your door, talking to your staff, seeing how your organisation operates is invaluable. This is not always possible but should be done at least every 12 months.
The worst type of communication is an email. Back off there a bit (I am serious here). We are talking about creating a product to interact with your market. Of course, emails have a place in communication, but a conversation will always provide the marketing consultant far more useful information than an email.
Your organisation relies on having a wide range of interactions with people. Your marketing consultant is no more important than any other person. Sorry that is not true, they are. Your organisation requires that you are fully engaged with your marketing consultants’ operations.
If you don’t want to do this with your current consultant, then find one you do. It is simply the most effective marketing performance improver you have available, yes back to YOU. What I am saying does not apply to all organisations; there are some where marketing is superfluous to operational success. I have yet meet one though.