I love a charcuterie board- those little piles of nuts and seeds, clusters of grapes and cheese cubes, and tiny jars of fig or kumquat jam. Olives, savory spreads, and spicy salamis line up like gleaming soldiers. And, the brilliant orange dried apricots, although often left uneaten, add just the right pop of color. The pistachios mingle with the raisins and the olives run into the crackers. Everything is served up on a flat wooden board, showcasing these beautiful edibles that complement each other.
This is how I think about marketing.
The Debilitating Cost of Disconnect
This is how I think about marketing
Lots of different strategies overlap in order to accomplish business goals. While specific roles are designated, it’s important everyone is connected, maintaining communication and consistency across the board. Content talks to SEO to find visitors through organic search, using the right keywords to target the right audience. Conferences talk to social media to build, engage, and nurture audiences before, during, and after an event. Paid-per-click talks to creative so that the compelling ad with the specific keyword has the same branding and colors as the interstitial ad on the website.
What surprises me is how many growing companies, already dubious about spending money on marketing, decide to outsource different marketing tasks to multiple agencies. Some companies have one agency for SEO, another for social media, yet another for content—and they all have to play nicely in the sandbox to achieve the same goals.
How are companies able to track attribution using this approach? If they’re ripping through their marketing budget with little to show for it, it’s likely they aren’t looking at consumer behavior across channels.
Opportunities Lost, Prematurely
Of course, this leads to those dubious feelings companies have about marketing
I can’t imagine what it must be like for that marketing director to pull together their monthly analytics. Cross referencing across multiple reporting dashboards must take so much time, it can only lead me to believe that what should be regular reporting becomes intermittent. Of course, this leads to those dubious feelings companies have about marketing.
Another consideration is onboarding. It takes time and preparation for two companies to get to know each other and find a rhythm. Trust is typically established before any paperwork is signed, but that’s only with agency leadership.
Our marketing company works in a relatively flat structure, meaning our writer is just as client-facing as our CEO. During the first few weeks, it's about learning the products and services, taking inventory of assets and resources, conducting market research, and creating a competitive analysis. Processes and timelines need to be hammered out, and more often than not, have to be adjusted a few times before they are fluid.
Why do it, if not to Succeed?
It takes time and preparation for two companies to get to know each other and find a rhythm
According to Merriam-Webster, marketing is defined as an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer. It is intrinsically holistic—the flat wooden board holding the individual edibles, or in this case, all the specific marketing roles.
Only when companies have a complete picture of how various marketing functions are working together can they get an accurate calculation of performance and truly make an impact on corporate goals.
