As a founder of a small- to mid-market business, you’ve always had a clear vision for the future of your company. After all, why start a business if you didn’t already have driven, personal goals driving you every day?
Most likely, this vision includes:
- The value you believe will help your customers thrive
- How you see your organization as uniquely differentiated from others in your industry
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The impact your organization works together internally--how everyone will work collectively towards the mission
Over time, you’ve worked hard to build a team that shares this vision and is dedicated to making it a reality. From sales and service/support to your marketing mavens, you might even feel like you have the “dream team” in place.
Growth Can Be Painful
Unfortunately, things may begin to break down as you start putting your vision into practice. While your team does want to bring your vision to life, growth can do funny things.
It may stir up opposing priorities, there may be stiff competition for limited resources, success metrics may rely on different data sources so that it’s hard to rely on a single source of truth in performance measurement.
When teams seem confused, they’re looking to leadership to clarify and point to the true north, so they are crystal clear about how to make success happen. This is certainly true when it comes to your marketing team and outsourced marketing partners.
The question is: What can you do to ensure your marketing team truly understands the role they play in making your vision a reality?
De-Siloing Teams *Is* Important… But It’s Not Everything
The concept of de-siloing your teams goes a long way to aligning different skill sets and responsibilities. For example, ramping up marketing efforts when service bandwidth or inventory capacity can’t handle the load is wasteful and puts stress on internal systems. Focusing solely on completing the “tasks” in front of them puts the big picture at risk. The more isolated your teams are, the more likely this is to happen.
But, there’s an opportunity for greater coordination, particularly with respect to marketing strategy. Even when internal teams are working collaboratively, there can still be a misunderstanding about “deliverables” versus process. A cohesive organization with defined processes is what brings vision to life.
Growth can do funny things.
It’s not that marketing (or sales, or operations) is losing sight of the organization’s overall vision—it’s that these departments and functions may not grasp that marketing can be the driver of these processes.
To make this happen, it’s essential to create a shared roadmap in order to define what this vision “looks like” when put into action. This means seeing your vision from each teams’ perspective—and understanding how each team’s workflows fit into the big picture.
In other words, you’re not simply saying “Here’s my vision, make it happen.” Rather, it’s “Here’s our vision. What steps will we take together to make it happen?” This, in turn, will help your marketing team stay focused on your goals over time—even when things get a little hectic in the trenches.
If your company needs a more DEFINED marketing strategy—one that encompasses a shared vision approach—here are some resources to help:
- See more videos on marketing strategy on our YouTube channel—and don’t forget to subscribe so you get the new ones in your inbox.
- Check out the Strategy Lab video to help break the cycle of random acts of marketing through a proven three-step framework to maximize every marketing dollar they spend.
- Let some air out of your marketing strategy “balloon” by exploring a part-time CMO to guide your in-house or outsourced marketing teams. Make sure your tactics have a strategy to stand on. Let's talk specifics.
- If your team needs a strategy primer to finesse your current strategy roadmap, get in touch so we can set up time to discuss timing and cost so you're in good shape moving into 2022.
P.S. Stay tuned for part two of this blog, where I get into more of the “nitty-gritty” you’ll need to accomplish to ensure your marketing team follows through on your marketing roadmap.
