Marketing For Non Marketers

About 20 years ago I knew someone who was high up in a major tech business. She was head of a business unit and had been promoted to run marketing for the division. In this role she would control multi million pound budgets. I was running a tech marketing agency at the time and thought this was excellent news. I introduced the topic of some professional guidance and asked, “have you run a marketing function before?” I was, I have to say, rather shocked when she replied, “no, but how hard can it be. It is only common sense”.

There was recently a load of posts on LinkedIn regarding training in the marketing profession. The argument was, there isn’t much and there needs to be more. You might think this is a “no brainer”. After the friend I mentioned above dropped this comment I was outraged. I was insulted my 20 plus (then) years of experience, knowledge and insight could be so easily dismissed. Now I am not so sure. She made a pretty good job of it as I recall. She was an intelligent, motivated woman who knew the corporate culture of her employer much better than I did. Just like a government minister, she was moved onto another post within a couple of years.

So what about the many people who find themselves saddled with a marketing role they have no desire or training for? In the large number of family run SMEs which contribute to the UK economy I would guess there are thousands of people in this position at any one time. What do you do if you find yourself in this position?

There are numerous ways in which this could happen, but the most likely are either the incumbent is moved out, or you are the boss and the business has grown to the stage where a marketing function is required but there is nobody but you to do it. In either case, there is a temptation to make sweeping changes to mark your new role. This is generally a bad idea. The next temptation is to call up your AI agent of choice and bombard it with questions. Again, not a great idea. AI agents are great as a tool, but not as a starting point. Unless and until you have the information required to make positive, evidence based decisions you are better off listening. 

Step One: Listen

In both scenarios, my first piece of advice would be to talk to your customers. They know things which are invaluable to you. Whether you are taking over an existing marketing function or building a marketing function from scratch. This is the first step you need to take.

Step Two: Assemble

Armed with the valuable information you have collected from talking to your customers, you can then run this against the media and messaging used in your campaigns and business plan. Do they think about the business the same way you think about it? The chances are they will be concerned with price where you will be concerned with positioning. However, when you dig a little deeper, they will start talking about things like lead times, stock availability, customer service and new product development. 

Build a spreadsheet showing a matrix of how you compare with your competitors. This is where AI can help. It is a great productivity tool and will cut down the time taken to visualise and interpret data. 

You will be able to compare your media and messaging, and the strategy behind them, with the market’s perception of your offer. Do not fall into the trap of talking about price. Concentrate on the other areas. If you like, you can make a mental filing cabinet and store responses relevant to mental and physical availability, category entry points, share of voice and so on. You don’t know what those terms mean? No problem, AI agents love all that stuff. Feed all that into the mix and then do an audit of what your current marketing mix looks like. 

Build another spreadsheet setting out your routes to market and the media channels which support them. You will be amazed at how many channels you have access to. I remember doing this for a client and it ran to hundreds of rows, each of which needed monitoring, content dissemination and evaluation. That is Step Two, thinking about what you have and where you are.

Step Three: Plan

Step Three is to start a calendar and live by it. Look at every bit of copy, video, print and merchandise and think about the lead times required to create and publish. Add in the dates of events and occasions relevant to your business. Run the lead times back and you will almost certainly be confronted with a mass of tasks which should have been done yesterday. Congratulations, you are now a marketer.

You may be asking, “why am I putting lead times in for tasks which I may cancel when I do a performance audit?” If you are, then congratulations on the quality of your critical thinking skills. The reason is this; carrying out Steps Two and Three will inevitably lead you to prioritize. Many of the tasks on your calendar, such as social media posts, carry no financial cost, but they do have a significant cost in terms of other resources, most importantly, time. Management means prioritising tasks using scarce resources.

Step Four: Write A Brief

Only now, when you have carried out these steps, are you in a position to communicate with potential partners, stakeholders, subcontractors and staff. To communicate effectively you need a brief. I like to create it as a wiki, so it becomes a living document which can be updated with you as moderator. Coming up with ideas to affect strategy or implement tactics is one thing, but you will need to show your working. So you will refer to the brief whenever you want to adapt your marketing mix, hire freelancers or agencies or whatever else your business needs and your budget allows. 

Until you have the basis of a brief, which these steps will give you, you will be unable to write a brief which communicates with those to whom you will be delegating tasks.

Have the confidence to trust your own thoughts and processes. Don’t be arrogant, you have no right to be, but resist the temptation to parrot what you were told by the last person you spoke to. There will be those who will say, “No mate, you need to run your GA4 and eCommerce dashboards up against an AI agent and tell it to assess your CROI and CoA against industry benchmarks”. Or there will be others who tell you to splash your budget on a big party for all your customers, or sponsor the local football team. Everyone is a marketing expert. I doubt your CFO gets unsolicited advice on treasury management or depreciation schedules, but the world and his wife know you should be on TikTok.

My advice is, before you do any of these things, focus on the brief. It is, just as my friend said all those years ago, just common sense.