Managing Change to Grow

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2015, buying process, C-Suite executives, change, conversions, customers, digital age, growth, internet, Internet marketing, marketing, marketing mix, Marketing Sherpa, online content, research, results, sales, strategy, website

It’s January – time for the New Year’s resolutions and change.

Change affects everything in a business, from improving product offerings to streamlining operations. Just like other departments—from operations to finance to quality assurance—marketing also continues to evolve. In our digital age, marketing products and service is more complicated than ever before.

If you’re still marketing the old-fashioned way and waiting to send information to your customers, your marketing programs may prove less than effective.

Customers no longer wait for you. Engagement starts on the Internet when customers begin their research on your company, your competitors and your products.

Nearly 70% of the sales process is complete before a new customer ever contacts a company. This means by the time a customer comes to you, s/he already has hardened expectations. Customers have more control than ever before, and only want to hear from you when they have a need. They can avoid you by hiding behind technology. They can delete your information instantly.

If you wait until you have personal contact with a new customer to begin your marketing process, you may be too late. So how do you get in front and stay there when your customers have the control?

To ensure customers are reading the right content information, your website is ground zero. Consumers read and research, they ask around, and they analyze their needs against key stats and facts. Your marketing has to be focused and your technology flawless, and it must be available when your customer is ready to engage.

Customers look for three things in your marketing content:
1. Does your company have a product or service that meets their need?
2. Can you demonstrate what you do in a way that proves you are worth consideration?
3. Is your company easy to engage?

Customers will continue to drive their buying process deeper into the sales process. As a result, changing and improving your relevant on-line content marketing is more important than ever. How are you changing your marketing mix?

Source: Marketing Sherpa

 

Five Years of Communication Growth

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blogs, communication, growth, writing

One of the recent blog assignments given to my students was to write about where they want their level of professional communications to be in five years.

Five years can bring about a large amount of change. For me, five years ago I was smack dab in the middle of a national recession where I was managing all forms of communications for a Fortune 500 company and its subsidiaries that were experiencing record downturns, high levels of instability and corporate-wide layoffs. Internally, it was a weird arena of controlled chaos. I was dealing with the Executive Team, employees and the media on a daily basis. Everything I said and wrote in my professional dealings were crafted with specific messages and endured a rigorous approval process.

Five years ago, I didn’t know what my exact situation would be at this point in time, but I know I would have expected that my communication abilities to continue to improve. As I always did, I would adapt my writing and speaking to the environment in which I was working. Each company and organization has its own unique style and voice, and I think that being a good communicator is to understand and know that voice, and then use it to further the company’s goals.

Today, I have a lot less stress and lot more leeway in how I communicate professionally. This doesn’t mean that I have lost articulation or the ability to construct messages; it just means I do it on a less frequent (and frenzied) basis. These days, I have the luxury of two weeks between weekend classes to construct my Powerpoint presentations, organize my notes and prepare my lesson agendas. This is a far cry (and a great relief) from the 30 minutes I may have been given to craft a news release that would be distributed globally, but first had to go through five levels of approval by people who didn’t know how to craft messages.  That was rarely a fun day.

I am so pleased to enjoy communications again. What continues to improve is I still enforce a high level of professionalism in both the written and oral word and continually challenge myself to build my strengths and turn any weaknesses into positives. Some things never change.