Too often, marketing is viewed as the last piece of the puzzle when in fact, it should be the complete opposite.
Good marketing doesn’t overcome poor products, brands that don’t fit, or ideas customers don’t want. Good marketing thinks first and acts second. To do so, good marketing must be called upon early and often.
Here is why it is essential that marketing come into your plan as part of your overall strategy, not as an afterthought.
1. Marketing is vital to research and development.
When the engineer from research and development informs the marketing department of an exciting, technically superior new product and asks them to take it to market, it is too late. You can save your organization from costly mistakes, including the “build it and they will come” issue by implementing marketing at the forefront of your next project.
Put the horse before the cart. Testing your market and researching your ideal client at the beginning is essential to gaining valuable feedback before taking a failed project to market.
2. Marketing and brand should drive business growth plans.
Imagine the President of your organization announcing a newly acquired subsidiary and then calling on the marketing team to determine how to best integrate it with the corporate brand. It’s too late. Branding is more than just your logo, tagline or company colours, it is your promise to your clients. Branding is bigger than marketing. Your messaging, value proposition, and communications strategy needs to be well thought and aligned prior to exploring any merger or acquisition opportunities. Too many deals fail because of poor pre- and post-integration efforts that do not involve marketing.
3. Marketing correlates to, you guessed it, sales.
If the head of sales requests marketing support to promote their next big idea, it is much too late. It is important that marketing be incorporated into your sales strategy from day one. Buy-in from your ideal client or customer and understanding their needs is what will support your sales. Too often, marketing is on an island and treated as the last link in the chain. This should not be the case. Marketing needs to connect with your entire team and sales efforts should be integrated with marketing from the very beginning.
Good marketing is about determining what the market needs before spending time developing a new product. It is about understanding where the opportunities are before pursuing an acquisition to meet them. Good marketing gets its big ideas from the customer and funnels them to sales, not the other way around.
What business are we in? What business should we be in? What does the market need and want? What will the market find compelling? These are all marketing questions and should come first. If marketing is not involved in answering these questions, marketing is not playing the right role nor is it adding real value to your organization.
Marketing can help accomplish big things, but only when it is involved right from the start. Ready to get started? Let’s connect.
About The Author
As Founder and President of Incite, Ted brings over 25 years of strategic marketing and consulting experience to the table. His proven ability to engage in complex business strategy and multi-stakeholder environments has enabled him to help a diverse range of private and public sector clients with growth strategy, communications, strategic issues management and brand development.
About Incite
Incite is a marketing and strategy consulting firm specializing in growth, brand, and communications. From market expansion and brand development, to supporting post-merger integration and building internal engagement, Incite’s strategic approach helps clients to better understand their market, clearly articulate value, align organizational resources, and connect with key stakeholders to achieve success.
