What is Marketing Leadership

A consistent theme that I hear when I’m speaking to business leaders is they just don’t know what’s going on in their business around marketing, they don’t have enough control over it, they don’t know who’s doing what, they don’t know why they’re doing it, they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know when it’s happening, how it’s happening, why it’s happening, how much it’s costing. They don’t know where it’s going, who it’s reaching and they certainly don’t know what the impact of that marketing is.

Ultimately it is that lack of control that creates the reaction in most business leaders that forces them into a panic state. When we’re in a panic state what we tend to do is we park things, we either totally dive in and deal with the problem or we park it.

All too often I see businesses whose first response when I say to them ‘Who’s in charge of your marketing and what marketing are you doing?’ is ‘Well we do a bit and no-one’s in charge of it, it’s something I take care of as the managing director and we’re doing a bit but we don’t do an awful lot. We seem to be quite lucky.’

Yet if you ask them how business is and do they want more? Of course they say business is all right but we could have more, certainly we’d all love to have more clients.

There’s a real gap there.
That gap is caused by a lack of control.

So if you’re a business that thinks you’re doing ok but you could do more business and doesn’t have complete control of your marketing, that gap right there, that money that you don’t have, those clients that you don’t have, is 9 times out of 10 in my view because you don’t have control of your marketing.

Now that’s not judgement, I’m not criticising you, to be honest that’s normal. Most business leaders I meet have that similar problem. That lack of control is easily addressed actually when you find someone like myself, after 20 years I can tell and show you how to get control, and it’s very liberating.

The business leaders I’ve done that for and that I’ve showed how to get control find it’s very exhilarating and relaxing almost afterwards because they feel in control. They know what they’re doing, when, why, they know how they’re doing it, who to, they know where it’s happening, how much it’s costing. And they certainly have a handle on the key performance indicators and what’s measurable, what needs to be measured to determine what the return on investment is.

Ultimately that lack of control that creates that gap between ‘we’re doing all right, we could definitely do with more’ and ‘no one’s in charge of marketing’. When that gap goes away what you end up with is, you’re totally on top of your marketing and you’re getting the revenue that you deserve.

So if your business is a well-kept secret and you could be on top of the marketing and getting the revenue you deserve, that would be a good thing. The alternative is your business is a well-kept secret, you’re not on top of your marketing and they’re not getting the revenue is you deserve, and that gap is lethal. It may not seem like much but to a business that gap could mean the beginning and the end of the pipeline, and it could mean the difference between winning and losing a deal.

It’s all about control, and getting control in my view is quite easy.

There are a few ways you can get control, the first thing you have to do really is understand why you do what you do and what the motivations of your customers are.

So you have to define who your customers are and then work out their motivations.
Work out why you do what you do and why they care.

Why does it matter to them?

We often talk in marketing of selling the sizzle not the sausage, of giving people what they want but serving them what they need.

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
Steve Jobs

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Henry Ford

It’s your job as a business owner to figure out why you do what you do and what the intersect points are with your customers for their needs and wants so that you can anticipate and therefore serve and over serve them.

When you give your customers and clients more than what they want, when you give them something they didn’t even realize they wanted – they will flock to you.

Ultimately once you’ve understood why you’re doing and what motivates them, you need a strategy. But if you understand your targeting, if you understand you’re targeting and you understand your why and their why, then it’s a really simple case of understanding the target more;
Who are they?
Where do they congregate?
What information sources?
What’s their personality type?
How are they going to respond to certain types of language?
How would they respond to certain types of offers?
What are they looking for from you?

Once you’ve understood all of that, you can start to determine through the strategy, the marketing methods, marketing channels and marketing campaigns you can run.
So that’s marketing methods; so for example social media, the marketing channel; for example Facebook, and the marketing campaign; maybe a 60 second Facebook live to your audience from your page addressing the key points of pain that you know are the outcomes that they want.

Really simple, really quick and immediately people start to feel like they have control of their business. It’s very liberating.

You can choose not to do that of course, you could stay exactly as you are and do nothing about it and continue to bask in the paralysis. Ultimately you can completely decide to do nothing and maintain the gap between ‘no one taking care of your marketing or you not having control your marketing’ and the business you deserve to have.

You can have that gap if you want but if you want growth someone has to own the marketing, someone has to control it. That doesn’t necessarily mean more work, it could mean you being in control of the strategy and outsourcing it to various people, but you know what they need to do for you now because you’ve got a strategy, you’ve got targeting and messaging and you’re in control.

Ultimately to get growth, you have to bring your marketing together, you have to take control of it and then you will get the revenue you deserve.

If your business is a well-kept secret – for me that’s the best way forwards.
I hope that helps, I’d love to hear your comments.