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Marketing Your Business Three Ways to Get Your Team ‘On Board’
If your team thinks marketing is the sole responsibility of marketing or communications staff, they don’t “get it.”
At a recent keynote presentation in Lincoln Nebraska, I spoke to a roomful of amazing and committed nonprofit marketers and development specialists at an American Marketing Association (AMA) Brand Camp. They face several challenges, one of which is getting their boards and senior management teams ‘on board’ with marketing. Then, as chair of one of the AMA’s Special Interest Groups, I spearheaded a recent online discussion about marketing plans and discovered that many people face this same challenge. How do we get our staff and senior teams to embrace marketing with the understanding that everyone shares its responsibility? Here are three ways to influence your team:
1. Bring in a hired gun. When I worked on the “inside,” I faced the same challenge. I hired a local and experienced marketing consultant to do a presentation for the senior management team. In a one-hour session, he did a convincing PowerPoint presentation on why marketing and branding were crucial to generating revenue and growth.
You could see the little light bulbs go off around the table. It worked. No matter how much I had talked about it as a senior staff member, it took an outside voice to bring it to light.
2. Share case studies. When you find articles or case studies by other marketing or business professionals outlining their marketing successes, print copies for the staff and distribute them at meetings. There’s a good chance they’ll read the hard copy rather than receiving the article by e-mail. If they get antsy during the meeting, it’s possible they’ll scan the article right there. If you do this periodically, reinforcing the ROI other companies’ marketing efforts have produced, hopefully, it will have an influencing effect, although it may take time.
3. Staff training. Professional development and training can make a big difference in getting your team on board. Once the senior team embraces marketing’s role, the staff need to see how the dots are connected with the overarching strategy. When marketing is tied to the company brand, and staff understand the ‘big picture’ sum of all brand components, they may begin to see their roles in bringing the brand to life and how marketing is part of everyone’s job description.
If you attempt all three of these suggestions and one works, please share and e-mail your success story.
© 2007
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