Nice tag line. What does it mean?
It means I do what's best for business.
That's what good marketing does and "marketing" doesn't.
Over the course of my career I have developed a set of guides and checks to make sure my work stays focused and avoids the "marketing" mistakes.
The marketing process.
Marketing diagnoses issues and creates solutions.
The best marketing uses analysis, data, and insight to create a customer-oriented strategy, and then applies creativity, innovation and ingenuity to deliver effective tactics that support the objectives.
While the specifics are tailored to you, the most effective marketing programs follow a consistent overall end-to-process.
To start, we analyze the context through research.
We gather quantitative and qualitative data from internal and external resources and use it to create an objective overview of the dynamic between your company and the customer.
Then we develop a customer-oriented strategy.
The insight from this overview is used to identify the customers to go after, the best ways to align the product and/or brand with them, and set the objectives that the team is best placed to deliver.
After this we create and execute a tactical plan.
With the direction set, we take a neutral approach to the tools, actions, and measurements best suited to achieving the goals. They are organised and used in a way that makes responsible use of resources, allows flexibility to change with circumstances, and integrates them to play to strengths and reduce weaknesses.
At the end of the year, the attribution and reporting goes into the data set for next year's run through.
Creating good marketing.
What's best for business is doing what's best for the customer.
We need to get over the idea that we must choose between them.
Marketing is a business function. Its role is to positively impact the company’s financial performance by optimising the alignment between the company and the customer. It should base its objectives on the business' needs, and define success with measures and metrics that demonstrate an impact on the business' performance.
Marketing is (also) a verb. Theory is not an end in itself, it is a thinking aid to inform practice. Effectiveness is delivered through the combination of thinking and action, so they need to be treated equally.
Each stage responds to the last. Strategic choices are a response to the insights from research, and tactics are a response to the strategic choices. Preconceptions lead to internal preferences replacing customer orientation, creating marketing that is misaligned with the customer and less effective as a result.
The process is sequentially dependent. As each stage of the process is based on the outputs of the one before it; if one part is not done well, all the following parts will be weaker.
New does not mean better. Marketing has a base of proven fundamentals that should not be rejected among the hyperbole around change. Relevant new thinking needs to be combined with it to increase effectiveness.
Good marketing can't happen without collaboration. The expertise of the wider business is a crucial part of understanding and improving the dynamic between the customer and the company.
Complex does not mean superior. The discipline has been flooded with superficial complexity in an attempt to fast-track itself to internal credibility, which leads to overworked marketing that appeals to other marketers rather than the customer.
Every business is its own context and has its own challenges. While you might have similar challenges that other companies have, every company has different resources, cultures, politics, and limitations on how they can reach their ambitions: how you take them on is never the same as someone else.
There are no perfect or universal solutions to contextual problems. The answer should be tailored to you, based on your strategy, objectives, resources, staff, industry, category etc. There is no answer in a business book, from or podcast, or at a conference session. They are generic solutions that create generic outputs.
Trends are not best practices. Best practice is determined through critical evaluation of the sources. Data should be interrogated, evidence should be assessed, and conclusions should be questioned.
Best practices are always relative. They depend on the company, strategy, objectives, and resources.
Tactics are approached neutrally. Choices should be made based on their ability to deliver the objectives, not the agendas of specialisms or gurus.
Professional and ethical responsibility.
Tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Many freelancers will confirm your biases and let you make poor choices if it means they get paid. As a freelancer, I define integrity as asking questions and challenging ideas, even if it makes me unpopular or uncomfortable. If I lose the job, so be it.
I see my role containing a professional and ethical responsibility to ensure that due diligence has been done and that you are making informed decisions. It's not about being right, it's about making sure you're reputation, and marketing's reputation, doesn't damaged