The companies that will achieve the greatest success are those who will break down the barriers between departments within a business and truly pull together to achieve marketing goals.
Create a Company Vision
Many organizations may be organized in such a way where each department sort of fends for itself. Management has its goals, the sales team has its objectives, and operations is working on their strategies. Although individual departments should have their own objectives and metrics, they need to be working together to achieve a common company vision as well as participating in a single marketing campaign. Each company should have a single, unified voice.
This can, at times, be challenging as individual departments may not be aware of larger marketing goals or how they can participate. Best case scenario: all departments have a general understanding of the company’s branding and image and are trying to execute within the broad marketing scope, but they time their customer outreach too close together or waste resources by duplicating efforts. Worst case picture: departments are actually counterproductive, work against one another and confuse customers, influencers or other business partners with mixed messages.
The remedy for this situation is to start from the top. The marketing team should work closely with the company executives to not only understand the overall business vision and goals for the year, but also to come to an agreement about branding, image and marketing priorities.
Touch Base Often
Once those decisions have been made, a skeleton strategy, plan and schedule should be created. As the marketing department reaches out to all the internal departments, it can flesh out the overall plan with department input, ideas and suggestions.
Touching base with internal departments serves several purposes. First, marketing can roll out the overall vision for the year as well as providing branding, messages, and positioning to all departments so everyone is on the same page. Second, this is a great opportunity to solicit support, fresh ideas and content for the overall campaign. For example, an operations technician may have a knack for explaining more technical aspects of the business and can be a great resource for a trade reporter who might be covering related technology. Third, department-specific plans may affect the overall marketing plan. For instance, if an upgrade or new product or service has a particular launch date, that should be the big outreach to customers during that time. If the company is participating in a big trade show or conference, this should also have a protected spot on the marketing calendar.
Build on Your Unified Brand
By working together across departments and breaking down silos, businesses will be able to put forth a much more unified brand and message, which will help customers, influencers and other business partners remember and understand your company’s vision. If target audiences understand what you’re all about, they will turn to your company for advice, solutions, input, and leadership as well as products and services.
As 2018 comes to a close, and businesses gear up for 2019, it’s a great time to revisit your marketing and public relations strategies. If you need an expert who can prioritize your efforts, contact GYC Vegas. This public relations firm Las Vegas brings years of experience ranging from strategic planning to content marketing and relationship management.