5 Signs Your Internal Marketing Alignment Needs Work and How to Fix It

 

Imagine yourself as a skilled musician, dedicating countless hours to perfecting your instrument, mastering each piece precisely. Now, picture an orchestra where every musician performs flawlessly, but in a different key or different tempo. While individual talent is crucial, it is the synchronization of efforts and playing in harmony that produces beautiful music, akin to a team achieving greatness beyond the capabilities of its members. The sum should be more than the parts.

In today's organizations, internal marketing alignment is not just important—it's imperative. When campaigns, launches, events, and thought leadership efforts are siloed, it creates a ripple effect that can lead to conflicting messages and, ultimately, customer confusion. This confusion doesn't just risk your brand's relevance; it jeopardizes its very identity.

Consider this: with a myriad of marketing initiatives bombarding the market simultaneously, it's easy to lose sight of your brand's unified voice. This lack of cohesion not only impedes effective communication but also weakens your brand's impact, making it harder to stand out amidst the competition.

However, there is a solution. By breaking down these silos, integrating data and analytics, and enhancing internal communication, your team can not only align its goals and priorities but also cultivate greater employee engagement and cohesion across functions.

Yet, the question remains: how do you know if your team is truly aligned? What signs should you be on the lookout for? You can quickly assess your strategies, and ensure that every marketing effort resonates with clarity and purpose if you know what to look for.

5 Signs of Marketing Misalignment

Communication breakdowns
Breakdowns in communication can occur when individual marketing teams operate in silos. This fragmentation can lead to inconsistent messaging, weakening the impact of your marketing efforts. In addition, a disconnect between sales and marketing can arise, signaling a critical issue. When the expectations of these teams diverge, both are kept from their ability to perform effectively and achieve results. It's important to recognize these signs and take action swiftly to realign efforts and ensure the cohesion necessary for success.

Marketing Silos with Fragmented Messaging
As marketing silos expand, teams may begin creating their own marketing materials without central coordination. This presents a significant challenge: the carefully crafted brand messaging you've painstakingly developed can become fragmented and diluted. This not only undermines your marketing efforts but also leaves sales teams feeling uncertain about which story to convey.

Customers can become confused about your company's message and purpose in the market when they encounter conflicting information. It's key to address these issues promptly to maintain clarity and consistency in your messaging, ensuring that both internal teams and external audiences understand your brand's identity and value proposition. 

Data Disconnect with a Lack of ROI
Do all your marketing teams utilize the same metrics tool or a small set of tools? If not, conflicting insights can easily arise. Without a unified approach to metrics, accurately measuring campaign impacts and ROI becomes a mountain of a task. This lack of alignment not only complicates analysis but also weakens the ability to create a data-driven, unified customer journey.

To overcome these challenges, it's essential to establish a common data set or tool that all teams can use. By aligning on metrics and streamlining the data collection processes, you can unlock valuable insights and optimize your marketing efforts for maximum impact and return on investment.

Misaligned Goals and Priorities
Do your marketing goals line up with your sales targets? They should. The lack of alignment between sales and marketing goals can significantly impact the company's KPIs. Moreover, it can diminish the perceived value of marketing within the business (this is huge) due to a lack of clarity on how marketing contributes to the company's overall direction and goals.

It's critical to ensure that marketing and sales teams are working towards common objectives. By aligning goals and priorities, you can maximize efficiency, drive better results, and demonstrate the value of marketing initiatives in advancing the company's mission and objectives. It can also make your CRO very happy.

Employee Disengagement
Due to the issues highlighted earlier, marketing teams may experience feelings of isolation and lack of support from other departments. When employees don't understand how their efforts contribute to the company's vision and mission, morale and motivation can reach an all-time low.

It's important to foster a culture where employees feel connected to the bigger picture and understand the impact of their work. By showing a clear path for how marketing efforts align with the company's goals, you can boost morale, enhance motivation, and create a more engaged and productive team.

If you begin to see some of these symptoms it might be time to assess your marketing team’s alignment and begin to think about solutions.  Solutions focused on five areas can help improve alignment and promote engagement.

Solutions to Better Marketing Alignment

#1 Improve Internal Communication
Establishing regular cross-department meetings and updates is key to fostering communication within the marketing teams. Encourage open conversations and feedback during these sessions to ensure everyone's voice is heard. Additionally, consider using tools like Slack to create a collaborative space just for the marketing team, where ideas can be shared and discussions can evolve beyond traditional meeting settings. By prioritizing effective communication, you can enhance teamwork, foster innovation, and drive success across departments.

#2 Break Down Marketing Silos
To break down marketing silos, start by establishing, publishing, and regularly updating your marketing strategy and messaging framework. Be sure that all marketing stakeholders, including sales, partner marketing, events, and product management, are informed and aligned with this framework.

Next, create a best practices and learning forum (Slack or another platform) where team members can share both small and large wins with the larger marketing team. This encourages collaboration and knowledge-sharing so you can grow a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Lastly, promote collaboration across marketing sub-teams by encouraging cross-functional projects and initiatives. By breaking down silos and promoting a united approach, you can unlock the full potential of your marketing efforts and drive impactful results across the organization. With these suggestions, you can turn your marketing workgroup into a true team.

#3 Unify Data and Analytics
Begin by deploying or standardizing on a single shared data platform. You may already have a Customer Data Platform (CDP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in place that can serve this purpose.

Start with a focused approach: select a couple of projects or campaigns and ensure you can track prospects from the initial interaction to the final conversion. Additionally, make sure you're collecting enough data to inform future marketing decisions.

Using this approach you can get deeper insights into your audience and campaign performance, enabling more informed decision-making and ultimately driving better results for your marketing initiatives.

#4 Align Goals and Priorities
Start by setting clear and measurable goals. Consider using the SMART format for goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). When creating your goals make sure that they map into the overall business goals, and establish ways to track your progress.

#5 Promote Employee Engagement
Flexibility is key: regularly review your goals and strategies, making adjustments either quarterly or in six-month intervals. By maintaining alignment with business objectives and consistently tracking progress, you'll optimize your team's efforts and drive success in achieving your goals.

Foster a culture of collaboration and inclusivity.  Encourage senior employees to host training sessions on topics they're passionate about or skills they consider valuable. Providing opportunities for employees to share their knowledge and expertise not only fosters a sense of empowerment but also allows them to shine in their respective areas.

Recognize and reward team achievements to reinforce the value of collaboration and celebrate collective successes. By prioritizing employee engagement, you'll create a more motivated and cohesive team, ultimately driving greater productivity and success. 

Take Your Marketing Alignment to the next level

Ensuring your marketing teams are all singing from the same hymn sheet is crucial for a cohesive message to your customers. But how do you make it happen? Well, it's all about bringing teams together naturally and with purpose. Start your projects with clear goals and metrics in mind, and make sure everyone's on the same page when it comes to tracking progress. And don't forget about your team members - let them take the lead and share their expertise with each other. Reward them for their efforts, and you'll see that alignment soar!

Ready to unlock the full potential of your product or content? I'm a passionate marketer with a proven track record of success. Let's discuss how I can contribute to your team. Schedule a free consultation today! 

Building Unbreakable Teamwork in the Workplace: Stop Assembling, Start Building

Sure, we stack people who work on similar tasks together and call them teams, but does that spark synergy? Are they leveraging each other’s strengths, and tackling challenges collaboratively? When interview questions bring up teamwork in the workplace, it’s this disconnect that sparks debate — because work “teams” often fall short of the real deal. 

Unlike the teams, we find outside work, where diverse skills intertwine and support, our work groups often crumble under the pressure of rapid change and market shifts. Fragile collections of individuals simply can’t weather the storm, impacting morale, performance, and ultimately, the company’s bottom line. 

Let’s weave resilience into the fabric of our teams. We need groups that bend without breaking, learn from setbacks, and emerge stronger. This transformation requires concrete steps: 

• Foster open communication: Encourage genuine dialogue, feedback, and vulnerability. Create safe spaces for honest exchange and diverse perspectives. 

Action — Host “Brainstorming Brunches”: Ditch the stuffy conference room and gather your team for a casual breakfast meeting. Encourage playful brainstorming, where everyone feels comfortable sharing even the wackiest ideas. 

• Celebrate skill diversity: Value the unique strengths each member brings to the table. Build an environment where different talents complement and amplify each other. 

Action — Launch “Skill Showcases”: Dedicate a team meeting to showcase individual talents and expertise. This allows everyone to learn from each other and appreciate the unique skills each member brings to the table. 

• Invest in continuous learning: Equip individuals with the tools and opportunities to constantly grow and adapt. Embrace experimentation and encourage knowledge sharing. 

Action — Create “Learning Circles”: Facilitate peer-to-peer learning groups where team members can share knowledge, discuss industry trends, and support each other’s growth. 

By nurturing these qualities, we unlock a chain reaction of benefits: 

• Unwavering focus: Resilient teams weather storms with clear heads and unwavering commitment. 
• Flexible innovation: Diverse skills and open communication fuel creative problem-solving and breakthrough ideas. 
• Seamless collaboration: Trust and understanding pave the way for effortless teamwork and exceptional results. 

Building teamwork in the workplace isn’t just a feel-good initiative; it’s a strategic investment in your future. It’s the difference between surviving and thriving in the ever-changing game of business. Let’s stop assembling teams, and start building them. Let’s unleash the unstoppable force of collective resilience and propel our organization to new heights. 

Great article to learn more. 

If you are looking for a product marketing or customer success leader let’s talk.

Ad Tech 2011 SF revisited - It is all about time management

A while back I attended Adtech in San Francisco; April to be exact. Between product launches and my family, it has taken me this long to write about one of my experiences there. Yes, there were lots of great sessions on social media, video marketing, SEO etc... but the one that I remember most was on maximizing my time. It was a session given by Adam Boettiger on Digital minimalism.

As a web marketer, I find my skills are in high demand both in and outside of the office. Which typically means I always have more items to do than time. Evidently, I wasn't the only one in the room with this problem. Here are some Adam's thoughts that I find most useful in balancing my work on the web with living my life.

1. Go dark (digitally) for 1 hour a day. Use this time for planning or working on a task you have been putting off.

2. Schedule time for solitude. Give yourself time to think.

3. Stay focused. Eliminate distractions and STOP multitasking. There have been a number of stories lately that multitasking doesn't really work. It merely means you are trying to do multiple things and doing none of them well.

4. Use email more effectively. Send less email. He had a great statistic here that I found amazing. For every email you send out plan on getting three in return. So if you want to get less email; send less. This hit home with me and has caused me to change my behavior especially with questions. IM is my application of choice for things like questions, or double checking a number etc....

5. Brevity is king for email. Try to send 6 sentences or less in your emails.

6. Use text email. No graphics.

7. Always follow up. There were a number of agency folks in the room asking about contacting clients following up etc. Adam's answer was spot on. He told a short story about how he follows up with people. Send them an email. If you don't hear back from them then call them the next day. Keep trying different ways of communicating with them and follow up promptly. I have used this since his talk and no one has complained and in some cases the folks on the other end felt relieved that I called them and we could put the issue to rest. The other take away was that when someone is contacting you don't put off getting back to them. If you aren't interested tell them that and move on. That is unless you want them to follow up with you every day. ;-)

While none of the items were revelations they are all very useful and have made a difference in how productive I am. Check out Adam's website at digitalminimalism.com and or try some of the items that stuck with me. You have nothing to lose and you could really make your work life (and possibly home life) just a little easier. Let me know your thoughts.

Website Audits - Are you doing them?

Website audits are often overlooked in the world of web marketing.  Yet they are almost as important as posting your content on the web.  These audits are usually left to summer interns or temporary employees with a few extra cycles.   With the increased focus on the web and the amount of web content growing exponentially having scheduled intervals for website audits has never been more important.

There are a number of levels to a website audits.  At the most basic level an audit can consist of making sure pages load correctly in a variety of browsers and that videos play and graphics load.  At the most advanced level, website audits can include page metrics, page download speed checks, use of ALT tags and advanced SEO audits.

When trying to decide what you want to audit on your site you have a variety if checklist items to choose from.  I think the following items should be included in any website audit.

Meta tags
Check the meta tags for each page that you are auditing.  Ensure that you have your title tag, keyword and description properly completed.  This is a good time to review any keyword changes you wish to make and ensure you are using a often searched term. If you do change your keyword, don't forget to optimized your page text for the new term.

Page Content
Check your web copy to ensure that if you are using dates that any "old" material is either updated or renewed.  There is nothing more disconcerting for users than to navigate to a page only to find references to "new" items that have a date associated with them from the last decade.  Remember that for something to be news implies that it is new.  You should consider removing content that is more than 6 months old and any case studies that are more than 18 months old.

It is also a good idea to use an ALT tag when you have graphics on your pages so that search engines or other applications have a description of what graphic is posted.

This is also a good time to make any changes to the design of your pages; use metrics to ensure that you making data driven decisions about any page changes.  Your page should be useful to the visitor first and foremost.

Making pages visitor friendly also includes using short blocks of copy that are easily scanned.  Some editors suggest using paragraphs with no more than 300 characters and a maximum of 1800 characters per page.

Update any old photos or graphics that are not in line with your brand.

Ensure that there is a main purpose for your page and make sure that the action you expect the user to take is prominent on the page.  Know and understand what you want the user to do and ask for it by making that the easiest task on the page.

Performance
Use an application to measure page download time.  Ensure that your pages can be downloaded quickly.  Don't underestimate the importance of page that can be downloaded quickly.  Page download time can greatly affect the numbers of visitors who download and stay on your pages.

Check for broken links on your page and fix them immediately. 

Summary
Site audits can keep your pages relevant and well used.  The first steps  in getting started with a website audit are choosing what to audit and creating an audit schedule.  With these two items identified you are ready to get started  A page that is up-to-date and focused on the visitor's task is often a rare find on the web today.  Reward your visitors with a visitor focused page that is current and relevant.

Let me know your thoughts around website audits.  Let's share our ideas and create a really good checklist.


Some good sites and website audits;

One example of a website audit checklist;
http://www.groundspring.org/training/presentations/session-6-5.pdf

This site has a list that addresses a number of the important categories;
http://www.internetmarketinggroup.com/website-audit.html

Fairly complete website audit checklist;
http://www.kelie.com/services_analysis.html

Planning a Virtual Event - Looking Back

Planning a virtual event determines its success.  Knowing what to do and when to do it can greatly affect the success of your event.  I have identified five areas that you should think about while planning your next virtual event.  If you have others please share them.

A few weeks ago our marketing team put on a virtual event.  We had some great successes in this project and there were some things which I would do much differently next time around.  I want to share my thoughts and hear from you on your experiences with this medium as well.

1.  Planning.  These events take tons of planning and doing it yourself will require lots of effort so partner with others if you can; events teams, PR, and marcom all are good partners to look for when putting on a virtual event.  Also, if you are less than 90 days away from your event and haven't started planning you may be behind.  Planning and executing your promotional activities will take time.  Promotional items like banners, newsletter links and industry calendars can take a while for placement.  Not to mention the fact that you will need to have an idea of who will be presenting and what they will talk about to do your promotions.  A six month head start is the best case scenario.  You can definitely do it in a shorter timeframe but you will probably need to set other projects aside.

2.  Content.  Timely and relavent content is another key factor.  If you can get a well known speaker in a field, do it.  Next to promotion, key speakers and topics are some of the most important items to get for an event.  Review your event goals with the speakers so they understand what you are trying to accomplish with the event.  They can help you with your event goal if they know what it is.  Plan ahead with content templates and style guidelines so you can share them with the speakers prior to them creating their presentation.  Meet with the speakers prior to the event to make sure you can answer their questions and make them feel more comfortable about what will happen on the day of the event.

3.  After the event.  Plan for what you want to attendees to do after the event; is it visit a landing page or have attendees contacted by sales teams, etc...  Don't wait till after the event to figure this out.  Warm leads aren't warm for long.  Custom landing pages on your website can be a great tool for keeping the interaction going with event attendees.  You can provide additional information, host videos by the speakers, present flash demos, etc...  all are good ways to engage attendees after your event.  The point here is don't let all your hard work go to waste by not thinking about what you want attendees to do after the event.

4.  Send invitations out to people who will care.  Inviting large numbers of potential attendees is important but make sure the attendees you invite are your target audience.  If you have buy or rent a list it can be expensive so make sure you have a very specific audience identified for your event.  Click through rates can be less than 2-3% for invitations so plan accordingly.  To some degree the success of your event will be driven by identifying your audience or target market prior to the event and then using that information to drive who you invite, where you promote and how you promote your event.

5.  Do a postmortem on your event.  Make sure you plan to review all aspects of your event after it has taken place.  This helps ensure that you set up ways to measure each step along the way.  For example did all the lists you used perform equally towards your goal?  Did attendees stay to the end of each session or did some speakers turn the audience off completely?  How many attendees visited your landing page?  Did the web page serve its purpose?  These are just a sample of the items you might track.  Having the measurement tools in place prior to the event is critical as some metrics cannot be gather after the fact.

Planning is critical for any virtual event.  Knowing what and when do certain things can help you plan a successful event.  What types of things do you use to plan your virtual events?

It is Time for Marketing to Fully Embrace Analytics

More and more marketing efforts are applying metrics to gauge their success or failure.  This trend is not stopping and metrics will become a critical requirement in ensuring marketing has a seat at the key decision maker's table.

Forrester recently published a paper on Lead to Revenue Management for Tech Marketing that takes a look into making revenue the focal point of marketing activities.  In my opinion, this has been too long in coming.  Many marketing efforts are content to focus on merely getting leads; regardless of the quality.  This type of measurement usually leads to a lead quantity game.  Sales organization typically despise these types of activities as they have little time to track down poor quality leads.  The Forrester paper mentions that marketing should be more responsible for nurturing leads as well.  This would definitely keep marketing organizations focused on attaining quality leads.  By having marketing teams focus on revenue as opposed to merely lead gathering their strategies and approaches to marketing efforts should become more outcome driven.  However, tying marketing to close to sales is not without its own issues.

These issues include marketing focusing on more short term goals and not thinking about the lifetime value of a customer.  All too often sale teams are focused on their quarterly numbers and it is marketing who represents the long term view of the market and customer.  It is critical that marketing not lose that view.  In addition, measuring revenue against marketing activities can be difficult.  This is an issue that the Forrester report doesn't cover that much.  Tying revenue to marketing activities is difficult in that marketing efforts often move potential customers through different stages of the sales cycle and this process takes time.

  Depending on how long the sales cycle is can determine how marketing efforts to revenue should be measured.  But for organizations that don't have the sales process from lead to conversion completely mapped out measuring marketing to revenue is almost impossible.  Marketo has written a number white papers which address this issue of marketing to revenue and time.  I recommend this one as a good read before starting a measurement program.

Ultimately, measuring the impact to sales of marketing efforts can help with forecasts.  Predictive models can help sales, manufacturing and even CMOs work together to help drive the business.  The time for marketing efforts to be better to tied to sales is now.  The fun really begins in choosing a model that takes into account both the time of sale funnel and the methods of nurturing customers through the process.  It may be a long journey to get to a predictive marketing model but it is a journey we should start now.

What are your thoughts?

Reputation Management for Small Business

I was catching up on Website magazines this week and happened across an issue that had a story on Reputation Management.  I hadn’t read too much on this subject before but had often wondered if companies were working on solutions for small businesses for Reputation Management.  It looks like there are a few solutions out there but they are mostly focused on Enterprise size companies.  Best Buy has a well known program for customers with questions or issues on social media.  With the number of small businesses starting Yelp and Facebook pages Reputation Management is something that they should definitely look into.  The only thing worse than not being visible on these types of sites is to have a presence but never monitor it.  Customers with both good things to say and not so good things to say will just feel like they are ignored.

I recently used Yelp to help me find an electrician for a small job.  I poured over the reviews and eventually decided on one that seemed to have great reviews.  Unfortunately my experience wasn’t that great and I promptly wrote a review summarizing my poor experience.  However, the company never responded; either directly to me or commenting on Yelp.  This was a missed opportunity by the company to show that they both monitored the entries and cared about maintaining a consistently good customer experience.  This is a good example of “being out there” but not having a complete social media strategy that included monitoring and responding to customers.

For small businesses sites like Yelp are critical to their success.  Few of the folks I know use only the Yellow Pages these days; most are turning sites like Yelp and Facebook to maintain contact with their customers and as a way to passively prospect for other customers.  Few small businesses monitor these sites to see how things are going and actively respond to entries.  The article in Website Magazine offers a number of tasks that small businesses can perform on their own to conduct their own Reputation Management efforts.  All of them seem reasonable and small businesses should be able to execute them without taking up much time.   Items like monitoring your competitors’ entries on these sites and tracking prolific contributors.  These contributors could be potential leads in the future.  If you have considered starting a Facebook page or talking up your Yelp page don’t forget to do some planning for your Reputation Management.

What are you using for Reputation Management for your business?  Are you doing it by hand as the article mentions or are you using an automated tool?