Written by Chris Hedges – Marketing Consultant at Brave Zone

How often have you heard ‘let’s sponsor this’ or ‘let’s put an advert here’ or even ‘our competitor is doing this, so let’s do it too’? Sound familiar? This bombardment of demands tends to come from armchair marketers. You know, the people that believe anyone can ‘do marketing’. The ones that ask why the logo is a particular color rather than truly understanding the value of the brand as a whole. Marketing is not about ‘making things look pretty’ (yep, we’ve all heard that before), it’s about ensuring engagement with your brand that ultimately contributes to growing the revenue.

But wait. Is it our fault? Are we as marketers not effectively communicating the strategic benefit of what we do?

A study by Research Now identified that sales (94%), customer service (92%) and manufacturing/operations (85%) are perceived as more important than marketing. Even more surprisingly 54% see advertising and promotions as the top marketing activity. This was then followed by 47% for brand management and development, 39% for brochure production and 34% for organizing events. Do you see the problem? Marketing is seen as just a tactical execution of ‘things’. So, how do we change the perception?

Seek to Understand

Walk the corridors of the organisation and understand the DNA of how the organisation functions, the processes involved, identify the internal influencers and truly engage with other teams. Blowing £100K on a campaign that generates a plethora of leads but without the infrastructure to manage them effectively will lead to a lower return on investment.

Talk the Talk

As marketers, we are getting much better at understanding numbers and talking the language of the Board. By speaking the same language we demonstrate that we are not only commercially astute but it also raises our strategic credibility.

Insight & Evidence

Great marketing teams have a wealth of data conveniently to hand. With only 13% of marketers stating they share data with their partners and only 48% agreeing that their insight is not regularly discussed at senior level. Are we missing a trick? Share competitor data with sales, customer engagement data with customer services and use that data to help improve business functions across the organisation.

Learn from your Best Salesperson

Gone (mostly) are the days where there is such disparity between sales and marketing. It is much easier to remove blockers by being able to ‘sell the idea’ to multiple stakeholders. Combine this with a clever project branding and communication exercise and you will realise the launch of your marketing campaign sooner than you think.

Be Brave

Encounters with armchair marketers will result in projects taking longer, your confidence quietly dwindling away and you end up doing the same old beige marketing that all of your competitors are doing. Being brave is not shouting the loudest. It’s ensuring that the approach to marketing you have is inclusive of others, taking on-board feedback, combining insight with creativity and aligning with the business plan.

I have to admit, I am by no means a prolific writer on LinkedIn. I just wanted to share some thoughts based on my own experiences and some research I discovered. It clearly triggered me to think and regress back to those armchair marketer encounters (or nightmares) I experienced in my career. Please feel free to share your views below….as long as it is not the ‘marketer’ v ‘marketeer’ debate….that’s for another day.

Thanks for reading.

About Guest Contributor: Chris Hedges has over 17 years’ experience in marketing across multiple sectors. Last year he took the leap over to agency side and helped to launch international marketing agency, Brave Zone, in the UK. Brave Zone bend the usual marketing rules, because they believe that nothing exciting ever happens inside your comfort zone. www.brave.zone