Everyone in your company is in marketing. You may not think so, but from your salespeople to your admin to your HR manager, everyone is in the business of marketing your company— and most do a poor job of it.
While your marketing department may have a well-coordinated plan to grow your business, it’s likely that the rest of your staff are blissfully unaware of what they need to do to further the company’s brand image and use marketing to the company’s full advantage.
The great news is that these mistakes are relatively simple fixes that will provide significant ROI.
Read on to learn five common misperceptions that ensure employees fail at marketing their company— and what you can do about it.
1. Social media…it’s just for marketing, right?
From HR to sales to product development, everyone can benefit from effective use of social media. Say you’re a service or technology provider in the mortgage industry looking to hire. Posting on social media that you’re recruiting will generate hundreds or thousands of eyeballs from within the mortgage industry, since naturally most of your social media contacts will be in that segment. Use your imagination and you’ll find countless ways to leverage social media to help you in business.
2. I am unique and special
Have you ever seen two completely different signature lines from folks from the same company? Take this example:
Suzie Smith
VP Human Resources
USA Lending
*Smile, and the world smiles back at you!
John Taylor
Sales Directo
USA Lending
A company’s image is heavily based on its brand, which makes everyone at your company a brand emissary. From signature lines to proposals to presentations, your staff needs to stick to the company’s brand guidelines. Don’t have any? Then it’s time to create some. Choose a company font, font color, and color palette for all your materials. Then share these with everyone and make sure they stick to them. Your brand depends upon it.
3. Look ma, I created this!
While everyone may think they are an artist and can create a great presentation, chart or brochure to send to clients or prospects, company materials that include artwork of any kind should be left to the professionals. Don’t risk making your company look unprofessional by doing things yourself. Your mother may be impressed. Others won’t be.
4. You heard of us how???
A critical way of evaluating the effectiveness of any marketing campaign is to ask the right questions. Yet many people fail to ask prospects how they heard about their company. Whenever a salesperson receives a call from a prospect or the CEO meets someone at a conference, it’s important to ask this question. And most importantly, there should be a protocol or a form to relay this information back to your marketing department. It will help them know what is working and what isn’t.
5. My contacts are mine
A vital component of good marketing is having a comprehensive, current database of contacts. That involves a concerted effort from everyone in the company to enter the name and contact details of every single business contact they make. This database can be leveraged in many ways, not only for marketing.
The over-arching message is that marketing is not just the responsibility of your marketing department. Everyone in your company needs to understand the value and tenets of marketing, and should learn to be brand emissaries. Doing so will pay off for years to come.
By Rosalie Berg, President, Strategic Vantage