… but not necessarily in the right order.”
As Eric Morecambe famously said to the great composer and pianist André Previn in the 1971 Morecambe and Wise Christmas show. Previn had accused him of “playing all the wrong notes” in his rather unusual adaptation of Grieg’s Piano Concerto.
When we carry out a Marketing MOT for a new client, we often find something rather similar. The bulk of the problems (or opportunities if you prefer) that we uncover relate to strategy, direction, coordination and measurement of activities, rather than businesses doing ‘the wrong things’.
In nearly 5 years we have undertaken Marketing MOTs for businesses across over 20 industries from start-ups to well-established businesses. Most, if not all are successful but want to do even better. On average, we have discovered 47 opportunities to improve marketing per MOT with clients scoring an average of 33 out of a possible 100 points on our Marketing Grading tool.
Many of our clients have some in-house marketing resource and/or use a creative agency to provide graphic design, websites, social media, email marketing, flyers etc. All of this resource has usually combined to produce some nice marketing materials and some good ideas, but somehow it isn’t really delivering the results the business needs. What we generally find is that they are missing some opportunities, not joining activities up properly, not delivering a consistent message or have peaks and troughs in their activity (see my recent blog on the two C’s in success). As a consequence, they don’t get the success and return on their marketing investment they deserve.
In large organisations, this doesn’t happen and one of the key reasons is that they have a Marketing Director – someone with the strategic expertise to direct the efforts of the in-house team and the external agencies. The Marketing Director is accountable to the Managing Director for delivering a robust programme of marketing activity on-time, in full and on budget and most importantly accountable for the results of that programme in terms of sales, market share and profit.
Most Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMEs) don’t need a full-time marketing director, but our Marketing MOT results prove that junior in-house marketing people and a good creative agency alone aren’t enough to ensure success. Our part-time Marketing Director service offers businesses the opportunity to buy in the level of strategic marketing expertise they need to unlock their potential. You can read more about our service and some client case studies here.
Chris
“I’m playing all the right notes …
