Marketing coaching
Development of high performing marketing teams and individuals.
Use your strengths of your own personal work preference and social style to elevate and grow your impact as marketing professional
Explore how I can help you
Social styles
By understanding different social styles and work preference, you can build impactful interactions with others.
Motivate
Finding your inspiration, setting goals, and communicate.
Support
Identify your needs and building a personalised action plan
Mentorship
Provide guidance to unlock your potential through people, skills, and performance
Building success
Helping you to dream big, and make it happen.
Improving
Identify change needed and implement a step-by-step approach to improve.
It used to be a myth that a career in marketing meant that you needed to be very outspoken, overly extravert, act as a salesperson and pitch new marketing ideas.
Today, the field of Marketing has such a broad spectrum of roles that suit different social styles. Even if your preference is to connect 1-2-1 basis and is not naturally outgoing, you will very likely have a successful career in Marketing. There are so many roles that are a natural fit, and which have less direct communications elements to them.
Over the years though, I have also met and worked with many Marketers, highly skilled and with a high preference to think through before they speak, like to concentrate on the details, and instinctively holding back a bit when there are too many people around. They just find it hard to break through as a marketer in an organization.
Focus on your strengths
Commonly most introverted marketers are not aware of their strengths, and how to capitalise on their personal work preferences. More importantly, they don know how to use them to make a high impact in the work environment.
Whether you engage with people in your team, in other departments, or with key stakeholders in meetings, or just writing a report, using simple tools and techniques, and implementing small changes and steps to your daily work will make a huge difference.
Marketing Coaching 1-2-1 or Teams
Contact me for a no-obligation discussion and how I can work with you to come up with simple, small steps, tools, and techniques that will provide a visible and positive change in your interactions with others in the workplace.
Marketing Consultant Adelaide
How to develop a commercial marketing mindset is the question to marketing consultant Mikael Svensson?
Strategic marketing mindset
Regardless of if your relationship style preference is more introverted or extraverted, having the right marketing mindset is essential for success for everyone. This is something I will go through in a coaching session.
The marketing mindset deals with the individual person, the marketer, and it’s not really something you learn from textbooks rather being agile on the job; it is about business behaviour and how well a person identifies, interprets, and acts on insights and drivers of change to get the most business benefits out them from a marketing standpoint.
The marketing chase for ROI
It has always been a rather basic and fundamental requirement for a marketer to ensure a sufficient level of growth contribution and incremental return for marketing activities. The economic climate has forced this to become a reality, regardless of level, function, organisation, or industry.
However, for many years there has been a lot of discussions in literature, journals, and blogs about the marketing function’s lack of ability to link marketing spending with return-on-investment measurement (ROI).
One of the better books I have read on this topic is Value-based marketing by Peter Doyle[1] and already in the opening statement he states that: “The goal of this book is ambitious – they are no less than to redefine the purpose of marketing and how its contribution should be measured”.
The takeaway is that if marketers cannot link marketing spending to the financial values of a company, and a marketing function cannot demonstrate shareholder value from their marketing activities, they run the risk of losing influence and power in the organization and in the boardroom2.
This means that even though marketers can state the importance of market share growth and increased brand awareness as a result of marketing investment, the fact is that it may not contribute positively to the financial result at all.
There are lots of interesting studies available online about the role of the marketing function and most of them point in the same direction, suggesting that marketers should take greater responsibility for meaningful outcomes. For instance, Verhoef & Leeflang[2] state in their study that
” The marketing department should become more accountable for the link between marketing actions and financial results as well as becoming more innovative to gain more influence within a firm”.
On the flip side though, as organisations and management demand a clearer connection between marketing activities and revenue contribution, research data suggests that marketers are still grappling with how to prove the worth of marketing. According to HubSpot research (2015) proving ROI on marketing activities is on top of the list of the challenges marketers face. For companies with over 200 employees, it is as high as 71%[3]. 2021, 6 years later the focus on ROI delivery still holds. About 75% of marketers are reporting on how their campaigns are directly influencing revenue 5.
The takeaway is to become a successful marketer today you need to have the right marketing mindset, which is, operating with commercial excellence. The time of pegging positive performance feedback to printed material, or on paper innovative marketing campaigns is long gone, now it is all about contribution to revenue from the stream of activities.
As the business climate keeps getting more challenging and most sectors are under constant pressure to change and optimise their business models, the marketing engine must perform. So, with that in mind, so let’s look at what markets can do to become more effective.
Top 5 strategic marketing approaches that make marketers more successful
When looking back on the most successful and aspirational marketers I have worked with over the years, there are five common attributes they have displayed that makes them highly effective marketers:
- Approach to measurement and linking to goals
- Ability to balance time and priorities for effective outcomes
- Interest in transferring ideas from other industries
- Don’t let a title limit the actions
- Using segment-based insights when articulating brand propositions
[1] Pete Doyle, Value-based marketing. Marketing strategies for corporate growth and shareholder value. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.2004
[2] https://www.rug.nl/staff/p.c.verhoef/jm_marketing_influence.pdf
[3] http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33820/5-Major-Challenges-Marketers-Face-And-How-to-Solve-Them.aspx
5 https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
1 Approach to measurement and linking to goals
I have not yet met a marketer that is not talking about the importance of return on investment.
Everyone knows that is a key to success, yet according to research, this comes up as the main struggle to prove.
And just because this is such an important topic, sometimes I think that marketers use metrics because of the pressure of having them; and not necessarily the ones that are meaningful.
What it comes down to in the end is what you want to measure. One of my favourite e-books on this topic and which I highly recommend to all marketers is The Definite Guide to Marketing Metrics & Analytics by Marketo.com[1].
It’s a bit old now, but still great, and provides a good guide and helps to identify the right and relevant metrics and move beyond success measures such as hits on the website, click-through rates and email open rates. Even though these metrics certainly have a place in pipeline build-up, and are important metrics in the right context, if you present your marketing success to a senior management team, and at the same time ask for more funding based on these types of stats; well, you will not get it.
Even digital agencies struggle to provide relevant metrics. How many times have I not met with digital agencies using the conversion metric as the key success metric – that is a filled-in web form. What happens next in the marketing process does not seem to be so important.
The key point though in all of this, regardless of what metrics are set, highly effective marketers do not stop their marketing responsibility at the top of the marketing funnel, they are following through and take full accountably for the campaign, initiative, or workstream all the way to point of purchase – right to the end of the sales funnel.
[1] http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/139831/file-17773622-pdf/docs/definitive-guide-to-marketing-metrics-marketing-analytics.pdf
2 Ability to balance time and priorities for effective outcomes
Apart from being strategically and operationally great marketing performers, there are two factors that some marketers manage better than others, and those are time and priorities.
Everyone needs to balance priorities as there are always too many things to do and too little time in a day to do all of it. However, successful marketers seem to have a clear line of sight of what needs to be done, and in what order to optimise the result. This is a very important attribute, especially in situations when revenue and/or profit is under pressure.
For all of you who have experienced a turnaround situation, you know that the time frame is usually very short – at least to prove a trend change and/or signals that show that revenue will grow.
So, from a marketing standpoint, whether you are part of a marketing team or being the leader, what will your focus be to ensure a quick trend change, yet building value for the longer term?
The answer is usually doing the right things in the right order – getting the priorities straight. And that is very difficult, especially in a time of change when the pressure to fix everything is usually very imminent.
Remember if you start in the wrong end, it is very likely that you are not creating the momentum you need; it will feel that you are standing still no matter how hard you and the team are working.
The most effective marketers are very good at seeing in what order work needs to get done and feed this back to the stakeholders. For instance, if the company is under revenue growth pressure, you need to ask yourself: Out of all those areas the marketing team is involved in, what is realistic to deliver, what are the must-have-areas that provide the highest contribution to target; and what are the areas you cannot address until you have put the basics in place first.
It’s not easy, but once again, if you use a commercial-led marketing mindset, that will guide you in your decisions.
3 Interest in transferring ideas from other industries
No one would argue that it is hard work to become a successful marketer, and everyone has their own strategies to find ways to constantly improve and deliver results, and coupe with pressure.
One important trait I have seen from the best marketers I have worked with is their ability to transfer skills and learnings from other industries or companies. I remember early in my career when the company I worked for was hiring new marketing staff and one of the VPs said the best candidates will prove to us that they can easily move from one industry to another, and once started he/she will contribute quickly to a new environment. I have seen this to be very true over the years.
And what I find with successful marketers is that they tend to look beyond current industry benchmarking figures and what competitors are doing – rather than taking a broader view to identify successful models used in other industry sectors. There has been some interesting research in this area where one of the conclusions is that one of the pre-cursors of marketing excellence is the idea of importation from other industries[1].
Identifying and transferring success models from other sectors is very important, and whilst everyone is time-poor today, marketers need to allocate time to research new ideas that are closely related to the sectors they are working in and not just looking at the direct competition.
[1] Smith, B. (2007). Marketing Master Class: Excellence in medical marketing. Journal of Medical marketing, vol 7, 1 25-32.
4 Don’t let a title limit the actions
Let’s face it. A great marketing title is important for most marketers as it provides evidence of success.
For someone who started as a junior product manager and takes the next step to become an associate brand manager or a brand manager that is of course a very important career progression.
However, the title on your business card may state brand manager, marketing coordinator, marketing manager, event manager, digital specialist, or product marketing manager but it does not really tell anyone how you approach marketing – what a title does though it provides a perception of skill level and success.
What really matters though for long-term career success is you achieve result-oriented marketing outcomes.
For example, in the marketing function it is usually the brand manager’s responsibility to articulate what the brand stands for in the hearts and minds of the consumer; and with that, outline long-term brand visions.
In his book, Akker provides a useful metaphor to brand management as he resembles the brand manager as “captain of a ship, who must know where his or her ship is going and keeping it on course” [1].
I like the way he has framed the role and what it entails. Another way to look at the brand is what a person I used to work with, said a marketer is the caretaker of the brand and you need to make sure it is more valuable when you hand the responsibility to someone else. What I like about that is the notion that the value increase in the brand is reflected in revenue growth.
One of the best pieces of advice I got early on in my marketing career was from my manager who told me to every day look at the sales flash. Being swamped with price lists, flyers, and other marketing collateral I was not sure how relevant that was to my job, but I did.
And keeping an eye on sales performance every day since then has proven to be very valuable advice, and regardless of title and responsibilities, understanding how your workflow contributes to increased revenue will help you to progress and become an even more effective marketer – no matter the title on your business card.
[1] AAker, D A. (1996). Building strong brands. Page 21. Simon and Shuster Inc.
5 Using segment-based insights data when articulating brand propositions
I find that those marketers that have worked for big consumer brands are extremely good at using insights and data to form good marketing decisions. It does not mean that others are not doing it well, but it seems to be a natural part of their behaviour, many times influenced by a very strong company culture
And they never lose sight of the importance of the brand.
Lots have been written on the topic of creating winning brand propositions and the importance of it, and yet the importance of getting this right cannot be stressed enough.
Sometimes it is easy to take shortcuts in a brand process for various reasons – this may happen when there is a perceived lack of time and/or resources in a company.
But rushing this through will have dire consequences for any brand as it competes with its proposition. If the marketing department gets the proposition wrong, there will be an uphill battle to grow the business.
Everyone understands the argument of lack of resources; however, high-performing marketers go to great lengths in advocating that the company needs to build value propositions based on segment-based insights and allocate appropriate resources on the journey to get there.
Finally, the most highly effective marketers I have worked with have been able to put aside their opinions and make their decision based on research insights. Even though there may be successful brands that have come to be where they are today on a gut feel and unique idea, that is not the general rule to apply.
As I have said before, transferring learnings from other industries is important, and will provide insights into how other companies are choosing to work with value propositions; and from an outsider to that industry, the core may look the same, but the execution will be very different.
For example, there have been many articles written about a few big brand battles, one of them being the discount supermarket ALDI who entered South Australia some years ago competing with big retailers such as Coles and Woolworth. The other one is the hardware chain Bunnings and the now-closed Masters in Adelaide. Whilst affordable value propositions were essential to both, the execution of the brand and the customer experience looked very different; probably because they chose to interpret consumer research insights very differently.