I find myself nodding my head and smiling when I read this. Funny because I can relate with it so much in my previous life as a marketing coordinator. The smartest advice I ever took was from my manager, who happens to be the company’s owner. She told me to be on the sales floor a lot. Although they seemed suspicious of me at first, I befriended these guys, sought them for advice and eventually, bridged the gap between our departments. That was something previous marketing coordinators never did. It led to more targeted campaigns, accurate evaluation metrics and overall sense of mission. On our side, it shattered the “ivory tower mentality” pervasive in many marketing departments. We brought our ideas down to the trenches. Input from the people in the front lines were valuable bricks we used as foundation for all marketing initiatives. On their side, they began seeing us as useful resource that would help them reach their quotas and keep their customers coming back for more.
But as much as this sounds like a “happily ever after”, it was more like an epic battle at first. We would bicker like an old married couple. Sales would think our ideas were too lofty, messages too confusing and collaterals too cheesy for their customers. We would think that their ideas are too brute, unrefined and not representative of the corporate brand we were trying to build. I remember one time I saw a sales guy putting an e-blast together. There were a lot of mispelled words. He used ClipArt as graphics and all this was being done in MS Outlook. I decided to help out by putting it together for him. The whole project was shut down when my manager stepped in and tried to make it something more complicated. That was my Eureka moment. Because that same guy, is THE top salesman. He was bringing in more than half of the company’s profits. There’s definitely something he was doing right. All marketing needs to do is listen and enhance.
Hence, I decided to put together my own SNAP rules:
1) Talk to us. We might roll our eyes when you leave the room or crack jokes on your weird mannerisms in front of customers. It’s hard for us to admit but we have much respect for you.. especially if you’re bringing home the bacon. In reality, you pay for our bills. So give us your ideas, we may not take it point blank but trust me, the seed has been planted. We will refine it and it will be better than ever.
2) Give us a chance. You may think that our campaigns are all fluff. Or we create ads as a personal creative outlet in place of therapy. Or we just send out e-newsletters because we woke up one day and felt like it. Every marketing initiative we do is backed up with research. There is a method to do this kind of madness. And we may not hit the target in bull’s eye all the time but we still hit the target. And on the times we missed, we still had the best intentions.
3) Educate us. It is our responsibility to know the product but you are in the trenches. You talk to our target audience on a daily basis. You speak their language which is why they are buying from you. Tell us what promo or special deals work for you. Tell us where their media touch points are – how they look for information on what we sell and where we can catch their attention. Then sit back, relax and let us do the thing we do best.
4) Always remember we are working towards the same goal. I know you guys are busy, so are we. We might not field screaming customers or get hung up on a cold call. But we have deadlines too. We are here to help. So help us help you help us.