Hey Marketers, Get Your Priorities Straight

Nick Scarpino

• Publisher: Little Shoe Publishing
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9780989133418
• Subtopic: Customer Relations
• Index: Business

For startups, small businesses, and non-profit organizations, the idea of investing time and money into marketing communications can be very intimidating. Deciding between an investment in the next rising social media site, attending an industry trade show, or developing a direct mail program is daunting for businesses with marketing staffs of twenty people. Doing it with just a handful or fewer may seem nearly impossible, as the increasing number of available opportunities can be overwhelming. This book will help you set priorities for your marketing communication investments. It walks through an easy-to-understand visual framework by which all marketing communication tactics should be considered; so as new marketing options come and go, you'll know which ones to embrace and which ones to skip. The book also outlines the five must-have tactics all marketers must do before anything else. Real-life examples are everywhere in this book, making it easy to see exactly how the entire process works.

chapter 1 the need for priorities

A few years ago, I was organizing the production of a new photo directory for my church. The printed directory would eventually include photos and contact information for a few hundred families and would be mailed to their homes. The project required more work than I could take on myself, so I decided to work with a small photography business to get the job done. After meeting with a sales representative from the photography company to go over the details, the gentleman left me with a folder with information about additional products and services we could consider buying in the future. When I got home that night and opened it up, I was shocked at what I saw — there were 34 fliers and brochures advertising different products and services inside the folder.

34!

Yes, I counted every single one of them and I even took the photo you see on the next page. Now, I’m sure there was great information on those fliers, but how was I supposed to sift through it all? I didn’t have that kind of time. And where was I supposed to start? I was intimidated and overwhelmed. I was hoping for some guidance after our meeting, but I was left with information overload.

Maybe 34 fliers was just a few too many for one sales kit.

I was recently online buying some gift cards from a locally-owned restaurant. While on the restaurant’s website, I saw something that has become pretty standard on websites these days: a row of icons along the top linked to several social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. You’ve seen this before. But when I clicked on the Twitter logo, I saw a Twitter profile with only a handful of followers and just two posts — the last post had been made months prior. Sure enough, when I clicked on the Facebook link, I was also greeted with a page that hadn’t been updated in months.

How does something like this happen?

Well, the 34 fliers are not the problem. And neither are the social media sites void of content. They are just symptoms of an overall problem; not setting marketing communication priorities. The fliers are indicative of a company trying to promote every single thing it is doing. The empty social media sites show a company trying to chase every new marketing communication option available, but not having the time to do any of them well.

You see, there are an infinite number of great marketing ideas in this world. And it’s very easy to try to act on all of them — especially in a startup, small business, or a non-profit organization, where marketers can be quick to act. But without some direction, it can be impossible to identify which marketing ideas will build powerful brands and lead to the best returns on investment. As the ideas pile up, so do the to-do lists. A company’s marketing communication efforts can die a slow death under the pile of these to-do lists.

I call it “death by to-do lists.” And it’s a very real problem marketers face every day.

Noted psychologist Barry Schwartz studies what happens to people when faced with complete freedom of choice. In his 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice, he writes that an abundance of choice can be paralyzing and exhausting to the human psyche. A seemingly endless list of choices can actually prevent people from making a decision. In order for us to make a decision and feel good about it, he writes, we need to narrow our list of choices to a few that meet certain criteria, and then decide from there. And that’s the point of this book — to provide a framework for helping marketers prioritize the marketing opportunities that provide the best chance for success.

Regrettably, I’ve been contributing to the confusion about setting marketing priorities. In 2009, I started to write about engaging marketing ideas on my blog, Never a Lack of Ideas. My goal at the time was to gather great ideas in one place and inspire marketers in new ways. But I realize that by ending every post with the message, “add this to your to-do list,” I’ve only been piling the ideas on top of marketers and I’ve done nothing to help provide ideas on making marketing priorities.

Yikes. I’ve spent years contributing to this problem. But at least I’m not the only one.

Search Amazon for books on marketing and you’ll find nearly a half million results. That’s a lot of noise and a lot of ideas. You’ll find thousands of books on creating winning marketing strategies, but you won’t find any on prioritizing marketing tactics to execute that strategy. It’s sexy to talk about strategy, but getting down to identifying the appropriate marketing tactics gets a whole lot messier.

So what’s a small business marketer to do? How does marketing fit in if you’ve already come up with a great business strategy? How should you spend your limited time and money in order to maximize return on marketing spend? Should you invest in billboard advertisements or spend time building a presence on Twitter? Should you invest in a customer call center or spend money on distributing coupons through the Sunday newspaper? By the end of this book, you’ll know the answers to these questions because I provide a framework for making these types of decisions.

Let’s Begin

In the next four chapters, we’ll walk through the three most important factors in setting marketing communication priorities. After describing each factor in detail, we’ll look at a way to combine all three into a graph on which you’ll plot all of the marketing communication tactics you’re considering. Then, you’ll be able to see which ones you should prioritize and which ones you should put on the back burner.

Next, we’ll discuss the five must-have tactics on which all successful marketing communications programs are built. To bring everything together, I’ve included a case study of the best example of setting marketing priorities that I’ve ever seen — and it’s one you’ve likely never heard of.

Table of contents

• Hey Marketers, Get Your Priorities Straight
• #marketingpriorities
• foreword by Avinash Kaushik
• preface about this book
• chapter 1 the need for priorities
• chapter 2 focus on the target market
• chapter 3 create shareable experiences
• chapter 4 prioritize based on ROMI
• chapter 5 putting it all together with a cool visual framework
• chapter 6 the five must-haves
• chapter 7 IES Abroad redefines your world
• chapter 8 get your priorities straight
• thank you: acknowledgements
• copyright
• dedication
• about the author Nick Scarpino