1 August 2024 by Angela Knox
How often have you heard the saying - left hand and right hand don’t know what they are doing - which is a blunt but often accurate way of describing how some businesses are run.
Unless you have everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, your chances of operating a business efficiently and profitably are significantly reduced.
And the larger the company, the more difficult this is to achieve.
When you look at examples of business strategies used by prominent companies, and some of the reasons why they either fail or miss their mark, it is often because of either omissions in communication as intentions cascade throughout the layers of a company’s structure, or a lack of buy-in or clarity of agenda.
As a marketer with decades of experience in a variety of business scenarios, I have seen many examples of this problem.
Someone either high up within the company or an external consultant comes up with the idea of doing a ‘strategic review’.
Lots of data is scoured over, in-depth meetings are held, lofty ambitions are thrown around the room, ‘blue sky thinking’ is arranged, and eventually someone produces a set of recommendations.
Those recommendations may be very worthy, and rooted in the concept of growing the business and pointing it in an exciting new direction. Likely they will also identify problem areas that need to be addressed.
Objectives are identified, and plans drawn up to implement the recommended changes.
The practical realities of execution
All businesses at some stage in their development recognise that they need to implement change, and change management is an essential skill in business today.
However in many instances - and a few I can remember from personal experience - good intentions of setting new plans in motion often suffer from:
- Lack of buy-in from key staff members, department heads and managers
- Lack of ability of the management to effectively communicate their intentions
- Unwillingness of staff members to change the way they have always done things
- Lack of understanding as to why things need to change
- Things being lost in the general day to day running of the business and lack of focus on the changes
- Lack of understanding of how an individual’s job function and changes to it can affect process and business efficiency, and therefore profitability
- Lack of adoption of new technology needed to implement changes
- Lack of agreement between individual managers on what technology is needed, and in general the measures that need to be taken to implement the changes
- Fear of speaking up about issues to do with managers’ behaviour and/or inadequacies
How this relates to aligning your marketing plan to your business objectives
The situation described above represents one of the big problems about how, in particular, larger businesses conduct reviews into their strategic planning.
If you combine these often made mistakes with a lack of connection between marketing, branding and business strategy, you will have problems in effectively translating your marketing activities into realisable plans for expanding or stabilising your business.
Achieving business objectives through the use of focused, targeted and effective marketing initiatives is key to success in any business.
So there is no use randomly allocating resource to marketing activities that are not aligned to your overall business plan, as you won’t achieve your stated objectives.
Things that influence a company’s marketing output that shouldn’t be allowed
Often, different staff members within small to medium sized companies like to get involved in making decisions about marketing strategies and activities which they are not qualified to make - rather than leaving it to the person or people who are in charge of marketing to make their recommendations and get on with implementing them.
‘Why don’t we advertise in (e.g.) widgets monthly?’ said someone who is not in marketing, without the knowledge of how to evaluate media options based on the relevant criteria, cost-effectiveness, ROI, and business objectives.
Or a decision is made to utilise a particular marketing channel for reasons of subjective judgement, without considering whether it forms part of a planned, integrated overall strategy with properly stated objectives and KPIs.
Or worse still, a marketing channel is chosen and the means of communication or advertising is way wide of the mark - it may start out on the face of it as messaging that’s in keeping with strategy, but the creative execution is lacking.
Here is a link to a long list of examples of these, the Boston Marathon one is one of the most obvious faux pas where the creators have completely ignored any relevant recent sensibilities, with Airbnb a close second.
Or there’s the famous example of the use of the coca cola strapline in China, ‘Coke adds life’ = (in the Chinese translation) ‘Coke brings your ancestors back from the dead’.
These are operational mistakes, but just as far-reaching in their potential impact as omissions in implementing planning strategies.
In conclusion
So to wrap up, it’s always good policy to make sure that everyone in your business understands the direction the company is heading, and how they fit into the structure and plan.
When changes are due to be implemented, ensure your staff are on the same page and fully understand why change is needed and how it impacts them.
Make sure your marketing teams and/or agencies are always updated about current plans and developments, so they can work with your higher management to ensure that what they are doing is in line with your objectives.
Use communication and project management software to help the flow of projects through your business, and ensure everyone is fully informed.
Without doing these things, you will end up with fragmented and unfocused activities which waste effort and don’t achieve your objectives.
Easy to say, less easy to do - it takes sustained effort, but it’s worth it!