As technology continuously evolves and becomes more accessible, customers have become more informed and more demanding. This means that projects have also become more complex — and team management more difficult. While an astounding
While both are important aspects of every business, marketing and management aren’t really the same — but they are no apples to oranges. Here are some specific marketing principles that can be applied to management.
#1. Communication is Key
Modern-day marketing can take the form of traditional newspaper side ads to full-page magazine ads, to modern, highly-targeted Facebook ads, to keyword-optimized blog articles, and just about everything in between. In the slew of so many activities involved in marketing today, it can be quite easy to forget that all marketing is in fact a form of communication.
According to Community Toolbox’s lessons in social marketing, communication is a two-way street. You have to be sure that what your audience understands is the message that you meant to send. There are several issues that can provide difficulties here.
In the same way, modern-day management needs communication to succeed. According to SIS International Research, companies with 100 employees could lose more than $525,000 every year from poor manager-employee communication. When it comes to employee productivity, communication from managers and leaders plays a major role. As soon as employees become disengaged, the business suffers.
Communication has a big impact on the success of any organization. With effective manager-employee communication, engagement increases, workplace productivity boosts up, and business success is driven. On the other hand, ineffective communication can have damaging effects. Make it a priority to interact with team members regularly to make sure your communication is fostering an engaged workforce.
#2. Planning is Essential
Marketing plans enables teams and businesses to achieve proactiveness in what the market does. Instead of simply reacting to changes and to competition, marketers plan ahead to be always a step behind those who are already prepared. With that said, planning is a crucial step in marketing, because It’s always better to anticipate market changes and be on the leading — not following — edge. The best marketing plans include identifying key performance criteria. In digital marketing, for example, this includes website page visits, search engine rankings, Facebook Page likes, Twitter followers, and social shares, among many others.
Similarly, having an excellent plan in place is crucial for project management to be successful. Villanova University says that every project needs a plan with clearly defined and close aligned goals. Just like marketing professionals, managers need to establish measurable and trackable success metrics, including accomplishing tasks on time, within the set budget; with product functionality is satisfactory to the customer, and with compliance to government and/or industry regulations.
#3. Division of Work is Vital
The most successful marketing campaigns are rarely done by a single person. With the emergence of multimedia channels and constant evolution of technology, it becomes even more vital for businesses to find the best professionals who are experts in a specific areas in marketing, such as traditional marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and other digital marketing tactics.
Human resources expert Susan M. Heathfield says that delegation of tasks and even authority as a leadership style takes time and energy, but it’s worth the time and energy to help employees and eventually the company succeed.
Division of work can sometimes feel like a hassle; however, by delegating effectively, you can hugely expand the amount of work that you can deliver. As a manager, you need to know how to choose the right tasks to delegate, identify the right people to delegate to, and delegate in the right way.
#4. Customer Engagement is Crucial
In the world of marketing, professionals know that organizations that engage with their audience via multimedia channels have more loyal customers. Moreover, customers who engage with brands spend from 20% to 40% more on that company’s products more than those who don’t.
Customer engagement in marketing should feel less like an advertising campaign, and more like a well-developed relationship founded on interdependent needs, expectations, and mutual respect. Customer feedback isn’t only important for marketers, it is also important to them. If you can listen to what your customers are saying and improve the product and their experience, everybody wins. You get more loyal customers; they get what they really need and want.
Like communication, relationship-building is two-way. On one hand, your customers feel heard, and they can see the ways they’re actually contributing to your company. At the same time, you get free feedback, and have the opportunity to improve your business, thereby by attracting more customers.
Customer engagement in management isn’t all that different. Developing products without involving customers to articulate the need and the value a product can produce run the risk of an end-product that fails to deliver value to them. According to Slalom Consulting, project success is rarely achieved unless customers adopt and/or use the product of the project. Managers should go beyond accomplishing project objectives, and see through a project output that can be used by end-users.
In both marketing and management, communication, planning, delegation, and customer engagement is important in order promote awareness of your brand, and build the best products or solutions that are valuable to customers. By applying the best principles from each area of business to the other, they can both be effective and can help companies be made known, maximize profits, and succeed in their industries.
Images: ”Marketing Strategy and Core Objectives of Product/ Shutterstock.com“
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