Ask MarketingSherpa: Getting approval for your marketing ideas from your company’s business leadership or from clients
We frequently receive questions from our email subscribers asking marketing advice. Instead of hiding those answers in a one-to-one email communication, we occasionally publish edited excerpts of some of these conversations here on the MarketingSherpa blog so they can help other readers as well. If you have any questions, let us know.
Dear MarketingSherpa: Daniel, I’m wondering if I can share a thought from a conversation with a digital marketing “expert” I had today….
Theory:
If almost all ads/campaigns/approaches are likely to have weak VPs (value propositions) and non-compelling CTAs (calls to action), would an alternate approach to marketing knowledge delivery be to identify the most-likely-to-produce mediocre-result approaches. Would that have more affect on marketing performance than to rely on the main perception that MECLABS tries to get across based on fundamentals?
My thought is that no matter how hard a real marketer tries to use fundamentals, ultimately the decision makers, who will never understand the basics, will oppose the approach in favor of a futile effort that’s proven over and over not to work?
Here is how you do it properly
Vs
Based on your lousy approach you seem to want to defend with all your heart, it would be best to waste less by tackling your goal this way.
Thoughts?
Dear Reader: I sense some frustration with getting a client on board? Or working with business decision makers to prioritize your marketing spend?
Ultimately, whoever writes the check makes the decision. And the best we can do is hope to influence it in as positive a direction as possible. I assume this is very similar to other industries, like government for example.
So yes, unless we are the final decision maker, the marketing we produce will never be flawless and perfect. But our job is to take something that is say, 20% good, and shift it to 50% good. That’s not 100%, but it is better than 0.
As Confucius said: “Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying to just let it slide. The typical brainstorming technique of pretending there are no bad ideas actually isn’t helpful. (It’s called regression to the mean, says Harvard Business Review).
As a marketer, you must be the voice of the customer and an advocate for the audience. Without quality internal marketing, the world gets ideas like Zippo perfume. And no, I’m not making that idea up. You can read about it this New York Times article: Brands Expand Into New Niches With Care, but Not Without Risk.
Here are five tactics to help you win the yes for your next marketing strategy…
This requires a value proposition
It is internal marketing essentially. Don’t overlook the importance of this task. Like anything worth doing, it requires an investment of your time and attention. I was talking to a channel marketing manager at a Fortune 500 tech company, when something she said really stuck out to me. She was working on a major lead nurturing campaign, and about half her time spent on this project was spent on selling the project internally (from Internal Marketing: The 3 people you must sell to in your own office).
You need a prospect-level value proposition for each type of decision maker involved, as well as a process-level value proposition for the action itself.
We built this tool to help our readers – Free Template to Help You Win Approval for Proposed Projects, Campaigns and Ideas.
And this free template as well – How to Sell Your Marketing and Advertising Ideas to Your Boss and Clients (with free template)
Testing can help
Sometimes you need straight-up data to prove the mettle of your idea. A/B testing is one way to get that data.
You could say something along the lines of, “OK, let’s try it your way, try it my way, and let the customer decide.”
We actually had a great example of this happen internally in our own organization – Headline Writing: How a junior marketer beat the CEO’s headline by 92%
Educate about new technology
Sometimes the pushback you’re getting is because the decision maker just doesn’t understand the technology involved.
Educate execs on the latest technology and why their pushback to your ideas might not make sense. Let them see the flaws in their logic for themselves. For example, MECLABS (parent organization of MarketingSherpa) created a free mobile optimization course to help marketers understand what considerations they should take for conversion optimization and messaging specifically in a mobile environment.
Collaborate
Never look at it as a Me vs. You battle.
Give the decision makers you work with the benefit of the doubt – they probably want the same thing you do. Business results. And happy customers.
They just may not have spent as much time focused on the project or objective as you. They have other concerns.
Try to get some of their time for a value proposition workshop to build the fundamentals of your marketing together. Or at least get a meeting to present a competitive analysis.
Good intentioned, capable people may still come up with different conclusions. But after taking the journey together, you will better be able to understand their reasoning and they are more likely to understand why you are suggesting the approach you have chosen.
Help them feel the customer experience
“Wouldn’t GM executives learn more about the problems that customers face, [exec William Hoglund] was asked, if they had to drive used cars and deal with repair problems like everyone else,” James Risen wrote in the LA Times.
You may have a disconnect with a decision maker because they are too far removed from the customer experience.
In that case, before even presenting your ideas, share some form of the customer experience with them.
I was encouraged to see this line from Gabriel T. Rubin in The Wall Street Journal recently, “GOP Rep. Peter Meijer of Michigan and Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota swap footwear on Capitol steps to ‘walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.’”
A bit tongue-in-cheek of course. But if national leaders are willing to try it out, our business decision makers can as well.
If you can’t literally put them in your customer’s shoes, at least start your pitch meeting with a few slides that clearly illustrate how customers’ experience the brand’s product or services. Direct feedback from customers – say, from customer reviews or ratings – can really illuminate executives. Just make sure the reviews accurately represent a major set of customers and are not an outlier.
Reader, you are far from the only one with this struggle. I find we marketers are often better marketing externally than internally. Best of luck in getting approval for your ideas.
Dear MarketingSherpa: Thanks so much for this. Everything you say resonates and validates.
I find your mention of this very interesting: “But our job is to take something that is say, 20% good, and shift it to 50% good. That’s not 100%, but it is better than 0.”
It may support my original thought that the problem I’ve been trying to solve is not actually an accurate understanding of the true problem.
“Marketing underperformance” may actually be a symptom of a problem, and this may be where my frustration comes from.
I feel I’ve been trying to solve underperformance by insisting that a fundamental principle approach is the only way (Man with a Hammer Syndrome).
I think if I adjusted my perception in a way that’s more aligned with the decision maker’s rationale, then I think I’ll find my way back to enjoying solving marketing problems without expectation that the engine has to be perfect from the foundation. This is a fool’s errand when working within an imperfect business landscape.
It may be a good approach for a building that has a problem, even though the logical choice is not to tear the building down…but instead shore it up in the areas that make the most sense according to the unique variables for that particular issue – building, budget, timeline, outcome, etc.
I really appreciate being able to dialog this stuff with someone who gets it.
Thanks again,
You can follow Daniel Burstein, Senior Director, Content & Marketing, MarketingSherpa and MECLABS Institute, on Twitter @DanielBurstein.
Related Resources
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1,681 (and counting) free business and marketing case studies – Another great way to make your case for a marketing idea is by sharing a case study with decision makers
Categories: Leadership Executive Buy-in, marketing campaigns, Marketing Ideas, marketing strategies, Pitch
