Are you marketing barking up the wrong tree regarding value articulation?
Value articulation is critical to driving revenue through your firm.
Do you outsource marketing without a second thought because you are too small or shorthanded or too busy or just don’t care?
Think again.
In your mind, your firm is too busy creating manufactured or engineered output to focus on what you consider to be trivial phrases, slogans, a few tweets and yet another round of producing 4-color glossy brochures.
You are marketing barking up the wrong tree. Again.
Marketing, in your mind, is like the landscaping around your facility. It is like sprinkles on the cupcake. To you, your marketing materials are part of doing business, and nothing else. You have better things to do with your time.
It’s just something to get off the To-Do list on your desk., so you farm things out to folks who try to do their best with what you’ve given them.
In reality, marketing your value articulation is the front-end of cash flow. When made a priority and created strategically, that doesn’t sound like yippy marketing barking to me or anyone else.
Value articulation is your mantra: the clear communication of the compelling reasons your customers desire to do business with you.
If you do not regard articulation of value in this strategic and impactful manner, your past marketing efforts have minimal effects on your current and future business development strategy.
Your company looks like that dog who is marketing barking up the wrong tree. Noisy, annoying, ineffective, misdirected.
You throw a new website or internet marketing program against the wall and hope it sticks. You go to trade shows and walk the floors without purpose. Your marketing output makes you look and sound like everyone else.
Your business development and sales teams apply unique selling propositions and slogans and taglines interchangeably, because leadership just wanted to get marketing off their To-Do list.
You have multiple versions of what internal folks “think” are your value propositions. You present an inconsistent brand to the marketplace.
All because you are marketing barking up the wrong tree. Again.
Your indifference to the value of manufacturing marketing is why your marketing strategy and materials do not clearly and consistently articulate the tangible benefit that you and your company deliver to your customers time and time again.
If marketing is just a bunch of slick-sounding words to you, you can be sure it sounds like a bunch of self-promoting puffery to your marketplace. You are marketing barking up the wrong tree. Again.
Because your company has always done it this way.
You have overlooked one critical, internal leadership step.
Value articulation takes your value proposition and walks your talk throughout your own organization and your customers’ organizations.
It is not anyone else’s responsibility but yours and your teams’ and a skilled facilitator’s to discover what your value proposition looks, sounds and breathes like.
There’s no magic marketing wash-rinse-repeat recipe involved.
Value articulation involves cross-functional collaboration and hard work. Value articulation is part of the structural foundation of your business. When discovered in this manner, what your marketing folks create for you is powerful.
Does the leadership process of determining and articulating value still sound like a bunch of marketing barking to you?
Babette N. Ten Haken, President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, is a business leadership coach, management strategist and consultant. Her Workshops create Playbooks for individuals and companies who want to grow, expand and sustain their businesses, but wrestle with unpredictable revenue streams. Her Playbook on practical collaborative leadership and business development strategies, including tools, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com.
Image courtesy of godrick at 123rf.com.
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