Geoff Wolf, EVP Client Strategy
There are parts of marketing that are more scientific, like response analysis, strategic planning and tactical execution. Then, there are parts of marketing that are about people’s behavior, “people” usually being limited to consumers and customers. Guess what? Marketers are people too, and in our data driven world, we often overlook how those accountable for the success of the program feel and behave.
Whether the responsibility for marketing lives inside your company or is outsourced to consultants or a specialized agency, the most difficult element of success can be managing the people involved. Here are a few assumptions that can turn into trouble if you don’t understand the behavior of your marketing people:
- Just because something worked at another business doesn’t mean it will work for your brand.
People feel safer staying inside the lanes that are familiar. This goes for the food we eat, the neighborhood we live in, the car we drive AND the marketing success we have experienced. Be careful of the new marketing manager across the hall or the consultant that wants to focus mostly on their experience, their comfort zone and tries to force a brand’s marketing needs into THEIR box.
A lot of questions need to be asked early on by any newbie. They should listen carefully to learn about your brand’s behavioral elements and be very open to adapting their proven protocols to your brand’s needs. All the analytics, science and design in the world will fail unless the person in charge is able to work without too much drama woven into everyone’s day. It should feel like the Marketing Director or partner is able to understand the brand without creating stress in your stomach and heart. Marketing professionals have behavioral nuances and it is important to be sensitive to this reality when you hire your team, from analysts all the way to Director.
- Just because there is a team of experts involved, doesn’t mean there is value.
The behavior of a team can vary greatly depending on exactly how they are compensated or who they report to. People will behave one way if their paycheck depends on the success of the overall initiative and very differently if the compensation model is built around only their specific portion of the work. Be sure to link overall success of every team member to the entire team’s performance.
Human resource experts should be part of any team. An internal team of experts must feel safe in their jobs to cooperative fully with each other, making sure people are not acting to protect their “self-worth” and/or jobs. For example, internal company experts, like catalog and ecommerce analysts, need to have easy and efficient access to the accounting people and their general ledger expertise. Only when people actually like working together will there be a successful process (read: less payroll hours and more creative solutions) to calculate accurate breakeven metrics and the true cost to acquire a customer.
If you outsource some of the marketing to a team of consulting experts, make sure the experts have worked together long enough to have established a solid rapport that can protect the interests of the brand. Think of a great quarterback with a totally new offensive line who spends all season running for his life. A brand can spend an entire season putting our fires when a team of experts is not accustomed to working with each other.
- Just because marketing is dependent on a brand foundation, data and technology, don’t assume that experienced people can make it all happen successfully.
Marketing success involves detailed response analysis of the prior campaign, strategic planning, creative design, storying telling and finally tactical deployment of the marketing campaign itself. We all know there is an element of triage within marketing work and when the fun hits the fan, people’s behavior is tested… big time!!!
What happens when next week’s deadline gets moved up to this week? How the team reacts is critical to the success of the campaign. The tactical deployment must be accelerated, there are multiple elements happening faster now and multiple people with pressure to work faster. Working faster and under pressure is exactly when human emotions show up and mistakes are made. This risk can only be mitigated by understanding the behavior of marketing people and working to influence their decisions, just like we do for our customers.
In short, the people who make marketing happen have emotions and feelings about the work they do and their personal behavior can make or break any marketing campaign.
Need a seasoned marketing team who understands the challenges you face? Call Geoff Wolf, EVP of Client Strategy at 913-236-2401 or email geoffw@jschmid.com.
Tags: human behavior, marketing teams