Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you’re all spending the day eating chocolate, cutting out paper hearts on red construction paper, and reading marketing blogs. Or at least the last one.
Cupid is kind of busy today, but I asked him to swing by the blog to suggest a theme for this post. One arrow later, and here we have it: Communication.
As we all know, good communication is at the heart of (pun intended) a good relationship. A marketing campaign involves lots of communication–between marketing professional and client, among the marketing team, and the public communications representing the client’s brand.
Communication between marketing professional(s) and client. Once you’ve hired someone to do your marketing, a lot of details need to be clarified: scope of work, goals, brand identity (whether it’s in place or being created by the agency), creative input, timeline, and expectations. That reads like a quick list, but each of those elements involves an in-depth conversation. Thorough conversations lead to thorough understanding of your wants, needs, and concerns. Articulating these things up front is more likely to result in a successful campaign or project.
In addition to communicating ideas, method and frequency of communication should also be addressed up front. Are you an email person, or do you prefer to do business over the phone? Would you like communication at every decision point, or do you want to identify a few checkpoints and leave the rest up to your marketing person?
Communication among members of the marketing team. This is directly influenced by the initial and ongoing agency-client communication. (See! I told you it was imporant). The dynamics of the team aren’t the client’s responsibility, but you can certainly ask questions about it before the work begins. Who is on the team? Who will be the project manager? Who will the client be communicating with at every step in the process? What information does the marketing team need from the client, and when?
Being informed as to how the team works, and how you’ll be working with them (directly or indirectly), is another step you can take to ensure success in your marketing efforts.
Communication that reflects your brand. This, of course, is why you hired someone to do your marketing in the first place. As you might have guessed, the communication in the first two sets of relationships helps determine this final relationship–the one with your customers.
Everything from font to colors to design style to word choice to tone affects your brand and how it’s perceived. What starts out as a few ideas between you and the marketing pro in your corner emerges as a distinct brand with clear objectives and a consistent message…but only if there’s good communication every step along the way.
Maybe we can clone Cupid and ask him to sit in on our client meetings?
