My Approach to Marcom

I put this information together for a meeting I had with GAC senior leaders where I presented all of our department's accomplishments from the last two years. As I was developing the presentation slides, I realized that the principles I listed can be applied to any marketing/comms department. Here are what I consider the tenants of modern marketing and communications.

• You need a solid brand to tell a good story. In the case study on Sales Enablement, I talk about how important it is to approach sales enablement by first addressing the brand. Things like gathering brand and market intelligence, developing core messaging informed by mission and vision, and developing a comprehensive marketing plan go a long way in ensuring that things like sales materials and advertising can be as fruitful as possible. I have walked companies through this process and can do it for your brand as well.

• It's not about you. Everyone has a story to tell. The question is, can you do it well? Besides having a crystalized brand, the key to telling a good story is to put the customer at the center. Lead with the problems that the customer is facing. Then your solution, and marketing, will make sense. Get to "what's in it for me" as quickly as possible. And remember, that as marketers, we are the guides and the customer is the hero of the story. If possible, invite the customer into the story and give them a clear path to your one offer. These are all key principles that I learned from Donald Miller's book Building a Story Brand.

• Taking a digital-first approach. It's hard to believe that there are still organizations with holdouts who don't realize that the print era has passed. Print advertising, print handouts—these are not the way of the future. And the reason I say this is because a digital approach has three key advantages that print simply cannot match (these are my words and learning). Digital content can be targeted for specific demographics (think audiences in Facebook Ad Manager), can be delivered as tailored to address specific customer problems, and are trackable in terms of performance (using Google Analytics and Facebook tracking pixels, for example). (There is a caveat. If your fiercest competitors are in a print publication, you may need to bite the bullet and pay for the print ad or editorial.)

• Iterating is essential. Another advantage to taking a digital approach is that you can iterate. This looks like: develop materials, test, check the data (see what worked, what didn't work), make changes, test again. For iteration to work, you need to follow your analytics very closely. While you may have hypotheses for what will work in terms of sales emails, for example, it's in the testing that you you really learn what resonates with the particular audience you are targeting. A/B testing wherever possible, in an ad or email, is essential.

• Content is king. I can turn any office into a content-generating machine. While it's true that there is more content available online than ever before, you have to keep up to be able to compete. Maintaining all channels relevant to your industry is key. Also important is to match the right content to the right audience.

• Data is queen. I've only heard the expression, "Content is king". I made this one up because I think data is equally important. The ability to achieve the highest performing content relies heavily on access to data and interpretation and utilization of that data. For example, in looking at GAC's website data in Google Analytics, I was able to see which pages are getting the most direct traffic. For top performing pages, such as tuition, it was apparent to me that we needed to provide a full picture of the organization since that is where people were heading to first (even though it was not intuitive to think that one should do that). So for this page, we added all of the organization's brand pillars. On other top performing pages, we added videos that told a story.

This is the sum of what I have learned in my 12+ years as a marketer. I will continue to add to this list as I go. For now, these principles will be my shining beacon to marketing nirvana.