Marketing Resolutions for the New Year
By the time you read this, New Year’s Day will have passed and we will enter 2009 with an array of unparalleled opportunities and challenges. We offer the following “top 13” to help jumpstart your efforts so you and your institution will be successful in 2009. If you have a question about one of my resolutions please drop me a line (bob.sevier@stamats.com).
1. I will realize that great marketing will never serve as a substitute for a great product and I will acknowledge that it is the customer—the student, the donor, and the employee—who decides whether or not my product is great.
2. I will measure the effectiveness of my brand, direct, and internal communication strategies at every opportunity. As a consequence, I will focus on outcomes and not output.
3. I will carefully identify my top five competitors and then develop a meaningful and sustainable differentiation strategy.
4. Rather than be held hostage by opinion, I will conduct and/or seek out robust market research.
5. I will insist on a formal, written integrated marketing plan that includes goals, audiences, actions by individual, budgets, timelines, and evaluation mechanisms. I cannot manage what I cannot measure. I will stick to the plan and not sacrifice the truly strategic for the merely urgent or distracting.
6. I will recognize that gaining total consensus, like winning the lotto, is unlikely to happen. Rather than wait for the unwaitable, I will seek functional consensus; a general agreement about what should be done and move ahead.
7. I will insist that my team, and the senior administrators with whom I work, share goals and resources. I will eschew turf.
8. I will not let myself off the hook by saying, “I don’t have enough money.” Rather, I will work with what I have, think more creatively, and seek to prioritize, integrate, and coordinate my dollars and those of my colleagues.
9. After earmarking 10% of my marketing budget for market research and mROI (marketing return-on-investment) assessment, I will use the 70-20-10 rule to help me allocate my remaining marketing dollars. I will spend 70% of my marketing dollars on media that I know, from data, works; 20% on media that I suspect works; and 10% on new, untried media. Because of my commitment to evaluation, I will know what is working and what is not and make adjustments to how I allocate my marketing dollars.
10. I will not make a decision on a specific tactic without looking at the larger message/communication flow. I will seek a whole-systems perspective and the synergy and security of fewer messages in more channels.
11. I will say “no” more often, so when I say “yes” I can do a better job of following through.
12. I will continue to develop my personal brand.
13. I will keep my promises. Always.
Photo by: Krikit
