Actually doing the work is not enough
01/12/10 07:24 AM Filed in: Working
in corporate America
From
Amber at Attitude
Branding
comes this great nugget:
"I don’t care about social media gurus or
experts or mavens or whatever. That whole thing
is going to settle itself out eventually, when
the good work starts getting more concrete, and
the people actually doing the work continue
demonstrating and illustrating their learnings
and results."
The problem is that too many marketers develop
great Power Points without giving enough thought
to "how do we do this so it results in a great
customer experience?"
I am sure that on more than one occasion a lot of marketing people have cursed the person who developed Power Point. We spend a lot of time doing and redoing presentations which leaves little time to actually think about implementation to the most important audience: our customers.
Consumers expect every interaction with a brand to be to their high expectations and frankly that's where a lot of companies drop the ball. While managers are busy making really nice Power Point slides someone in customer service doesn't have the authority to offer a customer a replacement product or discount coupon to keep them happy. While you're sitting in endless back to back meetings people are using social media to talk about your brand and influence others.
Social media, if leveraged, can provide an array of astonishing insights into consumer behavior around your brand and product category. Those companies that listen and implement actionable item to improve their marketing are the ones that are going to do extremely well. Those companies who are quickly flooded with feedback need to realign marketing processes to around that feedback to identify actionable items that could enhance the brand. You don't have the luxury of waiting anymore and marketing people that find themselves in back to back meetings just to agree on small issues are going to find more challenges than empowered consumers.
Senior marketing people also need to understand that the elements of the brand have changed and now encompass the company as well. If your HR department treats candidates like cattle you're going to have some people talk about it on social media, if you don't have a green policy or your executives rake in huge bonuses when the public is trying to keep their heads above water, you'll also hear about it on social media. Websites are already starting to appear with a list of companies that treat employees badly to warn potential customers and job seekers.
Employees want more from employers today than a paycheck and benefits. They want respect but more importantly they want to feel like they made a difference. Having your boss send you a list of things "we need to do" all too often means "things I have to do". This means more stress and more hours because most managers don't ask people who work for them "how long would it take to do this" or "do you think we could this?"
Actually doing the work is not enough. It needs to be done with your objective in mind and people asking "how can we do it better". When you just do the work, work becomes a task to quickly done without thought on how it effects your business or customers. Align processes around your customers and prospects and get everyone involved in providing answers and you'll succeed if you can do it without a ton of meetings and presentations.
