“Marketing”... Let’s be honest, unless you work in the marketing department, the word doesn’t always awaken a sense of excitement. Throughout my experience with traditional marketing, I have found that many of the people in an organization outside of the marketing department, don’t actually know how it functions, nor do they fully understand the purpose it serves. Although the marketing department heads up marketing efforts, having company wide support is crucial. But gaining company wide support is easier said than done.  It would be ludicrous to expect busy internal teams to stir up passion or excitement about an influencer activation, an upcoming event, or a paid search campaign.  But when we are capable of incorporating the entire organization, marketing goes from being mundane to being unbelievably successful. Here are a few areas of challenge that I have observed, coupled with communicative solutions that can help to bridge those gaps that we often see between marketing and other internal teams.
  • Often times, other teams don’t have a clear picture of what the marketing department is actually doing. What is behind the curtain, after all? The key to providing understanding, is education. Requiring each newly hired employee to schedule a learning session with one of the company’s marketing team leaders as part of the on-boarding process, is an enormous first step. Your marketing team can then share with them what they do every day, and the way that it supports both them individually and the company as a whole. It is crucial that everyone in the organization views the marketing department as a helpful and resourceful tool that they can use to leverage growth. Ensuring that your internal teams have the opportunity to be involved in what marketing does from the very beginning, is a great way to create that internal understanding and support. 
  •  It’s not uncommon for the benefit of a marketing team to be obscured. A company’s marketing department must provide obvious benefit to the company and its employees. What’s in it for them?  Once teams begin to understand that marketing is the voice of the brand, it encourages the desire to contribute to what is being said. This fosters a sense of internal pride and excitement, which in turn bolsters the relationship between their success and the voice of that success...all leading to increased brand awareness!
  • If goals are not clearly conveyed, disconnect and disunity are bound to happen. Internal teams spend hours of their lives immersed in planning strategies and in countless meetings, all focused on the goals of success and growth. It is easy to see where there could be a major disconnect between their weekly activities and those of a department which operates across different platforms, focuses on different projects, and interfaces with different people. In order to bring everyone else on board, Marketing must show them that the goals are the same. It must be in tune with what they are doing. This could look like monthly informative presentations, or sitting in on team meetings in order to glean material for success stories. By assuring everyone that everything the Marketing department does is unto supporting them and their business goals, interest and understanding are built, which ultimately leads to overall success and growth.
In the end, the marketing garden can’t grow without the nutrients it receives from the rest of the organization. Without hard working teams, there would be no success to share, and without the sharing of success, the brand would go dark, and if the brand goes dark, there is no opportunity for success...it truly is a cycle that leads back to the same destination. However, once we begin to communicate and demonstrate how everything works together and how each department needs the support of the other, the holistic understanding begins to influence the way that teams respond and relate to the Marketing department, which then opens up a world of opportunity for a well oiled marketing ecosystem to thrive.

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