Marketing communication firms exist to lead marketing directors and their companies toward favorable outcomes. On the surface, this sounds simple enough, yet every marketing director faces different challenges, has different corporate goals, and approach their work from different perspectives.
Based on many decades of mar-com work, Studio/D has identified six key mindsets from which every marketing director approaches their work. It’s important for marketing directors to do a bit of self-examination to understand their approach, and it’s equally important for agencies to go through the same exercise. Only when alignment is created will the best results emerge.
Review these six key mindsets to determine which most closely captures yours, and challenge your mar-com partner with the same exercise to help ensure alignment
1. Strategic Focus
These marketers seek to realize their objectives through enhanced strategic insight. They value smart input and monitor the relative success of their efforts. They desire alignment between sales and marketing, and are often early adopters of new technology and embrace the use of “big data.”
2. Creative Focus
These marketing leaders seek highly creative thinking to help develop and grow their own USP (unique selling proposition) and brand. The creative messaging is nearly as important to this group of marketers as is their product or service. They have a strong desire to differentiate their company from others.
3. Content Delivery Focus
These marketers focus on owning the communication connection with customers and prospects. They frequently utilize a multi-channel approach to reach customers, including digital, social media, public relations, and traditional advertising. Quality of creative work is important, but secondary to maintaining an ongoing communication dialog with clients and prospects.
4. Revenue Focus
This group of marketers are primarily driven to increase leads, market share and sales volume. Interested in building on the lifetime value of customers, they seek new revenue streams (often through upselling or cross selling) to better serve customers with greater frequency.
5. Efficiency Focus
These industrial marketers desire an improved efficiency of their marketing efforts – seeking the best ROI. Not necessarily looking for “cheap” services, rather greater efficiency through continuous improvement. They are often focused on accountability from their partners who are driven to deliver on time and on budget.
6. Soft Skills Focus
These marketers seek the proper personal and cultural fit with an agency, particularly with key agency personnel. Results still matter, but relationship and passion is key. They must know that the agency will stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
In aggregate, these six mindsets boil down to a recognition that marketing directors in the industrial/manufacturing sector are looking for experience, results, relationships, ideas, executions, growth, and accountability from their agency. No surprises here, rather it’s how marketing directors rank and further define these attributes to capture their specific mindset.
To meet client expectations, agencies must build a clear understanding of goals and audiences, develop strategic plans, create exciting and engaging messaging, and flawlessly deliver the messages while building a lasting relationship with the marketing director or CMO – all in alignment with corporate goals and the client’s mindset/expectations. Successful agencies also measure the success of campaigns and continuously improve themselves.
Can you identify yourself in one of these six mindsets? If not clearly in one, which two capture you best? We challenge you to use this information to build better alignment with your agency team.
Studio/D is a full-service marketing communications firm working with mid-market industrial and manufacturing clients, together with companies that support the manufacturing ecosystem. We’re a team of “makers” who simplify complex communication challenges with messaging that engages and drives results. Learn more about us at StudioD.agency, or call our president, Scott Dieckgraefe at 314-200-2630.