I'm in the midst of nasty cold. At first I thought it was just exacerbated allergies, but the old cold man river carried me away to misery.
Now I'm knee deep in post nasal drip and scratchy hack.
Most of us do everything we can to either a) avoid getting sick all together and b) nurse the heck out of ourselves -- from homeopathic remedies to hardcore narcotics.
But catching a cold is (and should be) analogous to catching the marketing bug, something more HR suppliers not only need to catch once in a while, but to catch a nasty one with no recovery in sight.
A healthy bottom line means doing the hard marketing work. It means investing in the staff, tools and resources in order to plan, execute and track. It means getting messy with sick in the sometimes unmeasurable world of marcom.
Catch a marketing cold and get your ill on.
Plan - Figure out your messaging, your value and your place in the HR space -- and give yourself a sore throat doing it.
Then, expose yourself to all sorts of possible marketing bugs:
- Your competitors
- Industry influencers and thought leaders
- Reading and developing your own best practices content
- Developing your own internal editorial and marketing calendar
- Research list rentals, online advertising and SEM opps
- Research everything from potential media outlets to editorial opportunities to conferences to speaking opportunities to analysts to awards to blogs to social media...
The sick goes on and on and finding the right team and/or marketing partner to infect you is key.
Execute - Let the snot surface and the coughing commence -- push and pull that marketing plan each and every month and leave a tissue trail behind you. Stay in front of your customers, your pipeline, your prospects and your competitors.
Your eyes should be itchy, red and watering from all the hard work.
Track - Generating quality visibility, traffic and leads gives snot-nosed a whole new meaning. Your marketing cold should be making you run like a sieve while benefiting from the fruits of your laborious sneezing and hacking.
Yet another KWG forced metaphor, but good luck to you catching a marketing cold nonetheless.
Throw in a fever as well, but the only prescription, is more marketing.
And more cowbell if you really insist.
Post by Kevin W. Grossman (join me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - and now join HRmarketer on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!)
Labels: marketing and PR, marketing plan
I'm in the midst of nasty cold. At first I thought it was just exacerbated allergies, but the old cold man river carried me away to misery.