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It's Only Common Sense: Why You Need a New Marketing Manager

The old ways of doing marketing are done and gone. The new world demands that all companies—not just OEMs, retail, and commercial companies—must approach marketing differently. Even those of us in the business-to-business space must reinvent the way we do marketing.

Social media has been here for over 12 years now. Those of you who said it was a passing fad were wrong. It is not going away anytime soon. The way we market our companies is changing in ways that many of us are not familiar with.

Marketing managers need to be doing more, be adept, and be proficient regarding the ins and outs of true, viable, accountable, and effective social media.

They must know their way around all the platforms, especially LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They must constantly be putting out a strong company message that not only tells that company’s story, but describes and defines their brand, and engages with their customer and target customer base.

These new marketing professionals must know when, how and–most importantly–why to get a message out. They must create a veritable legion of loyal followers, and they have to level those followers to become their own apostles, proselytizing their story, products, and goods to future customers.

While the old marketing managers used to work on analog marketing such as business cards, brochures, and occasionally their website, the new marketing managers are more interested and focused on direct outreach—connecting with a customer by getting as personal and relevant as possible.

Customers now want to be part of something, whether that’s part of a tribe for In-and-Out Burger, a rock band, or a particular writer or politician. They want to feel as if they belong to a special group. The true goal of a proper 21st century marketer is to make sure they offer them the opportunity to feel that way.

Here are four ways that a great modern marketing professional can help your company:

1. Create your company story. The story must be human, humane, and credible. It must be authentic. It needs to say something about your company that makes people want to connect with you. No phony stories allowed. Make it relatable. Most of all, this company story must be the basis of your brand and the cornerstone of the rest of your marketing.
2. Helping your company become well-known. The great thing about social media is that it is democratic. Everyone is equal. The social media of a tiny company can compete with the largest companies in the world. Whether the company has two employees or 200,000, it’s a level playing field when it comes to social media presence.
3. Creating a loyal following. Social media allows a company to send out messages: valuable content, tips, tools, plans, and presentations all for little or no money. The social media tools give you the format to build company loyalty based on the best way to do it. Being valuable to your customers is the very best form of advertising. Giving something valuable to someone you want to do business with will elevate your company beyond the very basic elements of quality, delivery, and price. When done right, a good social media presence will get you out of the price game because it will create a tribe of customers and would-be customers who actually want to work with you. People go out of their way to pay more for Apple or Nike products, not because the product is better, but because they want to be part of the tribe (or maybe part of the cult?).
4. It is easy and economical. With platforms like Zoom you can produce a webinar and present it to an unlimited number of companies, all from the comfort of your conference room. Use social media tools to get them there. How much could that cost? How much time would it take without great social media? Once the webinar is done, you can post it on your YouTube account, your website, and your other social media channels as well.

But the real challenges to producing a great social media marketing package are two-fold. The first challenge is accepting the fact that this is the right way—actually, it’s the only way to market your company now. The second challenge is finding the right person to hire as your new marketing manager. Both challenges can be overcome with a little bit of ingenuity, creativity, and of course, with social media. Monster.com or Indeed.com, anyone?

It's only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.