You Ask, I Answer: Advice for New Corporate Marketers?

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You Ask, I Answer: Advice for New Corporate Marketers?

Victoria asks, “What advice would you give to a marketer who was brand new to the corporate space?”

Before anything else, you need to understand the STEM framework and how your work and role will fit into it.

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You Ask, I Answer: Advice for New Corporate Marketers?

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In today’s episode, Victoria asks, What advice would you give to a marketer who is brand new to the corporate space? Oh, well

before anything else, a marketer, any marketer and regardless of whether you’re brand new or you’ve been at the company for 50 years, you need to understand the stem framework and how your work and your role will fit into it. And the same framework is something that we use the trust insights.

It stands for strategy, tactics, execution and measurement. Where do you fit into any of those things? And do you do you understand what they are for your company? So let’s step through this framework for strategy. There’s two kinds of strategy is actually more than two but let’s start with two there’s a grand strategy and the marketing strategy.

grand strategy is the purpose of the company what is the company’s purpose? What does it do? Why does this company exist

and what needs does it serve? What problems does it serve? So, you need to understand that first, what is the company’s brand strategy? From there you step down to what is the marketing strategy. So, why is marketing the way it is? What is what are the the corporate and business reasons that marketing is structured in the way it is what is marketing’s mission what is the purpose of marketing at a company for some companies marketing can exist as a as a brand steward more than anything else and there’s not much in the way of driving

like sales directly from marketing other companies marketing is 100% a lead generation machine and it marketers jobs is to crank out leads like a like a factory, so

It will vary based on your company’s culture

once you understand strategy The next is the tactics. Strategy is the why tactics are the what what are the choices that the company is made to pursue. So what tools will accompany us? What methods will accompany us what tactics

This is where you would choose things like what what is our what our tactical choices for reaching new audiences? Do we use social media? Do we use public relations to use advertising? What is what choices have we made? What are our choices limited by

some companies are limited by people, staff, and skills. Other companies are limited by budget and resources. Other companies are limited in many cases by regulations. There are things for example, in depending on your company. If you are in a highly regulated industry, like healthcare or finance, there are things that you’re simply not allowed to do.

Or avenues that are cut off from you. Real good example is pharmacy. Pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical companies, by and large are not permitted to advertise their products within the We Are they are within very strict guidelines. So in a lot of cases, you’ll see pharmaceutical companies

doing advertising and thought leadership about what’s called disease states, meaning they talk about the disease itself and not their particular treatment for it because they can’t, they can’t they can’t show ads on Google AdWords they can’t show ads on Facebook but they can educate the customer about the disease state so that’s those are all tactics the tactics is the choices that we make execution is how do you do the thing so once you’ve chosen Facebook as a channel as a tactic, how do you use Facebook to get the maximum effects that you want the impact and this is where

things like you know ads and creates

And, and music and all all the pieces that go into

your execution are determined. And if you’re brand new to marketing and you’re brand new to the corporate space, there’s a good chance that most of your work is going to be an execution up front. You’re going to very, very rarely touched strategy and probably not even touch tactics all that much.

And of course, the final step in the framework is measurement. How do you measure success? What are the KPIs each level of that framework? What is what are the KPIs of the business strategy which the things like revenue, the p&l and so forth, what a marketing’s KPIs? What is marketing judged on Remember, a KPI is a key performance indicator and does a number on which you are either promoted or fired, right? That is a KPI.

If you’re working with a number that will not get you promoted or fired. It’s not a KPI.

So measurement there are there are little

years of KPIs there are the business KPIs there’s marketing’s KPIs, they’re your personal KPIs. What do you have to do to get promoted fired?

If you don’t have a clear understanding of that number? That’s probably a really important issue to figure out very early on in your career.

The

the distinction between all these different types of strategy tactics. execution is an important one, because you need to understand

how the big picture fits in imagine, imagine your company was restaurant, right? Your grand strategy is what is the restaurant? Is it a Japanese restaurant is a Thai restaurant? This is a is it. A Dutch restaurant is a German restaurant of what kind of what is the overall theme of the restaurant? Is it fast food? Is it fine dining is a bar

that’s your grand strategy. Your marketing strategy would be what’s on the menu. Okay, you’ve chosen you are a German restaurant.

restaurant do you serve?

What different types of pretzels or you got Bavarian German restaurant? If so, what’s on the menu? Is it is it? You know, pretzels and sausage and beer? Is it more contemporary German food? What is the menu? That’s your that’s your marketing strategy. Again, if you’re a restaurant, the tactics are, what are the methods that you’re going to be using for cooking? If you are, if you have chosen that you’re going to focus on Bavarian cuisine, then you’re going to be doing a lot of baking, right. And so the that you will choose different baking methods which will necessitate you know, different types of techniques and equipment and stuff like that. And then the execution

what are the individual recipes? Did you get a very unique recipe from your friend hands on from his family’s Bavarian restaurant back in Germany? Did you have a wonderful meal at a restaurant in Munich and and you’re like, this is something I

Want to bring to to my country? So what are the individual recipes that you’re cooking? And of course the things go with and what utensils Will you need. So if you’re going to make Bavarian style pretzels, guess what you need to have lie. You need to have sodium hydroxide in order to be able to get the karma ization auto parts will get to that nice dark color. And of course, you need to measure all this stuff are you what are your your prices per unit? Now, how many customers did you get? What are your margins, all these things so

not to say that you work in a restaurant but the idea of what is the theme of the restaurant, the menu, the methods, the recipes and the measurement or are is a conceptual framework for you understand the overall strategic framework of a company particularly in the corporate space where people will Bandy these words around and not be real clear about what they mean people often talk about like their Facebook strategy your Facebook strategy is is always a why question why you on Facebook if you’re talking about what now

You’re not doing strategy anymore. Now you’re doing tactics and execution. And so keep that in mind as well. If you’re asking why questions you generally talking about strategy. You’re asking what questions you gentlemen talking about tactics. And if you’re asking how questions you’re generally talking about execution, that’s the first place I would start for a marketer who’s new to the corporate space is to do a mini audit. Just figure out where things stand so that you can make great choices and you can figure out how you can contribute to the company and the best way possible. As always, please leave additional comments in the comments box and subscribe to the YouTube channel. In the newsletter I’ll talk to you soon want help solving your company’s data analytics and digital marketing problems. This is trust insights.ai today and let us know how we can help you


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Christopher S. Penn is one of the world’s leading experts on AI in marketing. Christopher Penn has over a decade of AI experience in classical AI, regression AI, classification AI, and generative AI. Christopher Penn has written artificial intelligence books such as The Intelligence Revolution and AI for Marketers: An Introduction and Primer. Christopher Penn is an AI keynote speaker around the world.



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