If your organization can demonstrate the sort of managerial effectiveness discussed in Part 1 of this article, there’s a good chance you can actually benefit from your marketing efforts.

Part 2 of this article will concentrate on Marketing Effectiveness.

Even if one of your pitches in the race for capital ultimately results in funding, you’ll need to continuously implement effective marketing strategies and tactics to either a) attract more funding, or b) attract your ideal customers to deliver on investor expectations.

The “long haul” for funding and customers requires modern, “attraction marketing”. In accordance with my own hard knocks, observations, research and investment, here are my five standard requirements for attraction marketing:

1) Effective management is a pre-requisite for effective marketing.

If the management in your company is seriously flawed, even highly effective marketing will not reap results.  As obvious as this may seem, it is all too common for bad management to be compensated for by working-up a new marketing campaign.

Here in lies two problems: (1) Ineffective marketing isn’t the root cause for lack of organizational growth, and (2) Bad management is infamous for poor implementation of any sort, including marketing initiatives.

As I write this, thousands of businesses are ignorantly trying to cover for bad management through implementing a new marketing gig.  Is this your company?

Clean up your management first (hire, demote, terminate or develop in accordance with company culture); then try to get great things done!

2) Effective marketing embraces and implements modern technology.

Here are three of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard recently: (1) “A prominent web presence isn’t necessary; we are only interested in attracting local businesses and customers.” (2) “Internet marketing and social media don’t apply to our industry and type of business.” (3) “We believe the only way to truly connect with people is in person.”

Modern technology changes how things get done, and marketing is no exception to this rule!  The thing that amazes me most is how even tech-focused companies (of any size) are slow to recognize the impact modern technology has on how we market today, and thus fail to implement marketing effectively.

That said, let me first address ridiculous item #1: Even if you’re looking to do business locally within your state, for example, your local prospects and customers are online! This is true if they are online intentionally searching for a solution to their problems, or if they stumble upon your solution in their online networks and industry forums.  Look at it is mere coincidence that people around the globe can access your business.

If you have a website, ask yourself these questions: Do you want to be a brochure, or a presence? Do you want to be a brochure, or a sales and marketing machine?  Do you want to be a brochure, or do you want to be highly effective and attract your ideal customers with a strategic, online presence?

The way I see it, if you’re going to take the time to be online, forget branding your company as a “brochure”.  Be a presence – a force to be reckoned with!

As for ridiculous items #2 and #3: Modern technology now enables rapport building on web-based platforms. It is a gross misunderstanding the only way we can truly connect and develop rapport with another individual is in person.

Where there are words, pictures, sound and video, there is communication – and thus connection – with human beings (investors and customers included).  And where there is connection with human beings, there is the potential for growing familiarity, trust, inquiry and commerce with your company!

Furthermore, aren’t businesses of any industry interested in growing familiarity, trust, communication and sales?  Building rapport online is for ALL businesses.  Don’t take your web presence lightly – go modern.

3) Effective marketing needs to deliver a positive, “potential customer” experience.

Just like a quality product or service delivers a positive customer experience, so too should your marketing efforts.  After all, isn’t marketing a “touch-point” with your potential customers?

Here’s how to implement a positive, potential customer experience: Provide industry-related education.  That’s it!

How are you educating your market about solutions to their problems? Effectively implement edu-marketing always, and you will attract the market.  You will engage your potential customers in becoming familiar with you, trusting you, researching your solutions, and doing business with you – all via education.  Now isn’t that nice?

4) Effective marketing MUST be in synch with sales efforts.

Do you ask members of your sales team what they think about company positioning and branding? Do you align your sales department to properly sell via an education-based sales model?

Positioning your company’s brand in the market requires that you do so through the eyes of your customers so you can speak their language.  Implementing mechanisms for acquiring sales force feedback on your marketing language before you upload content to your website or disseminate sales materials is a highly effective practice.

For example, invite a few of your respected sales leaders to your market strategy meetings and ask them, “What are the top 3 pains our customers are experiencing?”
Although marketing folks prefer to believe they know “customer speak” best, they will never know it like the company’s direct line of communication a.k.a. sales force.  Never.

Once you have the proper language to create effective sales tools, you need to align behaviors in the field.  Attracting the market is different from days of old.  Conversion isn’t going to be so hard anymore. I’ll elaborate on this concept in Part 3 of this article.

5) Effective marketing of today requires a significant amount of personal time.

I hear this from CEOs and business owners quite often: “ I’m really busy running my business.  There’s just not enough time in my day for marketing stuff.”

Because people are interested in connecting, trusting, and doing business with other people, they want to connect with a person, not a company.  Therefore, understand that attraction marketing demands time from the executive/business owner him/herself.  And if not the business owner, someone needs to be assigned the role of “Face of the Company”.

Due to modern marketing technology, today’s market presents a great opportunity for CEOs to attract investors and customers via modern marketing efforts.  Never before has the business owner/CEO been able to so directly connect with so many like-minded customers at once and impact sales.

As a CEO or business owner, if you take time to execute attraction marketing you will surely delineate from your competition.  The market will be attracted to you and your company, and you will grow faster.  Let me say that again, you will grow faster.  First and foremost for your own right – growing faster than your competition is an added bonus.

That said, here are some basic questions to ask of you and your company’s marketing effectiveness:

• Do we regularly utilize market research and/or internal company knowledge to assess our market and our customers’ needs before positioning and branding our     organization?
• Do we have a well-crafted value proposition that guides all of our positioning and branding?
• Are our logo, tagline, business cards, key profiles, proprietary processes, hubsite, product/service packages, leads-generating whitepaper, core case studies, and ancillary branding tools in alignment?  Do we have any of these things?
• Do we have a concise message as to how we help?  Can everyone in our organization communicate this same message? Do we provide training for our staff so they know how to effectively communicate a clear and consistent message?
• Do we market with educational media (blog articles, white papers, case studies, resource guides, reports, telesiminars, etc.) versus traditional “company-focused” brochures which no-once gives a rat’s tail?
• Do we have an online hub (hubsite) where we drive traffic and leads versus an Internet brochure (traditional website)?
• Am I the face of the company?  Who is?
• Are we out on the Internet connecting and earning trust with our future customers?
• Do we have an Internet marketing strategy in alignment with our brand to effectively connect and earn the trust of our ideal customers so we can drive sales through the roof?
• Do we “represent” offline like we do online?

Whether your market is attracted to your organization or not is up to you! We must embrace the change modern technology has on our marketing effectiveness.

What is one thing you and your organization are doing right now that is in concert with attraction marketing?  What are three new things you can start implementing this quarter?
Which concepts from this article would you like me to provide more tips and solutions?

Part 3 of this article will focus on Sales Effectiveness!

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