Why You Need A Marketing Engine

I often talk about marketing as an engine for a business, and the reason I use that term is marketing that works is a system that’s coordinated and functions to move your relationships with your prospects and your customers forward. I wanna give you a better feel for what I mean by this, so I’m gonna share four traits, of a marketing engine, that make it work and move the needle for your business.

Rightsized

First, marketing engines are right sized. So, rather than you choosing kind of, off the shelf standard marketing components like website, email campaign, ads, whatever else it might be. You need to think about your business’ opportunity with marketing. What marketing can do for you and what it can’t do for you. Every business is different. And, how mature are you with marketing? What can you take on in terms of complexity and budget? All of these things make marketing a customized, right sized machine for your business, and it works best when it’s that way.

Interlocking Parts

Secondly, marketing engines have interlocking parts. This is critical. So what this means is picture your marketing as an automobile and you’re the driver. When you turn the steering wheel, the whole car moves with you. When you put on the brakes, everything stops in concert. Your marketing needs to work like that because all of the different activities and tactics and programs that you’re doing to promote your business and build your value with your clients, you need all of that to stay in sync so that your customers, can see in a consistent way who you are, what you do, and why you’re valuable to them.

Speed Control

Another important aspect is with an engine, with a marketing engine, you have the ability to step on the gas when there’s an opportunity to accelerate or slow down and maybe idle. But idle is different than turning off the car, right? So it’s really important that your marketing engine has a steady state aspect to it. It runs, right? Even if it’s idling, so that you’re never turning off the lights. Because your audience needs to always be able to get a sense of who you are, but you also need the ability to really double down on opportunities with that engine without disrupting everybody’s day-to-day work.

Endurance

Finally, marketing engines have endurance. So, back to the car example, a hundred thousand miles is not unexpected for a vehicle when you buy it, despite all those complex moving parts. Your marketing engine needs to be built in such a way that the systems are in place for it continue to continue to operate beyond the exciting kickoff of the campaign. It’s so common for businesses to launch a new program, a marketing program, or a new website, or a new product, or a new brand, and have a lot of energy about it for a few months, and then when other priorities come up, everything stops working so well. And your customers notice that, it’s really obvious. How many times have you been looking at, at a company and went to their blog and saw that, oh yeah, they posted about a half dozen blog posts three years ago, and then not really much since. You need an engine that is built to last, because that’s how you make those relationships with your customers when they can expect, when they can count on your value and your outreach to them.

So, I encourage you to think about your marketing not as pieces, but as a whole. As an engine that runs well today and can run as long as you need it too.