Accelerate your in-house marketing capabilities

Good marketing drives growth, so it is essential to make the most of your in-house marketing function, whether that is one person who also has other non-marketing-related duties, a full-time person, or a team.

The question is, how do you achieve this goal?

In all too many cases, what really happens is that more and more work and more and more pressure is applied to the few people tasked with doing marketing.

Accelerating your in-house marketing capabilities is not about working people harder and applying more pressure.

Instead, it is about creating a sustainable working environment, which is exciting, enjoyable and rewarding.

It is achieved through building capabilities in three core areas:

1. People
2. Process
3. Technology

I strongly believe that any business can improve its growth performance by focusing on these three areas and applying the right methods.

However, before you do anything, there are two critical considerations:

1. Build from a strong foundation

To accelerate your in-house marketing capabilities, you need first to build a strong foundation so that all your hard work will be grounded and sustainable. The alternative, gaining too much speed too quickly, or trying to put too much pressure on people for too long, is that you risk going off the rails.  

This point is absolutely fundamental if you want to have a successful outcome.

The basis of a strong foundation is a full and clear commitment from the senior leadership team. Without this ongoing commitment, you will almost certainly either never get off the ground or you will run out of steam.

2. Create a clear and viable strategy

It would be best if you had a clear understanding of what you want from your marketing function. Why do you think you need marketing? What problems and opportunities are you addressing or expect to face? How will it work? What specific actions will you need to take?

How to answer questions one and two

Building a strong foundation and creating a clear and viable strategy are questions that need discussion.

You may have people within the business that you are able to talk to?

However, you may find that you face one of the following situations:

1. You are too close to your own business to see clearly
2. You have not got anyone with sufficient experience to talk to
3. You do not have anyone who is impartial and without an agenda of their own to have the discussion with
4. The changes you need to make are at this stage confidential.

In such scenarios, it can help to speak to an external consultant to get an impartial opinion and request specific advice. Hargreaves Marketing Ltd has been providing marketing consultancy as a service since 2012. Perhaps we can help you?

Let’s talk…

For a free initial consultation by Zoom, contact Adrian Hargreaves