Marketing may do a great job of communicating brand value to consumers, yet it doesn’t necessarily do the same for communicating its own value within an organization. Far too often I hear marketing staff commiserate about how they struggle to get respect and buy-in for their programs, including from the areas they support such as Sales and Product Development. It’s a serious concern as all departments – individually and collectively – impact brand delivery, thus impacting Marketing’s effectiveness.
What’s missing is marketing Marketing itself — not for its own glory or credit, but for strengthening its relationship with everyone in the organization. It’s not that we don’t know what to do to market our function; it’s that we’re so busy taking care of everyone else’s marketing needs that we neglect our own.
Marketing is all fun and games … or is it?
It’s hard to be taken seriously when people associate you primarily with “fluff,” but that’s what a lot of people think about Marketing. Just because the Marketing Department occupies a place on the organizational chart doesn’t mean people know who we are or what we do.
To get other departments to better understand and support Marketing’s efforts, we need to intentionally get out of our silos and strategically market Marketing within our companies. It’s not that difficult or complicated. It’s a matter of investing the time to educate employees about marketing’s critical role within the organization — as brand steward and promoter … customer advocate … collector and interpreter of market insight … etc. There are numerous internal marketing tools of engagement that can be used for marketing outreach and getting buy-in in for marketing initiatives.
Just like consumer or business-to-business marketing, internal marketing is not a once-and-done effort. It’s a long-term strategy that’s needed to build mutual trust, respect, and ongoing relationships between Marketing and the organization. Unless, of course, you want to be known as the “Department of Fluff.”