Using Creativity is a Key but what about Collaboration? It's Time We PUMP YOU UP!

ROI, ROI, ROI – Today, that is pretty much all you hear when it comes to a Marketing Spend. It’s kind of amusing in many ways. When did marketers become the red headed step child in their organizations? Sure it’s very important to have goals and measure against them but at the same time how do you measure the value of your Brand being recognized by a potential customer or even a future advocate. Why is it that today organizations lose site of the importance of brand equity? It’s naïve to think that you don’t need to be aggressive in your marketing and in reality this means spending money. I like to simplify it this way, would you ever knowingly try to bench press more weight than you can realistically lift without a spotter? What would the results be if you did? It probably wouldn’t be very pretty thing. Building Brand Awareness  or Equity is the same as Building Muscle. You can do an adequate job all by yourself but to really see results it takes more than you can do alone. Another gym analogy that is easy to draw on is to remember that your Brand is being crowded out. The same is true at certain times of the year for gym goers. New Year’s Resolution time and Back to School Time. Here they come, all the good intentioned people in search of a new start. They flood the space and disrupt your well-oiled workout routine. You need to be focused and spend more time in order to accomplish the same goals. You also need to get creative. BOOM, there it is, get creative! Can’t get on a treadmill?... Go for a run after dinner. You do what you have to make it work. The same has to be true for your marketing initiatives. Email not working?... Try some targeted direct mail. Your Brand is stale?... Freshen in up with Augmented Reality, a Mobile APP or both. You need to get creative in order to continually elevate your Brand message in an overcrowded world of information. So is your marketing ROI really about spending less money or is it about reaching your goals? I’m fairly certain that most will answer that question by saying that money is not an issue if the program goals are met. So what do you think? Is it time to get creative?

Creativity is the Holy Grail for success in marketing. Creativity is what makes you stand out. Creativity is the key to your success. Creativity is the road that takes you through the traffic to your destination or goal. Creativity does NOT mean doing the same old thing becauase that is what we do. Creativity means doing what it takes to reach a goal. So why do marketers often limit their options when it comes to marketing channels? Why do marketers run disjointed programs across multiple channels that don’t support each other? Why are marketers often times akin to the flood of seasonal gym goers who ultimately do not achieve their goal? The answer is simple. Marketers are often times so worried about the spend part of ROI that they are forgetting that you need to plant and water a seed to grow something.  They end up pulling back when in reality they need to engage more fully to attain the original goals.

So what can marketers do? My single biggest suggestion is to build a Collaboration Team. To utilize the vast network that is available to you, not to shop jobs, but to develop plans that will meet your goals and objectives. It’s nearly impossible to do it yourself and by yourself I mean with your internal team. Collaboration teams are the only way to insure you are safely on track to attaining your goal and ultimately on target to achieving that elusive ROI. So who should be on your collaboration team? Look at your vendor pool. Who among them are the go to organizations when you need it done right? These are the people/organizations you want to enlist during the brainstorming phase of your program development. Who among your vendor pool has shown creativity in the past that has made a difference for your organization? These are the organizations that excel at their craft. They understand how to deliver a message through a specific marketing channel and have a huge amount of knowledge through their past experiences, their trusted partners, and their own R & D programs. Be careful not to relinquish control of this collaboration team to any single partner. You may think that agencies have your best interest at heart but I can assure you that this is not always the case. Make it known that the organizations involved on your team are critical to your marketing success and that you will commit to them as a result of their contribution and time commitment to the process. When done right, ALL team members gain something and you WILL have a successful and measurable marketing program.

Collaboration Teams are nothing new. You do it internally all the time. Your brainstorming sessions are a form of a Collaboration Team. They are, however, missing the outside influences and the real world experiences from the vendor members knowledge tool chests.  This knowledge always will span across multiple goals and/or objectives. Information your team can use to better craft a successful marketing strategy, plan, program or event.  So when we think about ROI it’s not a measure of what we spend but rather a measure of what we get. To put it another way, it’s our level of success as measured against a goal. It’s a mindset that must start at the beginning to achieve optimum results. It’s CREATIVITY put to use with clearly define objectives that focuses on a result. It’s an understanding that the unmeasurable intangibles of team insights are far more valuable than a lower price and that the mystical result of building brand equity is part of the bottom line. It’s jumping in with your whole being and knowing that the support you need is right there with you at every step, in every moment, from beginning to end.

For me this is not some high level rocket science. It's not voodoo or magic. It is a degree of common sense that is unfortunately overlooked everyday by the marketing community and business community as a whole. There are resources at your finger tips waiting for a chance to provide value and receive a return. Expertise that has very little cost but comes with a high value proposition. So what do you say? If it were me, I would certainly give it a try! Start small with a simple short term project. Begin to evaluate who your Collaboration Team Members should be. The key is to start and in the end, everyone should come out ahead of the game.