Why are other departments such as accounts, fulfillment and operations more organized than marketing?

With today’s standards, the marketing function may represent the greatest opportunity for increasing overall business growth and company innovation.

Your campaign management people feel the pressure – yet lost at sea amongst tantalizing new fads and genuine new opportunities such as affiliate marketing, social media, twitter…

But it’s no one’s fault. Business has to take more responsibility to the point of absorbing marketing as a centre piece of modern strategy, rather than leaving it silo’d. Only then can the marketing function do what it can and must.

Said the great Peter Drucker: “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two-and only two-basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

And what is the most glaringly obvious opportunity to improve right now? Marketing Project Management.

Training in MPM can come from books on project management… or it can extend into formalised academic education, or a comprehensive study and implementation of critical chain PM which is way ahead of standard critical path methodology.

The Way Into Marketing Project Management

Regardless of the approach taken for marketing project management training, or the scale of MPM required in your business, there are 6 components for MPM.

1. Preparation – Customer focus orientation, productivity training

2. Research – Customer insight, product insight, internal capabilities audits, etc.

3. Development – Web site, NPD, teamwork training, etc.

4. Conversion – Campaign management, website management, email marketing, sales pipeline, etc

5. Traffic – Search engine optimisation, affiliates, list procurement, social marketing.

6. Tracking – Web tracking, financial ratios, etc.

These 6 areas of practical marketing project management are guided through the trialectic of management:

1. Outcome – Get clear on the targets that are possible and are required for high marketing results.
2. Process – Understand the constraints and how to mitigate them.
3. Performance – Guiding daily productivity and overall ROI of all marketing campaigns.

With this protocol any marketing manager can construct a unique approach to marketing project management.

Ten years ago, the phrase “Facebook fired” wasn’t in our vocabulary. Today a Google search for “fired for twitter post” brings up 158 million pages. Although you can delete photos and status updates, you can’t un-ring the bell, as too many “soon-to-be ex-employees” have found the hard way. Using Social Media is like living in a glass house – people on the outside can see what you’re doing on the inside. This doesn’t have to be a stressful situation. Instead, it represents a huge opportunity to connect with your target audience if you go about it the right way.

Post strategically

The key to living in the glass house of Social Media without worry is to approach posting socially as a strategic activity. The purpose is to connect with your audience and build and develop the “know,” “like,” and “trust,” factors that are crucial to converting prospects to clients and maintaining a long-term relationship. A strategic approach means developing a series of guiding principles that your posts and updates will be in alignment with.

Post in integrity

Nothing turns people off as fast as duplicity. People will forgive a lot of mistakes, but hypocrisy is a tough one for people to get past. There are lots of examples of people and businesses whose efforts have been hindered because the incongruity between their public face and their private face caught up with them. As Zig Ziglar once said “If you always tell the truth you don’t need a long memory.” If you only use Social Media to share pictures and post updates that are in alignment with your business and your personal “brand”, you don’t have to worry about living in a glass house.

For some, this really won’t be much of an issue at all. For others, it will be. The key here is that if you think that this could be an issue for you, don’t use Twitter, Facebook, etc., spontaneously. Instead, think about it before you post it. Sounds simple, but this simple approach, if followed, would have saved many public figures embarrassment and in some cases their livelihoods.

Mixing business and personal

Social Media marketing done right is not about being clinical or sterile in your updates. It is about achieving a balance between professional and personal that will attract your ideal audience and make them want to follow you and engage with you and then go on to do business with you. To achieve this balance steer clear of “TMI” or the sharing of too-much-information, usually personal in nature. Share the kind of things that will be interesting to your audience and supportive of your social marketing goals. Steer clear of anything that won’t help you develop know-like-trust with your target audience.

Social marketing can help you connect with your target audience like never before and contribute to the growth of your business. Don’t let the stress of living in a glass house keep you from moving into Social Media. To put the power of social to work for your business, check out 5 Ways to Grow Your Business Using Social Media.

Many business owners get so excited with the trend of going online that sometimes, the planning part tends to go awry. If you really want to see the results that would work to your advantage, it is a must to make a roadmap so that your efforts will be targeted toward a specific goal. The roadmap should take account of strategies to employ, metrics to achieve and results to measure.

What is Social Media?

Social media involves activities like audio exposure, images, videos, content and social interaction. When used for marketing purposes, participating in different social media networks will help any business achieve marketing communication goals and improve the popularity of a brand.

To understand how social media marketing works, you have to take account of the following:

* Be a contributor to the online community.

A huge percentage of the human population worldwide read articles online and look for information through search engines every so often. And because the population of contributors is relatively small, providing useful content will give you more opportunities to promote your brand.

* Assist others.

If you want to be successful in your social media marketing efforts, the best technique that you can put into play is to help others in any way that you can. Here’s an important rule to remember: Think more of others and minimize talking about yourself.

* Create links.

Links are proven to generate more traffic to your website. Without links, search engines won’t be able to serve their purpose. It is an ordinary practice among website owners to link out to other websites and blogs. You can also try this trick and see the amazing effects yourself.

* Set-up blogs.

Blogs are growing at an uncontrollable rate. Even spam blogs (also called as splogs) are taking over the playing field. If you want to be successful in your online -marketing campaign, don’t ignore the effect that blogs can create. You might be caught off-guard with the amount of traffic it can bring to your site.

* Connect with people.

Especially those who are considered authorities in your niche, you can benefit from the tips they can offer, the guidance they can give and the experience that they are more than willing to share. There are also brand advocates who can do much to make your business known to a good number of interested people.

Be it online or traditional, marketing serves the ultimate purpose of selling your products and services. Before you embark on the journey, make sure that you know where you’re headed and make sure that the vessel you have boarded on is directed toward your planned destination.