Ep. 46 Involving Stakeholders in Your Marketing Strategy: The Key to Successful Messaging

Involve Stakeholders

The Key to Successful Messaging

Table of Contents Show

Marketing isn't a task to be assigned to a single individual or department. It's a corporate-wide endeavor that requires the input and consensus of all stakeholders for it to truly thrive and drive business growth.

ROI doesn't come from simply blasting sales messages into the void. It arises from a unified army of invested individuals speaking in one voice about the products or services they personally believe in.

The Importance of Stakeholder Buy-in

When companies place their marketing strategies in the hands of a select few, they risk distorting the message and diluting its impact. To ensure the consistency and longevity of your marketing message, it's critical to involve the entire team right from the start.

Employees play a vital role in marketing. They have direct contact with customers and likely hold valuable insights about their preferences, challenges, and motivations. Understanding and harnessing these treasure troves of knowledge can unlock the full potential of your marketing strategy.

Key stakeholders from diverse operational departments, such as the CEO, Head of Sales, Head of Customer Support and Operations personnel, need to be involved in developing the messaging strategy. This diverse contribution helps to ensure a holistic approach to marketing the company's product or service and allows a realistic assessment of budgetary constraints and team dynamics.

Stakeholder Involvement in Content Creation

Marketing strategies also benefit from the fresh perspective brought in by stakeholders playing an active role in content creation. The modern marketing landscape demands continuous content generation across various channels, and this can quickly overwhelm a small marketing team.

Leveraging internal stakeholders offers a solution to this challenge. By identifying subject matter experts within the company and assigning them content creation duties, businesses can keep their marketing communication channel populated with authentic and customer-relevant content.

After the initial drafts prepared by subject matter experts, the marketing department then steps in for editing. They ensure the content meets the brand voice, has the right hooks and closings, includes a call to action, and has a smooth flow.

Aligning Marketing Goals with The Organization's Objectives

Marketing doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's closely tied to the company's broader objectives and strategic vision. If marketing goals are established without consideration for the organization's overall aims, they risk inefficiency and misalignment.

By involving stakeholders such as the CEO and the sales team, businesses can establish how many leads are needed to meet revenue goals, craft an effective messaging strategy, and calibrate to the sales team's close rate. Powerful marketing is, at its core, a numbers game. Understanding these numbers can streamline the marketing process, leading to increased sales and improved customer trust.

Staying Consistent Across Channels

In the realm of marketing, consistency is king. When employees share your content, or when they casually talk about the company, it's crucial for this information to match the brand's story. If customer service, sales, or any other customer-facing department veers off message, it dilutes the marketing efforts and can confuse potential customers.

Inconsistent messaging compromises your brand's credibility and can erode trust, making it harder for a customer or potential customer to comprehend and engage with the brand. Stakeholder buy-in helps to foster collaboration and cooperation among different departments, ensuring synergy in conveying the brand message.

When Stakeholders Don't Buy-in

Ignoring stakeholders' concerns or excluding them from the marketing process fosters an inconsistent message. This confusion can lead to stagnant sales, longer sales cycles, and a lack of trust in your organization. Due to a fragmented approach, companies risk damaging their reputation and losing out on potential opportunities.

Clear communication of the strategy's rationale and benefits is key to overcoming these obstacles. Involve your stakeholders early and ensure that your messaging strategy aligns with your current organizational goals. Address their concerns and objections and tailor the messaging to resonate with their specific interests.

Remember, stakeholders will care about the marketing strategy they're a part of creating. Their insights and buy-in are critical to aligning marketing with overall business objectives and ensuring consistent, effective communication across all channels.

TL;DR

Marketing success relies on involving all stakeholders in crafting a unified message. Employee insights and diverse department contributions ensure consistent messaging and alignment with business goals. Engaging stakeholders prevents confusion and stagnation, enhancing brand credibility and fostering trust. Ignoring stakeholders leads to inconsistent messages and potential business damage. Clear communication and involvement from the start are essential for effective marketing.

Highlights

00:00:00: Introduction to marketing roles within a company

00:01:10: The importance of stakeholder involvement in marketing

00:01:33: Defining stakeholders

00:02:38: Role of customer support in marketing

00:03:27: Importance of subject matter experts in creating content

00:04:57: The role of marketing in content editing

00:05:39: Importance of stakeholder buy-in

00:07:25: Ensuring consistent messaging across all channels

00:09:55: Fostering collaboration and cooperation among the team

00:10:57: The golden thread in messaging

00:11:36: Risks of a lack of stakeholder buy-in

00:12:38: The Risks of Disjointed Messaging

00:13:52: Building Trust with Prospects

00:14:16: Stakeholders and Account-based Marketing

00:15:34: Factors Affecting Stakeholder Buy-in

00:17:36: Four Ways to Gain Stakeholder Buy-in

00:20:35: Client Success Story

00:22:23: Homework for Listeners

00:22:46: Conclusion and Offer for Workshop

Transcript

Sarah Noel Block: Everybody within the company should have a role in marketing. So often entrepreneurs create their marketing message in a silo. Either it's just them working on it or they're working with a strategist on it. And it doesn't really take into account the team that is disseminating that message. You need stakeholders within the company to fully buy in on your messaging or it will die.

B: Will die, I promise you.

Sarah Noel Block: Because they won't know why they should be using it. They don't really understand it and they don't see how it's connected to your product or service.

B: So they don't, they talk about your.

Sarah Noel Block: Business, the way they interpret your business, rather than the carefully crafted brand story.

B: That you developed with a strategist.

Sarah Noel Block: So for this reason, I bring in stakeholders right at the very beginning of.

B: The process, so we can get everybody.

Sarah Noel Block: On the same page from the get go. And that is what I'm talking about today. I'm going to be talking all about why stakeholders matter and bringing them in early in the process so they buy in to the messaging. And then, and only then, will your marketing message be consistent and live on through the life of your business. I'm Sarah Noel Block and this is Tiny Marketing.

Sarah Noel Block: Let's start from the very beginning.

B: What are stakeholders?

Sarah Noel Block: So stakeholders within your company that should be involved in your marketing messaging are your employees. They are the people on the ground, boots on the ground, working with clients and customers. When I am running a messaging strategy with a client, I always make sure.

B: That we have the head of the.

Sarah Noel Block: Department on any operational department that you have. So generally for myself, I am working with the CEO or the entrepreneur, the founder, the head of sales. That person is my very favorite person because they know more than anyone what customers are saying, who the ideal person is, what their challenges are, what triggered them to look for a solution in the first place. Sales are a gold mine for marketing and messaging strategies. You also want customer support or someone within that sort of role, customer success, whatever you end up calling it.

Sarah Noel Block: You want someone there so you can understand the retention elements.

B: What is keeping people happy?

Sarah Noel Block: What is keeping people staying with your company? What is retaining them? That is really important.

B: So I like to have somebody from.

Sarah Noel Block: The customer success role in my stakeholder.

B: Calls and operations is great because they.

Sarah Noel Block: Help me understand the money aspects. What can you afford, what does your team dynamics look like? And this gives me a really great.

B: Idea of what I have to work.

Sarah Noel Block: With when I'm creating your marketing strategy, what's my budget looking like? What kind of team members are there? And at the same time, these stakeholder calls are a great time to get hand raisers. Who feels comfortable creating content for the business? The people I'm working with, they usually have a zero to two person marketing department that is not big, especially when we're all expected to be creating content at all times.

B: What I like to do is I.

Sarah Noel Block: Like to find the subject matter experts, the little gifts that we have within our company and assign them projects to work on within marketing. Because one, anybody who is customer facing and creating content at the same time builds trust with your ideal customer and it becomes a lot easier to sell when you do that. And you have your employees involved in marketing, but also you just don't have the resources to have the marketing department create all of the content in a silo. You need all hands on deck from it. Everybody within the company should have a role in marketing.

Sarah Noel Block: And all the marketers listening to this right now are probably wanting to slap me across the face because in my own experience, I know that everybody does think that they're in marketing. But the big difference here is the marketing person is the strategic role where the other company stakeholders, they're content creators, they're subject matter experts and they're people that should be highlighted spotlighted within the content. Once the team has created the content, marketing can take over and do the editing. Make sure that it meets the brand voice, make sure that it hits, it has the right hooks and closes, it has a call to action and it.

B: Has a great flow. But that first draft would be a.

Sarah Noel Block: Great place to bring in subject matter experts within the company. To do that, they can be the author on the content. And it's a really exciting thing when you start seeing the benefits of seeing these internal stakeholders involved in marketing and how much more buy in you get when people are invested in it. Next up, the importance of stakeholder buy in. Okay, let's explore why stakeholder buy in matters for the success of marketing.

Sarah Noel Block: So one, we want to align goals and objectives. When marketing creates goals in their little bubble, they miss out on the goals of the wider organization. So you definitely want the CEO involved. What are the revenue goals involved in the business? You want sales involved, how many leads would it take to meet these goals, these revenue goals?

Sarah Noel Block: And then just do the math.

B: Ask sales what is your close rate.

Sarah Noel Block: And how many of our marketing qualified leads are turning into sales qualified leads? And then how often are you closing.

B: Those sales qualified leads?

Sarah Noel Block: This is just simple math. Having all of these people involved allows you to understand how many impressions you need on your marketing to be able to meet revenue goals. It's super simple when you think about it that way. You just need to keep track of stuff. Okay, so this is the math that gets me to the revenue goals of the business.

Sarah Noel Block: And I know that X, Y and Z gets me this many impressions on average. And this is usually the CTR, the click through rate on that and it.

B: Becomes a lot easier when you're keeping.

Sarah Noel Block: Track of these metrics and you understand all of the dynamics within the organization. It becomes simple math. And I hate math, but I love math when it comes to money and marketing. Okay, next, you want to ensure that you have consistent messaging across all channels. So when you're involving employees within the marketing, you want them to share out your content.

Sarah Noel Block: You want them talking about the company in a very specific way. You want them matching the brand story, otherwise it gets diluted and it's really.

B: Pointless if customer service is talking about.

Sarah Noel Block: The company a different way, if they aren't radiating what that message is that you have determined, like your business is this character and they help solve the problem for your customer in this way. Customer service needs to be down with that and doing the exact same thing, otherwise you're diluting the message. Same goes for sales and anybody else that's customer facing. They need to be able to recite that brand messaging and convey it in everything that they do, especially social media when they are sharing out content for the organization. Dang, you want to make sure that they are saying it in the right way so that your message comes across and it's clear what you do, the solution you provide, who you provide it for, why all of that jazz?

Sarah Noel Block: Next, you lose credibility if you don't have your marketing message conveyed the same way throughout the organization. Authenticity is an overused word for sure.

B: I'm still going to use it.

Sarah Noel Block: You lose that authenticity when different stakeholders are talking about the company in different ways and your messaging is just all over the place. It's hard for a customer or a potential customer to trust you if you are all talking about the company in different ways. And last, you want that stakeholder buy in happening because you want to foster collaboration and cooperation among the team. It's so important to be able to have marketing, customer service, sales and anyone else that communicates with the customer at all to be on the same page when it comes to messaging. So I'm just going to bring this.

B: Back to how I do it.

Sarah Noel Block: So I have a Marketing Mad Libs.

B: Workshop that I always do at the.

Sarah Noel Block: Beginning of every single project. There's no way of getting out of it.

B: This is what I do.

Sarah Noel Block: So I have this messaging workshop which I call Marketing Mad Libs and all of the stakeholders are invited to it and together we have a great conversation. And I find that golden thread among all of the stakeholders that ties everything together. So oftentimes stakeholders think we're saying completely different things. We don't agree and we're never going to agree. But the thing is, there is a golden thread between everything that the stakeholders are saying and you just have to have that marketing mind to be able to find it and weave it through all of the messaging because it's there.

Sarah Noel Block: And I have done a million of these workshops.

B: It is always there.

Sarah Noel Block: No matter how disconnected the team is, how much the stakeholders are convinced that they have a broken organization, it's there and they don't realize it because they're just too deep into it. So trust me, you need an outside facilitator because they can see things with a clear mind that you can't see when you're in the muck. I wasn't going to do this here, but if you do want to just do the stakeholder workshop, my marketing madlibs workshop, I'll have a link in the show notes and you can sign up for it right then and there, my friend. All right, let's get back into it.

B: Next up, let's talk about the risks.

Sarah Noel Block: Of a lack of stakeholder buy in. We have all seen it. We have we've seen these organizations where there's a big disconnect. Everybody is talking about the company in a different way and you're not clear on the why. Why does the organization exist in the first place?

B: The how how do you help your.

Sarah Noel Block: Customers differently than everyone else in the what's included in your support, in your solution for the customer? It happens all the time where you think the entrepreneur thinks that it's very clear and maybe it was at one point, maybe it was, but the team has just gotten a lot bigger and there just isn't that cohesion that there was when the team was more concise small or even just them.

B: It gets a lot harder when you're.

Sarah Noel Block: Adding more people and more emotions to play. But here are the risks when you don't bring them all in together to work on the messaging together. Now, even if you have great messaging now and then, you have been scaling your team's a lot bigger. Now you will probably also want to.

B: Have a workshop with a facilitator to.

Sarah Noel Block: Bring people together and help them understand the why behind the messaging and marketing strategy that will get them pulled back in and even asking them their opinions and what they see as people that are boots on the ground out there. Because your messaging might have been perfect when you are a one person company and now it might not make sense and your team will have these insights that you don't have. Here's some struggle things when stakeholders don't buy in. There's inconsistent messaging and it leads to a lot of confusion with customers and prospects. And what does this lead to?

Sarah Noel Block: It leads to stagnant sales, it leads to longer sales cycles and it leads to people not trusting your organization, which is a big problem. The number one thing that I do in my marketing strategies is build out a system to encourage trust between prospects and the company. I want them prospects to fully buy in and trust the company that they are seeking a solution from. And that's lost when stakeholders don't believe in the message. Let's say you are working on an account based marketing plan and you are seeking to work with a very specific company and it's all hands on deck.

Sarah Noel Block: You want to land this account, but stakeholders aren't all buying in on that messaging and they're talking about it in different ways. They aren't going with your actual campaign assets, your campaign messaging. Big problem with that and that's going to make you lose that account. And we all know when you do ABM account based marketing, if you don't reach your goals, you've lost a lot of money. You need to nail that account.

Sarah Noel Block: There's a negative impact on brand reputation and credibility when the stakeholders don't buy in. It's all inconsistent and people don't trust you and you get missed opportunities because you have a fragmented approach. What might be working for one team isn't working for another. And the reason for that is you guys aren't on the same page on.

B: How to talk about it.

Sarah Noel Block: And that can be really detrimental, especially if you have marketing, PR and sales all talking about the company in different ways, completely fragmented and no one's going to trust you like that. Next, let's talk about factors affecting buy in, what is causing issues, and what would fix those. So, one clear communication of the strategy's, rationale and benefits. So, let's say you were an entrepreneur and you created your messaging and marketing strategy with an outside consultant before you scaled up and you added a team. Now you have a team and they have no idea why you've chosen the direction that you have or what the benefits are of it.

Sarah Noel Block: They need to be involved. So if you have that, it's time to revisit your messaging strategy and bring them in to make sure that it still makes sense and it still fits for the organization. And if it does, it's a great opportunity for these stakeholders to understand the why behind it, the rationale, the benefits of it. Next, addressing concerns and objections so your stakeholders might fully understand your messaging and your marketing strategy and think, nah, not.

B: For me, I don't believe in this.

Sarah Noel Block: So these workshops are a great time to address concerns and objections that they.

B: Have with the strategy as it is.

Sarah Noel Block: Today and actually listen to them because they might have very valid reasons behind their objection to it. And it might be time to make a tweak. And then last, demonstrating alignment with organization goals. So you sit down and you have a messaging workshop and you can align it with the goals of today, your 2023 goals. Because if you created a messaging and marketing strategy in 2020, it's probably looking very different today.

Sarah Noel Block: It has probably evolved without your knowledge and it's time to revisit it and make sure that it aligns with today's goals.

B: So here are four ways that you.

Sarah Noel Block: Can gain stakeholder buy in. One early involvement and engagement of stakeholders in the strategy development process.

B: This is why it's the very first.

Sarah Noel Block: Thing that I do. So my full strategy is called a Strategic story. And it is customer Avatar Messaging Strategy content and Marketing Action Plan. That's what my full strategic story looks like.

B: But the very first step of that.

Sarah Noel Block: Happens before all of those pieces. And that is the Marketing Mad Libs Workshop where I have stakeholders sit down with me and we have a whole workshop to get them involved and engaged in the process. And they're involved every step of the way. So they are in, they are invested and they are fully involved when we roll it out and it's actually being.

B: Used because they were part of it.

Sarah Noel Block: You care a lot more when you're.

B: Part of the process.

Sarah Noel Block: Two customizing messaging to resonate with different stakeholder interests. So the same messaging needs to be across the entire organization, but there can be some customization based off of what role that stakeholder is in. For example, marketing is going to be talking slightly different about the company than customer success because customer success, they are working directly with current customers, so they.

B: Need to talk about the piece of.

Sarah Noel Block: The funnel that is retention. So you need to be able to have a messaging strategy that talks about the entire funnel, including the delight and the retention stage of it. Three sharing success stories and data to demonstrate potential impact. So when you are trying to get that stakeholder buy in, you want to be able to show the reasons why with real life examples so you can test out some of your strategies and build up success stories to demonstrate the impact. And this would be coming from the consultant's point of view, or it would be coming from the marketing leader's point of view because you have experience to show them.

B: These are success stories that I have.

Sarah Noel Block: Experienced from going this direction. Make sure that you have them available so people who aren't in marketing and don't understand how it works, show them how it works in a way that they're going to understand. You're a marketer, you know exactly how to do this. You need real world examples, you need stories and you need data to make it clear why your strategy will work for them. Make it as easy as possible for them to be invested and excited about it.

Sarah Noel Block: To wrap it up, I just want to tell you what one of my clients said to me recently after I ran a Marketing Mad Libs workshop for them. They said before working with me and doing this stakeholder workshop, they didn't have any buy in. They were completely disconnected, every department within the organization. They didn't really understand what they were doing, they weren't going in the same direction, they didn't have the same goals and they didn't know how to talk about the business or how to get in front of the right people. But after the Marketing Mad Lips Workshop, they actually feel invested and like they're on the same team and they're moving in the same direction for the first time in a 20 year history.

Sarah Noel Block: That is the power of getting stakeholders involved early on in the process of creating a marketing or messaging strategy, there is no substitution for it. People are not going to care at all about the messaging or marketing strategy.

B: That they're told about.

Sarah Noel Block: They will care about the one that they were involved in. So even if you have a marketing and messaging strategy right now, but you've grown and you have a team now that isn't really invested in it, it's time for a workshop and a tweak. It might be time to adjust your messaging and marketing strategy so everybody is involved and you get new insights and you guys are all running in the same direction to meet those goals. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today on this solo episode.

Sarah Noel Block: And here is your tiny homework for today. What I want you to do is.

B: Make a list of all of the.

Sarah Noel Block: Stakeholders that you think should be involved in the messaging and marketing strategy. Make that list and start from there. And if you are comfortable, go down to the Show Notes page and book your Marketing Madlibs Workshop.

B: The full cost of that workshop goes.

Sarah Noel Block: Towards your strategic story. So if you decide to move forward and get a full strategy from me, that workshop cost, poof, gone. It's completely moved over to the strategic story. So you get a big old discount on the actual strategy. All right, thank you again and I will see you next.