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How often do you or the people surrounding you talk about improving internal communication?
This is all about opening up the lines of communication with the people responsible for managing & executing what makes your business go. Consider them the gatekeepers of your success. Marketing initiatives often take a back seat in the ecommerce world; projects aimed at improving site conversion, order attachment, cart abandonment, & navigation are more important than implementing tracking codes or producing banners for your campaigns.
These things take time & resources & competitive pressures make timing & speed to market a crucial variable. This is likely to cause a backlog of projects as most technology companies are constantly looking for good IT people. A backlog plus limited manpower equals slim pickings for you, Marty Marketer.
So, how do you justify that request for a larger marketing budget? You connect yourself with the right people, across the company, regardless of regional location. We all can be more sophisticated with our marketing & relationship development/management, but too often get consumed within our own workload & don’t bother to actually meet & talk to people.
Get familiar with the people I have listed below, especially if they’re in the same building or campus. If they’re elsewhere schedule time when you travel to meet them. Don’t travel? Think of something that will get you out there. Or beg; it doesn’t cost much for your company to provide airfare, hotel, & food/gas expenses compared the negative cost of failing or stale campaigns.
Merchandisers: Quite possibly the most important people as it relates to you driving incremental sales.
- They know what sells & why & so do their vendors.
- Seasonality, product launches, in-stock vs. out-of-stock are but a few things you need to be plugged into.
IT: These guys & gals cover a wide variety of things you need.
- The product & web development folks will keep you up-to-date with upcoming site changes, enhancements, & functionality. It’s important for you to be aware of new landing pages & URL changes to eliminate or minimize campaign downtime.
- You know how your project got denied for implementation anytime within the next 4 months? Besides escalating through your department, if you’re actually nice to these people, they might help push your projects through in half the time required or less.
- And don’t forget your help desk people. That one to two day turnaround to get your laptop, Treo, printer, or phone fixed can turn into mere hours. Don’t forget to repay them for favors; food & alcohol go a long way.
Creative: Anything you are going to publish graphically online should look good.
- If you want your media campaign to drive as much revenue as possible; you need to make sure what’s produced for you is legit.
- It’s so easy, but too many online retailers fail miserably in this department. It’s not because the personnel are bad; they just don’t have the right direction. Help them & be clear about what you need.
Public Relations: Being on top of company announcements will allow you to create new campaigns or be prepared to react to news, whether it’s positive or negative.
- Crisis & issues management is vastly underutilized in the online space.
- Too many brands are not aware of what’s being said; by the time they figure it out, it’s too late. You are key in eliminating or minimizing crap like this.
Customer Service: If you’re smart, you are monitoring the online chatter specific to your brand.
- Whether positive or negative, feed it to customer service; they can facilitate things for customers & improve their experience or at least somewhat appease an irate customer. We all know the damage one bad opinion with motivation to tell all can do.
Front Desk: From routing calls to them being one of the few people you see this often, they can make your life easier & more pleasant.
If you or someone you know is not listed here, but you feel they’re just as important, I would welcome the feedback. As you can see, I am not opposed to communicating.
