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Special Insights from Kneko Burney, CEO of Change3 Enteprises, included.

In Operations Management, best practices will tell you NEVER operate your production resources at full capacity.  I know – doesn’t make sense.  But, here’s why: when 100% of your resources are used to deliver your orders – it means you cannot make mistakes nor can you do vital activities like maintenance and repairs without stopping the entire production line. 

So, what exactly does this have to do with marketing?  Well, the same philosophy is true.  If you are using sales people to do marketing – guess what: they are not selling.  As such, your marketing department should not operate at full capacity.

Why shouldn’t I operate at full capacity?

1.  There is no direct correlation between increased production and increased productivity.  As with studying all night before an important exam, simply counting the number of hours studied as productivity would be wrong:  adding more hours of labor to a project does not necessarily produce an improved result.  While the field of economics may point to examples in the manufacturing industry, a marketing organization – with completely different inputs to production – cannot be managed in the same manner. 

Simply creating more email campaigns or producing more webinars may signal increased production, but the ROI of each marketing piece may drop, as fewer leads, engagement, or KPIs are recorded.  In this case, increased production does not lead to increased productivity.

2.  Focus on quality, not quantity.  A total commitment to quality is not a new concept.  Spearheaded by Japanese industry since the late 1970s, and later giving way to ISO 9000 and Six Sigma methodologies in the 1990s and 2000s, a focus on continuous improvement and a commitment to quality has been empirically shown to

• Reduce product and service complaints
• Support premium pricing
• Engender morale
• Increase overall productivity and profitability

Therefore, an organization, including a marketing team, should instill a total commitment to quality in every task, no matter how large or small. 

However, this concept is particularly difficult for today’s senior marketers operating in a complex media landscape with multiple platforms, channels, audiences, and endpoints all seeming to vie for importance and attention.  ‘Don’t we have to be where our clients are – everywhere?’ is often a question I am asked.  The answer is No, if there do not exist sufficient resources to produce the level of quality needed to meet the demands of a client or prospect. 

3.  Companies need to create a safe haven for experimentation and creativity -- and mistakes.  Entire industries, including technology, media, entertainment, and even pharmaceuticals, have built huge businesses on ‘mistakes’ in production that occurred even though they were never meant to happen in the first place.  Such mistakes are later productized and monetized.  If a company is operating at full capacity, with restrictions on activities not central to the business at hand, there are no resources left over to experiment and discover the next product that just might become a blockbuster.  While Google has long been known to famously allow its employees ’20 percent time,’ or one day a week to pursue side projects (the company has recently sunsetted this policy), time to pursue projects can indeed deliver results to the bottom line.

Final Thought:  Not operating at full capacity does not mean a lack of efficiency.  Today’s marketing professional may struggle with this concept, but satisfied customers will take notice of the resulting quality. Since all marketing should tie back to revenue, your team will easily be able to measure the results of this strategy. 

Inject the human element into your organization and decide what tasks should become more efficient and what others could be discarded. 

Want more info?  Expand your horizons with additional reading. 

ChangeU: for your independent study…

• Applying Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, and SOA to Drive Business Results: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/abstracts/redp4447.html?Open (Lean Six Sigma unites tools and techniques from Lean and Six Sigma methodologies to produce real results.  Business process management (BPM) technologies and service-oriented architectures (SOAs) contribute  to accelerate improvements and results.  This IBM® Redguide™ e-book publication is intended to help companies that are leaders in their markets or are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors.)

• Google’s 20 Percent Rule: http://www.slideshare.net/amitmakhija81/google-25631794 (From a Marketing Operations Manager at Microsoft, a look at the pro’s and con’s of Google’s ’20 percent time’ rule.)

We’ve all had boring jobs at one point or another, but companies have quickly realized the importance of harnessing – and profiting from – the creativity of their employees.

Of course, in certain businesses, day-to-day creativity is expected.  But in industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals, transportation, and energy, companies are realizing that some of the best ideas can very well emanate from within.

While Google has long been known to famously allow its employees ’20 percent time,’ or one day a week to pursue side projects (the company has recently sunsetted this policy), time allotted for employees to pursue projects can indeed deliver results to the bottom line.

Here are some considerations for jumpstarting your organization’s focus on harvesting new, business-building ideas:

Start online, before going offline.  Take it to the community:  post an announcement via your company’s online community, and target champions – managers or whole departments – whom you are certain could serve as positive representatives of the initiative.   You need not engage the entire company at first either – perhaps just certain groups in the online community first, then gather relevant feedback which you can use to further promote the program.  People prefer to see results first before jumping headfirst into uncertain waters.

Create an incentive program for creativity.   The prize needs to be more than just an online badge or a trophy given out at the All Hands Meeting at the end of the quarter.  If an employee’s idea leads to real business results, a financial incentive will speak volumes of the senior management’s commitment to motivation, morale, support, and the future of the business.  Engage the PR department for additional out-of-the-box ways to motivate employees, and how such results can be communicated effectively.

Don’t just talk the talk:  show results.   New employee programs are often greeted with a yawn.  Once launched, continue to communicate the progress of the program via your company’s online community and in small meetings, capturing the lifecycle of an employee’s idea as it becomes a reality.  This will incentivize other employees to join in and generate even more ideas.

IBM is another company that is a proud proponent of employee innovation, whether or not such innovations make it out the front door.  Each year, at the company’s annual Lotusphere conference (renamed Connect), the most exciting part of the conference – at least for me, as a former industry analyst – was the personal tour I would receive of a handful of ongoing projects developed by researchers at IBM labs in Cambridge, Mass., Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo, and other cities.  Always staged in a windowless room far away from the main conference sessions – no cameras or recording devices allowed! – I learned of diverse projects, including one aimed at monitoring employee social media usage and another that seemed to serve as an internal Kickstarter-like crowdfunding campaign platform.  I would later learn that the social media usage product, while not a formal IBM offering, was piloted at a few clients for evaluation.  Kudos to the IBM researcher who developed it!

Final Thought:  Your employees are your best resource for new business.  Motivate, inspire, and most importantly, compensate them for delivering creativity and profits.  It’s just good business, in addition to good karma.

Want more info?  Expand your horizons with additional reading. 

Want Help? Contact our team today

ChangeU: independent study…

Centre for Innovation Studies, Imperial College, London

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/innovationstudies

Articles related to the study of the innovation process and the impact of knowledge creation.

Harvard Business Review’s 10 Must Reads on Innovation

http://hbr.org/product/hbr-s-10-must-reads-on-innovation-with-featured-article-the-discipline-of-innovation-by-peter-f-drucker/an/11363E-KND-ENG

Books on innovation, including articles written by Peter Drucker.

How To Innovate:  A Step By Step Guide

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/30/smallbusiness/how_to_innovate.fsb/

From a reporter for Fortune Small Business, a guide on planning and adopting innovation in an organization.

See my perspective on identifying leaders on your team in my latest blog post on LinkedIn. 

Here is an excerpt:

Over the years, I have made a practice of "throwing" my employees into the fire of "you can do this!" My philosophy is simple: in order for my organization to grow, my employees need to become leaders as well - because I can't do everything myself. As such, just about everyone on my staff needs to muscle up and learn to lead in their area of expertise.

Visit LinkedIn to read the full post.  

What is Content Marketing?

According to Wikipedia, content marketing ‘is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers.’

This catch-all phrase certainly means different things to different marketers, in different companies and in different industries.  As such, a community of content marketers and professionals has evolved to address the ever-changing needs of this business process.

A content marketing strategy occurs when a brand, company, or organization utilizes longer-form content – articles, videos, photos, research findings, among other assets – to capture the attention of potential customers – hopefully leading to engagement, and then eventually, sales. 

While advertising campaigns are designed to generate awareness, the discipline of content marketing involves a dedicated, focused approach that includes any or all of the following aspects:

• The development of a content marketing team of bloggers, researchers, editors, designers, and developers to create the company’s content
• A schedule or calendar for content distribution
• A platform to publish and distribute the content, often the company’s website but also various social media channels and email or automation programs
• Monitoring and metrics tools to measure audience reception to and engagement with the content

Spreading the Love

Discussions of content marketing generally include social media, but there are many other business functions to which content marketing extends.  As such, one or more individuals from these departments could take a more active role in a company’s content marketing strategy.

• Sales.  Salespeople and those supporting sales operations need a consistent stream of content to put in front of prospects.   Sales professionals are a perfect group to measure the strength of content assets, as they can give immediate feedback to the marketing team as to what is performing and what is not.
• Customer service.  As customer care has largely moved online, a customer community, self-service site, or FAQ webpage are all considered content marketing, as customers go online to search for the information they need.  Customer service managers can measure the impact and utilization of such content, and so by extension, their content is content marketing.  (They can also insert some helpful information about the company’s new products as well.)
• Human resources and administration.  Many companies large and small have realized that their corporate intranet, in which reside dozens of important employee-related policies and documents, need to be more clearly organized and utilized.  Document retrieval and utilization are by extension, content marketing, as HR managers, using the proper tools, can determine which pieces of content are accessed more than others, and give attention where needed.  Indeed, employees can be considered an internal audience.

Automating the Process

With the proliferation of Twitter timelines, blogs, Facebook Pages, YouTube channels, and Pinterest boards, marketers are very well aware of the need to constantly and consistently feed ‘the content beast.’ 

As such, shrewd marketers understand that not all of their content needs to be original.  Indeed, marketers have learned that they can capture the interest of their core audience of buyers and influencers by aligning themselves and the brands they represent with the content of others, a process otherwise known as content curation.

Examples of content curation include retweets – merely passing along a tweet which you find interesting, while still identifying the original author.  Another example of content curation is finding a YouTube video or SlideShare presentation which you consider interesting, and then embedding it on your website or blog, and including your remarks or commentary.  Thanks to embedding technology, this process is legal and ethical, and serves to promote both the content of the original creator as well as your own.

There now exist several content marketing services that include curation tools, that automate this process and introduce efficiency to content marketing efforts.

The Evolution of an Industry

Content marketing is not new.  Some clever marketers have been utilizing content marketing practices for at least a century.  Recipes and cookbooks featuring branded packaged goods – from Betty Crocker to Martha Stewart – serve as longstanding examples of content marketing.  Magazines, eBooks, How-To-Guides, research studies, articles, and even entire courses have served their purpose in performing content marketing for their underlying brands and companies.

ChangeU: For your independent study….

Annual Research: Content Marketing Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends, for both B2B and B2C - http://bit.ly/1uv4tMu

The Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 study of content marketing in both B2B and B2C environments.

Why Your Content Marketing Team Needs A Marketing Technologist - http://cmo.cm/1uv4EaC

A discussion of the technology needs for a full-in content marketing program.

The Social Customer Engagement Index - http://bit.ly/1tZIThy

The results and analysis of a survey of online communities that serve the social customer.