22
ADVISOR: Marketing
Making a marketing New Year’s resolution
As we embark on a fresh new year, a revolutionary approach to marketing could pay dividends, writes Colin Gordon
COLIN GORDON
marketing expert
As we start a fresh new year, “It’s almost impossible not to think of something that couldn’t be improved,” writes Colin Gordon
A
new year with new promises and new resolutions, targets and commitments, almost always personalised and very ‘health’ oriented. Most of us have, or at least most know friends or family or associates who have weight loss, fitness, smoking, drinking resolutions. Or promises to learn a language or finally get to finish that patio or any number of other personal (or maybe family) objectives. But how many of us would think of adopting or seeking business new year objectives? There’s no reason why a new beginning or new resolutions can’t be adopted for your professional life, or even your business.
Organisational health targets A new approach to how we go about our work, how we organise and behave in our professional life. I’m not talking here about everyone throughout the ShelfLife January 2022 | www.shelflife.ie
organisation deciding at the one time to do everything differently. That would lead to chaos. But marketing is not ‘everyone’. Marketing sits between the customer (and the consumer) on the ‘outside’ of the company and the operational system of the company on the inside. It is uniquely placed to see how it, and the company is best organised for success. So, it has the opportunity to set organisational ‘health targets’, and why not in January? I’m not talking about market share objectives, or click-through rates, or net margin achieved. I’m certainly not thinking about the dreaded annual plan! I’m looking as to
how marketing can best work with others in the overall value chain to ensure all the points of difference (all the points that make selling easier – or not) are met.
Ideas from different fields Let me back up a bit. I was doing a bit of reading over the holiday period, some magazines (I recommend the FT Weekend for so many good insights on how people are behaving), and several books that I’ve been accumulating over the last few months (one to look out for is Mark Henry’s In Fact – An Optimist’s Guide to Ireland At 100 for a
If enough people buy into the idea of improvement and the need to reassess and ask why something is being done, or not being done, then something magical could come out of it.
