Published January 2006

Align infrastructure for more
marketing success

You would be hard pressed to find many business owners who are completely satisfied with the results of their marketing program. You’d come across even fewer who blame lackluster performance on their infrastructure — yet this is where most marketing breakdowns occur.

We’ve performed hundreds of marketing audits and found that most companies are challenged in these infrastructure categories: facility, finance, technology and human resources. These are foundational assets and systems necessary to sustain an enterprise. All too often, however, they are not properly aligned to marketing activities.

Following are a few infrastructure details and a simple exercise to help you uncover potential breakdowns in each category.

Facility: This is your physical plant, office building and/or distribution system. It’s where the rest of your infrastructure (that isn’t outsourced) is housed. Growth can cause facility challenges.

Many marketing programs rely on the facility and distribution. Bottlenecks can reduce productivity and drive up the cost of production. Even if you sell a service, the way you organize your workspace has an impact on your performance.

Finance: This includes capital, cash flow, credit, investments and financial management practices. Projecting capital burn rates on a marketing initiative up front is important — knowing your break-even point is essential.

When planning a marketing program, and its tactile execution, consider the sales cycle and how it will impact cash flow. Make sure you maintain the appropriate reserve. Especially with new programs, contingency and scenario planning is useful.

Technology: This involves all of your systems and equipment (network hardware, software, phone system, etc.). Especially in our current state of hyperinnovation, staying abreast of emerging technologies is important. However, fully leveraging existing technology is where many companies struggle.

Believe it or not, the most frequent breakdown I encounter is in the area of data management and analysis. Aligning systems to accurately track key performance metrics is a critical success factor.

Human resources: The most precious asset for most companies is their people, both employed and contracted. Being understaffed anywhere along the marketing and sales continuum usually translates into flushing marketing dollars down the toilet.

For both employees and outsourced partners, training and communication (or the lack thereof) is where I find the biggest breakdowns. Having documented operating procedures and protocols is vital to maintaining the continuity of service.

A great infrastructure alignment exercise is to document all of the functions in your marketing program, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant; then mark each line item with the dependent infrastructure category — some will involve more than one category. Finally, evaluate the infrastructure for each marketing function to determine if it is well developed or aligned to support that marketing activity. This exercise also serves as a gap analysis.

The ultimate question you want to ask yourself is: “What can we do to enhance the value we deliver to our customers, and how is our current infrastructure facilitating or impeding that effort?” You are bound to uncover a few areas where infrastructure development or alignment will reduce marketing breakdowns and increase results.

Andrew Ballard, president of Marketing Solutions Inc. in Edmonds, develops brand leadership strategies for businesses and teaches strategic marketing through Edmonds Community College. He can be reached at 425-672-7218 or online at www.mktg-solutions.com.

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