Recession Survival Strategies: 5 Job Saving Steps You Can Take Now to Prove Your Value as a Marketer
If, after dosing on the nightly news, you find yourself waking up every morning, grateful just to have your job, you’re not alone. Nowadays, employers are scrutinizing the ROI of every operational cost and headcount. And that includes you. In an environment where the next layoff can be as close as your cube, its more important than ever to have a “never let them see you sweat” job-saving action plan.
Those of us who are employed but anxious (and who isn’t) can take proactive steps to broadcast our successes and create a reputation of effectiveness and indispensability in the office. Whether you work on the agency, client-side, or media space, now is the time to channel your employment anxiety into proving your individual on-the-job ROI. Indeed, doing so can sometimes mean the difference between getting a pay stub or an EI statement.
If you’re ready to turn your job fears into a career-climbing advantage, check out these five recession busting tips to help you prove your ROI as a Marketer.
Marketer – Promote Thyself
Pretend everyone you work with is walking around with a sign around their neck that says “what have you done for me lately?”
As a marketer, you are hired – purportedly to cater and attract external stakeholders – your target market. This is part of your official job title and responsibilities. But we sometimes forget the unwritten part of our job description - promoting ourselves within our organizations to our internal stakeholders. These internal stakeholders can be your boss, senior management, the sales team, or anyone else who directly or indirectly benefits from the demand/ market interest your programs create.
As we go about our jobs, it’s important not only to create value for our company – but to also make sure that others recognize how our marketing activities help them keep their jobs. They need to know what your marketing programs do for them every day - by generating demand for the products they develop and bringing in leads that help them make their sales quotas. Your co-workers need to see you – the marketer - as a strategic partner in their success.
Does senior management know who you are and what you do? Does the sales team know about your latest campaign results which generated their best leads ever? If not, you’re probably neglecting your internal promotion campaign.
Snuggle Up to the Sales Team
For marketers, our most important internal stakeholders are often the sales managers and account executives – those who are supposed to be on the receiving end of the leads, traffic, or brand equity we are charged with creating. It’s important to forge deep partnerships with your sales team, and make them believers. A smart marketer knows that Sales can be their most important internal champion.
If you aren’t already doing so on a regular basis, make a point to talk to your sales team, and increase your visibility among them. Join them on sales calls to clients, get to know their key clients. Update the sales team regularly about your work. Get their feedback on your projects, strategic plans and budget spend and share your successes with them. Anything you can do to improve their standing and relationships with their own clients will – in turn demonstrate your value to the company.
Know Your Numbers
Do you go blank out and start counting ceiling stucco whenever sales spreadsheets appear on the powerpoint screen? A lot of marketers (me included) prefer brainstorming sessions to budget meetings and sales updates. But we need to put away our number phobia in order to seriously evaluate whether our projects are delivering to sales objectives.
On the revenue side: Do you know the annual and quarterly sales quota?, the status of the sales pipeline? Who your company’s best clients are? Which of your ads and media channels were the best and worst performers? It’s important to have this data, understand the impacts your projects are making on the business, and communicate that impact to your stakeholders. One former colleague of mine was an expert at this, and regularly introduced himself at meetings with new colleagues with “I am marketing director for Product Division X, which represent $X in revenue for our company.”
On the expense side: Do you have a good grasp on the dollar spent per lead generated? Can you track back branding dollars spent to impact on web traffic, calls, or sales? Knowing and being able to quote these figures confidently to your boss and stakeholders is key to justifying your budget allocations and individual ROI.
Show and Tell
Luckily, much of what we create in marketing is visible. As part of your “promote yourself” strategy, you should make it a regular practice to update your internal stakeholders on your activities. This can be as simple as distributing hard copies of the latest print ad to their desks or at a meeting, or as involved as preparing a detailed memo or post mortem meeting after a trade event, giving a breakdown of attendee feedback.
If your department doesn’t have an official “brag board”, try to create a wall in your cubicle dedicated to some of the best printouts of recent campaigns, ads, or even interesting swag that you have ordered.
Be the Rainmaker
As a marketer in a tough economy, you want to be seen as the rainmaker of leads and of innovative ideas.
Your company is looking to you for the best creative ideas to move the business forward and create new opportunities to replace customers who have disappeared. Luckily, the web (including the CMA site) is amuck with new business strategies, blogs and tools that can help you stretch your shrinking budget dollars. And it is easier than ever to search on Yahoo! or Google to find out what your competitors are doing. Now is the time to be researching new revenue streams, customer segments, or low cost marketing programs that will help your company survive the recession.
Having written this post, I am the first to tell you that no job is recession proof. In this climate, even the brightest and best self-promoting marketer can find themselves in the EI line. However, hard times also challenge us to re-tool our career arsenal, become even more proactive in demonstrating your relevance to the powers that be, and ultimately emerge as a smarter corporate survivor (and thriver!)
Like the big US corporations now in front of congressional committees- the more we can do to deliver and prove our ROI – the more likely we are to be seen as worthy of our employers’ continued investment.
My next post: I’ll reveal my secret stash of links to free and cheap online marketing tools for budget conscious online marketers.
