Why are other departments such as accounts, fulfillment and operations more organized than marketing?

With today’s standards, the marketing function may represent the greatest opportunity for increasing overall business growth and company innovation.

Your campaign management people feel the pressure – yet lost at sea amongst tantalizing new fads and genuine new opportunities such as affiliate marketing, social media, twitter…

But it’s no one’s fault. Business has to take more responsibility to the point of absorbing marketing as a centre piece of modern strategy, rather than leaving it silo’d. Only then can the marketing function do what it can and must.

Said the great Peter Drucker: “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two-and only two-basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

And what is the most glaringly obvious opportunity to improve right now? Marketing Project Management.

Training in MPM can come from books on project management… or it can extend into formalised academic education, or a comprehensive study and implementation of critical chain PM which is way ahead of standard critical path methodology.

The Way Into Marketing Project Management

Regardless of the approach taken for marketing project management training, or the scale of MPM required in your business, there are 6 components for MPM.

1. Preparation – Customer focus orientation, productivity training

2. Research – Customer insight, product insight, internal capabilities audits, etc.

3. Development – Web site, NPD, teamwork training, etc.

4. Conversion – Campaign management, website management, email marketing, sales pipeline, etc

5. Traffic – Search engine optimisation, affiliates, list procurement, social marketing.

6. Tracking – Web tracking, financial ratios, etc.

These 6 areas of practical marketing project management are guided through the trialectic of management:

1. Outcome – Get clear on the targets that are possible and are required for high marketing results.
2. Process – Understand the constraints and how to mitigate them.
3. Performance – Guiding daily productivity and overall ROI of all marketing campaigns.

With this protocol any marketing manager can construct a unique approach to marketing project management.

Marketers are a buzz over the potential mobile marketing offers. Experts predict that almost half of US mobile phone users will have a smart phone by the end of 2011, so interest in marketing to mobile users has reached a tipping point.

Social media marketing appears to be the “low hanging fruit” in mobile marketing. According to Simon Salt, author of Social Location Marketing, it is defined as marketing based on location sharing applications like Foursquare, GoWalla, Facebook Places, and Yelp. These applications let members of a user’s social network know where they are and what they are doing at that location. The user “checks in” via the application on their smart phone.

What are some social marketing techniques that businesses can use to leverage mobile applications and social networks?

Coupons

Many retail establishments now offer discounts when someone nearby checks in on Foursquare. Think how much more effective a coupon is when it is delivered to prospects near the actual store, vs. left in the Sunday newspaper. Coupons range from a free coffee drink at a fast food establishment to a free appetizer at a restaurant.

Sweepstakes

There are free sweepstakes, such as a “7-Eleven Check-In to Space,” which offered a chance to win tickets to the Super 8 movie, a free zero gravity experience, and a sub-orbital flight. Just like off line contests, social media contests must adhere to sweepstakes rules and regulations.

Mayor Reward

Repeat business is generated when members of social networks to compete for the title of Mayor of a locale, a title Foursquare gives to the person who most frequently checks in to a location. Places provide incentives to the mayor, such free sub sandwich for the mayor.

Trips

The Gowalla application has a trips function which works something like a scavenger hunt. People can pursue a “trip”, which is a series of locations a related to a theme. By using the smart phone to check in at each location, participants complete the trip. Examples of trip applications are as follows:

Education-visitors to a venue can check-in to various places to add interest to their visit, such as the Fort Worth Zoo Safari, which serves as a personal guided tour. The application shares interesting facts about each exhibit, while visitors contribute to the content by sharing pictures of the jaguars, tigers, and elephants.

Sponsor Reward-The Social Media Club of Dallas offered a thank you tour for its sponsors that offered members prizes for completing a trip by checking in to its various sponsor locations. This served to encourage sponsor patronage.

Enhancing Membership-Chamber of Commerce organizations can create new member trips, demonstrating value in the membership by encouraging existing member to patronize their respective businesses through completion of a trip.

In conclusion, there are a variety of promotions and discounts already being used by businesses and organizations to generate trial, build repeat business, enrich the experience, and add value to the membership.

There is much discussion about how effective these new social location marketing activities are. However, history has demonstrated that businesses that enter a new marketing channel can reap disproportionate response rates while the field remains uncrowded.

Ready, set, check in!

If you are fairly new to the Internet or just starting a small business there, there’s little doubt that there’s a lot to learn and absorb. It isn’t as though there’s not enough to worry about with simply creating a quality website that adequately describes and promotes your products or services, now you have to worry about advertising and marketing as well. The good news is that with a properly crafted social marketing strategy you can increase your web site traffic and your income without spending any extra money that you probably don’t have.

Social networking websites are the hottest and fastest growing type of sites on the Internet today because they not only allow individuals to create profiles that reflect their individual personalities but also allows them to share information with their own a network of friends and acquaintances faster than ever before. YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and other such websites make it possible to relay information at an unprecedented rate.

When you set up a profile on a social media website as part of your social marketing strategy, be sure to remember that you should reflect that tastes and opinions of your target audience if you hope to draw them in. Your age, gender, race or any personal affiliations or opinions should not be reflected in the profile of your business unless they are pertinent to your products or services.

One final note, please bear in mind that your social marketing strategy should remain upbeat and contemporary and avoid high pressure sales pitches at all costs. In today’s social media society your tone should remain organic, relaxed and comfortable.