Clarity, Communication, & Cadence: The Key to Marketing Success 

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Will any road take you there?

Whether your organization is large or small, in order to get everyone rowing in the same direction, they first have to know in which direction you’re trying to head.

In his posthumously released song “Any Road,” George Harrison’s refrain “If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there” rings especially true when it comes to growing a business. Sadly, many organizations run without articulating a clear vision of where they want to go, and that leaves many employees rowing aimlessly in different directions.

Over my past 25 years in marketing, I’ve seen far too many CEOs establish a growth goal but fail to communicate it throughout the organization.

The lack of communicated objectives or purpose leaves people feeling and behaving like they’re merely order takers rather than part of a meaningful mission. The end result is a company that is stripped of its ability to build a cohesive culture and achieve great results.

Getting everyone on your team in sync will help you build stronger teams, deliver better service, and achieve stellar performance.

The Sync Phase: Optimizing clarity, communication, and cadence

In the first three phases of OPTICS™ (Orient, Predict, and Target), we established a baseline, a vision, and a clear view of our target audience, as well as the products and services that we will market that will provide the greatest impact to growth and profitability.

These first three phases also work together to provide a level of clarity that, when communicated across the entire company, create amazing results and build strong cohesion among team members.

The next two phases (Implement and Calibrate) are about building the machine and constantly calibrating its components to achieve maximum results.

The final phase (Sync), is about getting the entire organization in sync by creating cadence of communication and goal setting that keeps everyone engaged and running in the same direction.

In his book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, Gino Wickman states that “human beings stumble, get off track, and lose focus roughly every 90 days.” Thus, he encourages the implementation of a 90-day track for people to run on that he calls the “90-Day World.”

That's the purpose of the Sync Phase: To assess progress, identify corrective actions, create new goals, and maintain the cadence of communication in 90-day increments as an organizational collective.

In other words, the Sync Phase is about bringing the entire company together in a 90-day cadence to assess, course correct, and reestablish baselines and targets.

That’s the most effective way we know of to get everyone rowing in the same direction and hit growth targets consistently and accurately.

Working in 90-day increments helps everyone maintain focus, energy, and effectiveness.

As a company, quarterly and annual planning sessions must become your do-or-die ritual, and the most important part of those sessions is the communication of articulated goals across the entire organization.

As a marketing team, there are key things that should be part of your quarterly cadence:

Setting, Communicating, and Integrating Organizational Goals

Many changes can occur in an organization from quarter to quarter. New products and service lines are developed, leadership changes occur, finances change, economies change, and emergencies arise — all of which have a bearing on your marketing strategy, requiring review and adjustments.

At the same time, continual calibration needs to occur to ensure you’re still headed in the right trajectory to achieve your year-end goals.

By setting and communicating clear organizational goals, you can help ensure that everyone in the company understands what the company is working towards. This helps create a sense of shared purpose and focus, which can be motivating and inspiring for employees.

Setting and communicating organizational goals can also help everyone in the company stay aligned and focused on the most important tasks and priorities. This will help you avoid distractions and ensure that your team is working towards the most impactful goals.

By reviewing your progress against your goals on a quarterly basis, you can identify areas of success and areas for improvement, and make any necessary adjustments to stay on track.

Finally, creating a sense of accountability for everyone in the company is a key outcome of goal setting and communication. When all departments and individuals understand their part and the role they play in achieving company objectives, results soar and morale improves, as well.

Maintaining and Updating the Campaign Calendar

While the campaign calendar was created during the Predict Phase and refined in the Target Phase, it needs to be maintained throughout the year and thoroughly reviewed during the Sync Phase.

One of the main benefits to maintaining a campaign calendar is that it provides everyone in the organization a window into the activities and workload of the marketing team. 

This window helps the leadership team quickly see the impact of throwing new tactics into the marketing mix when a new idea comes to mind or there is a shift in priorities.

There are several other reasons why your marketing team should maintain a campaign calendar:

• It helps you plan and coordinate your marketing efforts: A campaign calendar allows you to plan and coordinate your marketing efforts in advance. This can help you ensure that you are using your resources effectively and that your campaigns are aligned with your overall goals and objectives.
• It helps you stay organized and on track: Maintaining a campaign calendar can help you stay organized and on track with your marketing efforts. You can use the calendar to schedule tasks, deadlines, and other important events, which can help you ensure that everything stays on schedule.
• It helps you track progress and measure results: A campaign calendar can also be a useful tool for tracking progress and measuring the results of your marketing efforts. By regularly updating the calendar with data and insights from your campaigns, you can better understand what's working and what's not.
• It helps you collaborate and communicate with your team: A campaign calendar can also be a useful tool for collaborating and communicating with your team. You can use the calendar to share information, delegate tasks, and coordinate with other team members.

The campaign calendar might need adjustments, depending upon the outcome of your quarterly or annual planning session.

For instance, do you need to reschedule campaigns to run sooner or later in the year or swap some out for others?

Just because you set the campaign calendar up at the beginning of the year doesn't mean everything on it will still be appropriate in Q3.

The bottom line is this: maintaining a campaign calendar is critical to effective marketing management. It helps you plan and coordinate your marketing efforts, stay organized and on track, track progress and measure results, collaborate and communicate with your team, and give everyone a tool to assess the potential impact of shifting priorities.

ASSESSING Marketing Team Member Performance

It’s important to assess marketing team member performance to ensure you’ve always got the right people in the right seats.

Turnover occurs, and individual performance assessments need to be made to ensure people like their jobs, have the capacity and resources to succeed, and have the skills and education necessary to keep improving and executing at a high level.

Some of the key benefits of evaluating marketing team member performance include:

• Identifying areas for improvement: By regularly evaluating the performance of your marketing team members, you can identify areas where they may need additional support or development. This can help you provide the resources and support they need to improve their performance and achieve their goals.
• Recognizing and rewarding high performers: Evaluating the performance of your marketing team members can also help you identify and recognize high performers. This can help you reward and motivate your team members, which can in turn help improve team morale and drive better results.
• Ensuring that your marketing efforts are aligned with company goals: By evaluating the performance of your marketing team members, you can ensure that their efforts are aligned with the overall goals and objectives of the company. This can help you ensure that your marketing efforts are effective and contribute to the success of the business.
• Improving team productivity: By regularly evaluating the performance of your marketing team members, you can identify and address any issues or challenges that may be impacting their productivity. This can help you improve team efficiency and drive better results.

It’s also important that you celebrate wins when you see and experience superior performance.

Recognition is a key driver for people when it comes to job satisfaction, and celebrating wins and performance helps cement a culture of striving for excellence.

Sync now or forever hold your peace

When marketing teams operate in a vacuum or without being fully informed of the growth objectives of the organization, performance suffers and growth stagnates.  

The Sync Phase of the OPTICS™ marketing framework is crucial for ensuring that all members of an organization are working towards the same goals and moving in the same direction.

By setting, communicating, and integrating clear organizational goals on a regular basis, reestablishing baselines, and maintaining a consistent cadence of communication, teams can stay focused, motivated, and aligned. This leads to better performance, stronger teamwork, and ultimately, greater success for your organization.

It is important for leaders to prioritize the Sync Phase and make it a regular part of their business strategy, not just their marketing strategy, in order to drive growth and achieve executional excellence.

Putting it all together

Implementing and mastering the OPTICS^™ Framework in your organization helps ensure your marketing engine is hitting on all cylinders.

By mastering the six critical phases of marketing (Orient, Predict, Target, Implement, Calibrate, and Sync), you will unlock the secret to designing and implementing powerful and effective marketing strategies, while at the same time deploying a powerful mechanism that focuses energy and talent to execute those strategies at the highest level.

OPTICS™ not only applies to building and managing a strong marketing team, but it is the exact same framework that you will use to create and execute marketing campaigns and tactics.

OPTICS™ is not a static once-and-done marketing exercise, but rather, it is an operational framework that represents a continual, ongoing process with the goal of consistent improvement and assured results.

The OPTICS^™ Framework enables you to build a high-performing marketing machine that gets more accurate as time passes and helps you achieve your goals quicker and more efficiently with less friction and cost. The result is more growth, more revenue, and greater profitability.

If you're unsure if OPTICS™ will help your organization, schedule a no-cost, 1-hour Marketing Diagnostic Consultation with us. We'll help you uncover any weak spots in your marketing process and identify new ways to accelerate your patient/client growth over the next 90 days.

To quickly identify your organization's marketing strengths and weaknesses, take our 20-question self-assessment. It shows which of the six phases is holding you back from achieving your revenue growth goals.

If you want to get started right away implementing OPTICS™ through our immersive training, sign up for our next cohort here.

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