Business As Unusual

There is no question we are in a time of constant change, disruption, volatility, overwhelm of information and an uncomfortableness that is as consistent as our morning coffee. There is a rapidity of change that can make most marketing leaders freeze. You are totally fine to feel this, we all feel this. But lets stop and get focused on what we can control. Below are 5 tactics that help you, as a marketing professional, respond to uncertainty more effectively and foster a greater sense of resilience and clarity in a period of 'business as unusual'.

Zero Based Budgeting - This allows marketing teams to take more control of the short term and apply a very 'proactive' framework into your business. How you respond to the market opportunities will rely on nimbleness and ZBB provides agility. How information is diffused into your business will determining how you successfully leverage these opportunities. It requires openness, listening and an empowerment of your marketing team. IPG recently announced their intentions to support this approach to planning to enable speed and agility in their clients decision making. In uncertain times, how quickly you can respond to and execute on a market opportunity will become the competitive edge.

New metrics - Marketing 4.0 (Kotler 2017) is redefining how we leverage the power connectivity and at its heart is the accountability of performance. We are becoming less concerned with reach and more vested in engagement and influence. As a result we can now really start to respond to the behaviours of our communities and start to support them at all parts of their relationship / journey with our business and the wider world. The modern marketer, with increased access to a variety of data points revitalise the business by redefining targets around more relevant metrics like ACLTV (average customer lifetime value) and ARPU (average revenue per user). At the heart of these new metrics is the notion of baking in a relationship strategy with your customer community as a growth opportunity during a down market.

Relationship Strategy - You now have the technology to learn as much about your customer as feasibly possible or within the boundaries that they have permitted you. With this information comes illumination (Doug Stephens 2013) on how best to help and serve. This creates a more enduring partnership between you and your customer base during tough times and respond more empathetically to their needs / wants. It creates the right environment for you to respond with cross selling and up-selling opportunities at the right time. Amazon are the kings of this play Many of the news organisations are now redefining how they respond to disruptive forces by understanding the power of membership and retention. They have finally been brave enough to step forward and ask their communities to place a value on their services. People will always pay for quality but the challenge is to keep those services reinvigorated and relevant.

Employee Engagement - We are observing more organisations creating collaboration points between marketing and HR /Culture Departments. We have finally woken up to our greatest asset during uncertain times (Our staff) and the opportunity to help develop your workforces experiences. Tools like Happify Health are cloud based platforms integrated into the workplace of the future and empowering staff to be more resilient, optimistic and connected to your companies purpose beyond the team WIP. Marketing teams have the greatest responsibility to drive collaboration and engagement from their peers in culture . It also provides one of the greatest advocacy opportunities beyond existing campaigns. We are also seeing more and more organisations leveraging phy-gital experiences inside their workplace and into their retail offering. Businesses like Storitects are helping brands tell more compelling stories that connect their employees to their mission vision and values. This is the intersection of architecture, technology and good old fashioned digital narrative.

Purpose & Partnerships - Setting a companies purpose isn't the sole responsibility of the marketing department. However, creating a connection point or platform that helps connect the brand to its purpose and deliver on its brand promise is at the heart of marketing teams challenges. For example Novozymes is a Danish company whose purpose is making the world better through partnerships that transform lives. They recently created a connection point that facilitated an accelerator programme called 'Unleashed' to support innovative early stage startups developing solutions that tackled the UN sustainable Development goals. This was in partnership with the Danish business community, government and Deloitte. Unreasonable Goals is another connection point that bring different organisations together around a common purpose to accelerate startups to tackle some of the greatest challenges of our time and support UN SDG's. This project is helping J&J and Lowes deliver on their wider business purpose.

These are just a small number of ways to help you manage the present and respond with confidence to the future. Marketing is the heart beat of effective change within any organisation as it creates the connection point that catalyses it. The ability to resiliently help your organisation respond with confidence and certainty is a great asset that will drive you and your company forward in an age of business as unusual. I hope they help - happy xmas and have a wonderful new year! 2018 is going to be ....uncertain.