Doing Right is Good Marketing

Here is a short list of rapid cultural changes: Consumer and business databases. Cable. TIVO and DVR. The Internet. Search engines. Satellite radio. Podcasts. Social networks. Blogs. Mobile. The iPhone. Thousands more innovations in beta today.

The vehicles of marketing have transformed more in the last 10 years than in the previous 100 years. The communication tools and methods of the Industrial Era do not work in our shared world of instant informa­tion exchange.

Anyone and every man has the power to publish either a confidential company memo or an opinion about your product or service with staggering ease.

It does not pay to be a communications dinosaur in the age of social utili­ties, blogs, and mobile connectedness. If your marketing team does not stay current, your marketing may do your company more harm than good.

Take Wal-Mart’s recent healthcare public relations mishaps as an example. On one hand, the public one, the retail giant acknowledged that healthcare was the foremost reputational factor facing the company. They vowed to do well by doing good.

Then, an employee leaked an internal memo. Within hours, it zoomed across the Internet. In essence, the message implied that managers needed to fire the sick and aging. The company lost credibility across the globe at a time when it needed it most. The lesson: act in accord with your message. Let’s call it Do Right Marketing.

Do what you say

In this era of transparency, companies best do what they say. Changes in technology sharpen how customers research, compare and choose to engage a company or buy a product. This news is true for consumer goods companies, business-to-business firms and service businesses.

Buyers judge your company with more access to information and opinion than in any time in history. As the old folk song states, “you better get your business fixed right.”

Marketing is no longer about screaming “buy now” downstream with a pretty face and memorable expression. In fact, marketing now spawns back upstream to test the core principles of a business. My advice: apply the carrot rather than the stick.

Actual value

Instead of playing a communications shell game, invest your executive energies bringing actual value to the world. Provide something useful and then offer an enriching, on-going dialogue with your customers or clients. They are worth it.

Whether your marketing is created in-house or by an outsourced firm or a mix of employees and vendors, ensure that everyone who touches your market­ing knows your company values, the power of social media and blogging and the importance of keeping your corporate actions and words in sync. Generations X and Y have a keen nose for sniffing out hypocrites. They vote against them with their wallets and expose them as frauds.

Every action and aspect of your company is transparent. Even the events that get shredded can be partially reconstructed. Every action is marketing and media. Everything that is transparent can be defined as mar­keting, an outward expression of your business.

Although you may need to stretch your mind beyond what you learned and now practice, rethink the role of marketing in your organization. See marketing as a strategic line running through every company interaction as a golden thread. This thread runs through every audience (employees, shareholders, sup­pliers, buyers, press and more) at the quantum speed of the Internet.

If you want to prosper, honor every hand that touches this golden thread – these are your marketing touch points. If you want to grow market share, make sure your product or service creates value for its users. If you want to attract more business and top talent, use the carrot rather than the stick. Do right.

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Michael Graber is the managing partner of the Southern Growth Studio, an innovation and strategic growth firm based in Memphis, TN and the author of Going Electric. Visit www.southerngrowthstudio.com to learn more.