Every company must ask itself how it presents itself to potential customers, how it addresses them proactively and reactively, and how it designs its offering to be as attractive and well-suited as possible. In this field, many threads from corporate management, strategy, sales, and marketing come together, which is why this area is often summarized under the term “strategic marketing“.

 

In practice, there are many different ways to translate strategic preliminary considerations for a product, brand, or offering into entrepreneurial action. This often involves developing an overarching marketing strategy as well as elaborating various strategic plans for the relevant individual disciplines. Examples include the social media strategy or the online marketing strategy.

 

Since in every individual marketing discipline the leap must be made from a very long-term and less tangible plan to tangible and actionable initiatives or measures, this can easily lead to a confusing field of tension between sub-strategies and implementation, which no longer fulfills the actual requirement of strategic thinking – namely, to provide a guideline for what a company is working toward in the long term.

 

For precisely this reason, companies adopt a „mission“ or a „vision“ at the organizational level – short guidelines that serve as orientation even in complex structures, a kind of „North Star“, as one might say in modern business jargon. Even within a company's marketing organization, complexity can reach a level where such continuous orientation in one direction could be very helpful. The gap between corporate vision and practical marketing implementation is a field that can be well filled with a concept that I call the Marketing Mandate .

 

The marketing mandate concisely describes the mission and orientation of marketing activities toward an overarching goal. It is not a strategic plan and certainly not a list of measures – it is, in a sense, the elevator pitch of the marketing department.

 

"We ensure that new customers become aware of us and are engaged in meaningful interactions with the sales team."

 

"We want to become the strongest brand in the X field."

 

"We want to tap into the untapped potential that lies in our existing customers."

 

A marketing mandate, like a political mandate, is limited in time and scope. It is not written on the flag in front of the company headquarters, nor does it need to think for the whole world. However, it should describe which marketing focus at a given time enables the greatest value contribution to the company's success.

 

Marketing mandates often operate in the following areas:

 

Brand Building: The primary goal here is to build awareness in the market. Companies that want to build a strong brand image often rely on mass communication tools such as classic advertising, PR, or reach-oriented use of social media.

 

Market Security: When a company has difficulties positioning itself in the market, developing market security can be an important goal. The task of communication is then to better understand and change the external perception of the brand so that the target group develops a positive attitude. This goal is more likely to be pursued by established brands that must leave their traditional territory due to current market changes.

 

Product and Service Optimization: This objective is often pursued in product marketing and is typically only one (important) aspect of the communicative goal. However, close collaboration with market researchers ensures that this mandate can provide very valuable insights for the overall strategy.

 

Increase in Demand: The most common target specification, which can be further specified as described above.

 

Sales Support: Especially in complex and lengthy sales processes, this is a very important objective that can be managed through service level agreements between sales and marketing. For example, it can be defined how much time is spent on creating sales materials, competitive comparisons, and sales websites.

 

Customer Acquisition: One of the specifications for increasing demand. With this objective, communication focuses on winning new customers. Efficient collaboration between sales and marketing is required here.

 

Customer Expansion: Even though many companies are aware that 20 percent of their customers are responsible for 80 percent of their revenue, surprisingly few focus on the continuous expansion of their existing customer base. Cross- and upselling are often only considered a side issue, with the focus placed on classic goals such as increasing demand or brand building.

 

Customer Loyalty: Unlike customer expansion, customer loyalty focuses on the long-term retention of the customer relationship. Companies that emphasize this in their communication often use loyalty programs, exclusive customer events, or customer advisory boards to convey exclusivity to their most important customers.

 

Are you wondering how to best focus your strategic marketing and bring it to life? I look forward to hearing from you!

 

stefan.epler@epos-marketing.com