Communication – Your Shovel To Success
by admin ~ December 24th, 2008 |
This article is part three of a multi-post series on SearchFuel discussing tips to a successful search marketing program through integration of your search and media agencies. Click here to access previous articles in this series: Let’s All Play in the Sandbox Together and Share for Success or Share to Exceed.
When building your sand castle or your campaign, integral to your success is communication. In our last post we touched upon the first step in a successful campaign – planning. Working hand in hand with planning is communication. One does not effectively exist without the other.
A foreman has to communicate with the vendors on building materials and permits. He has to work with his crew to make sure the castle is stable and up to code. Elect a foreman to keep the conversations (and the project) flowing. In this day and age, so many agencies can do it all. The threat of competing agencies learning too many of your processes only to pitch a more streamlined plan to the client to add to their business is high on many minds. Avoid this problem by working as a cohesive team to stay ahead of the competition and deliver a successful product to the client
Keep the conversation going…too often a hard stop occurs when the rest of the team is waiting on one portion, or when calls and emails start going unanswered. When one of the team starts missing the regularly scheduled meeting or will not respond, it is up to the foreman to get to the bottom of the problem. Do they have other clients/projects that are taking up more time than expected? Are they not getting the necessary response from one of their vendors, thus holding up their ability to respond? Whatever the reason, getting to the bottom of it quickly, through communication, will allow you to solve the issue and continue building.
Discuss timelines and deadlines. Manage the team’s expectations. If we know the production and approval for television ads take the longest to plan, start there and plot according to each team’s different needs. Make the overall timelines readily available to all team members with access to updates so everyone knows when there are hang-ups and what may fall behind due to it.
Ongoing communication is the only way to successfully complete the project.
Communicating is talking, exchanging information and ideas, notifying, corresponding – or any other means of relaying a message from one person to another. The point is to share with your team. Without this intercourse among the team our moat may leak, our walls will crumble and the campaigns will not succeed.
We have a great team to build the castle, let’s have open communication amongst the builders…Time to get a blueprint. Stay tuned for our next post after the holidays about the mud and rocks of it all – budgeting.
So I hear that the economy is a little slow right now, but have no fear search is the recession proof industry! Not sure if I buy the hype on that one. Search may be recession resistant, but I think it is far from recession proof. We feel the strains that clients are putting on their media budgets, just maybe not as much as the traditional media channels are at this time. Search can provide a more direct link to what consumers are looking for, intention marketing, and then provide analytic substance to back-up the results of our campaigns. However, that is a topic for someone else besides HR to get into.
During the 2008 election, President-Elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain had successful strategies that included ground-breaking use of online media in a presidential campaign to reach voters and convey their platforms.
