We define the most undervalued competency in marketing today.
It was Aristotle who coined the adage, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” There is no greater truth to this statement than when it comes to marketing planning and alignment, program design, and activation.
True synchronous marketing during a considered purchase creates an experience with a brand that surrounds an audience. It transcends tactics, and maximizes the impact of messaging and the value of an offer by reaching the audience through multiple, coordinated channels at the same time.
Considered B2C purchasing has benefited from synchrony in marketing for some time. B2B brings the added complexity of buying centers, and the need for marketing to be consistent, aligned, and synchronous.
Synchrony isn’t merely an outcome of execution. It’s a theme threaded through the entire marketing process. From strategy and planning, to program design, to functional alignment – inclusivity and agility make synchrony possible even at the enterprise level.
Synchrony in executive-level planning and goal-setting:
Synchrony starts at the executive level as part of the strategic planning process. It ensures that there is alignment across leaders for marketing’s focus. Marketing can’t support everything in a company – so where will the big bets be?
Synchrony surfaces in hiring and organizational design. Are you hiring for breadth or depth? Too many subject matter experts can create unforeseen silos.
Drawing invisible lines for functions, products, and go-to-market teams can hurt synchrony, not help it.
Synchrony in program planning and design:
Who is the custodian of your brand’s narrative? All-too often, program planning and design is done in silos. The result is near-sighted messaging that ignores the bigger picture and offers that provide little value.
Synchrony enables better storytelling by adding audience and market context to the value that products and services provide. As an example – 2020’s global health crisis forced many brands to realign their value propositions, and focus on tenets that related to the changing personal and professional demands of their audience.
When an organization can make synchronous adjustments to market context as part of program planning and design, the result is more relevance and greater impact.
Synchrony in campaign management and activation:
Synchrony in activation has two arms: project management and technology alignment.
First, an organization needs the ability to project manage across disciplines. The PM is a well-rounded team lead who understands how an audience is experiencing marketing and is able to guide the team through milestones that achieve the program outcome.
Second, leveraging technology within a program creates synchrony by coordinating the tactics themselves as well as sourcing and applying buyer insights directly back to the marketing program.
Coming up in 2021:
Stay tuned for future articles where we’ll unpack the tenets of synchrony in executive-level planning and goal-setting, program design, campaign management and activation – detailing steps to take to gain tighter synchrony, and showing examples of successful outcomes.
