Designing Marketing: More Than Meets the Eye

Proper, purposeful marketing is an integral part of a business’s success. It is also one of the most volatile, subjective, and misunderstood areas of business operations. Although largely considered the fun part of business—with logos, tag lines, advertising, promotional items, letterhead, and so on—marketing done well is much more than meets the eye.

My professional background is in marketing. This subject is one of my passions, bailiwicks, and soapboxes. The discipline of marketing encompasses much more than the promotional activities such as advertising, public relations, and graphic design that immediately come to mind. Marketing in its true form also includes pricing strategy, product or service development, and product/service distribution. However, for the purposes of our discussion, when I refer to “marketing,” I will be referring only to the promotional aspects of the discipline and how design thinking can enhance your efforts in that area.

Before you spend a penny on advertising, logo design, or any other marketing tactic, be sure you have a clearly articulated brand that you and your leadership team know inside and out. Without a doubt, the cornerstone of solid, successful marketing is creating a well-defined brand, and it should inform every marketing decision you make. To promote your business without this cornerstone in place is a waste of money.

Contrary to popular belief, defining your brand doesn’t have to take forever or cost a fortune. By using design thinking tools, you can produce results quickly and efficiently. Once your brand is
defined and in place, design thinking can help you create and execute marketing plans for products and services successfully.

Rapid Branding

Know this: your business’s brand is not a logo or a business card. Those are merely visual representations of your brand. Rather, your brand is your business’s personality, the embodiment of what your company stands for and is known for. Your brand is what distinguishes you from your competition. When you market your brand, you are promoting that distinction, emphasizing your advantages to the customer, and positioning your brand as the only solution to the customer’s problem.

Accurately defining your brand can be accomplished in an afternoon with your senior leadership team or other important stakeholders using a design thinking activity called Microscoping. This activity helps you uncover your brand’s DNA by exploring both the rational and emotional sides of your brand, drilling down to inviolate philosophies that reside at the core of your brand and form its essence.

Designing a Marketing Plan

With your brand DNA defined and articulated for the entire world (or at least your world) to see, you can confidently design a marketing plan that will appropriately support your brand. Your brand DNA is your touchstone, and your marketing plan is your roadmap. Its entire purpose is to get you from point A (where your business and brand is now) to point B (where you want it to go/what you want to achieve).

I have always followed a formulaic approach to designing a marketing plan. It keeps me on task and prevents overlooking key factors relevant to the plan. However, the resulting document can vary in
length depending on the scope of the marketing effort and the level of detail put into the plan. Before you start designing a plan, consider your audience: for whom is this plan intended? A leadership team well versed in your brand’s DNA, your target market, your marketing goal, your budget, and your key performance indicators may need less detail than a collaborative team comprised of leaders from different departments, vendors, or others not involved in your company’s daily operations. Let your audience be your guide when determining the level of detail to include in the plan.

Want to learn more about purpose-driven leadership? Sign up to receive weekly leadership articles and resources from the Small Giants Community.