We are coming out of a flat line economy that has plagued business growth for the past seven to eight years. What we are beginning to see is the promise of a new day, and that has a lot of our customers thinking of trying something new to grow their business. This is great news! Optimism is blooming in business circles once again!

Let me offer a bit of advice to those who are looking to market something new this year. Integrate what you are doing to market your products and services with your sales efforts. Here is what happened during the bad economy: people stopped marketing. They looked for ways to gain customers without using marketing at all – which means they did not grow, they just maintained. The little marketing that was done, for the most part, was to retain the customers they had. Marketing ran the annual charity golf event and put the corporate logo on squeeze bottles and T-shirts. The function of marketing is to generate interest (leads) for sales. That functionally disconnected in many businesses during the last eight years. It has gone on so long in some companies that the sales staff does not know what to do with a marketing lead, and the marketing department does not remember how to generate them.

If you are getting ready to push the marketing button once again, make sure you are using a marketing tool that will garner interest in your products and services, but make sure it also delivers a good lead. Do a little re-training with your sales staff on how to follow up when marketing is giving them leads. Part of that is an issue of timing. A lead has to be followed up quickly. But it also has to do with transitioning the potential customer past a glancing look at you. So much of marketing today is based on Brand Awareness. That is important, but there is so much more to marketing than making someone aware of what you are selling. For instance, I had a conversation with a customer not too long ago who told me he had garnered 2,500 "likes” on Facebook. "Great,” I said to him. "How many of those people bought your products?” The answer was, none! A good sales person knows how to get someone past a "like” and onto an offer to buy. Integrated marketing helps the sales person make the case for a sale.

Another problem that happened to marketing in the flat line economy was that marketing was divided amongst several different entities. You may have one person who designed your web site, another person who did a YouTube video for you, and still another who made your sales brochures. No one coordinated the three of these people, so you have come away with a very disjointed marketing message. They may have all used the same logo, but they are bound to all have a different look – and convey a different message. An integrated marketing plan puts some parameters around marketing to keep from brand confusion. It’s great if you are having several people build out components of your marketing, but who is overseeing the brand message? It is impossible to integrate your marketing and sales efforts if you have a dozen different messages. If this is your case, I would suggest you stop and consider what it is you want your target market to believe about you. We call this a Brand Positioning Statement. All your marketing should reflect what it says. You should also find out what distinguishes you from your competition. Take these two statements and build your marketing campaigns around them.

Before you spend money on marketing a new product, do yourself a favor and train your sales and marketing staff to work together in generating and following up on leads. Make sure your marketing is actually generating leads and, if not, refocus your marketing efforts. And make sure your brand message is one statement, not a half dozen. If not, stop and work through what your brand really stands for before proceeding.