Marketing in a Silo

I first heard of the concept of business silo's a few years ago while attending a presentation by Labov & Beyond.

Pat Mcgraw wrote about this last week on his blog.

I look for holes in system when I'm working with a client.

Pat explains:

What is marketing?

Posted: 16 Sep 2010 07:00 AM PDT

The marketing executive was presenting the company’s new promotional campaign – and then the energy left the room when someone asked “What happens when someone actually responds to our marketing?”

Great creative. Strong, targeted messages with offers that are too good to refuse.

Every possible keyword has been identified, great blog posts written along with white papers, webinars…

The social media strategy is a piece of art. And the content marketing strategy rocks.

But the phone tree is a goddamn mess.

And the reps are poorly trained and not managed all that well either. You just never know what they might say once they pick up the phone or get in front of a buyer.

And the process for capturing information so that the order can be quickly, accurately shipped has more holes in it than a good Swiss cheese.

The website is a confusing maze and there is no ecommerce functionality because IT is busy and all marketing does is design pages.

The return and refund policies are as customer friendly as the tax code.

Come to think off it, the product isn’t really all that different from the competitors.

The pricing ‘strategy’ isn’t really anything more than a constant string of 15% to 50% off because it’s so easy to drop the price. And forget about financing options that help the buyer – let them get their own financing.

The distribution strategy is built on who will carry your products rather than who will help reach your entire target audience and provide a valuable experience.

But the promotional campaign is freakin’ incredible…so your job is done.

Right?

What is marketing?

Do you use every opportunity possible to push things, to make the customer experience more uniquely valuable or to differentiate your business (in a good way) from the competition?

Or do you limit yourself to really cool promotional stuff?

Just askin’…

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