Marketing Campaigns and Supply Chain
Payal Parikh
By Payal Parikh, Director of Client Engagement at Heinz Marketing
A successful marketing strategy involves strong inter-department alignment. It is crucial for sales and marketing to be aligned. For a greater marketing conversion, you need an efficient sales program. For efficient and more predictable sales, you need a solid marketing program. You need a cohesive approach that includes both sales and marketing.
We have talked about keeping sales in the loop when rolling out marketing campaigns, we also talked about empowering the sales teams with the necessary tools when rolling out a marketing campaign. But, there are a lot of other functional teams that you should keep in the loop before rolling out a marketing campaign. Specifically for two reasons:
- For the success of the campaign
- To prevent any PR catastrophe
Who should be aware and aligned before you roll out the next marketing campaign or a promotional campaign?
Sales
Sales and Marketing go hand in hand for the execution of a successful marketing campaign. Marketing’s job is not only to keep sales in the loop, but it is their job to also empower sales with the necessary tools to follow up with the prospects.
Sales and marketing alignment leads to increased revenue, improved campaign performance, better win rates, and improved customer retention. I recently shared in one of my blogs, according to a study by Aberdeen, when sales and marketing teams are aligned, they generate 32% more revenue, retain 36% more customers, and see 38% higher win rates than teams with little to no alignment.
Check out our latest Sales and Marketing Alignment Playbook that provides strategies for a successful alignment and also provides an actionable workbook for you to get started on the journey today.
Customer Service
Customer service has a personal encounter with your customer. How you conduct that personal experience determines whether you create a customer who will develop loyalty toward your place of business.
Good customer support or customer service makes your customer feel special and unique, and this comes down to efforts made and behavior exhibited by you and your staff. A customer is interacting with customer service because some aspect of your marketing campaign lured him in, so don’t lose him now or your campaign was all for naught. How do you ensure that good customer service takes place? The first step towards this is to communicate about your marketing campaign or marketing promotion to your customer service team.
Supply Chain
As a marketer, you most likely think that the supply chain management process has nothing to do with you. That’s another department’s focus. You just hope that what they do doesn’t create a marketing nightmare for your team.
What makes up a supply chain?
Supply chain management is the vital process of planning, tracking, and perfecting how goods and services move throughout the system. Maintaining strong links within your supply chain impacts business costs and profitability.
A supply chain is the network of those involved in the production and distribution of a company’s products. Supply chains involve a multitude of activities, people, entities, information, and resources. They incorporate many steps and processes used to deliver products or services to the marketplace. Examples include refining raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, inventory control, finance, packaging, and retailing.
What happens if the supply chain is not ready?
An issue in the supply chain can sometimes turn into a PR catastrophe that you don’t want to deal with.
Recently, a BOGO promotion from Chipotle backfired. Chipotle customers and workers said the chain’s free burrito offer turned into a nightmare with 2-hour waits, tears, and huge shortages. Although, the company officials did not comment on it, I think the problem runs deeper than this. Nationwide, the stores were not prepared for this offer when it was rolled out. They realized a BOGO offer was announced from fellow employees, a couple of hours before the offer was rolled out which did not give them enough time to stock, nor prepare the staff.
Take Tesla, as another example, and its problems with supply chain management back in 2017. A CNBC article noted that the automaker experienced as it struggled to make the move from small to large-scale production. Orders were piling up, making customers unhappy as opposed to the great experience marketing had promised.
Where does Marketing And Supply Chain Meet?
With the Chipotle as well as Tesla scenario in mind, it’s important that you think more about collaboration with the team in charge of managing your supply chain. After all, you don’t want to overpromise your target audience and then under-deliver.
Promotional campaigns and logistical planning go hand in hand. Promotions prove to be successful in helping companies attract new customers and retain existing clients when it is a part of the marketing strategy. The key is for companies to adopt a holistic approach to promotions. This allows key supply chain management requirements such as fulfillment and distribution to play a vital role in a successful promotional campaign.
If a company’s supply chain is not prepared, it can face several potential risks. Stock outages are likely to result in consumer dissatisfaction and loss of potential sales, or a delay could lead to legal risks and impact agreements.
Ultimately, by maintaining close integration throughout the promotion, logistics can play a key role in ensuring that promotional campaigns not only run well but exceed financial expectations.
This is not just about a manufacturing or retail industry; it is also applicable in the service industry. Including capacity planning in your marketing and sales plans is crucial for better and timely client service.
Would love to hear from you if you collaborate with any other functions in your organization before rolling out marketing campaigns, write in your comments. If you need tools and tips from us on cross-functional collaboration, reach out to us for a free 30 min consultation! payal@heinzmarketing.com
