3 Way a Marketing Thought Partner Helps your Bottom Line
Need help boosting your bottom line marketing? Start thinking about collaboration. A marketing thought partner is a new way to collaborate and get the skills and experience your organization needs quickly. Before we dive into the three ways a marketing thought partner can help your bottom line, let’s talk a little bit about collaboration.
“Collaboration is the new competition”
Why do we collaborate?
When we collaborate in business, we do so to reduce our risk. We also do it to create something better than what we could have created on our own.
Navigating today’s complex, constantly evolving, digital landscape requires businesses to seek out a fresh approach to competition. In fact, when we think about collaboration, we either think about tools or team structure to allow people to work more effectively.
As design thinking would suggest, we need to consider more than tools. We need to consider the external people and/or organizations we are bringing together to solve problems in a mutually beneficial way. In fact, over the last 5 years, we have witnessed the power of collaboration firsthand. It has become the backbone for some of the most successful business ventures globally. Whether it’s sharing information/ideas (e.g. Facebook 1.65b monthly users | $320B market cap) or the production and delivery of services (e.g. Airbnb $25.5B valuation |1.5m listings). Collaboration has enabled these businesses to successfully scale and innovate.
Collaboration helps us stay relevant
In this connected world, partnering and collaboration is happening at all levels. The ability to stay relevant requires an evolved approach to business, no matter what stage your business is at. The growing on demand workforce is home to several thought experts. Whether it’s IT, engineering, accounting or marketing. These thought partners can help you add value to your business in ways you never imagined. This is especially true in B2B marketing, where the sales cycle has changed. The buyer journey now demands that buyers be communicated with when and where they desire, and the technological options to address this are growing. How do you determine when to communicate with your prospects and how? A marketing thought partner can help.
In this connected world, partnering and collaboration is happening at all levels. The ability to stay relevant requires an evolved approach to business, no matter what stage of your business.
Using Collaboration to Boost your Bottom Line
Now that we know how important collaboration is, let’s talk about how a Marketing Thought Partner (MTP) can boost your bottom line marketing. Here are three ways that A MTP can help your bottom line:
1. Innovate to stay competitive
Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is all that it takes. As an objective, unbiased third party, a thought partner can help you look at your marketing problem with a new lens. True innovation comes from thinking about a problem in a new way. This is where a Marketing Thought Partner thrives. A thought partner with experience across industries will help you connect the dots in new ways. For example, she can share learnings from other industries that you might not have had exposure to before.
2. Reduce costly mistakes.
Your partner has a breadth of experience. She has seen what has worked and what hasn’t. Why re-invent the wheel? The experience she brings to the table spans strategy and tactics. For instance, with the number of channels now available, it is critical to understand the right mix of mediums and content structure for your marketing strategy. Further, understanding how to create customer personas and plot both the buyer journey and the sales journey will help improve alignment across sales and marketing.
An experienced marketing thought partner can help you arrive at the right marketing solution for your organization in less time.
3. Scale quickly
A skilled partner helps you ramp up quickly. Hiring a full time role for your organization can take months to find the ‘right’ combination of skills+experience+fit. A marketing thought partner is a resource that can help you up your game quickly. For example, they can act as a short term solution to your marketing challenges, providing breathing room while you hire your ideal long term candidate on your own schedule.
Collaboration is the New Competitive Advantage
Collaboration is the new competitive advantage and there is no doubt that the right marketing thought partner can add value to your bottom line marketing. Thought partners are becoming table stakes for B2B businesses who want to truly understand their customers, stay relevant and compete. Businesses that are able to harness collaboration will be the ones that win.
