Electromagnetic Marketing shares four tips that apply to your personal relationships and your relationship with your marketing company!
The Electromagnetic Marketing team was talking about relationships a few weeks ago. I started realizing that many of the characteristics and actions that make a healthy relationship with a significant other are the same things that we talk about as we seek to build healthy client relationships.
So we decided to take a deeper dive. What can we learn from our romantic relationships that can help build a healthy marketing relationship? I decided to keep this post on Dr. Phil’s end of the spectrum instead of Dr. Ruth’s. There may be lessons to be learned there, but we will save that post in case we ever launch an “Electromagnetic After Dark” blog.
Shekeydrah pointed out that it's important to listen and communicate in a way that the other person can comprehend. She actually captured 2 of our company’s key characteristics and actions in this statement. (Last fall we did an exercise to determine the key characteristics and actions that a person must commit to in order to work at Electromagnetic Marketing. The characteristics are Dependable, Intelligent Communicators, Authentic, and Curious. The actions are Listen, Remove Friction, Finish, Celebrate Challenges.)
This is certainly critical in a marketing relationship. If listening and intelligent communication are not part of this relationship, your marketing won’t align with the heart and soul of your brand and your marketing partner won’t gain insight into important aspects of the opportunities and challenges that your business faces. Sadly, it seems like many companies don’t feel like their marketing partner has listened and understood them.
Angelia said that it is important to understand your motives for being in a relationship. There are a lot of bad reasons for getting into a relationship or a marriage. A little time thinking about what you hope to gain and give in a relationship can provide real insight into your desires and motives.
Why are you in a relationship with a marketing company? Are you concerned about your brand? Increasing sales? Are you hoping that they will solve problems that you haven’t been able to solve internally? Or did you feel pressure to “just do something”? How would you know if the marketing partnership continues in alignment with these motives?
I started wondering how you determine if a marketing relationship is healthy. The health of the personal relationship is assessed by perspectives and feelings rather than quantifiable metrics. Are both parties engaged and communicating? Do they have positive feelings about each other? Are they on the same page? (Note: If you measure the health of your marriage with a dashboard of statistics and metrics, you have my respect, but you may want to double-check with your spouse to make sure that you guys are still good on Tips #1 and #4.)
Those same factors are relevant in a marketing relationship. Those “feelings” about the relationship are important to the overall success of any partnership, but there are more tools that come into play. In a marketing partnership, you should have SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). There should be methods for getting a quantifiable and disinterested perspective on the health and success of the relationship.
Finally, the Electromagnetic team talked about how all relationships should be win-win. Whether you are talking about a spouse, a significant other, or a marketing partner, if you aren’t both winning, then neither of you will win in the long term. It is possible for one party to power through for a little while their needs aren’t being met, but eventually, bitterness and resentment will set it.
There are business transactions where the only way for one party to do better is for the other party to do worse. If a merchant discounts a transaction 10% to get my business, then I keep some money that would have been in their pockets. Marketing really doesn’t work that way at all. An arrangement where both parties prosper creates enhances the quality of the work and improves ROI. Finding a marketing partner that can deliver the services you need for a price that you both feel good about is critical.
During this Valentine’s season, we encourage you to take a little time to consider your relationships. Is your relationship with your significant other healthy? What steps might you take to improve it? We encourage you to take action, whether you are going to enlist the help of Dr. Phil or Dr. Ruth.
What about your relationship with your marketing company? It’s a great time of year to invest a little time and effort into this relationship as well. And if you decide to break up, the relationship advisors at Electromagnet Marketing will be more than happy to provide a listening ear.
PS. When we say that one of our key actions at Electromagnetic Marketing is “Remove Friction”, we are just talking about simplifying your life by removing friction from projects, processes, and procedures. If Dr. Ruth tells you that you need more friction in your personal life, we are happy to defer to her expertise.
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