How can you tell that marketing execution is working? The right things are happening in a coordinated way. This is where it is essential that the person or team leading the marketing execution activities have a strong understanding of the strategy. They keep this “big goal” in mind as they manage all the elements to make it become a reality. The downside here is that ‘making it happen’ is just often seen as common sense, as something the people in the various departments will just do as a result of coming to work each day. Where the oversight occurs, is that people are in charge of their own element doing their own work. What is missing is the over-all management of the elements and the realization that this is a needed part too. This can often be missed as it seems to be the “invisible” piece. Let me illustrate with this example:

• ABC company has a person who is in charge of the website,  someone in charge of PR and someone in charge of sales support. Each are competent in their areas of expertise and have daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly items to produce. As these folks go along in their routine, they focus on their area of expertise because that is what they do. Sure, as professionals they all understand that their element is feeding into the broader activities of the company, and that somehow all of their work needs to come together in some coordinated way. But none of the people in this example are either compensated for, asked to, have the skills or desire to do this. So they go along doing their thing, but none of the three people in this example are looking out for how the other two elements support their element, or how their element could support the other two. This is where marketing execution falls flat. Sure there is a lot of work going on in this example, but who is ensuring the work done is benefitting from the other two elements and vice versa? And who is ensuring the work being done is feeding into supporting the strategic goals of the company?

It is really easy to see how marketing execution gets missed and how many companies large and small struggle with this. Having someone who understands the marketing elements available (what they involve, how they help a company, when to bring them in, how to mix them with other elements for the biggest return), general management of people, budgets, timelines, and what senior management sees as success will put your team on the path to more coordinated success.

Have you found a way to make marketing execution a needed skill in your company?