Marketing Centerline

Installment 2: How Do We Express What We Do?

If the ethos of Centerline is to continually evolve to solve the most complex business and marketing challenges, and we’re in the process of defining our “next evolution,” then how do we express what we do? (If you haven’t read Installment 1 about the ethos of Centerline and the need for evolution, you can do so here.)

At the highest level, you’ve hopefully seen on our website that it starts with this statement:

Strategic, Modern Marketing Solutions

There’s even some exposed thinking behind the choice of words right there on the homepage.

Think of that main statement as the first sentence in response to the question: What does Centerline do? Below, I’ve unpacked the choice of words with more detail… detail which is imperative for you to be able to understand the statement, ask informed questions about it, and talk about it with potential clients.

Strategic means starting every endeavor by understanding “why?”

Regardless of what the solution is, we want to make sure we’re solving the right problem. To accomplish that, we have to understand more than just the client ask… we have to understand what’s behind the ask.

If a client is even the most prescriptive in their statement, such as “we need a product demo animation for our salesforce,” there’s still more behind that statement. Why do they think they need an animation? Has the sales team voiced a concern about needing a demo, or has the client identified a perceived gap in the content mix? If it’s the former, have the sales people said customers are asking for demos, or have they said they have a hard time demoing the product themselves? If the later, what’s the criteria by which they’re categorizing and measuring the use and efficacy of the content they have? Etc.

To be strategic means we are doing more than delivering what’s asked… even if we end up delivering what was asked. It means we understand the need. It means we have knowledge of the audience’s needs beyond the piece at hand. It means we understand the audience’s language and preferred channel for communication. It means we understand how the content matches with the audiences state of mind, providing the right information at the right time. It means we understand the holistic business goals of the company and the communication goals of the product or service marketing manager.

Everyone at Centerline is a strategist; it is not reserved for the strategy department or projects with “strategy” in the title. Project Managers should be thinking about how this piece of content strategically connects to the others we’ve created for the client. Writers should be thinking strategically about how language motivates audiences to action. Designers and developers should be thinking about how to strategically enhance the experience the customer has with the piece through visuals, content structure and ease of use. And so on. Asking “Why?” at every step isn’t a bad thing if it leads to a more precise, effective deliverable. That, in turn, makes us more of a partner to our clients rather than a vendor.

Modern is about engaging with audiences in the way they prefer today.

Have you tried Meerkat yet? Periscope? A month ago, no one had. Now they’re common place… for some audiences, at least. And those are just two examples that illustrate the speed at which new channels are introduced and grown. And exploited.

That’s not to say that Twitter is dead. Not yet. Neither is radio, TV or direct mail. Those are still modern forms of communication as well. But as strategic partners to some of the world’s most influential companies, we are expected to know how to incorporate those channels into the marketing mix; or explain why they shouldn’t be. Organizations are turning to us for help in getting their own internal marketers up to speed on the way the new, digital consumer find and use content. And we’re being asked by clients to help them tune their marketing organization’s processes to help them be more agile with their content.

So it’s our responsibility to understand all the channels and to be able to utilize them correctly, no matter how fast they rise and fall. We must continually be on the leading edge of “modern.”

Marketing is about more than the content itself. We’re building systems to help our clients create better value for their customers.

Now… what do we mean by “systems”? It could be one of many different things. But we’re talking about the means to solve business communication challenges. That could be helping clients optimize their internal content creation teams (most likely marketing and sales). It could mean helping them create a team of marketers from scratch. (That’s one of the things we’re doing for National Instruments.) It could mean creating a content strategy that will be fulfilled by experiences created by Centerline, a client’s internal marketers and other agencies in concert.

In this sense, what we provide as “marketing” could take the form of organizational consulting, strategic plans and/or content creation itself. You could say that means the building blocks of successful, modern marketing are solutions around people, process and content. And that’s how Centerline will be organizing our offerings moving forward. (Those three words will be the topic of Installment 3.)

Solutions intones a positive, documented outcome. It also reinforces the idea that Centerline doesn’t exist to create one-off pieces… we’re here to solve complex problems.

We know that our clients need to find success, and we always like to know the work we do had an impact. We strive to create marketing ecosystems and content that solves problems, and that have been proven to do so through tangible metrics. That could mean views, likes, engagement, registrations, leads or sales.

But, quite frankly, measurement is the area in which we have the farthest to go — the most to learn through application — within the statement. It’s aspirational. We’re only now getting toe-deep into the world of data driven marketing, marketing automation, retargeting and personalization. We’re learning the systems as we go. (But, as with so many other “new” things in marketing over the last 19 years that Centerline has been evolving, we learn fast.)

Modern marketing is defined by the ability to measure nearly everything, find insight within the numbers, and make rapid adjustments to messages based on the new information. We’re beyond the days of not knowing which half of your advertising works. So the promise of positive results is a must.

Strategic, modern marketing solutions. That’s the first sentence in answer to the question, “What does Centerline do?” And there’s a lot packed into it.

In Installment 3, we’ll go through the second sentences. Please… let me know what you’re thinking and what you would add. Feel free to add your comments or questions right here so that others can join the conversation!