The rise of the MICRO-MARKETER: My favourite trend of 2017
Let’s get one thing clear up front. There are a number of different definitions of “micro marketer”, but it is definitely not a small person who does marketing (okay, that was my one and only comedy attempt in this article).
In our emerging definition of the micro-marketer, we look at one of the other major trends that is well-published in trends for 2017. This trend is about sales and marketing becoming one. It is quite funny, someone was only telling me the other day about how they feel about some people in marketing feeling superior to sales people, and how sometimes sales people feel inferior to marketing people. This disappoints me. There is no need for the competition. Marketing and Sales are so complimentary.
We often see this resentment towards the marketing team by other members of an organisation. I challenged a team on this perception the other day: One of the guys admitted that he is guilty of this attitude towards the marketing team of his organisation. He said that recently, the marketing team had asked him for information on what he does, but he did not end up responding to them. I emphasised that the marketing team is only trying to help him make more sales — and that he too, has the potential to become a micro-marketer.
What does being a micro-marketer involve? Let’s look at this in the context of the food industry:
Being a micro marketer means that you can write the recipe, do the shopping, prepare the food, make the dish, then wash the dishes. It also means you can publish your recipe and upload it to recipe sites — perhaps even write a cookbook that can be printed and in the form of an e-book, put a video of you on Youtube preparing the dish, and gloat about your success on Instagram and Facebook. Meanwhile, you have reached a lot of people, because you have become quite well known for your recipes!
The problem with traditional sales processes is that often the salesperson writes the recipe, cooks the dish and washes the dishes, but relies one someone else to do the rest. Often the rest doesn’t happen. So a few key points about becoming a Micro Marketer. A good Micro Marketer:
1. Can build personal brand
2. Can promote company brand
3. Is sufficiently knowledgeable about the whole business
4. Can create content (or facilitate creation of content — you don’t have to do it if you aren’t good at it!)
5. Knows mediums and platforms to get information out
6. Can network (if you don’t like it, find new ways so you can learn to like it)
7. Can do the online thing (if you don’t understand online, start learning)
8. Can do the analytics (either formal and rigorous, or even just as a starting point.
9. Can ask for the business (the old closing the sale thing).
10. Is damn resourceful at getting all this done (you need to find ways of getting other people to help you out).
11. Is efficient and consistent in doing all these.
In relation to the last point, one of my key learnings was that it wasn’t getting done consistently. I had to look at new ways to get other people involved in content creation and getting it out through different platforms and mediums. I was time-poor, but someone else knew what to do. There was a simple solution there!
I will also suggest that when someone in a business development role chooses to become a Micro Marketer, they should never have to cold call ever again.
