Episode 192: Upgrade Your Company's Marketing To Better Deals with Wayne Mullins
Over the past 20 years, Wayne Mullins has proven himself a versatile professional. Wayne has worked with clients in over 100 industries, from nonprofit organizations to multi-million -dollar enterprises. He expertises in helping companies market themselves, find deals, and accomplish significant acquisitions. In this episode, he explains how to structure marketing in order to scale your company better.
Most Companies Overlook Marketing
The bulk of Wayne's clients seeks his expertise because they are entrepreneurs who have come to realize their marketing is not effective. With so many functional sectors in a company, marketing is often left out, this often happens because many managers charge the marketing of an entire company to a single employee who is fulfilling a role and doing marketing at the same time; this approach does not work. A strategic approach is a better option, putting someone dedicated in order to achieve more. This is the difference between a company with effective marketing, and a company with poor marketing.
Marketing In Acquisitions: Targeting The Audience
Marketing for companies is not simply about giving credence or justice to your existing products. If you are positioning your company for acquisition, marketing is also essential. You need to ensure that the message you are sending is attractive and appealing to prospective buyers. To ensure that, see the following items:
- Make potential buyers your target audience: If you’re looking to be acquired, make sure that you are speaking to those prospective buyers in all your marketing moves.
- Keep the value proposition in mind: Do you already know what your value proposition is to these potential buyers?
- Your public marketing affects acquisition: When you pitch to acquire another company, those owners are concerned about how you will treat their team members. Keep in mind that your public marketing reflects your relationship with your team.
Strategic Communication With Employees
Imagine being hired by a company that just starts delegating without even communicating the company’s culture. Terrible, right?
That is why a communication strategy for employees is crucial to your reputation. The team plays an important role in productivity, so it has to be treated with care. Many people do not even realize that marketing also has this function within a company.
Anytime a change is going to take place – whether it is an acquisition or a sale – there’s always going to be some grief by the team members. Wayne works to craft internal marketing messages to help them move through that loss and grief process quickly, so the company can get back to scale much faster. Wayne advises companies to do this by helping them realize that the potential losses are not nearly as bad as they believe.
The Message Format Is Important
One of the larger questions asked is how does a company or manager communicate the message to the employee? One approach is simply an e-mail. This is an easy method to communicate your message, but it's simply not the best way. A much better approach is via sending a printed letter to each employee. This is a common marketing strategy that adds an element of personalization, which conveys to the employee that you value them. By taking the time to be personal in your correspondence with an employee, you set the tone for the relationship from that point forward.
Relationship Marketing As A Small Business Tip
Wayne’s company is in a small market, but it reaches millionaire customers via its long-term game strategy, meaning their marketing strategy is not about a transaction, but a relationship. Have you ever stopped to reflect on how your company connects with people? By focusing on marketing to develop relationships with other professionals and people, his company ensures an alliance with individuals who can add to his business.
Organic Marketing For Scaling
First, you need to decide what your business wants to achieve, then you utilize marketing strategies effectively. Marketing to scale is organic, unlike growth marketing, which often needs inorganic impulses. Scaling your company is not necessarily about revenue or rate of growth, the key component for entrepreneurs is that synergy must take place you. The growth is taking place because of others' inputs, alongside your own.
Marketing Is About Communication
Wayne shares that a common mistake is thinking of marketing as something to produce for the public and prospects; in reality, marketing is about communication and persuasion, so the intentionality behind the messaging matters. With clear intent to articulate marketing internally, you can overcome most of the obstacles that come along with buying, selling, and acquiring.
Connect with Wayne for more:
Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker. He is deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.
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