Need to be strategic in your marketing? A short guide to both the process and practice.

Is it possible to be MORE strategic in how you market services, solutions and expertise? And how do you know you’re still on point? Robin Tooms gets specific with Shavonnah Schreiber, director of global campaigns and events at IHS.

Robin: Hello and welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their marketing strategies. I am Robin Tooms, VP of Strategy at Savage Brands, and my guest today is Shavonnah Schreiber, Director of Global Campaign and Events at IHS. So Shavonnah, I’m so glad you’re on Brandonomics today.

Shavonnah: Thank you for having me, Robin. I’m very excited to participate.

Robin: Well, I feel like this is a continuation of a conversation we’ve had before, but now we get to have it for the benefit of our viewers.

Shavonnah: Absolutely.

Robin: In that it’s so important to you, and to me as well, that marketers are strategic. And, you know, we don’t want to get in that quote-unquote ‘marcom’ route.

Shavonnah: Right.

Robin: I’m curious, at IHS, how do you ensure that you’re being strategic in your marketing? How are you doing that?

Shavonnah: Yeah, that’s a very good question. So, at IHS, since our business is information, so at IHS, we’re the source of critical information and insight, which we supply to our clients to help them make more informed business decisions, so they can go on and have very successful businesses. So, just by virtue of what the services that we provide, strategy, and being very strategic, and very thoughtful about how we market our services and our solutions, is key. So, the way we do that in the practical sense at IHS in my business line is, so we think about our customers and we divide them up around financial markets, perhaps, or coal, or gas, or power; upstream, downstream.

So, we do all the segmentation and instead of saying to all of them, these are all of the services, or all of the solutions that you can procure from IHS, we’re very thoughtful and intentional about, if you are a person working in this particular part of the business or in the market, these are the solutions that we have that would be complementary. Or, you take this service from us currently. Did you know, we have a complementary service that would allow you to make an even more informed decision about your business, and the future, and the strategy of it. So, for us, it’s very much about going deeper with our customer knowledge and understanding and then deeper still around the personas within each particular segment of the market, and making sure that when we’re providing solutions; software services, consulting services to them, that it’s fit for purpose and not just general. So, that’s one of the things that we do.

Robin: So that upfront work is so important. How do you, throughout the year then, make sure that is stays on track and you all don’t veer from it?

Shavonnah: So, once we set, you know best laid plans, right? So we come up with our strategy quarterly, and then we do regular touch points. Not just with the marketing teams. I think that’s one of the things that I’ve seen in my career where marketers will talk to the marketers; this is our plan, these are the campaigns and events that we’re doing, is it in line with what we say we are going to do? Yes, well, I don’t think that that’s really as strategic as you can be. So, what we do is we work with our marketers, we work with the commercial team, we also work with some of our technical advisors to make sure this is what we said we wanted to do, these are the things that we’ve done, this is how they perform. Now you tell us, what are you hearing from the customer, or perspective customer? Is it working in the market?

So, the way we stay on strategy is we do regular, bi-weekly, and some cases depending on what it is, monthly and then quarterly touch points with all of our site… to ensure that we’re not just pushing out things that no longer have relevance in the market, or if something changes. If some big thing changes, are we on message and on point making sure that we are able to respond to that.

Robin: Well, thank you. A great practice and process; I love it. Thank you.

Shavonnah: Yeah, absolutely.

Robin: This has been another edition of Brandonomics, a look at top brands and their marketing strategies.