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Marketing is not a function; it is a way of doing business. It's not just this month's promotion or a new ad campaign. In order to get in front you need to accept marketing is everything you do; from the way the receptionist answers the phone to your social media accuracy; from your talent to your board of directors.
Over a year's travels and countless radio client in-field sessions it becomes apparent the organizations that have built what we call "dominant coalitions" are far better performers than those with individualists constricted to their respective specialty roles with limited coordination with colleagues. Our definition of a "dominant coalition" calls for recognition of, and alignment among, the people in the building who actually have the greatest influence on making strategic decisions and affecting them. If the coalition is overloaded with a specialty emphasis (sales, programming, financial) it won't be as effective. Reiss & Trout referred to this process as "bottom-up marketing" stressing the importance of allowing a strategy to "bubble-up" from a group of highly capable department people, who create things that work.
Many managers respond only to problems they recognize or perceive. This may be because they have a human tendency to only patrol their back yard; things and topics with which they're most comfortable, or with which they've have had the most experience. Once in a while managers get so wrapped up in small details they forget the big mission. So people who were once more free-wheeling thinkers can become nit-picking micro tacticians. Everything from once-successful ratings promotions or sales tactics can become today's sacrosanct anachronisms. When asked about avoiding this pitfall our response is relatively simple: attack yourself!
Get your "dominant coalition" out of the building (I know, I know...) and hole-up in a meeting room off campus whereby your challenge is to war-game an approach using this premise: If your rich and indulgent uncle just willed you three FM licenses with no strings attached except for the requirement you pummel the cluster across town (yours), how would we beat us? I recommend this exercise once a year. As trite as it sounds "brainstorming" is an excellent method for creating new scenarios that might defeat old regimen, long outmoded.
Competitive strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities should be on the map table. Research is expensive and too few are conducting it yet it becomes your unfair advantage; winning in an unfair game like engaging spies in warfare. Sun Tzu was right when he wrote "Spies are a most valuable element in war; because upon them turns our army's ability to move and conquer." What do we really know about ourselves, our competitors, and our most accurately defined audience target?
Is your group truly strategic or going through the motions? Since most of us have a scoreboard known as Nielsen, results are there to measure.
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