From intention setting to talking metrics, JMP marketers packed a lot of sharing and learning into one day. That day was Tuesday of this week...during Kickoff 2024.
Living the brand
With the help of HR’s Chaneen Cummings-Kouassi as moderator, marketers spent a couple of hours focused on the JMP brand. She asked: “What do you want to start doing right now? What do you want to stop doing? And what should you continue doing?”
Amazingly, the members of Worldwide Marketing, Americas Field Marketing, and EMEA Marketing (as represented by Nina Chan) were in almost total agreement on branding priorities. In the near future, JMP employees can expect to see a refreshed and more complete brand guide – covering words and feelings, as well as colors and fonts.
Also forthcoming is a brand survey to benchmark how JMP is known – or determine if it is even known at all – in our target industries, in our priority geographies, and among the people we want to know about us.
JMPers can expect to see new brand campaigns coming out on our owned channels as well as on purchased ones. And work is beginning on enhanced websites to ensure they show JMP in the best light possible and with each addressing the needs of the various audiences.
Supporting this effort into our brand, Michael Scruggs, JMP’s new VP of Global Sales, said the first time a salesperson calls a prospect, it shouldn’t be the first time they’ve heard of JMP.
Scruggs: ‘Test ideas. Fail fast. Course correct. Learn.’
While being interviewed by Corporate Communications Manager Landra Robertson, Scruggs also talked about our world-class events, Sales and Marketing priorities, and leads vs. yield. He said that Marketing and Sales will work more closely together than in previous years. Sales teams are identifying a few strategic accounts they’ll focus on growing this year, he said, and Marketing needs to be a part of those plans. Scruggs said he sees Global Marketing, Field Marketing, and Sales as partners: “That triangle needs to be connected.”
Communicate, communicate, communicate. That’s going to be key to avoiding silos and duplicating efforts. It’s also essential for ensuring that Product Management and Product Marketing are complementing what Sales and Marketing are doing. Ditto for User Enablement, he said.
Scruggs said, “JMP 18: It’s such a great reason to get in front of customers and have conversations. Let’s rally around the release coming up.”
“Campaigns need to be honed to the existing customer base,” he said, reminding us that it is six times more expensive to sell to a new customer than to sell to an existing one.
“It all starts with goal setting.” And, he emphasized, it always includes measurement. We’ll be asking ourselves: “Are our activities the right activities for the right reason? How are we measuring? How are we course correcting?”
One of the outcomes of the session with Scruggs: A task force for setting up new marketing metrics that executive leadership can get behind and that help marketers know what works.
We’ll be “tweaking dials, not changing” he said about Sales and Marketing in 2024. “Let’s reinforce the behavior that brings most value to our organization.”
When asked what he’s seen so far, Scruggs said, “You respond well to ad-hoc requests. But you respond to too many ad-hoc requests.” Marketers agree, and we look forward to a focused and deliberate 2024.
