A marketer’s job is never done. There is always room for continuous improvement when it comes to optimizing a user’s experience on the website using a desktop computer, improving email performance, increasing engagement on social media, or maximizing a customer’s experience making a purchase via a mobile app on their phone. Achieving and implementing a continuously improving marketing strategy is made possible with the right data collection, analysis, and informed decisions put into action.

Building off of my class post, Applying Lean Principles to Marketing, a marketing team, especially a small and nimble marketing team, is able to achieve more with less by streamlining workflows and implementing automation. For example, if my company wants to increase sales for its online leadership assessment by a certain percentage among a targeted customer segment of its member individuals, marketers can first look to eliminate waste along the customer’s purchase journey by analyzing website analytics like flow reports to see where any bottlenecks can be identified and eliminated to improve user experience.

Since my company has a member login page for its leadership assessment and an integration is set up between the website, my company’s customer relationship management system Salesforce, and its email platform Marketing Cloud, my marketing team is able to set up automated emails to trigger to its members a day or so after a member clicks an email’s call to action button but doesn’t complete a purchase.

Once the project outlined above is planned and executed, the next step is to evaluate your success and start the lean cycle over again to further improve the value delivered to the customer and eliminate waste in their journey.

The other main principle of implementing a true lean culture is to put respect for people at the top of your company’s priorities. When a lean culture of respect for people is achieved, the overall company and its customers benefit. But, this can also open new opportunities for marketers to differentiate its brand from others through digital story telling about the company’s unique culture that puts its people first. Similar to the Netflix Culture published on its website, companies can find and leverage that point of differentiation from competitors by communicating how their team of employees is looked after and encouraged to experiment and find new ways to achieve new things. Customers are caring more and more about companies with a socially and culturally aware culture, so marketers need to dominate on that trend to make their brand stand out from the crowd.

 

Chaplin, L., & Simon T.J. O’Rourke. (2014). Lean Six Sigma and marketing: a missed opportunity. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 63(5), 665-674. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-09-2013-0155

“Netflix Culture.” Netflix, https://jobs.netflix.com/culture. Accessed 13, Feb. 2022.

Seed, Bill. Transforming Design & Construction: A Framework for Change. Lean Construction Institute, 2010.