Marketing Sucks! (and Sales, Too!) captures the frustration felt by many parts of the organization when marketing and sales are not aligned. There is a better way. Click for more.
The Marx Group (TMG) has been rewarded for our compelling marketing strategies and outstanding creative execution by a leading Automotive Aftermarket trade publication, Aftermarket Business. We are proud to have our work acknowledged by our peers within the industry.
Industry Award-Winning Creative (PDF)
As part of our free e-mail newsletter, Catalyst, we've written a series of articles. Our aim is to deliver marketing insights, recommendations, tips and techniques and to be an ongoing resource for our readers. To broaden our offer, we also invite guest authors to submit their writing.
Here are just a few of the key articles by and about us:
Aftermarketnews.com's Executive Interview with Tom MarxView from the Bay: Climbing Mountains
My best writing is when I am speaking from my own experience. The steps in preparing to climb mountains is very similar to the steps of an effective marketing program.
Assessing Your Marketing Partner Worksheet
This worksheet will help you assess your marketing partner during interviews or your annual review.
Lead Generation Redefined
Lead generation is a critical and important component of a successful marketing strategy. Learn what it take to have an effective lead generation program.
VALUE is the Differentiator
What to look for in a marketing communications firm when developing a relationship or conducting an evaluation of your current firm.
What's the deep, dark secret to leveraging media?
Steps on how to effectively develop an integrated media & PR plan for your company.
Holiday Greeting Card
Happy Holidays from all of us at The Marx Group.
Taking Pause to Reflect
A brief pause from the world of marketing to end 2006.
Metrics Chart
Sample metrics chart that grades topics from your post tradeshow meeting.
Tradeshow Mania Continues
An effective, proven, and results- tracking structure for two weeks after exhibiting in the most important trade show of the year.
Being Strategic About Strategy
6 Steps for a successful strategic planning process to help drive your company decisions and aligning your team members with the plan.
Marketing Plan and Budget Worksheet
Sample spreadsheet that lists the marketing activities that were executed this year and spending needs for next year to achieve your sales budget.
The Perfect Storm- Marketing Style
Four simple guidelines to make your budget planning process easier, less time consuming and less stressful.
Marketing Action List for a Successful Trade Show
An invaluable strategy action list to make your next trade show your MOST successful and productive marketing event ever.
Have your Next Trade Show be the Best!
Our experience has proven time and again that companies that exhibit at trade shows with hot prospects and key meetings already lined up see an exponential increase in return on a very expensive investment.
Networking and the brand
Networking events are very important to the successful promotion of your brand. A great event has a very positive impact on your brand -- as well as your customer’s loyalty to your product or service.
Channel Collaboration
Collaboration between trading partners is so fundamentally important, we decided to devote this entire issue to that subject. Specifically, we’ll focus on the marketing relationship between manufacturers and their distributors.
Who Needs Marketing ?
At the Global Automotive Aftermarket Symposium (GAAS) in Dearborn, MI, panelists sent the industry a strong, clear message: Essential to leveraging the available marketing dollars is collaboration on marketing programs.
Your Brand Is An Asset
How improvements in brand clarity will help strengthen your brand, keep your messages consistent and build your unique brand proposition.
Who Needs Marketing?
Observations and questions regarding marketing in the Automotive Aftermarket designed for the panel at the next Global Automotive Aftermarket (GAAS) symposium led by our own Tom Marx.
Top 10 Marketing Resolutions
Repeat after me...here are our Top Ten Resolutions for an effective, powerful marketing process for 2006.
2006 G.A.A.S.:Tom Marx Leads Marketing Panel
"Global Perspectives" is a bi-monthly publication from the Global Automotive Aftermarket Symposium. As a part of this year's symposium theme of "Thriving in a World of Change", Tom Marx is leading a panel of Automotive Aftermarket marketing leaders discussing "Who Needs Marketing?"
A Wish for the New Year
Each year we take the time to share our accomplishments and disappointments of the past year. By doing so, we are able to acknowledge each other for the positive things that have happened – and let go of our disappointments. Setting up a safe environment and listening with compassion is key.
Sometimes Little Things Make a Big Difference
This "Marketing Action List" is a very effective communications tool for keeping all team members and clients current and in action.
A View From the Bay:It's All About Commitment
What makes an effective marketing partnership? When the commitment to the relationship is senior to the circumstances.
Why PR Is So Good
Stop justifying P.R. and start reporting the ROI on your P.R. budget so that Public Relations is considered essential to your marketing plan -- rather than a lot of fluff.
Branding - Consistency is Essential
Your brand represents the experience that your customers and prospects have with your company and its products. To leverage this experience, it is critical to have consistent messaging.
Brand Equity, Part Two
Branding is the art of developing an ongoing, trusting relationship between your customer and your company.
Brand Equity, Part One
What goes around comes around. The concern for ROI on marketing and branding - like a giant ‘pendulum’ - has taken a big swing back from the madcap days of the late 90’s, to the business downturn of 2000-2003. Perhaps it has swung too far?
How to Convey Bad News
Life can be disappointing at times. Stephanie Winston's article outlines a set of simple communications that can help you responsibly prepare the person to whom you are about to deliver bad news.
The Effective Meeting
For most companies, proving ROI for meetings can be a laborious process. Allow us to offer a simpler tool - our Meetings Effectiveness Audit.
Conducting a Marketing Audit
Conducting a thorough investigation of your marketing initiatives will keep your marketing and sales teams sharp and improve collaboration within departments.
The 3 C's
Once your advertising and/or public relations marketing partner is on board, keep the partnership fresh, authentic and proactive with 'The 3 C’s' - Communication, Collaboration and Cooperation.
Crisis Communications-Have a Plan or Plan to Fail
Companies that have no plan in place when a crisis erupts will find themselves scrambling to respond to the media who will inevitably descend upon them to get their reaction to the developing story.
Selecting a New Communications Agency
Because of the key role that a communications agency is able to play in promoting your company and its brands – ultimately enhancing profitability -- the selection and retention of the right agency is critical.
Post Tradeshow Sales-Marketing Checklist
Having a solid structure of follow-up activities to get your teams into effective action immediately after a tradeshow, gives everyone the peace of mind to be totally present for each prospect meeting at the show.
A View From The Bay-Don't Panic It's Organic
Because it takes the entire spectrum of your marketing efforts into account, 'organic ROI’ is a more effective – more realistic – way to measure your marketing investment.
Fantasy vs. Reality: Staying Sane During the 2005 Planning and Budgeting “Silly Season”
October is usually planning and budgeting season - the MOST important time to distinguish fantasy vs. reality. Here's how to set believable goals and sales projections, based on the serious consideration of sales gains (or losses) for the current year, competitors, looking at the pipeline, and developing a matrix of current clients, prospects and products available for go-to market.
Effective Public Relations Is All About Getting It Right
Public Relations expert McCoy believes there are three principles of “right” that will help you put together an effective public relations program: Right Message, Right Media and Right Away
Leveraging the Channel Opportunity
With collaboration between your Sales and Marketing teams, the only changes in the sales process that your customers will notice are that their needs are being met and that they have a highly proactive vendor/partner.
A View from the Bay-CRM It Works!
Being in partnership and staying in collaboration and communication can make a big difference to your bottom line - especially when it comes to good customer service.
In Tune With The Sport Compact Performance Market
The sport-compact-underhood market - valued at $131 million in 2001 - is poised to soar to $333.4 million by 2008!
Strategy vs. Tactics - A Thin Line
When the whole team has buy-in on the strategy BEFORE it’s implemented, there is an exponential increase in effectiveness.
The Future of The Aftermarket - A Shift in Perception
Both Wall Street and Main Street are beginning to appreciate the high-quality, technologically advanced respect being earned by the automotive aftermarket – an industry that continues to expand despite the perception of a softened economy.
There is Power in an Effective Strategic Creative Brief
Provide your creative team with enough basic information about the strategy, messaging, timeline and financial resources -- from the get-go -- and you ensure a much more powerful outcome.
Brainstorming vs. Strategic Brainstorming
We have increased the value of a very common practice -- your garden-variety brainstorming -- by transforming the practice into what we call ‘strategic brainstorming.’
The Contract Between Marketing and Sales
Marketing and Sales seldom talk to each other even though both teams essentially have the same goals. How can we get Marketing and Sales to come out of their silos and talk to each other?
Lady Jane and the Magic Matrix
A Marketing Fairy Tale!
Avoiding a Lethal Disconnect - The Sales vs. Marketing Solution
The relationship between Marketing and Sales is critical. When a company has Sales and Marketing aligned, and both teams have open channels of communication, the power – the leverage – that becomes available, is formidable.
A Keen Eye on Marketing
It pays to take the time to seriously analyze your competitors’ products and develop messages and benefits that have your products and services stand out.
Leveraging AAPEX-SEMA
Stop assuming. Why not use your presence at AAPEX/SEMA to find out what’s really going on with your customer and close the gap between belief and reality.
Market to the Max at AAPEX-SEMA
How can you maximize your marketing investment on a tradeshow? Here are some simple solutions that when paired with your current tradeshow marketing program will go a long way.
Sales vs. Marketing
Are your Sales and Marketing teams acting as allies, or more like oil and water?
Trade Show Audit
Are you participating in the right trade shows? Marketing guru, Marshall Dickman, has put together Trade Show Audit Form that will help you better determine which shows in which you SHOULD participate.
View From the Front Lines
As cars become more and more technologically sophisticated, how will the independents keep up with these changes and how will the technicians of today answer the questions of technology tomorrow? Listen to someone who knows: Lynn Cardwell.
The Email Edge
The most powerful marketing tool out there today is called Rich Email. Rich Email brings a breath of fresh air onto the scene because of its direct nature of one-to-one selling and persuasion.
The Gilbert Email Manifesto (GEM)
Repeat after me: "Email is more important than my web site!"
“It's a GAAS” - The Global Automotive Aftermarket Symposium
The theme for GAAS was "Beyond All Boundaries". As business increases the value of specialization and the niche market, the days of one organization doing it all are becoming fewer.
AAPEX/SEMA Show – An ROI Opportunity
A trade show is only as good as the lead generation process. Driving qualified buying traffic to your booth or meeting rooms maximizes your ROI.
Four Short Articles
One of our very first Catalysts was quite succinct. Here are four very useful short articles from October 2001.
Reinforcing Your ROI
Marketing programs MUST justify themselves -- not only in soft revenue, but in hard dollars.
© Copyright 2006. The Marx Group. All Right Reserved.