Successful marketers play four roles, some of them unusual in marketing: Instigators challenge the status quo and look for new and better ways of doing things. Innovators turn marketplace insights into untested products, services, or solutions. Integrators build bridges across silos and functions and between the company and the market. Implementers execute on ideas.

Today being a successful marketing manager requires a broad range of skills.  It’s not enough that you might be an excellent marketer you also have to be an excellent communicator and implementer within your organization.  From my experience this is where most people fail.

Marketing is changing and to keep up with the changing business environment marketers have to stay abreast of the latest trends.  With the information overload this in itself is a full time job but as we learn more about what consumers and customers want we also have to able to translate these needs into quantifiable business objectives that can be understood by non-marketing business executives.

How should you do this ?  The first step is to collect the data from various sources. I find that following the right people on social media provides me with a wealth of new marketing information and case studies.  Once you have the information though you can’t just send out Power Point decks to everyone.  You need to summarize the information and, more importantly, provide actionable recommendations to your audience. Too many people get too much information and frankly a lot of people have a problem prioritizing the information that crosses their desks.

Finally, I recommend that you send out information periodically. If you send out too much information than it will go in the “read later” pile.  If however you send out information that is useful and only when you have good insights you’ll find that it is read more often than not.

Change is sometimes best when it’s evolutionary not revolutionary.  Give your audience the pieces of the puzzle they need to form a complete picture and you’ll find that you’re going to get a lot of people who support what you’re trying to do.