The hidden ‘grunt’ work of marketing that is vital for great performance
I want to talk about the grunt work of marketing. The stuff that often goes unseen by senior business leaders. The small work that actually means things work properly and often leads to big results.
You know, the kind of things like making sure you're listed on Google and rank properly. Making sure the experience clients receive actually work.
It's those little things that add up:
Chasing that contact for your database, keeping everything clean and up to date when people move around
Making sure when you post something on your website, it's got H1, H2, H3 headings
Adding alt text to images, linking out properly to other things and linking to pages internally
Adding page titles and meta descriptions
On LinkedIn, responding to comments and making sure your posts have the right formatting
Posting across social media channels. It can take me up to an hour to make sure I've got the right format and approach for each particular channel
Tracking down approvals for campaigns and chasing stakeholders for feedback
Organising and naming files properly so you can actually find things
Keeping your content calendar up to date and coordinating with sales
All of this stuff takes time that people don't realise needs to be done.
AI can definitely help you with some of this grunt work, but it'll get you to 70 or 80%. You still need that human touch to make sure you're doing it in the best way possible. That it's in your voice and the right format for what you need. AI doesn't always pick up what you wanted to say, and I think that's quite important to realise.
The issue is that grunt work is often overlooked by boards and senior staff because they don't realise this stuff is actually important or why it needs to happen. And until they do, they won't put a value on it.
They value the end result. Are we where we want to be on Google? Is this piece of content what we need? Have we got those leads coming in? But they don't necessarily know all the steps involved to get there.
As marketers, we need to find a clearer way of making sure people know the work it takes to get good performance to rise to great performance.
Thanks for reading
I’m Ayo and I’m a built environment marketing consultant who has worked with many construction firms both large and small. Contact me to talk about how we can get your digital marketing converting more ayo@abbasmarketing.com
