Any marketing or comms people - task question

[Wonderbug81]

I'm due to do an interview for a senior marketing role. They've set a task which includes strategic approach and measurement but there's very little info on their audiences.

Is it worth asking for more or should I assume they've done it deliberately so I can show how I would approach audience analysis and prioritisation?

I'd assume they are expecting you to research their company site, their case studies and testimonials, and any other information you can glean, and base your proposed strategy on your findings.

As PP said, I would research the company, their competitors and the industry to work out who their audience is. I wouldn't ask them.

Thanks that was my instinct. It's tricky to do a robost strategic approach without detailed audience segments data. I'll see what I can find out and make assumptions where necessary.

I am a Senior Marketing Manager and a former Head of coms

It really annoys me when an organisation (usually a charity...) gives you the task of presenting a comms strategy at the interview stage

As far as I am concerned devising a strategy what I would hired to do, and therefore paid for, not something that I would do for free at the interview stage.

A lot of these organisations seem to think they can use interviews to get free consultancy support.

All I do if I am asked to present a strategy is give an overview of how I would go about producing their new comms/marketing strategies. For example I tell them in my presentation that I would:

• define their key audiences and how they want to influence them
• define their key messages
• look at the current branding and whether it needs to be refreshed
• look at how their website and socials are performing and plan ways to improve these channels
• do a competitor analysis
• make sure the comms strategy supports the delivery of the overall organisation strategies
• put a place a yearly plan detailing all deliverable activities and 3 year overall marketing/comms strategy
• define key objectives and put in place monitoring tools (for example you can measure how your website performs with Google Analytics and so on)
• put a budget together ....

I talk about the method I would follow but that's all: they need to pay me to get the actual strategy.

Without details of budget available and internal info about what they have in place at the moment in term of marketing/comms, trying to come up with a strategy would just be based on thin air.

@Startingagainandagain Yes I totally agree but this has been a tough market and I'm doing more than I usually would to get the role.

I hope things change soon!