Marketing your RIM program: when selling a RIM program or program component to employees or management, applying marketing principles can increase the likelihood of success.

• Author: Richmond, Heather

At the Core

This article

* explains how to apply marketing principles when "selling" a RIM program

* discusses the "Four Ps" of marketing in relation to RIM

* examines RIM customers and how to market to them

When you have a valuable and useful new records and information management (RIM) program or policy that you want employees to use because it will benefit them and help improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness, you cannot just sit at your desk and hope that they find out about it or stumble over it. You must "sell" it to them, and that requires marketing.

When marketing a RIM program or program component (e.g., a policy for managing e-mail), applying marketing principles can increase the likelihood of winning employee buy-in. Unfortunately, marketing is not an activity that many RIM professionals have been exposed to or even feel comfortable with. Thus, it is helpful to begin the exploration of marketing RIM with a few definitions.

Marketing is "a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and exchanging products of value with others," according to Philip Kotler and Ronald Turner's book Marketing Management. This definition focuses on the following core concepts, which are vital elements of successful marketing: identifying and understanding needs, wants, and expectations; developing and offering products; providing value and assessing cost and satisfaction; and exchanging products of value with others in transactions. Product, according to Kotler and Turner, is "anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a want or need." The RIM "product" is often a tangible good, such as a records retention schedule. It is also often a service (sometimes called a service product), such as operating a central file room. Frequently, the RIM product is a combination of both goods and services, such as consulting with employees to identify RIM needs (a service) and developing tools such as a classification scheme (product) to help them meet those needs. The term "product" will be used here to refer to a RIM program, product, or service. Promotion is how one informs customers and potential customers about a product. RIM tends to use methods that are more targeted and more individual (e.g., one-on-one meetings), as opposed to using mass media promotion methods like billboards. RIM practitioners--like marketers of other products and services--must guard themselves against focusing so heavily on creative promotional methods that they ignore the importance of the other three marketing elements--product, pricing, and place. Pricing is what customers pay for a product. RIM customers rarely pay a fee to RIM for its products (though some organizations assess charge-backs for services such as inactive records storage). However, the organization as a whole pays for the RIM product because the RIM budget is part of its administrative overhead. At the same time, RIM customers often "pay" through time and other resources devoted to RIM, such as employee time spent providing information for retention scheduling or money spent on filing equipment. Place, refers to the distribution channels by which customers gain access to products. For an internally marketed service like RIM, "place" means anyone outside the department involved in promoting or delivering RIM services. Distribution channels might include senior management or a RIM "champion" promoting RIM services to other departments; external vendors or consultants used to educate or train customers; or existing customers who recommend RIM...