Stop Buying Marketing Tactics and Start Building a Strategy

Stop writing that video script. Don’t stress to finish that e-book by Friday. Pause your hubspot/marketo/pardot/salesforce/mailchimp/whatever subscription.  For the love of all that is holy, please don’t rush to buy that email marketing list of people that you’ve never met so you can spam them with messages they probably won’t receive, definitely won’t read, and are likely to mark as spam hurting your future normal emails?

We live in a world where it seems like each week there is a new piece of marketing automation software, email distribution platform, programmatic ad company, a new company claiming “we’re #1 at this or that but have no way to prove it but we’re claiming it anyway”.

Or worse, some self-proclaimed marketing marketing guru/ninja/warrior/expert/specialist/coach claims to have the secret to having customers search for you, find you, love you, hire you, refer you, and rave about you.

❌ Just follow an “ask and answer” model to your blogs.The leads will pour in.

❌ It’s all about inbound. Advertising doesn’t work.

❌ Video – you have to focus on video. It’s ‘Google Juice’.

❌ We can guarantee you the first page of Google.

❌ Facebook – it’s all about Facebook these days. Who isn’t on facebook? That’s where the leads are.

I’m here to tell you – there are no shortcuts. There are people who work hard, people who work smart, and people who get lucky. The best scenario you can hope for is a bit of all 3 (but I really believe you create your own luck, so maybe just the two).

This is ridiculously simplified in an effort to not write a 10,000 word post, but I believe there is only one real way to create a marketing plan that has any chance of success.

1. Clearly articulate your business goals
   1. Ask this question of the CEO or business owner: what are the top three things we want to accomplish this year? Acceptable answers are variations of:
      1. We want to increase revenue by 20% (to which your next question is how/what services/business lines/geographic areas present the best oppThisortunity to deliver that growth?)
      2. We want to increase employee engagement (to which your question is how are we measuring employee engagement, and how will we measure if we increase it or not?)
      3. We want to increase profitability (to which your question is which services/products that we currently sell are the most profitable, and which are the least?)
2. Study your target (prospect).
   1. Who is the person we have to reach in order to start the sales cycle (defining the sales cycle, that’s a whole ‘nother post, or series of posts). Here is the guide to answering that question:
      1. If it’s b2b, what size is the company? Where is it located? Is it public, or private? Industry? Maturity?
      2. Again with the b2b example, ask this: who is it that I have to influence to get in the door/make a buying decision/etc.? Is it a Project Manager, typically 35-45 years old, skews Male, college educated, who generally worked as an (previous job title) and then was promoted to this position? Who do they currently use for your goods/services? What is their budget? What is their approval process for hiring a new vendor? What are their (perceived) pain points? Who is their boss? What does their typical week look like – are they in the office, in the field, on the road? What technology do they use – Mac, PC, tablet, etc. How much money do they make? Who are their mentors? What do they read? What type of entertainment programming does that demographic typically watch? Are they typically married? Kids? Can we actually find all of this out online from social media for this exact prospect? You cannot run a campaign unless you know who you’re trying to reach. The more data the better.
3. Figure out how you’re going to get their attention.
   1. This is the step we see get skipped more than any other, and I just call it Getting Noticed. If I’ve never heard of you, if you aren’t on my calendar for the day, if I’m not even shopping for what you offer – how do you expect to get my attention with any sort of meaningful interaction? If you do get my attention – if you want to sell me something, it better be in an interesting, helpful, meaningful (possibly humorous) way!

I’ll stop there in the interest of brevity. This is less than half the battle – you still have to engage with them, discover a need, propose solutions, create value, deliver what you said, delight the client. But – if you’re focusing on Net-New, and you haven’t answered questions 1 – 3 above, start there.