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The Set-up
Apr 4, 2024
There feels like no win here. It takes a brave kind of leadership team to be creative and try new things. I’ve always had the most success with a supportive CEO and executive peers who understand what marketing is and isn’t. But a lot of the time, we’re working for honchos who want to undermine our work, fighting off CROs trying to take the marketing function to get ownership over the budget. When that doesn’t work, they attempt to annex marketing as their admins to tackle their ongoing “strategic” list of hospitality events, email blasts, and sales collateral (sales leaders when I find that magic sales collateral that closes deals for you - I’ll let you know). And then they go tattling to the C-suite like little bitches when marketers draw hard boundaries around their people and resources against these incursions.
Instead of threatening their job like some f’ed-up Damocles’ business sword hanging over their head, it's time to allow marketers what most of us do best: building something lasting instead of recreating pretty slides with nicely fudged numbers.
I was enjoying a few drinks with a baller marketer I know here in Philadelphia. She’s no bullshit and has built her own business. We were talking about how no one values marketing strategy anymore. It’s all about tactics. Just an endless list of tactics that don’t make sense and aren’t tied to any real outcomes. But it’s performative and makes CEOs feel like something is happening. Of course, these same CEOs will get frustrated and pull the plug when these tactics don’t drive what they could. They are stuck in a vicious cycle and they don't even know it.
It’s easy to grab tactics now instead of worrying about strategy. You have Fiverr (shout out to Sam for my awesome illustrations), Canva, and of course, all the AI tools that have democratized highly specialized skills so not everyone has the ability to touch marketing in some way, shape, or form. I am honestly more excited about this than frustrated— as I believe it’s allowed very talented people to build new businesses based on situationally specific tactics for their needs. Even with all my complaining on this blog, I am generally more optimistic about things than not (don’t snort).
Again, though, tactics like Google ads and LinkedIn advertising are deployed without a view towards the business outcomes they are trying to achieve beyond lead generation. The kicker is that they’re showing diminishing returns, or they require sky-high budgets to be competitive. This is where a really solid strategist comes into play. Strategy brings all of these things together in a way that speaks to customers on multiple levels. You don’t get the immediate high from that one inbound form fill, but you get the ongoing satisfaction of knowing that you are building something lasting that hopefully brings more and more customers to your door.
Until companies give the marketing team the resources and runway to kick ass, they’re setting the whole operation up for failure.
There feels like no win here. It takes a brave kind of leadership team to be creative and try new things. I’ve always had the most success with a supportive CEO and executive peers who understand what marketing is and isn’t. But a lot of the time, we’re working for honchos who want to undermine our work, fighting off CROs trying to take the marketing function to get ownership over the budget. When that doesn’t work, they attempt to annex marketing as their admins to tackle their ongoing “strategic” list of hospitality events, email blasts, and sales collateral (sales leaders when I find that magic sales collateral that closes deals for you - I’ll let you know). And then they go tattling to the C-suite like little bitches when marketers draw hard boundaries around their people and resources against these incursions.
Instead of threatening their job like some f’ed-up Damocles’ business sword hanging over their head, it's time to allow marketers what most of us do best: building something lasting instead of recreating pretty slides with nicely fudged numbers.
I was enjoying a few drinks with a baller marketer I know here in Philadelphia. She’s no bullshit and has built her own business. We were talking about how no one values marketing strategy anymore. It’s all about tactics. Just an endless list of tactics that don’t make sense and aren’t tied to any real outcomes. But it’s performative and makes CEOs feel like something is happening. Of course, these same CEOs will get frustrated and pull the plug when these tactics don’t drive what they could. They are stuck in a vicious cycle and they don't even know it.
It’s easy to grab tactics now instead of worrying about strategy. You have Fiverr (shout out to Sam for my awesome illustrations), Canva, and of course, all the AI tools that have democratized highly specialized skills so not everyone has the ability to touch marketing in some way, shape, or form. I am honestly more excited about this than frustrated— as I believe it’s allowed very talented people to build new businesses based on situationally specific tactics for their needs. Even with all my complaining on this blog, I am generally more optimistic about things than not (don’t snort).
Again, though, tactics like Google ads and LinkedIn advertising are deployed without a view towards the business outcomes they are trying to achieve beyond lead generation. The kicker is that they’re showing diminishing returns, or they require sky-high budgets to be competitive. This is where a really solid strategist comes into play. Strategy brings all of these things together in a way that speaks to customers on multiple levels. You don’t get the immediate high from that one inbound form fill, but you get the ongoing satisfaction of knowing that you are building something lasting that hopefully brings more and more customers to your door.
Until companies give the marketing team the resources and runway to kick ass, they’re setting the whole operation up for failure.
There feels like no win here. It takes a brave kind of leadership team to be creative and try new things. I’ve always had the most success with a supportive CEO and executive peers who understand what marketing is and isn’t. But a lot of the time, we’re working for honchos who want to undermine our work, fighting off CROs trying to take the marketing function to get ownership over the budget. When that doesn’t work, they attempt to annex marketing as their admins to tackle their ongoing “strategic” list of hospitality events, email blasts, and sales collateral (sales leaders when I find that magic sales collateral that closes deals for you - I’ll let you know). And then they go tattling to the C-suite like little bitches when marketers draw hard boundaries around their people and resources against these incursions.
Instead of threatening their job like some f’ed-up Damocles’ business sword hanging over their head, it's time to allow marketers what most of us do best: building something lasting instead of recreating pretty slides with nicely fudged numbers.
I was enjoying a few drinks with a baller marketer I know here in Philadelphia. She’s no bullshit and has built her own business. We were talking about how no one values marketing strategy anymore. It’s all about tactics. Just an endless list of tactics that don’t make sense and aren’t tied to any real outcomes. But it’s performative and makes CEOs feel like something is happening. Of course, these same CEOs will get frustrated and pull the plug when these tactics don’t drive what they could. They are stuck in a vicious cycle and they don't even know it.
It’s easy to grab tactics now instead of worrying about strategy. You have Fiverr (shout out to Sam for my awesome illustrations), Canva, and of course, all the AI tools that have democratized highly specialized skills so not everyone has the ability to touch marketing in some way, shape, or form. I am honestly more excited about this than frustrated— as I believe it’s allowed very talented people to build new businesses based on situationally specific tactics for their needs. Even with all my complaining on this blog, I am generally more optimistic about things than not (don’t snort).
Again, though, tactics like Google ads and LinkedIn advertising are deployed without a view towards the business outcomes they are trying to achieve beyond lead generation. The kicker is that they’re showing diminishing returns, or they require sky-high budgets to be competitive. This is where a really solid strategist comes into play. Strategy brings all of these things together in a way that speaks to customers on multiple levels. You don’t get the immediate high from that one inbound form fill, but you get the ongoing satisfaction of knowing that you are building something lasting that hopefully brings more and more customers to your door.
Until companies give the marketing team the resources and runway to kick ass, they’re setting the whole operation up for failure.
There feels like no win here. It takes a brave kind of leadership team to be creative and try new things. I’ve always had the most success with a supportive CEO and executive peers who understand what marketing is and isn’t. But a lot of the time, we’re working for honchos who want to undermine our work, fighting off CROs trying to take the marketing function to get ownership over the budget. When that doesn’t work, they attempt to annex marketing as their admins to tackle their ongoing “strategic” list of hospitality events, email blasts, and sales collateral (sales leaders when I find that magic sales collateral that closes deals for you - I’ll let you know). And then they go tattling to the C-suite like little bitches when marketers draw hard boundaries around their people and resources against these incursions.
Instead of threatening their job like some f’ed-up Damocles’ business sword hanging over their head, it's time to allow marketers what most of us do best: building something lasting instead of recreating pretty slides with nicely fudged numbers.
I was enjoying a few drinks with a baller marketer I know here in Philadelphia. She’s no bullshit and has built her own business. We were talking about how no one values marketing strategy anymore. It’s all about tactics. Just an endless list of tactics that don’t make sense and aren’t tied to any real outcomes. But it’s performative and makes CEOs feel like something is happening. Of course, these same CEOs will get frustrated and pull the plug when these tactics don’t drive what they could. They are stuck in a vicious cycle and they don't even know it.
It’s easy to grab tactics now instead of worrying about strategy. You have Fiverr (shout out to Sam for my awesome illustrations), Canva, and of course, all the AI tools that have democratized highly specialized skills so not everyone has the ability to touch marketing in some way, shape, or form. I am honestly more excited about this than frustrated— as I believe it’s allowed very talented people to build new businesses based on situationally specific tactics for their needs. Even with all my complaining on this blog, I am generally more optimistic about things than not (don’t snort).
Again, though, tactics like Google ads and LinkedIn advertising are deployed without a view towards the business outcomes they are trying to achieve beyond lead generation. The kicker is that they’re showing diminishing returns, or they require sky-high budgets to be competitive. This is where a really solid strategist comes into play. Strategy brings all of these things together in a way that speaks to customers on multiple levels. You don’t get the immediate high from that one inbound form fill, but you get the ongoing satisfaction of knowing that you are building something lasting that hopefully brings more and more customers to your door.
Until companies give the marketing team the resources and runway to kick ass, they’re setting the whole operation up for failure.
