“Campaign is wrapped. Here are the numbers. I’m shifting to the next project in the queue…”
This is a risky pattern. And earlier in my career, I was guilty of it. It looked a little something like this:
Every month (or every couple of months), there was an expectation that we'd run a specific type of campaign. I had a documented process and a set number of deliverables needed to stand up the campaign. I ran through the process. The campaign went live, then eventually ended. I reported the results and made a couple of recommendations to tweak the process. Then we’d move on.
Hindsight is, of course, 20/20. Even with the rigorous process I followed, I wish I'd asked bigger questions. Questions like:
Is the structure of this campaign (the list, offer, cadence, messaging strategy and copy) driving the results we want?
How might we radically change the structure to improve our results?
Do those changes offer more execution ease?
If the changes don’t offer more ease, do we have confidence that the juice is worth the extra squeeze?
What else might we do instead of this regular campaign to hit (and ideally surpass) our targets?
Do those alternatives offer more execution ease?
If the alternatives don’t offer more ease, do we have confidence that the juice is worth the extra squeeze?
What about our results might be indicating that we need to make bigger shifts to avoid messaging drift?
Are the downstream sales metrics telling the same story as the upstream marketing metrics (remember: conversion rates can lie)?
If so, are there any new learnings we can pull from Sales to improve our results?
If not, what exactly is looking wrong downstream? And how can we course-correct moving forward?
I wish I’d consistently asked those questions, but I didn't. Not because I didn't care (I did). But because there wasn't time to dig in. This is just one example of how the Synthesize and Decide phases of a listening loop can easily break down.
Marketing teams are generally good at Deliver and Collect. Reporting results is increasingly automated. But data collection without analysis is just data. And synthesis without a decision is just observation. Neither produces meaningful improvements.
Synthesize and Decide are the stages that require time, space and someone willing to ask why. They're also the stages that get squeezed first when teams are under pressure. (Just like I did, earlier in my career.)
The thing is that Synthesize and Decide aren't "extra" or “optional”. Marketing’s results (or lack thereof) can be traced back to that work.
So, when was the last time you gifted your team with the time to actually sit with the data and ask why it looks the way it looks? What might you be missing? What else could you do to hit your targets? Would changing something (or everything) get the results you want more efficiently?
'Til next week,
Carolyn
Off the clock…
📕 The Booklover's Library by Madeline Martin. It’s officially feeling like summer in Canada, so I’ve been in the mood for lighter reads. So far this is ticking the box.
📕The Natural Shade Garden by Ken Druse. I may or may not have moved around half of our garden after perusing this book on a rainy Sunday morning.
📨 In the Age of AI, You Need a Point of View by April Dunford. I’m hearing a lot of chatter about selling the roadmap (i.e. vision). But a unique POV is the better alternative because it shifts the conversation from this is what we’re building to this is what you need from a product like ours. (When done well, this sets up your product as the obvious choice.)
Before you go…
My firm (Boxcar) helps sales-led B2B software companies turn their proven sales motion into a clear messaging framework that generates more qualified leads.
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