Fifth in a Series: Know Your Own Agenda
In the first four articles in this series, we looked at marketing from the prospect’s perspective, examining what you want them to think, feel, and do, and how to create marketing that encourages those outcomes.
Now we turn the lens around on ourselves. In order to gain clarity on what you want your audience to do, you need to be clear on your own goals. This is a question that gets far less attention than it should.
The Goal Behind the Goal
At any given moment, your marketing team can almost certainly tell you what they’re working on. Ask them about the outcome they’re working toward, though, and you’re likely to get a lot of hedging and probably at least one panicked stare.
Details and specifics matter here. Wanting more qualified leads is not a goal in the same way that wanting to generate more qualified leads in a particular vertical because we have expertise we can apply to that vertical is.
Details lead you toward strategies. Vagueness will lead you toward tactics. Even worse, the vague nature of your goal makes it too easy to rely on previous solutions that may not be applicable here.
Specificity provides you with a clear framework within which to evaluate the decisions you make.
The Danger of Unstated Goals
When left unsaid, goals don’t disappear. They get assumed. And often assumed differently by different members of your team. Leaderships assumes a conversion issue, marketing is working toward brand awareness, and the sales team is wondering where their leads are.
As you’d imagine—or have experienced—this is an expensive and damaging lack of communication. Misalignment like this keeps the marketing flywheel from ever spinning up and generating real momentum over time. Fixing it sounds easy on paper, but can be difficult to implement because of the teams and turf involved. Stepping back for a moment to reorient expectations is a worthwhile exercise.
Test Clarity Internally
Last time around, we talked about applying a clarity test to conversion-stage marketing. Here, we’ll apply the same rigor to your goals that you do to individual marketing elements.
- What’s our desired outcome?
- Does our planned approach lead our prospects there?
- Are sales and marketing in agreement on success metrics?
If you can’t answer these with certainty, you’re unlikely to achieve the results you expect. Even worse, there won’t be an obvious point of failure you can identify and remedy. Clarity in your overall marketing shouldn’t be a peripheral concern. It should be recognized as a basic requirement for achieving marketing success.
Next month, we’ll bring the series to a close with a practical framework you can apply to any marketing investment you’re considering.
This is the fifth article in my “Marketing With Intent” series. The final installment will present a practical framework for putting it all together. You can find earlier articles in the series here.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
