What’s your plan?

Whether you’re taking on your first or tenth marketing leadership role, the toughest thing you’ll face in getting started is…well…getting started. There’s so much you need to do and learn that it can be positively overwhelming. So, how to get started to put yourself, your team and organization on a path to marketing success?

There are many ways you can approach your first few days on the job methodically and linearly so as not to overwhelm you. These are the steps that have worked for me in the past:

• Build Relationships: You have to first build relationships before you can address the issues. Organizational stakeholders and decision-makers need to know, understand and believe in you first before you can get down to addressing critical business issues. Investing time getting to know them while they get to know you.
• Know Your Team: You’re not the Lone Ranger. You’re not going it alone. You have a team on your side. Learn about them, what’s important to them, their career hopes and dreams, their typical day-in-the-life and what they need from you to unleash their personal and professional achievement.
• Look Inward: Have 1-on-1’s with stakeholders to get their perspectives on what makes the organization relevant, different and better. Ask them of their perspectives on challenges and opportunities and customer insights. Getting their perspectives is important to measure against what you learn of customer perspectives and see if there’s alignment or mis-alignment
• Look Outward: Gather as much intel, data or insights into your customers, prospects, target audiences. Understand their functional and emotional decision triggers, articulated and unarticulated needs. Lear the typical customer journey from info gathering through to billing and customer service.
• See What Others Are Doing: Businesses don’t operate in a vacuum; there’s competition for your customers’ time and money. ID your likely competitors, see what makes them tick, how they present themselves, what they offer, how they’re different and the same from you. Look for ways you to double-down on your strengths vs. them or exploit their weaknesses or fill an opening in the marketplace.
• Follow the Money: There are always resource constraints. You can’t be all things to all people at all times. Decisions need to be made on time and resource allocation. For me, it’s about knowing what products, services or lines of business that drive the most significant revenue and margin opportunities…or maybe that represent fastest and most strategic path to growth. If you understand clearly how the company makes money, then planning and prioritization of resources more easily falls into place.
• Conduct an Audit: I like to say that you have put the walls up first before you start wallpapering…and that means going through an exhaustive checklist of the current state of marketing across many dimensions (staff, budgets, PPC, SEO, lead gen, CRM, data/analytics, martech, conversion funnel metrics and more). This may take a few weeks but it’s worth it, as you’ll know quickly how strong the foundation is and what areas need to be strengthened before you can act on a vision.
• Oh, Have a Vision: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” You must go into the job with a clear set of marketing principles, beliefs, and core strategies. Absent that, then every idea is a good idea. An example I use is the case of Andy Reid, Super Bowl winning coach of the Kansas City Chiefs and certain Hall of Famer. In January 1999, he was an unknown assistant coach for the Green Bay packers. He had head coach aspirations and was a meticulous planner, keeping detailed notes along his coaching journey, what kind of offense and defense he would run, a list of assistant coaches he’d hire. When he got his shot at the top job with the Philadelphia Eagles, he knew exactly what he wanted to do and why.