Anyone can write a listicle or keyword-stuffed how-to article. But stories are hard work. Stories can convince people who are not interested in your product to try it. Most writers can pen a story that taps from their personal experience. But what about arcane subjects like infrastructure as code or sustainability reporting? Most content writers don’t do a great job at storytelling because they don't have the expertise needed to craft stories in a way that teaches, touches, or builds trust with the reader.
Organizations have data. But what value do they derive from it? Is this value increasing with ever-expanding data volumes? In our experience, organizations don't have the discipline to read data. Collecting data is never a problem. Everyone has Google Analytics installed. But how much insight do you get through the use of analytics? The challenge is not collecting data, it's dealing with the data.
Do your salespeople know what their marketing colleagues are doing? Even more importantly, do your marketing and sales teams set their strategies and goals together or separately from each other? Let's add your R&D folks to the mix. Now we've got marketing, sales, and innovation – these three units should work closely together to ensure that the organization is performing optimally. Unfortunately, this is not the case in many organizations. Aligning marketing with sales and R&D is extremely difficult.
Experimentation is a key pillar in any marketing strategy. Testing out different channels, tactics, and strategies is how marketers define what works, why it works, and what might be done differently. But how can business leaders organize teams that can efficiently conduct experiments and put new learnings and best practices to work? And what steps can be taken to nurture a test-and-learn mindset in marketing teams?
One of the most challenging tasks in marketing is to make decisions about where to put available resources and which solution is a better option to go with. To make the right decision, we have to consider an organization in a broader context. Let's say, we're putting together a plan of action for a cybersecurity identity and access management company. How can a global inflation crisis shape our overall strategy?
