Try Walking Before You Begin To Run

There’s a condition that I see many marketers suffering from, and it frequently goes undiagnosed. It’s an obsession with innovation that can lead to seemingly endless adventures down new rabbit holes. In a world of never ending thought leadership content, some organizations chase the unachievable “best in class” status for their marketing program based on examples or concepts that marketers might see shared by their industry peers.

I’d argue that these pursuits can derail meaningful progress if not done thoughtfully. It can be tempting to try to accomplish everything all at once, but even large and experienced teams may struggle to account for the multiple concurrent variables and work streams that are present in large transformative changes. While that LinkedIn post, webinar, or industry report might seem like it contains the missing ingredient your team has been looking for, thought leadership content doesn’t always provide the necessary levels of context for a deeper understanding around how these changes were implemented.

With that said, I’m not advocating for complacency by means, but rather steady measured progress over the pursuit of innovation for the wrong reasons.

The driving forces behind these grandiose pursuits can come in many different shapes and sizes. At the smaller end of the execution spectrum, your boss might make a statement like, “Why aren’t we running ads on TikTok? I’ve seen other marketing directors post about the success they’re having there, and we should be trying to replicate that.”

On the other end, a client might request something like, “I recently read a report on the future of digital marketing, and we’d like for you and your team to put together a proposal to rehaul our tech stack to begin leveraging a centralized data warehouse, CDP, CRM, and MMM solution to build a cutting edge data-driven marketing program.”

Both of these requests are valid, but the first question you can ask in situations like these is, “does this project make sense for this business at this time?”

If we start to play out the first example, we can break it into two sub-scenarios. In the first, if you’re working at a large, mature organization that already has a strong presence across multiple social media channels, then testing into TikTok might be a relatively low lift because your team already has the processes in place to support an initiative like this. However, if you’re working at a company that is just starting to experiment with paid media, expanding to a new channel might not be as straightforward as it appears. If this company is currently only running YouTube ads, you and the marketing team would need to address considerations like:

• How much money is required to test into TikTok to get a confident read on performance? Does the marketing department have this budget available, or would it need to be reallocated from YouTube?

• What would the potential impact to overall marketing performance be if we do have to scale back on YouTube? What is the tolerance for a drop in efficiency of our existing revenue generating activity?

• Have you maxed out the potential return from your YouTube campaigns? Could you increase revenue efficiently by simply spending more there?

• How is the team planning to measure performance across two channels now instead of one? What is the plan to account for the incremental impact of this channel expansion?

• Does the team have the creative resources required to develop TikTok specific assets at a more frequent cadence to prevent ad fatigue?

• Has the team confirmed that your customers are actually on TikTok? How are you planning to target them?

These are only a few of questions among many that need to be answered before the organization can decide whether or not expanding to TikTok makes sense. Just because other marketing leaders are seeing success there, it doesn’t mean it’s right for your company at this moment. You might be able to generate a greater return by doubling down on YouTube.

In this example, determining the right questions to ask, and conducting the due diligence to explore the feasibility of the request is clearly no small task. Therefore, I’m sure you can only imagine the type of commitment that would be required to execute on the second example (evolving a marketing tech stack). Without getting into specific details here, the same framework can apply.

If your client already leverages most, if not all, of these different tools and just wants to better integrate their systems, this project becomes much more feasible. On the other hand, if your client doesn’t currently leverage any of those tools it might be more prudent to advise them to walk before they can run. Starting with just a CRM and extracting as much value from that tool as possible can yield greater results in both the short and long term than trying to develop and implement a complex marketing tech stack.

I’m certainly no stranger to the temptation of brainstorming what a 10/10 marketing program would look like, but I’ve done my best to practice remaining grounded and understanding where my clients currently stand. Sometimes going from step one to step two can generate strong returns at a much lower risk than trying to jump from step one to step ten.

Similarly to many other aspects of life, there is no finish line in marketing. It’s a constantly evolving process that grows and changes as part of a business. There is certainly a time and place to make a big bet or change, but a series of smaller bets that put one foot in front of another are required to help companies grow in a stable fashion.

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn and X (Twitter).