One of my favorite things to do is travel.
If I were independently wealthy, I wouldn’t own multiple houses, expensive cars or designer clothes. I would spend all of my money traveling from place to place.
The only problem is that I am a very destination driven person. Any time I check a new place off of my list, I can get myself into a lot of trouble because I pick a destination, buy a plane ticket, make some general guess as to the weather, the location of my hotel and what might be happening while I am there – and then it’s off to the airport I go.
I concentrate on the destination, and not the details of how to get there.
The result? My wife and I have ended up in some very interesting situations.
For example, we recently traveled to the West Coast for a conference and I assumed it would be warm. We ended up in a snowstorm with 50 mph winds and a suitcase full of clothes better suited for 80 degree weather.
If you run marketing for your company, I guarantee you are surrounded by many destination-only coworkers.
- The salesperson who wants to know “why haven’t we seen more leads”.
- The CEO who inquires “why haven’t we closed a deal”.
- The board member who asks “why the social media follower count isn’t growing exponentially”.
- The product marketing manager who wants to know “why the email opt-in list isn’t growing”.
Destination-oriented people don’t understand the details of what it takes to get a company to these end goals.
And this adds to the complexity of your role as a marketer.
Not only do you need to spend time educating your customer on your product or service along an increasingly longer customer journey, you also need to educate your internal team. The good news is that you can do both of these at the same time with a little planning.
As you build out your content, consider how it can be repurposed. Simply adding an introduction or changing the words from “you” to “your customer” makes a piece work for more than an external audience.
Be sure to include your team members along the process of building out your marketing assets. This gives them a behind the scenes look, they are bought into what is created and it results in a team that is more open to sharing the content once it’s released.
Tell a story with your metrics. When reporting results, be sure to share the story behind the numbers. Marketing isn’t as clean as running the finances or programming a product. Your customers are real people and they don’t follow a linear path to working with your company.
Don’t let the destination get in the way of meeting your overall goals. Like with all forms of travel, you might hit a snowstorm or two along the way.
