Get In Gear: A Digital GTM Series (Episode III)
I know, I know… I’m slacking. I’m usually hitting your inbox on Sundays, and I missed the last one. Now I’m later than usual today. It’s been a hectic couple of weeks since the 4th holiday, and I chose to prioritize elsewhere. Womp womp.
OK, on with it… We led off in Episode I by developing a strategic framework. In Episode II, we talked about assembling a team. Now it’s time to discuss how to navigate making the investments to arm your team and achieve your goals.
Build For Tomorrow, Not Today
One common mistake I see made is investing in resources that focus too much on needs for right now versus goals for the future. Yes, you want to ensure you’re able to deliver real-time ROI; but you need to balance short-term solutions and long-term gains. The easiest way to protect yourself from making short-sighted investments is a three-step process:
- Develop a Learning Agenda
- Invite Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Focus on Iteration
Set a Learning Agenda
If you start off thinking you have all the answers, I promise you that you don’t. Start your resource planning with a well-defined learning agenda. What are you hoping to better understand about your customers, your category, and/or the cultural environment?
You’ll need to consider your business model. At Hatch, we’re a hybrid of DTC and wholesale - Amazon is a huge part of our business. When I led digital at Monster, the business was 100% wholesale; everything was distributed through another company (Coca-Cola) and sold by other companies (Walmart, Amazon, 7-Eleven). How your business works should be the first priority in deciding what makes it into the learning agenda.
After that, it’s Marketing OKRs. What core marketing objectives does your team have to support? What are the key metrics that define success? This is another high priority - your learning agenda should inform your digital plan and wider marketing strategy significantly and continuously.
The third priority is to align your resources to your team structure. Recall what we discussed in Episode II: are you building an agile-oriented team? A more ‘traditional’ digital operations model? Planning for resources means understanding who the operators will be, and which primary stakeholders will be utilizing the outputs.
Collaboration Is Critical
Whatever you do, don’t do it in a vacuum. Too many times I’ve seen this in my career: a smart, capable leader fails to understand the politics and personal dynamics at play within an organization. Good investments - even great ones - can get derailed by a siloed approach. So engage your core cross-functional partners early and often. Give them equity in the planning process. Some obvious partners for digital include IT, Sales, Marketing Operations and Analytics.
Share the burden and you also share the accountability. Don’t sign up for something you can’t deliver against, and don’t deliver something which won’t answer questions you must. It’s cliché but true: one team, one dream.
Focus On Making Progress
Do not let perfection become the enemy of progress. You’re operating in a fluid environment where changes happen at warp speed and in black boxes known as proprietary algorithms. You are always going to be learning and iterating. Design your resources that way. I use the 80/20 rule: if a resource solves 80% of your teams’ immediate needs and helps you grow 20% towards your long-term goals within a year or two, it’s probably a good one. Don’t overthink it. Get moving.
A way to speed this up is to look for stackable resources. For example: when building CRM at Monster, we aligned our CDP investment with one of that partner’s preferred platforms for lifecycle marketing management. We then had confidence that their roadmaps were integrated and aligned with ours. Win-win.
Forecast Forest Growth
The last thing you need to be doing is taking stock of the digital environment. We’re operating in a creator-driven and algorithmically-controlled ecosystem. Decentralization is on the horizon. AI is accelerating the pace and scale of optimization. Measurement is becoming more opaque and disconnected. These are all things that need to be factored into your decision-making.
Don’t try to predict the future and don’t sell success. Sell a vision for learning that will answer key questions and raise new, fruitful ones. Emphasize efficiencies that will be gained, and the new potential innovation that can be unlocked with that now-free bandwidth.
Treat your digital marketing investments like you would your personal investment portfolio. Have a plan, and revisit the plan continuously to see how you’re progressing toward goals. (And definitely avoid the crypto-like scam of AI automation for everything… AI isn’t solving every problem you have.)
In our next installment, we’ll dive into designing a go-to-market plan. You can have the right talent and tools, but you still need to execute. Look no further than would-be superteams in sports. Bottom line - don’t be the Clippers. (Sorry, I’m a Lakers fan. It was too easy. 🤣)
Until the next episode… Same bat-time, same bat-channel. Happy hunting. 🤘🏻
