The Executive's Marketing Playbook

Marketing activity doesn't guarantee business growth. Who's identifying opportunities, challenging assumptions, and preparing your business for what's next? Explore why strategic marketing leadership matters and three questions worth asking.

Growth creates opportunities, but it also creates complexity. As businesses expand, leaders need to reassess their strategy, priorities, and investments to ensure they're focused on the greatest opportunities for growth.

When marketing isn't delivering the results you expect, it's natural to question whether you have the right people. Should you hire someone more experienced? Replace an underperforming employee? Change agencies? Bring in additional expertise? Any of those decisions might be justified. But what if the problem isn't the talent? What if it's how that talent is being led, utilized, and held accountable? Before You Change the Team, Understand What's Really Happening Throughout my

When growth isn't meeting expectations, the natural response is often to do more. Launch another initiative. Enter a new market. Increase marketing investment. Add resources. Pursue another customer segment. Each decision may make sense individually. But collectively, are they moving the business closer to your growth goals? Sometimes the problem isn't a lack of activity. It's a lack of focus on what will make the greatest difference. Are You Focused on the Right Growth Prior

When business results fall short of expectations, what's the first thing that gets questioned? The marketing team? The agencies? The budget? Whether marketing activity is moving the business forward? When results aren't there, the natural reaction is to look at what's being done and how to improve it. But what if the problem isn't how well your team is executing? What if they're executing a strategy that doesn't address what's actually holding the business back? Knowing the d

Sometimes the person who buys your product is the person who uses it. Sometimes they aren't. That distinction sounds simple. But when the buyer and user are different, getting it wrong can affect everything from your positioning and messaging to your sales approach and ability to grow. Think about diapers. The baby uses the product. The parent or caregiver buys it. Cereal adds another layer. A child may be the user and influence which brand they want, but the parent ultimatel

I’ve spent much of my career helping companies figure out how they should position themselves, where they can differentiate and what customers need to hear. Then I had to do it for my own business. And I realized I wasn’t always taking my own advice. I wanted to talk about everything I could do. Every industry I’d worked in. Every problem I could solve. All the experience that made me qualified. I hadn’t clearly defined who I was trying to reach. I wasn’t articulating why som

Most companies don’t lose their competitive edge overnight. It happens gradually when the business stops evolving at the same pace as its customers, competitors and market. The business grows. What made the company successful becomes established. Processes get built around it. Teams focus on delivering it. And over time, the organization can become more focused on running the business than questioning whether the business is continuing to evolve. Meanwhile, customers keep cha

In the early stages of a company, it often makes sense for the CEO or founder to be deeply involved in marketing. They know the customer, the product and the vision for the company. And when the organization is small, being involved in decisions across the business can help keep things moving. But as the company grows, the CEO’s role has to grow with it. The marketing model often needs to evolve as well. At some point, being involved in everything stops being an advantage an

The marketing that gets a company to one stage of growth isn't always the marketing that gets it to the next. Early on, a lot can work. A great product creates buzz. Founders open doors. Word of mouth drives customers. A few strong channels generate demand. Then growth gets harder. Customer acquisition slows. Competition increases. The company moves into new markets or targets larger customers. Sales needs more support. Marketing costs rise. The natural response is often to a

I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly in growth-stage companies. Marketing worked well enough to help the business get where it is. Then the company grows. The team expands. More money goes into marketing. More campaigns and channels are added. Yet growth gets harder, not easier. The CEO starts asking reasonable questions: Why aren’t we seeing more from our marketing investment? Are we spending in the right places? Do we have the right team? Often, none of those is the real probl

I recently wrote about a dangerous phrase "we've always done it that way," used when nobody has the will to change. Eric Shoars shared another dangerous phrase "We can't do that, it'll set a precedent." Why Leaders Resist Change Here's what "we can't do that, it'll set a precedent" actually means when a leader says it. It's not about the one decision in front of them. It's the fear of what happens after. If we make this exception once, we'll have to make it again. For everyo