Measurable vs. Meaningful

Do you listen to The CMO Podcast religiously? 

Don’t worry – we don’t either. 

But we do check in, and once in a while we find a thought-provoking little nugget. 

CMO of Rakuten, Dana Marineau, dropped this one on a recent episode:

“Is it measurable or is it meaningful?”

What does that bring up for you? This was our initial reaction: 

Important distinction, but the two can’t be mutually exclusive, right?!

To be clear, we believe everything that is meaningful is measurable. But we certainly don’t think everything measurable is meaningful. And we know you don’t either. 

Our CEO Jay had a fun little rant about button colors as a case in point the other day. 

So what is meaningful? 

For B2B marketers in 2023 we believe meaningful sits at the intersection of impactfulpractical and timely

As a B2B growth team we focus on one key objective in 30-90 day periods. We call them objective-driven growth sprints. This ensures we’re working on something feasible that can impact the business in the not-too-distant future.

There are five main areas where we can do this kind of meaningful work through marketing tactics as standard as paid media: 

1. Message Match

As we established last week, messaging truly is ongoing work. And very few things are more important than iterating to ensure your message/story/narrative resonates fully with your buyers. 

2. Market Expansion

Is it time to look at some adjacent markets? What if you could learn enough about a new potential market for your product to where you significantly expand your pool of right-fit buyers? 

3. Product Development

As marketers, we don’t always have the courage to approach this, but sometimes you just need additional product to have a big enough pool. Demand for a future product is totally testable.

4. Buyer Experience

How do your buyers actually prefer to experience the value your solution provides – before they purchase it? Trial? Content? Conversation? If you’re not delivering on that, figure out how to.

5. Creative Approach

We all default into a similar approach to how our marketing shows up in front of buyers. We basically play it safe. But we don’t have to. What if we test a fundamentally different way?

Short version: 

Lots of meaningful marketing work we can do even with limited resources. 

Again, it’s not about being efficient for the sake of efficiency. It’s about doing the meaningful work as efficiently as possible. 

And yes, it’s measurable.