The most important thing

You might be tired of it by now too. 

The daily posts that suggest there’s a quick fix to our growth challenges. 

This idea that we – as marketers – don’t quite know how to do marketing right. But that we’re somehow just a few tactical shifts away.

You’ve heard all the “brilliant” advice: 

  • Ungate your content
  • Create demand -- don’t just capture it
  • Focus on THIS metric (whatever it is)
  • Make content for dark social
  • Build a community

A lot of it might be valid. But that’s not the point. 

Remember this quote from the legend Stephen Covey: 

“The way we see the problem is the problem.”

And you know that the real problem is not your choice of tactics. 

The real problem is… 

Companies don’t pause to think about how they’ll actually grow. 

We know that might sound ludicrous, but think about it for a second. Would everybody on the leadership team give you the same answer if you ask: 

“How will we grow this business over the next 12 months?”

Nope!

In most cases you’d get a whole bunch of different answers. 

Meanwhile, everybody and their mom is trying to tell us how to do marketing. How to execute. What tactics to go for. 

How in the world is that going to make up for not having alignment across Leadership on how the company is even going to approach growth?!

Companies want sustainable growth, but most aren’t even remotely prepared to do what it takes to get it. 

Leadership teams simply aren’t aligned enough.  

So this is the first thing we wanted to share as part of Growth Lessons: 

The most important thing you can do to drive meaningful growth at your company is invite your CEO and the rest of the leadership team to a conversation about how the company will drive growth so that the group can prioritize, align and ultimately focus enough to get on a path to sustainable growth. 

To be clear, that conversation is not about A/B testing, landing pages or experiments. 

It’s about business strategy and an entire company being set to pull in the same direction – before anybody starts pulling on their own. 

Leading that work is our biggest opportunity as marketing leaders. Not embracing the latest tactic that “experts” are gushing over. 

That’s the lesson for today :)

- Your partners in growth at Elevate Demand