From the course: Advanced Lead Generation

Start with business objectives

From the course: Advanced Lead Generation

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Start with business objectives

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- [Instructor] A great marketing plan doesn't start with a creative brief or even a PowerPoint presentation. It starts with a spreadsheet. Let me explain. Marketing's role is to drive growth of the business, full stop. And the business's growth goals have likely already been enumerated by your leadership team. Your marketing plan and strategy start with the business goals, and it allows you to create a direct line between organizational drivers and marketing team priorities. The more explicit you make those ties, the more likely your peers as well as other departments, sales, finance, and more, will understand how your focus areas align and integrate with theirs. It's how you create a marketing team that is a profit center, as opposed to the glorified arts and crafts department. And this also allows you to improve the precision and focus of your demand programs. It's likely, for your example, that your organization's growth strategy already gives you explicit clues as to where your marketing should focus: on market segments, vertical industries, channel relationships, and more. And if you don't have or know those organizational goals, now is the time to ask. Strategic plans, long-term business objectives, even board of director presentations can give you the input you need to create a more focused, aligned demand strategy. And even in the absence of a broader business strategy, your sales team objectives can at minimum give you tactical direction. In either case, these strategies likely have already been enumerated into specific metrics. In other words, your organization's goals aren't about words, they're about numbers. So too should your demand program be focused on aligned metrics. Now, you can use words to describe how you'll get there, but make sure you're focused on the numbers necessary to drive contribution to sales and revenue growth. No marketing program or demand team can operate in a vacuum. It's your responsibility to collect the input you need to ensure your resources are as efficient and focused as possible.

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