1. The Lean Revolution
I have seen the issues with the old approach to growth since the beginning of my career. As a sales person, having to execute growth campaigns that were not based on the reality that I was seeing in the market place. It only got worse as marketing budgets grew bloated with software and advertising costs.
Working on startups, software teams and manufacturing teams gave me first-hand experience with the power of Lean.
Lean startup ideas revolutionized startup thinking. The “build it and they will come” mentality switched to a scientific approach based on testing and learning. In software, the big bang or “waterfall” idea of defining requirements up front went to shipping small releases fast. The result was better outcomes, less waste, and happier teams.
While running my growth agency Revenizer, I started applying Lean principles with all customers. This gave us a unique opportunity to develop and refine what Lean means for growth teams.
2. The Activity Factory to Hollywood Blockbuster Spectrum
Marketing teams span between the unstructured chaos of the activity factory to the failure prone Hollywood Blockbuster model.
The Activity Factory churns out content from blog posts to videos. Unfortunately, most of the content does not resonate with customers and prospects. The content that does resonate does not get the promotion is deserves since most of the team is working on content production. The focus on activity means the bigger picture strategy is often lost.
The Blockbuster does work to develop fully integrated campaigns with promotion fully thought through. These are big, long cycle projects and can drag on for months. Other priorities can come up redirecting resources. This model often does not include upfront testing so campaigns are created than launched to spectacular failure.
Both approaches lead to a lot of frustration.
The Activity Factory marketing team feels good when content is published. Pressure comes from the executive and sales about when the activity will lead to actual results in terms of increase leads or revenue growth. More importantly, the Activity Factory only haphazardly delivers on the core mission - improving the customer experience.
The Hollywood Blockbuster marketing team is even less satisfied. The long cycle means that the satisfaction of seeing a campaign rolled out is rare. Milestones are hard to communicate so the rest of the organization does not see marketing’s value. The level of focus does increase the likelihood of success but there is still the risk of failure with a big waste of resource. Again, most importantly, the Blockbuster model represents a lost opportunity to maximize marketing impact on improving the customer experience.
It gets worse.
Customer expectations have changed. They expect more than a great product. They demand a great experience. Consumer-focused companies like Netflix, AirBnB, and Amazon focused on all aspects of the customer experience. Marketing teams can no longer limit their focus to acquisition. They need to be developing campaigns that include customer success. A recent study published in the Harvard Business Review found that customers who had the best experiences spent 140 percent more than customers who had the worst experiences.
Is there a better way?