Growth Insights for CEOs

A long-time client surprised me last week. He called to update me on his pursuit of a new position within his company and, in the course of our conversation, said that his CEO “is an extremely talented manager but not much of a leader.” The assessment itself didn’t surprise me. I have known this CEO for over 30 years and agree completely. What did surprise me was hearing my friend make the distinction. We have often talked about the differences between managing and leading. Like most people, however, he generally uses the terms interchangeably and doesn’t really make a distinction day-to-day—just the kind of thing that drives leadership experts like John Kotter crazy.

For over 40 years, Kotter has been on a mission to get people to think about the distinction between management and leadership. Our ongoing transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy, however, has made Kotter’s work much more difficult. We still need to understand the difference between management and leadership, but it is increasingly difficult to be an effective CEO without also being a good leader.

I was recently asked my thoughts on how technology and digital trends will shape the future of marketing. As I pondered this question, I took note of all of the ways that I am digitally connected to the outside world. My laptop, smartphone, phablet, tablet, and e-reader were all dripping digital data to some unseen force through my WiFi connection. A fitness tracker awaited the opportunity to observe and report my next activity. Acting as marshals for many of these resources were my modem and router, which collected the needed inputs and outputs and converted my actions into trackable information.

I had a conversation recently with a business associate who was pronouncing dead the discipline of outbound marketing – which, simply stated, is the technique of reaching out to a prospect proactively to gain their attention and ultimately, their business.

This associate went on to say that his recent attempt to send a direct mailer to hundreds of prospects was an abject failure. Hardly any business had resulted from the investment.

When I probed as to the reasons for the failed outbound marketing attempt, I learned that this individual conducted no appreciable follow-up, had not developed a plan to reinforce the message in the mailer and had no rhythm, cadence or even schedule for reaching back out.

It is often forgotten in this brave new world where inbound marketing – abetted by social media and other relatively easy portals for a prospect to initiate contact with a business – rules the day that the outbound side of the equation, when executed well, can still have a place in many business’s toolkits.

If you are reading this blog right now, you are participating in a trend that has transformed the face of marketing as we know it. “Content marketing is …….. creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action,” according to the Content Marketing Institute.

If that sounds a lot like what traditional advertising endeavored to do, you’re correct. Content – its creation, refinement and dissemination through multiple channels of communication – has become the essential recipe to the marketing formula. And, like traditional advertising, the gauge of success, too, for content marketing is, “profitable customer action”, e.g., thought leadership, lead generation – and ultimately, sales.

In my last blog, I talked about the need to have your 2015 marketing plans be mindful of the increasing importance of marketing technology infrastructure, data, content, mobile and privacy regulations.

As the CEO of your company, you’re bombarded with words and phrases like content marketing, inbound marketing and blogging.

It can all seem nebulous unless you define what content marketing actually does for business. Content marketing, done right, is created to answer questions for people. Essentially, you want to become the Wikipedia of your niche. People come to you because they trust you with the right information.

For companies that follow a January-December fiscal year, it’s time to put the finishing touches on the budget and lock in the marketing plans for 2015. However, in this high-tech, fast-moving marketing environment, a year is a long time to be fully committed to plans being put in place now.

Before you hit send on that budget email to your head of finance, it might be worth your while to take one last look to ensure you’ve considered the impact of coming trends. These trends will invariably cause the winds to shift on your marketing landscape sooner than you may have prepared.

I had the opportunity to hear Bo Burlingham speak last year about his upcoming book, Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit on Top.

Many of you might be familiar with Burlingham from his groundbreaking work, Small Giants—Companies That Choose To Be Great Rather Than Big. In his latest book, he takes an in-depth look into the specific phase in a company’s life when its Owners/CEOs/Partners begin to consider exiting their business. His relevant ideas and sharp insights in this discussion of Finish Big were so compelling to me that I wanted to share highlights with you. I encourage you to get the book when it is released at the end of November 2014 so that the concepts below can come alive for you as well.

Today, customers expect to be marketed to in the right place, at the right time, with the right message. If just one of those things is off, your content is at risk of getting deleted, or worse, being marked forever as “spam.“

A key to giving your audience the messaging they want to hear, when they want to hear it, is having marketing and sales teams that work together instead of independently. Sales and marketing alignment is now more important than ever because:

A popular online buzzword right now is “content marketing.” The phrase is mentioned so frequently that I can’t help but recall the song lyrics by Harry Nilsson – “Everybody’s talkin’ at me, but I don’t hear a word they’re saying / Only the echoes of my mind.” Everybody is talking about content marketing and why it matters, but not many people have paused to consider what content marketing truly is and how it can best serve your business.