B2B Marketing Isn't a Rinse-and-Repeat Process

Tan and Tanja team up with Joshua, a Fractional CMO at CMOwashere, to discuss the true meaning of marketing.

Joshua explains that marketing is often misunderstood as a noun, when it's really a verb, an action that involves a creative process and due diligence. Tune in.

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Can’t watch it right now? No problem, there is a full transcript of the video below.

Tan

All right.

Welcome to another episode of CMO Chat.

I'm Tan.

Tanja

And I’m Tanja.

Tan

Okay, Tanja.

Tan

Then we have another special guest

in this episode.

Tanja

Yes, we do.

Tan

Who do we have today?

Tanja

We have Joshua with us.

Joshua is a Factional CMO

at CMOwashere.

Tan

Welcome, Joshua.

Joshua

Thank you, guys.

Glad to be here.

Tan

Thanks for joining.

Where are you right now?

Joshua

I am in the southwest of France, kind of near

Montpellier. Between Montpellier and Nîmes

Living in my little

mountain bubble, trying to figure marketing out a little bit

more from a Zen perspective, maybe.

Tan

Okay, awesome.

Tan

Well, I've been looking forward to

this conversation because I'm a big fan of

words and defining meanings clearly and etymology.

And I know, Joshua, you mentioned

that you told me that it annoys you a little bit when people forget where

the word marketing came from.

It's anything that ends in an ING.

Right.We learn in first grade

it's a verb. I’m doing something, but we forget that marketing

is something that we do.

People

just see it as a thing that you receive.

Is that correct?

Joshua

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

I think there's this inherent confusion

amongst marketers that the marketing,

the act of marketing is an output, right? The noun marketing

rather than the verb marketing. As you said, the act of going through

the process of developing marketing, where that process is, what creates

the noun, which creates the output,

which creates the plan. But I think what we've been doing and you know, how many times do we all sit there and go,

Oh, that's just terrible marketing. And you go, wait a minute,

this really starts to smell like it was more output based than it really

was doing the due diligence. And inherently a creative process, right?

A creative due diligence to get to what is the best possible plan.

But then that art and science of doing marketing

of doing the act of marketing, I think is being lost in the process

either because of speed or fundamentally, I think it's

because people have become addicted to formulas, right?

This notion of,

Oh, I'm going to go and get my MBA

and I'm going to learn all the formulas

and all the tricks,

and then I'll just rinse and repeat.

Inherently,

I think there is this this confusion that marketing is a rinse

and repeat process as opposed to every brand

and product has its own DNA, has its own problems, has its own

strengths and weaknesses, right?

A DNA sequence shows you likelihood.

It shows you how your you know,

where your strengths and weaknesses are.

So you have to go into that DNA

in order to develop the marketing plan by going through marketing

as the verb exercise. Hmm.

That makes sense to you guys?

Tan

Yes, it does make sense for me.

I'm just I'm just so glad

that you brought this to my attention,

because now when I think about it,

nobody says,

you know, people say, like,

I'm working, I'm exercising, I'm sleeping.

Nobody says I'm marketing.

Tanja

Yeah, yeah.

Tan

And it's also like I feel like marketing

is not just something that happens.

Oh, I do two months of marketing

and then I'm done.

They say I do marketing.

Nobady says I’m marketing.

“Let’s go market”

“Let's market tomorrow.”

Tanja

Yeah,

Tan

it doesn't exist.

We forget that it's a verb.

Joshua

Exactly.

I'm so glad you guys are excited about this

because I think this is the crux of where we're losing touch with that.

Again, marketing is not an output.

It is actually a skill.

And I know you're

a big proponent of - listen, it's

not about, you know, let's generate sales.

Generating sales is an output

of doing the act of marketing.

Tan

Right.

Joshua

And you have to do that, that process

that becomes something that isn't.

And I think the problem

now is the copy paste

syndrome of, oh, we're just going to do

the same thing that they are. And I see a lot of marketing heads,

especially large corporations, who decide, you know, like CMO's

that worked in large companies and you know,

and I see them pretty much my whole career like 25 years of working

with CEOs and CMO's and seeing these CMO's that have an incredible playbook for very large enterprise scale

functionalities where they have

a lot of tools at their disposal and then they go out and they're like,

You know what, I'm going to go volunteer.

You know, volunteer

my time to a small company.

And they bring that same playbook.

And that playbook is an absolute disaster.

Y is an absolute disaster because it works

for that product

or it works for that brand. That brand has a DNA sequence.

That was great to solve that way.

But now that you've moved

to another product or another brand,

it has a completely different DNA

sequence.

It's also like saying

and I mean, I believe that everything starts with what's your single

biggest business problem?

That's how you start, in my opinion.

You start off with what's your single

biggest business problem?

And what I find is that whenever

I ask that question from CEOs and CMO's is that I'd say about 90% of the time

they go, Oh, I've got a ton of problems.

I got this, this

and this and this and this.

And it's like, okay,

and this is what I've been telling

you, you know, I've talked about.

This is like, this is why I do what

I've termed business therapy, right?

We need to go

and put the business on the couch and have a therapy session to uncover

what is the biggest business problem.

Yeah, because sometimes

they don't even know themselves.

They might have a lot of problems,

but they don't know.

Tanja

What shall we tackle first?

And I want to add to that as well.

It's not only they don't know the problem, sometimes

they don't even know what they even want. Like when you ask them, okay, what is

the number goal you want to achieve?

Tan

Unwilling to prioritize.

Joshua

Yeah, yeah, prioritize.

Tan

All right.

Joshua

If I want all these things,

which one do you want the most?

I don't know. Or I don't want them.

So what I've been seeing as, again, like,

this is my way of talking about seeing patterns, right? That's what we as marketers and strategists do.

We look for patterns, right?

Either things that are very consistent or things that are very inconsistent.

And those patterns

where I see in doing business therapy and asking them, what is your single

biggest business problem?

And they will list the ten problems that they have

and they want all of them taken care of.

What I often find is that by

going through the process of asking the questions of,

well, let's look at what and identify

what that single business biggest business problem

is, that most likely by identifying and tackling

that one 70% of all the other.

People,

they'll get knocked. Down under it.

And it's like it's like,

you know, a bowling ball, right?

If you hit it just right and all the.

All the domino to fall. Over.

But you have to figure out what is that

first one that you're going to hit.

And it's like the keystone.

Yeah, Keystone

sits there and holds the arch together.

Tan

Joshua, I can tell that

you are so passionate about this subject.

I could talk to you all day, but we're

going to have to end it right here. So

thank you so much for joining us.

Tanja

Thank you, Joshua. You're very welcome.

Joshua

Thank you so much for inviting me.

This has been wonderful.