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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.


 

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.




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