There are a number of helpful methodologies and frameworks that I've picked up over the years and find useful in structuring the process of getting from CEO desire to desired outcome.


The Strategic Marketing Process


This was developed by Professor Malcolm Macdonald at Cranfield School of Management and was brought into Pilkington Glass by a consultant called Grant Oliver operating under the Marketing Process Company.  I was a member of a strategy review team reporting into the board under the direction of the Marketing Director at the time, David Pinder.  The outcome was a series of recommendations that would add £100M in UK revenues over three years while maintaining gross margin.  The process looked like this:













One of my favourite outputs was the Directional Policy Matrix which very simply showed where to focus limited resources for maximum yield.  Comparing market attractiveness factors with business strengths is obvious but seldom done and a lot of the value comes in the determination of how to segment your product/market (Ansoff Matrix) options, how to determine market attractiveness and how to determine whether you're better or worse than the competition at delivering that product into that market.


Pragmatic Marketing


Along similar lines, a framework was developed in Silicon Valley to manage the product life-cycles of software products by a company named Pragmatic Marketing.  This proved helpful in my days at Amdocs where I drove the product strategy for products in the area of Marketing Automation, Analytics and Business Intelligence.  This framework was used to kill, build and acquire technologies and led to a global partnership with SAS.


Digital Marketing


The digital realm is constantly evolving with new business models, a technology arms race, hoards of self-proclaimed SEO experts and digital/creative agencies all vying for the attention of a new, mobile, social consumer.  Here are a few depictions that I refer to on a regular basis:


The basis for all these techniques is built on a common principles:

  • Content - build content that your audience wants to read (not what you want them to think) or engage with that makes them see you as relevant and valuable - make it good enough that they want to share it to reflect your glory on themselves.  Build content that maps to industry, buyer persona and critically, sales stage.  Done correctly, you should be able to automate much of the early stages of a sales cycle, certainly awareness and education, thus lowering cost of sale and winning friends in the sales team
  • Getting people to your site - compelling content, social media outreach, inbound links on partner/customer/affiliate sites, search and display advertising, ad re-targeting (to get them back again)... basically filling the top of the funnel as cost effectively as possible
  • Maximising conversion - whether success is getting people to declare themselves by downloading content, to becoming a registered free user, to getting them to and through your web store, testing and measurement are key to defining and refining the best traffic sources and site design
  • Success breeds success - ensure that customers are able to leave reviews and give thought to customer evidence techniques such as videos, testimonials, case studies, webinars etc.