3 Questions To Ask In Your Next Marketing Meeting

Go-To-Market Shenanigans (#006)
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3 Questions To Align Your Marketing Department 📈

There are two marketing departments in this world—those with budgets and those without. Neither is right nor wrong; it is often a factor of growth stage and how much upper-level management wants to be involved with day-to-day decision-making. PS, if upper-level management allows you to make plans without micro-managing, that’s a good sign.

So far in my career, I have had the pleasure of leading both types of marketing departments, budgeted and non-budgeted. If asked which one I prefer, it’s hard to say… There are too many variables: the people, the product, whether we’re raising capital, reporting to investors, etc.

Variables aside, I have found nothing is quite as sharpened as a marketing department running sufficiently off of a lean budget, meaning they have the ability to spend but they choose not to, which often means they are maximizing on current spending, which YES means that just because you have a budget doesn’t mean spending it all is a strategy. I get it; sometimes you have to use it or lose it, and that’s great, but blowing a budget is also flat-out irresponsible; in this day and age, there are too many qualified options to maximize your return and, most importantly, measure it. So, these are my favorite drills to maximize our capital efficiency and ensure that if we have to spend the whole budget, we’re murdering our sales goals.

My favorite questions to ask any marketing team: (bound to spice up your next team meeting)

1. If the budget no longer existed, what would you do right now to hit our monthly revenue goals?

2. What is the short-term ROI on what you are working on this week?

3. What is the long-term ROI on what you are working on this week?

You’ll notice a contrasting shift between long-term and short-term thinking. I have found it challenging for my teams to view their time as a measurable contribution to the entire department; your daily input is often overlooked, especially when we’re focused on the big picture and desired outcomes. By understanding the short-term and long-term effects of our day-to-day work, we put our team in a position to feel valued and empowered by the end results we are all working to achieve. Some work is seen immediately, and some needs to be built; it all serves a purpose. Sometimes, we need to be forced to acknowledge our purpose.

Out of all these questions, my favorite one is asking what the team would do if the budget no longer existed. It forces everyone to actually think about what they’re doing and how it contributes to our revenue goals. If we’re behind, we need to focus more on what’s in front of us; if we’re ahead, how do we savor our budget so that we can spend it on something that would make an unforgettable, long-lasting impression?

This typically leads to the strategy behind a winning campaign and forces everyone to assemble their best and most reasonable resources to execute efficiently.

Be original about sharing your originality, and take the time to make your team analyze their level of importance.

We’re all critical; be responsible about how you use that thinking.

Teddy Giard

In case you don’t already know, my name is Teddy, and I operate a firm that specializes in marketing strategies for outdoor brands. Our approach is simple: align your product development timeline with your marketing production timeline; by doing so, we can own the distribution of both our message and our products.

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