I talk to my teams a lot about the 95% and the 5%. You can do 95% of the work, and the program can utterly fail because you didn’t do the final 5%.
Here’s an example:
Your team plans and executes a “perfect” webinar program. Lots of people register and attend from your target market. The content is stellar. You’re feeling great.
But….your team didn’t properly roll the program out to Sales. They don’t know the first thing about the content or how to follow up. Worse yet, you held the event at the end of the quarter when reps are trying to close deals. The leads linger. By the time you get everything sorted, they’ve gone cold.
Did the program fail? Should you do it again?
The the truth is, you don’t know. Even though the marketing team worked very hard on the program, it failed because they didn’t close the loop. All that work ended in frustration and didn’t move the business forward.
I see this type of thing happen everywhere in virtually every type of program.
Marketing execution must be crisp and complete. Demand no less. As I’ve shared before, some programs won’t work. That’s ok. But it shouldn’t be because of an execution failure.
To help ensure effective execution, I recommend two specific actions:
Look for marketing executors that are neurotic about details. You typically won’t find this at the CMO level, but someone has to be responsible for making sure the details are in focus. This person is worth their weight in gold.
Where possible, create reusable checklists for different types of programs. This keeps everyone on the same page and ensure that details won’t be forgotten in the fog of marketing war.