Marketing Focus: A Field Guide to Improving Marketing Operations

The marketing function of most organizations continues to evolve at an exceedingly rapid pace. Primarily fueled by digital technologies, tools and trends, marketing teams are faced with a growing level of complexity in the way they operate. And, with this complexity comes an overwhelming number of choices and decisions, a need for speed to stay competitive, and ultimately higher levels of stress. There's also the problem with the inherent nature of how the marketing function is perceived and the typical makeup of its contributors. Part of its allure is the seemingly endless creative possibilities available for achieving growth or making an impact, as well as the need for experimentation as a means to better influence human behavior. The combination of higher levels of performance uncertainty, open-ended possibilities for strategic aim and rapid change of consumer preferences, can often lead to chaotic and uncontrolled environments. While some chaos is welcome and even necessary, not seeking to develop a more structured, sophisticated system or continuously striving to make operational improvements is a mistake. The FOCUS framework is a collection of concepts for helping a marketing team gain better focus on doing the work that really matters by achieving greater clarity, organization, control, alignment and sustainability around activities and initiatives. Distractions could include spending too much time on administrative, low value activities, chasing too many new ideas and constantly reinventing the wheel. With more focus, distractions can be reduced. While suited primarily for teams of many, the concepts of this book can be applied to teams of any size starting at one, simply scaling the approaches as necessary. This is not a comprehensive prescription, but rather a collection of tools and techniques to help you run marketing more efficiently and effectively. Given the overwhelming number of choices and options, a focused mindset can help keep sanity.