Name the Problem
Most marketing projects start something that seems simple enough.
Someone says something like -- we need people to know about this new feature we’re launching. Or -- we need to generate new business, we’re going to do x (webinar, webinar series, etc.).
The problem with this approach is...we’re not stating the problem we’re trying to solve.
Whatever we do -- building a product, launching a new feature, crafting a campaign -- we need to name explicitly the problem we’re solving. And it has to be written down, clearly and simply, so everyone involved is reading off the same script.
And a campaign brief is not enough. Most of them clearly name the creative deliverables and the metrics to measure success. But not the reason why we’re doing this in the first place. That’s bigger picture than what we’re making, who it’s for, or what data points will prove the value of your work.
Your work will likely need to address brand, pipeline, churn, customer engagement, product, or product marketing challenges within that overarching objective. And when you name those things up front, the creative flows faster, the tactics are clearer, even the success metrics are kind of no-brainers.
Too often, each stakeholder has a different idea of the problem we’re aiming to solve with a marketing project.
Maybe we need customers to use an existing feature and prospects to understand it exists. Maybe we need more leads in general. Maybe we need more qualified leads. Maybe we need our leads to be more sales-ready at hand-off (meaning, they need to understand the product better, which of their most pressing problems it can solve, and how).
There’s a big difference between saying: ‘we want to generate new business’ vs. ‘we want to attract net-new leads who understand that we can solve x for them with y product.’ Or ‘we need to engage x sales-ready* leads with budget authority, who will turn into x new deals this quarter, because we’re aiming for 10x growth this quarter.’
*If your team hasn’t defined sales-ready, in writing, that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.
A fully thought-out, useful campaign brief includes a high-level statement that defines the problem we’re solving for the business.
The three why’s can be helpful here. (Five why’s if you want. But three are usually sufficient.)
Asking each stakeholder to answer why, three levels deep, generally is enough to get them to examine their own drivers and for you to understand them well enough to align them into the bigger picture.
So you finish off your brief, with your perfect problem we’re solving objective-statement. If you’re very formal, key stakeholders literally sign off on it. — or at least a verbal agreement.
(Who are your stakeholders? Your key stakeholders might be someone in marketing, someone in sales, and the wildcards. How involved is your CEO in marketing activities? What about product or customer success?) Whomever you need to be on board to keep all the teams moving together, you get a stakeholder to sign off on the problem you’re solving.
At every stage of the project, where things could’ve taken a detour, they don’t. Because you can always point back to that solid statement of why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Whether you can’t get aligned on the tactics or budget, or someone wants to wordsmith that email, or someone else wants to more deeply explore the flow of those webinar slides...you can point back to the problem you’ve all agreed you’re solving here.
By the way, this isn’t just helpful for marketing. I’ve seen my customer success and product teams adapt my campaign brief template for their own projects, too. Give me a shout if you’d like to see how I do it.