Which camp are you in?
The Peanut Butter approach
Do you spread your marketing efforts and resources evenly throughout the year? Is this influenced by different members of the team asking to be at multiple “key industry events”? Or meeting requests across the various product or regional groups? This is the inertia and the constant gravity of the business that pushes you to spread your efforts (and budget) over the course of the year. That’s the Peanut Butter approach.
In a noisy, attention-deficit world, this can be the kiss of death for your marketing. It spreads your investment and activity so thinly that you never move the needle regarding cut-through, awareness or customer engagement. It also has major implications for team dynamics, behaviour, as well as the quality of your Go-To-Market (GTM) efforts.
The Lightning Strike approach
What’s the alternative? The Lightning Strike strategy means that you have a concentrated burst of activity over a defined period of time, usually for two to three weeks in duration, with likely two of these peaks per year.
This cuts through the noise of the market and truly moves the needle for your awareness, and drives clear, measurable impact on pipeline and business impact. It makes media and analysts sit up and notice you. It shows your channel partners that you are on the move and shaking up the market. It rattles your competition.
This doesn’t mean you don’t have any other marketing activities throughout the year; this is your “Rolling Thunder”, where certain company news, announcements, and campaigns are executed to feed the business with leads and awareness.
How to commit to a Lightning Strike GTM strategy
You can, however, mindfully break the Peanut Butter cycle and commit to a Lightning Strike GTM Strategy. This is more than a change in tactics. It has deep implications for team behaviour and leadership:
- The Strike drives alignment and shared purpose across the entire company. While marketing plays a large and central role, the Strike is intended to give everyone a role to play. It is not just a marketing thing. The Sales team must make customers show up. Channels and Alliances need to deliver partner support. The CEO must be personally involved with the Strike and communications and execution around it. This drives alignment and shared purpose, but it also means a multiplier effect of the Strike. It means that the team, and the Strike, are viral. It means that every scrap of resources and energy across the company is being fully harnessed.
- The CEO and top management love the Strike concept once they understand it. It creates a platform and initiative for the CEO and management team to get their arms around the entire organisation. It enables top management to prioritise and challenge the team to deliver on key components of the Strike across key products being ready; enhanced channels and alliances; key account and customer targeting; media coverage; or analyst commentary/rankings.
Also Read: How Category Design drives productivity and efficiency
To fully execute your Lightning Strike, you will need to consider these critical elements and drivers:
Your “Strike” has at its heart a compelling Point of View (POV). This problem-led story and narrative draw your audience in by describing a problem that is relevant to them. It’s in a conversational tone but is compelling and motivational. It then leads to the solution that is required. And then, and only then, can you mention your product and differentiation.
Having a clear, compelling POV is critical to your Strike. It weaves throughout your announcements, presentations, media pitches, and analyst presentations. There’s an art and science to creating a truly great POV, and you must have this asset in place for an effective, kick-butt Lightning Strike.
What is your Category strategy? Given that we are always in a Category, are you following the existing description (not recommended)? Or are you redefining the Category? Or create an entirely new Category? This can and should be a critical element of your POV.
You need a big idea also to help drive your content and creative elements in the strike. What creative twist and set of taglines can you create? What guerilla marketing event can you stage? Is there a creative, high-impact direct mailer/item that can be delivered to your key customers or alliance partners?
Is there new data and research that can be created? This can factor into your promotions, presentations, and media pitches. It gives your customers and partners data that they, in turn, can use. Media love fresh data and will publish it in their story.
Is there a third-party event during the Strike that you can leverage? The Lightning Strike rule for this is that if you are going to be at an event, then dominate it. Don’t just do the standard dog and pony show with a booth and speaker slot. Do something creative that dominates the event.
How will you leverage channels and alliances? What can they also announce during the Strike? Can you distribute joint press releases? How can budgets be combined?
How can you have analysts (either technology or industry) release an update about your organisation and set of product announcements? To align this timing, you will need to pre-brief them four to five weeks in advance under NDA.
What creative media pitches will you create? How will you bundle all your announcements and new research/data for a high-impact pitch?
There are other tactical components to include, but the above illustrates how you must bundle together an intense set of content and assets to drive a truly great Strike. Companies that adopt this strategy usually run two Strikes per year.
This five to six-month period means that you have some updates and tweaks to your POV, new announcements to bundle together, new channels and alliances, new customers and logos to show, and other factors that have changed over this timeframe.
Also Read: How G-P aims to redefine the EOR market through its global growth technology
As further context, the Lightning Strike is the GTM step in the broader design-thinking around Category Design.
Politeness is the poison of collaboration
Considering the Lightning Strike strategy and execution, it becomes clear it is also about commitment and courage.
It’s the courage to have shared responsibility to deliver across the team, from the CEO to sales, to product, to channels, to marketing. It breaks the cycle and mentality that go-to-market is always marketing’s responsibility.
Some team members may not like the visibility and commitment that the Strike brings. Members of your Sales, Marketing, Product, or Channels teams may want to return to Peanut Butter.
The question then becomes:
In this noisy, chaotic environment, do you want a homogenised, washed-out same old, same-old approach? Or a Lightning Strike that will cut through the noise, scare your competition, and deliver measurable results?
Do you want to position or be positioned by the competition aggressively?
Boom! Execute your Lightning Strike and out-position the competition!
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