Now that you have decided to leave your media mix “as is” for next year AND invest in some rigorous customer research, AND be making movies, on location (cue Dire Straits), let’s move on to the fourth and final big marketing question for 2013.
The Fourth Marketing Question For 2013 goes like this:
Are we going to go another year with zero investment in improving our knowledge of marketing’s fundamentals ?
Generous to a fault, we will once again provide the answer:
No.
That is the only correct answer, because you and/or your marketing support staff can’t be running around all of 2013 without satisfactory answers to these “subquestions”:
>>> Do I/we really understand the essentials of customer segmentation?
>>> Do/I we know how to reposition a brand or product from scratch?
>>> Do I/we have any idea on how to put together a defensible, quantitative market forecast?
>>> Do I/we have the skills required to conduct a customer journey analysis?
Everyone claims to be too busy, under budget, and without enough staff. Yet hundreds of thousands of marketing professionals somehow find the time to read Seth Godin, Richard Branson, Mashable, and TechCrunch. Where the ephemeral reigns supreme. Every single day.
The answer to the Fourth Marketing Question of 2013 – why aren’t we spending the money and taking the time to up our core marketing skills ? – is easy. We thought there was a shortcut to being smarter than the other guy. When all along, that was the wrong goal.
As far as marketing knowledge goes, we just need to be smarter than we were the day before.