All Strategy Is Marketing Strategy! And, Research Will Transform Your Business!

Hey!

Due to my travels, I didn’t realize until Monday that last week’s note didn’t go out!

Sorry!

I’ll save it for a later week when I can’t think of the right thing to say!

This week, don’t worry, I’ve got plenty on my mind like:

• How strategy and marketing are so interconnected now that you can’t successfully tear them apart without undermining your business.

• The extreme value of doing market research constantly in your business.

So let’s get to it.

As a jumping-off point, let me ask y’all a question:

• During the pandemic, what do you think was the most valuable thing you did to set yourself up for success after the pandemic?

I’ll go first, I spent some time studying marketing and strategy.

Formally and informally.

Why does this matter?

For a few reasons, but let me give you three:

• I looked at some focused learning as a security blanket for the post-pandemic future.

• I wanted to make sure my knowledge was still relevant.

• I wanted to challenge my thinking.

If you’ve spent as much time around the industries I’ve been in a lot over the years, you realize that challenging your thinking isn’t always high on folks’ list of things to do.

But as a colleague, Tom Goodwin, noted earlier this week, the real cool stuff happens at the edges or where ideas clash.

Hey…I knew this a long time ago. I just didn’t realize it was a lesson that needed to be spelled out to people.

So one area that I had my thinking challenged and changed is around the intersection of marketing and strategy.

I’ve had a couple of really great marketing professors over the years and if I had to digest and share their teachings to me in one simple phrase it would be always do strategy before tactics.

Where I have always been is that corporate strategy and marketing strategy were two separate processes.

I was wrong.

The reality after a year or so of the pandemic is that I know that you can’t break the two apart.

Why?

Because marketing is everything your business does.

Every single decision you make is a marketing decision.

Every marketing decision is a strategic decision.

On and on.

Why does this matter?

Want some examples?

I like to tell the story of the University of Alabama and the hiring of Nick Saban as head football coach.

When President Witt signed off on hiring Coach Saban, he realized that it was a marketing opportunity to elevate the university to a higher level in the world of colleges in attracting the best students and gaining attention for the work the university was undertaking.

Since 2007, Alabama has won on the football field and in the classroom. The football team has won 6 national championships. The university has grown around 58% in that same time with the number of high achieving students increasing as well.

All strategy is marketing strategy. All marketing strategy impacts your strategy.

How do you make better strategic decisions?

Research!

Research will transform your business in ways you may not even realize when you first begin doing research regularly.

Over the past few months, I’ve talked a lot more about the power of research and sharing things that I use to do research like:

• Ethnography

• Secondary Research

• Primary Research

• Focus Groups

One idea that I’ve shared a bit over the last bit is the idea of Net Promoter Score. I’ve hopefully shown you how simple it is to measure, how impactful it is when you track it, and how to use it to learn additional qualitative information that can improve your business.

A few readers reached out to me to share their stories of measuring their NPS, what they learned, and how this improved their business.

One of those businesses, Eventellect, has a really good story to share that helps illustrate how powerful research can be in helping you change how you create value and create new opportunities.

Let me go further.

When I first started talking about NPS, Eventellect’s Co-Founder, Patrick Ryan, reached out to me and said, “We just did some research and our NPS was 77.”

I was intrigued because 77 is unbelievable.

In context, the last time I ran the NPS survey for The Business of Value, I had a 40. Very good, but nowhere near a 77.

I’ve seen Apple’s NPS listed at 72.

As a standalone examination of the way that you engage your market, the NPS number is a great snapshot of where you are.

There are two things that can really add punch to this research.

The first is measuring your NPS over time.

I shared the score of this newsletter, but I’ve been measuring the score of my ticket newsletter for much longer and I’ve seen the score improve from 53 to 67 over the last year as I’ve tracked the data. Along with that improvement in score, I’ve seen the newsletter’s audience grow to add about 20% to the audience which is a couple of hundred people at a time when the world of tickets is pretty much shut around the world.

Tracking your score over time, you can see growth or decline by looking at your score. If you are going up, you often see your business expanding.

Simple as that.

You track your NPS by asking the simple question: “How likely are you to recommend ____ to your friends or colleagues?”

The second aspect that can add punch to your research immediately without having to track your score over time is by adding two additional questions to your survey:

• “Briefly can you explain why you gave us this score?”

• “Would you be willing to have us follow up and learn more about your answers?”

You can go deeper and we will talk about that in a moment, but if you just start there you will learn a great deal.

Want to see it in action? Click here!

I’ve shown you the basics, but what I want to teach you this morning is about the power of going even further with your research and the impact that can have.

Because that is exactly what the team at Eventellect did with their research.

And, the adjustments it enabled them to make helped them create new value during the pandemic and to position their business in a way that will benefit them heading out of the pandemic.

Let me explain.

First, they assembled an extensive survey that was built around getting a holistic understanding of what their partners valued, wanted, and needed in their relationship with Eventellect.

Their survey was tight and focused, the key to success when pulling together a survey.

What do I mean by tight and focused?

30 questions or less.

Second, they analyzed their data.

One challenge folks encounter when they do research is that they stay at the surface level and don’t read between the lines.

It is very important to get a number of eyes on the data. To look at it from different angles. And, if possible, to poke holes in the research to see if it holds up.

Eventellect did that as well.

Gathering feedback from up and down the organization on what specific departments and employees saw in the data.

Finally, they took action.

This is where the transformation for all of us happens in taking action.

In the midst of the pandemic, they focused on three key ideas that stood out to them:

• Their partners were attached to the way that they focused on shared outcomes, good and bad.

• Their partners loved the data they provided but didn’t always have the time to read huge data sets and reports.

• Their partners needed more than a one-size-fits-all approach to selling tickets.

How did this impact their changes?

The changes were simple, but the impact has been profound.

First, by focusing on a common vision, Eventellect has been able to be a trusted advisor to their partners. This has allowed them to change the way that they work with their partners, especially during the pandemic, to focus on much more strategic conversations not built on one specific area of their partners’ business, but holistically.

Second, looking at the way they presented data enabled the Eventellect team to change the way they shared data with their partners. As Lisa Walker, SVP of Business Development for College Athletics, told me, “We’ve repackaged our insights so that a busy executive can find something valuable in 30 seconds.”

They still have the full report, but by emphasizing an immediate payoff, it has given their data a much heftier impact. Something Lisa calls, “First Class Data”!

I dig that term.

Finally, Kate Howard, Eventellect’s Chief Commercial Officer, talked with me about a program that they call “The Unified Single Game Theory” and the power that has had on being able to help their partners adjust their strategies when necessary to maximize attendance, revenue, or selling out specific locations.

This matters because in many cases, folks talk about “scale” or “standardization” when the solution that a customer or partner needs is something unique or specific to their situation.

By highlighting their ability to deliver on those unique situations, Eventellect gained a significant advantage.

I point all of this stuff out because this clearly shows the power of research and looking at what your customers are telling you to change your business.

I’ll tie it up by focusing back on me and how I’ve used research over the last few years to improve the things I did before the pandemic and through the pandemic to set myself up for the future.

First, surveying my audience led to the creation of “The Whiteboard Workshop” which is a 1 or 2-day on-site workshop built around helping businesses get unstuck, reset their goals, and put together a set of action items to get them to the next stage in their business.

The idea came because I talked with a couple of readers of the newsletter and listeners of the podcast that told me they really enjoy the way that I help reframe problems, create boundaries for solutions, and focus on action steps.

I’d say that this is ethnography and focus grouping in action.

Second, I use examples from my own experience a lot more in everything I do.

Why?

Because of the first survey I ran y’all told me that these stories hit harder for you and helped you understand how to use the concept a lot more.

Done and done!

Finally, I had some conversations and did some surveying that pointed me to the idea that folks wanted more ways to learn some of the concepts and ideas that I could only scratch the surface of in a newsletter or article like pricing, research, and other topics.

This has led me to post short lessons in my podcast stream, host a few more webinars, and create other things to teach concepts and ideas in a way that people can get more value.

One thing I can offer you right now is a worksheet that I teamed up with Eventellect to create around Net Promoter Score that tells you about it with a little more depth, helps you map out your survey, and gives you context to judge your results.

And, once the pandemic is over…we will get back to doing things in person again and I’ll have a few classes and seminars to share when the time is right.

So that’s it.

Maybe this is a long one, but the key takeaways are:

• Strategy and marketing strategy are linked at the hip now.

• Do your research.

• Your research will transform you.

As a side note, research doesn’t have to be scary, expensive, or take forever either. If y’all are curious about learning more about research, drop me a note!

See you next week.

Dave