Marketing pothole (#3 of 3): What will the boss think
This is the biggest one, and the reason for the whole series.
I now believe that almost all marketing decisions are first and foremost made without the marketplace in mind.
That’s a pretty bold statement, but here goes.
I think that most marketers, most of the time, make their marketing decisions based on what they think the committee, or their boss, or their family or their friends or the blog readers with email will say.
When I speak to groups, the folks who are stuck, or who are not finding the growth they are hoping for, rarely say, "we don’t know how to get the market to respond." Instead, they say, "my boss or the factory or the committee or the design folks or the CFO won’t…"
Now, of course most of this is whining. Most of this is nonsense. It’s not everyone else’s fault. But that’s not my point. My point is that if you market intending to please those people, you only have yourself to blame.
Great marketing pleases everyone on the team, sooner or later. But at the beginning, great marketing pleases almost no one. At the beginning, great marketing is counter-intuitive, non-obvious, challenging and apparently risky. Of course your friends, shareholders, stakeholders and bosses won’t like it. But they’re not doing the marketing, you are.