How to Up Your Game

The weather in southern California is lovely most of the year. I particularly enjoy the spring when everything is in full bloom. Springtime is also when I step up my outdoor fitness game, mostly because of the extra sunshine we get from longer days and daylight saving time. This spring I decided to add a new skill to my repertoire: I’m learning to golf.

I am taking a class with a very patient golf pro. Our first session started with putting because that’s the goal of the game—to put the ball in the hole. I had no idea how intricate this stick-and-ball game is! Your whole body has to be engaged, oftentimes in ways that are counterintuitive. For instance, I have elbows that give me a whole range of motion. I can bend them to help me scratch my back or reach awkwardly placed items in my garage. However, while putting, elbows are not supposed to bend. You basically turn yourself into a human pendulum to putt. Who knew?

I spent my first couple of lessons practicing my putting moves, while trying to get the ball past several practice ribbons that my coach had placed on the green. By the third lesson, he decided that I was ready to “read the green” and hit the ball into the hole.

Reading the green is no joke. It requires inspection, perspective and anticipation.

It turns out that the green is not flat. (Duh. That would make for a boring game.) It has slopes and contours that you might not ever pay attention to if you don’t play the game. Inspection of the green is required to understand its configuration. You need to gather relevant information to know what you’re dealing with.

Looking at the green from multiple angles gives you a perspective of what might happen to the ball when you putt it. It allows you to see how the slope of the green changes. It has been said that the view from behind the hole is one of the most important. In fact, the best golfers master the green by studying it from all perspectives.

A successful putt may not come from aiming directly for the hole. More often, it comes from an indirect line to the hole that anticipates where the ball will roll. Basically, you hit the ball, it (hopefully) follows the line and, then, the break and gravity take over. With skill (and luck for some of us), you eventually get the ball in the hole.

Understanding marketing is like reading the green on a golf course. It has slopes and contours that are not so obvious to anyone who does not follow the game closely. Identifying and inspecting the right metrics is critical for peak marketing performance. Gathering relevant information is key to understanding the landscape.

It is never enough to look at marketing from one perspective. How many followers you have or how much engagement a social media post receives are key metrics, but they must be considered in conjunction with top line performance. Yet, revenue growth alone is an insufficient metric. If you do not know how your marketing spend is impacting your bottom line, it will be extremely difficult to optimize performance. You must look at it from all angles.

Meeting your forecasted growth and profit targets is like sinking a putt. Every quarter, with its unique curves and challenges, is a new opportunity. But, with great skill and a good coach, you will take fewer strokes to reach your goal.

Katherine Hunter-Blyden?is a CMO Partner at TechCXO. She is a senior marketing executive with P&L management experience. As an expert in strategic plan development, product management and customer acquisition, Katherine helps businesses meet their goals with data-driven, quantifiable results.