Revenue-Driven Marketing Mindset: 3 Lessons from Snoop, Puffy, and Beyoncé

Today, most marketing organizations focus on (and are measured by) the amount of activities they execute. The common mentality is if you send enough emails, mail enough flyers, run enough events, generate enough followers, and push enough ads then the revenue will come. Monthly and quarterly marketing reports primarily include open rates, click performance, download numbers, attendees, followers and other vanity metrics. Focusing on marketing activity, and the direct metrics tied to those activities was fine-enough at one point. However, today over 75% of marketing leaders say they now own or share responsibility for their P&L, according to Gartner. With accountability to revenue, marketing teams must shift from an activity-driven marketing mindset to a revenue-driven marketing mindset.

Listening to one of my "Made for You" playlists on Spotify Gin and Juice played, followed by All About the Benjamins, and then Formation. 

As I stood at my desk working and dancing, dancing and working I started thinking. I've been planning an article on the revenue-driven marketing mindset for quite some time and I found my muse in the music. Here are two key lessons for marketers:

 I've got "my mind on my money and my money on my mind" because "It's all about the Benjamin's baby!"

Businesses are in business to make money; I've never seen a CEO direct their teams to make less money in the coming year. Although how they aim to grow may vary; companies are always looking to improve performance. So, the first lesson for Modern Marketers comes from Snoop Dogg and Sean "Puffy" Combs; is to focus on the goal. All marketing plans should align to meaningful metrics and attribute revenue generated (at least in part) to the various marketing efforts.

My advice is to begin your marketing planning process by asking "what are we trying to accomplish" and answering that question using this formula:

X% OR X# of [AUDIENCE] to [ACTION] which yields Y for [COMPANY]

Example statements:

• 75% of current customers will upgrade to the latest release of the software which will increase revenue by $3M and reduce the customer support overhead costs by 10%.
• 30 Net New customers to purchase the latest widget which will increase annual ARR by $1.5M
• 17% of current customers to be using 3+ products which will increase TLV to 40% yielding $12.6M additional revenue over 5 years

"Ariana Grande reportedly got paid twice as much as Beyoncé to headline Coachella, and fans are furious"

Listening to Formation I was reminded of the headline that lead readers to believe that Ariana Grande was paid twice what her predecessor was for her Coachella performance. Arguably Beyoncé is a higher tier artist than Ariana; and fans regard her as the "Michael Jackson" of this generation. Subsequent articles disputed that fact; but despite what either artist earned, what we do know is that in addition to a salary for the performance Beyoncé negotiated full creative control and all-rights to the content. There are two key lessons that we can learn from Queen Bey:

Lesson 1: Content is EVERYTHING! And the details matter.

Beyoncé had a hand in absolutely everything related to the content she was producing. She understood her audience, their interests, and the vision for what she was trying to accomplish. She also began the creative process with a plan for re-purposing the content. The shows primary purpose was as a live performance, but it was also live-streamed and later turned into a film.

As marketers we so often focus on creating such a large volume of content that it loses originality and lacks pizzazz. We end up with a lengthy list of generic content that doesn't speak to the target audience and doesn't move them to act. We also spend significant amounts of time and budget to create content without a long-term plan for how we will maximize the value of it. If we take the Beyoncé approach to content development and spend time perfecting the plan and focusing on the details, we can create fewer pieces of content that have a higher ROI.

Lesson 2: Revenue-Minded Marketers Focus on the Long-game

Let's assume the original articles were true and that Beyoncé earned less than Ariana, and that this was because of her negotiation for the rights to the performance. This long-term approach to revenue generation is insightful for marketers who have longer sales cycles. So often I talk to clients with average sales cycles that are 12-18 months, but all their marketing plans are short-term (1-6 months at most). When we shift our mindset to the end goal we start to thing, and plan for moving a prospect through the entire journey and marketing's role in supporting the process. 

#ContentMarathon