Are We Solving Or Scaling?

Straight to the punchline:?

Even organizations that are trying to scale have problems they first need to solve.?

When it comes to growth.?

None of us like to admit it. But in marketing – and especially in tougher times – we’re always trying to figure something out. Even things we believe we had previously figured out.?

But we feel pressured to scale, right? You’ve heard all this a bunch of times:?

“We need to get back to growth!”

“Can you get us more demo requests?”

“If we don’t hit the target…”

Everybody wants the outcome of scaling, but very few are willing to put enough energy into solving. Which is a core issue so many marketing teams have to deal with.?

And one of the classic ways to try to scale marketing efforts is to hire an agency.?

But in most cases it’s not about scaling marketing.?

It’s about figuring out how to drive growth (that can sustain and eventually scale). During a particular period. Given a specific set of constraints. One initiative at a time.

How to Hire an Agency

You know how the advice around hiring has turned into this “do the job first and then hire for it” type of thing??

Why wouldn’t it be similar with agencies??

Oh, because they have more people or something?!

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:?

Most agencies can only scale something that’s already working – they can’t actually solve real problems for you.?

There are of course exceptions, and we obviously believe Elevate Demand is different, but that’s besides the point.?

The point is that there’s no way you’d bet on a typical B2B marketing agency heroically saving a company in its pursuit of growth in 2024.?

An annual contract and fixed monthly cost to “ramp up some programs” just doesn’t make sense for most right now. It’s too costly in terms of both money and time, plus it’s too risky.?

But marketing teams still need help.

With exactly what though??

Precision.?

Which comes from clear focus, deep expertise and optimized processes.?

The Simple Path to Growth

Objective-driven growth sprints is one of the reliable ways to execute on this.?

Here’s how it works:

You select one key area to focus on – could be messaging, acquisition or whatever – and dedicate 30, 60 or 90 days (depending on the nature of the sprint) to get it fully figured out. Within the reality your business currently faces.?

And then you do another one of these growth sprints for the next thing you need to figure out.

These objective-driven growth sprints lead to focus, focus leads to faster learning, faster learning leads to outgrowing the competition.

But as practical and compelling as it is, we’ve talked to dozens of B2B marketing leaders so far this year, and most of them simply don’t have the oxygen to do this inside their orgs.?

As a result, they’re stuck doing a little of multiple things. When we’re not deep enough in a particular objective or focus area, we never break past the surface level issues with that path.

Which is why we now offer it and believe other agencies should too.?

As a more appropriate alternative to an annual contract with a fixed monthly cost against some open-ended and unrealistically-optimistic programs.

Individual growth sprints driven by one specific objective at a time.?

Either you already know what that first objective is for you or you would run an “impact sprint” to determine what would be the highest impact areas for your business right now.?

If we were in-house marketing leaders again, we would absolutely run some version of this.?

The most powerful thing would be to bounce this up against the formula for low-friction customer acquisition to move up in one of the three key areas at a time:?

DISTRIBUTION x AHA MOMENTS x CORE VALUE

Meaning:?

• What is the primary distribution into our audience that builds consumption habits?
• How can we drive our audience to aha moments around our brand narrative?
• How can we deliver the core value of our offering pre purchase?

So we would run growth sprints focused on improving our distribution, the aha moments we facilitate and the core value we deliver.?

Because it’s not about the funnel anymore - it’s about the formula.?

Anyway, I hope you’re able to focus in on your ideal version of this too, whether you’re doing it on your own or through the right agency.?