Before the US allies invaded Iwo Jima, the Navy bombarded the island for 10 days. The reasoning behind such maneuvers is to ‘soften up’ the beachhead and clear out enemy combatants so allied troops can land on the beach safely.
War, in a way, is a crude analogy for certain aspects of marketing. Instead of the navy bombarding beaches to clear out enemy combatants, marketing is bombarding an account to raise awareness so our supporting salespeople can land on that beach safely and have a warm conversation.
Ok, so it’s a little different and a hell of a lot less dangerous, but over the weekend I couldn’t get this thought out of my head:
Marketing is War.
It’s a war for attention. It’s a war for budget. And ultimately, it’s a war for trust.
And you’re not just up against what you perceive to be your direct competition, you’re up against an entire market. There is only a certain amount of budget allocated every year for tech purchases and you better be damn sure these companies are asking “is this mission-critical tech for us this year?”
Marketing’s job is to fight viciously and secure that precious budget by any legal means necessary. And it doesn’t stop at bombarding beaches…
You better have your value prop and differentiators on lockdown and baked into every piece of sales collateral. You better have a killer sales deck that drives action from the account. You better have a buyer’s guide that positions your solution as best-in-class and business-critical for the account. And finally, you better have a comprehensive proposal that sells the why again so as it makes its way through the account, it reminds every stakeholder that needs to sign off on the solution why they are doing so and why they are doing so now.
Our job as marketers is to make sure every battle is won before it’s fought and give our salespeople all the ammunition they need to win that war.
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