By Steve Wolgemuth
Don’t pick up The Crucial 12 if you want to understand marketing. It is not for you. Pick up The Crucial 12 if you, as a leader, want to get “bang for your buck” marketing efforts. This is a book on how leaders lead (rather than abdicate) marketing efforts.
About the author:
Steve Wolgemuth is the CEO of YDOP, an award-winning digital marketing agency in Lancaster, Pennsylvania since 2006.
The book in a sentence (or more):
A leader’s behavior affects marketing outcomes. Leaders don’t need to become great marketers, they need to become great marketing leaders. Steve writes, “I wrote The Crucial 12 as a guide for business leaders who want to develop their marketing leadership skills." In it, readers will discover and unpack 12 essential questions they must ask not to become great marketers, but leaders who ensure great marketing efforts.
My quick take on The Crucial 12:
It took me a long time to read The Crucial 12. That’s not a reflection on the book; the book is great. It took me a long time because I am the leader Steve Wolgemuth addresses in his book, one whose focus tends toward operational and financial issues over marketing. I stepped into my role as President of Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary & Graduate School with a strong marketing team intact, and Steve’s company YDOP, our marketing partner. We were running well. Why mess with a good thing? And while I don’t need to “mess with a good thing,” I do need to understand the questions I must ask not to market well, but to LEAD WELL when it comes to marketing.
Overview and Analysis:
The Crucial 12: Powerful Insights for Marketing Leadership is just that. Leaders who understand how marketing works will appreciate it. Those, like me, who are marketing neophytes, will appreciate the wisdom and practical advice in these pages. I know the author, whom I have appreciated and respected as a friend, former Board member at Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary & Graduate School, and leading citizen of our area. Now I know him as Steve the guy who is exceptionally good at his craft, and one with a unique capacity to explain what leaders need to know and ask to get the most from the teams that drive their marketing efforts.
My Takeaways:
1. What’s our high-level strategy?
Demand a written marketing strategy. “A brilliant marketing strategy is always built on a core insight or insights about the marketing challenges any business or organization is facing” (19). He quotes Richard Rumelt, “A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.” A marketing strategy addresses three problems: (1) Awareness: How will people discover us/our brand? (2) Consideration: What do people need to know, feel, and believe in order to move forward? (3) Decision: What does the conversion step look like?
2. How are we different?
“It is the leader’s job to gain clarity about their organization’s differentiation and make sure marketing aligns and reinforces it” (38). I need this sticky-noted to my forehead. I know how important the principle is, and I can quickly lose sight of it in the coming and going of daily leadership responsibilities. Yes, I must be the CMO (Chief Mission Officer), but with that I must understand and clarify our differentiator. Our differentiator (we help students discover their part in God's story in the context of an exceptional life-on-life education) needs to be a regular part of my communication: All-Employee-Meetings, Board of Trustees, Cabinet Meetings, Hiring, and Regular communication.
3. What is the customer’s experience?
“If a leader isn’t first asking their marketing stakeholders about customer experiences, they might not be ready to create more awareness” (62). See “A Well-Crafted Brand Story” (58ff). “As company leaders, we need to be asking the question, ‘What do our customers experience?” (66).
4. What’s our marketing problem?
“In other words, do more people need to hear about the product or service? Do we need to be better at building and staying in touch with potential customers? Do we need to make it easier for customers to take the next step on our website? Which key areas of our marketing should be improved?” (79). This chapter was very helpful for me in evaluating LBC and my own sites.
The content placed on our website should help the customer subconsciously feel these things:
(1) They have what I want or need.
(2) They are a good fit for me.
(3) They’re my best choice.
(4) I feel comfortable taking the next step (83).
5. What’s the thing that sells the thing?
Steve tells me to make sure I reflect on that activity, event, conversation, or any experience that has a high correlation to someone becoming my customer (105-6). For many colleges (ours is one of them), the campus visit is the key milestone experience. What is the key milestone experience for your organization or website?
6. How will people hear about us?
People learn about us in many ways: Leads, exposure, word of mouth, and customer comments. About the latter, ensure the good will (from happy customers) “overshadows the few inevitable unhappy customers” (116). ALWAYS provide a wise and timely response to online comment. Keep your content focused: “regardless of what type of approach (e.g. content marketing) you use to make your advertising sticky, it’s important to keep people focused on a single idea” (129).
7. Ask the right questions: Steve’s chapter, “How do we assemble the right team” was particularly helpful. I am not a marketing person. I don’t understand its complexity. I don’t even know the right questions to ask. Steve does! He peppered me with strategic questions I need to evaluate any marketing team I might hire. His questions were designed to help me get to the root of my “value-added” proposition: “Why are you here? What’s the best business case for you to spend money on marketing? What are the financial drivers of your business? What are the opportunities for growth in your industry? What do you perceive to be the marketing problems your company is having?”
But he also helped me by providing a set of diagnostic questions to determine an agency’s qualifications: “What strategies have you used in industries similar to mine?” Or, “Given what you know about my company, what type of overarching strategy would you suggest we consider?” (141).
I appreciated his metaphor, “Are you ‘Buying a shed?’ or ‘Planting a backyard garden?’” The latter takes planning, planting, and then ongoing maintenance. Many aspects of marketing are ongoing commitments and you need to be sure they are addressed and updated in the marketing plan you are reviewing, that is, marketing objectives like maintaining a ranking on search engines, content strategy, website conversion performance over time, online reputation (143). Planting a garden takes strategy, expectations, timelines and regular meetings to discuss the garden’s progress. Don't buy a shed. Plant a garden.
8. Invest in leadership development:
Steve said, “my company’s team of digital marketers spends almost 25 percent of their time studying, learning, experimenting, reading, and attending educational webinars and conferences in their single-category of expertise (153). THIS HIT HOME WITH ME! PRIORITIZE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT.
9. Create great content:
It takes CONSISTENCY + EXCELLENCE + VALUE to deliver excellent web content. For years I have focused on the first two and assumed the third. "Which audience are we designing for? Does this create the right impression right away, align with our brand essence, and communicate our differentiation? Does this provide the right experience for our intended audience?" (167).
10. Website design:
A good designer will defend their work, and you need to hear that argument. . . It’s very tempting for leaders and those they involve in creative review to insert their personal perspectives as though they’re the intended audience. . . I’ve seen many great websites brought down in quality because people in power demanded the website be changed to appeal to their personal tastes rather than the website’s intended audience (169).
11. On website appeal:
“Website visitors are more impressed with a site’s usefulness than its flashiness.” Questions to ask: (a) Who is coming to this website? (b) What’s on their mind? (c) What should their first impression be? (d) What do they need to learn or experience? (e) What do we hope they’ll do before they leave? (170-171). THIS IS CAUSING ME TO RETHINK EACH OF MY WEBSITES.
12. How will we track our progress?
Measure. Measure. Measure! “Ideally, every leader should want a closed loop from ‘how the customer first heard about the business’ to ‘sales,’ but this isn’t always possible. When it isn’t, leaders should insist on measuring portions of the customer’s sales pathway separately” (203). Keep an eye on bounce rate.
13. Priority over strategy:
For many business leaders the issue is what can we work on this year that will bring the best benefit in the short term but also contribute to the two or three-year vision (226). Where’s the business case for the investment this year?
The author piqued my curiosity about these books:
1. Talk Trigger: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers With Word of Mouth
2. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters
Words to ponder:
1. On idea implementation: “The best ideas aren’t led by consensus, they’re led by talented individuals empowered to make decisions” (Steve Wolgemuth).
2. Advertising: It should be the last resort for creating brand awareness (131).
3. On continual learning: “We go to bed smart, but wake up stupid” (153). Marketing, like most of life, is changing rapidly. You must be (and the folks you hire must be), continually learning.
4. Respect the process: Smart leaders ask a lot of questions about an agency’s process before hiring them. . . But effective leaders [are] careful to honor and respect they process (169).
5. When hiring professionals: When you hire professionals, you have two choices—trust them or fire them (172).
6. On spending money for marketing: “How far can you sail in half a boat?” Invest the money necessary to give the marketing plan the opportunity to work.
7. To bring out the best in marketing efforts ask: “How can I support you in keeping this project on track?” (170)
Conclusion:
Don't take two years to read a book that can help you tomorrow, just because you think someone on your team has that area covered. Good leadership means taking a role in driving the marketing plan. Steve gives you the key questions to ensure you have a plan that works for your organization. It's up to me (and you) to do the hard work of thinking through those questions to get the results we want and need.
I highly recommend The Crucial 12: Powerful Insights for Marketing Leadership
