The Problem with Planning >>> While You Were Working in Dec 2019

This past month, you’ve been knocking out goals…but you probably didn’t have time to read up on the latest and greatest in the marketing world. Don’t worry—here’s what happened While You Were Working.

The Problem with Planning:

No one wants to make a plan that gets derailed. So what is the next step?

“Planning.” Welcome to the new year. Everyone’s talking about planning, but so very few are talking about what happened with last year’s marketing plan.

You’ve been holding back from planning because you know how quickly things change in your business. Long-term plans aren’t practical, right? Rather than “strategy,” which might outline 12-18 months of “stuff,” you’re looking for contingency plans for when budgets change, goals change, target audiences change…because they always change…right?

That’s also how we marketers can spend an entire year accomplishing so many things, but looking back we can’t see any progress. It’s not that you didn’t have a plan; it’s that your plan consistently got derailed, modified, or just plain ol’ pushed to the side.

So for the last While You Were Working this year and the first headed into a brand new Q1, we want to share some of the articles on planning and strategy that give the most applicable knowledge and clear how-to for you to make measurable, year-over-year progress.

These articles had a profound impact on us, and we want you to have your best chance at moving further, faster in 2020.

How Airbnb went from air mattresses to 150M Users, by Web Profits

Many of you in the Rogue Nation have a business model that requires a base audience. So what does it take to build a trajectory toward 150M+ users in just a few years?We read several articles on Airbnb’s trajectory, and we learned a few things: Growth is messy. Everyone pays for growth, whether in budget or in time. Yes, you can upset the industry giants if you can better accomplish the “job to be done.”This article is well worth the read. And so is this one with 11 actionable takeaways from Airbnb’s growth; another take on Airbnb from GrowthHackers; and this one on Lemonade’s (the insurance company) meteoric, and troubled, rise.

Value Props, Landing Pages, and Conversion Rates: How to Sequence Your Value Prop, with MecLabs/Marketing Sherpa

Every single member of the Rogue Nation that has received a customer journey map has called it one of their most valuable pieces of marketing strategy. When we came across this graphic this month, we knew it’d be the perfect addition to your customer journey map.When it comes to marketing research, Marketing Sherpa’s MecLabs has no peer. This is an excellent article and video to spend time refreshing your knowledge of conversion rate optimization.

21 Customer Acquisition Strategies to Win New Customers

OK, so this headline is maybe playing it a little fast and loose with the word “strategies” (we’d probably call them tactics, but whatever). Nevertheless, this is a great list that probably includes a few things that have fallen off your radar. The author does a great job of giving you exactly where to start and how to get the highest return out of each tactic (oops, he’d say “each strategy”…).At Rogue we love a good plan, but we also love being able to move quickly. This article gets you headed in a good direction without delay.

Why Brands Should Need to Target All the Senses, by Huge, Inc.

Here’s a new take on integrated marketing: Why do ads tend to be visual? Marketing is so much more than finding another way to say, “BUY NOW.” Bring your audience into the experience of your brand. You’re not just a B2B brand; you’re not just a services brand; you help people. And people are people. Your particular niche of people have many things in common, and you can reach them with some relevant, multi-sensory marketing that makes you something different.See what our friends at Huge, Inc. have to say about marketing to stand out instead of marketing to shout louder.

Rogue Works:
Video Promo for Southern Methodist University

Here’s a promo video Rogue assembled for our client at Southern Methodist University. Have you thought about video? Rogue is much more than search ads and social media posts—we help you grow, no matter what tactics we need to deploy.

While You Were Working (LIVE) Ep. 43: The Road to Relevancy

If you’re the kind of business leader that believes:”if you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevancy a whole lot less…” then this episode of While You Were Working is for you.In episode 43, Rogue invited sales operations and business development executive, Dustin Poole to discuss the mindset you’ll need to avoid irrelevancy. He offered ideas on how to avoid becoming a commodity, discussed a long-term play that more than 60% of your marketing budget should address and offered tips on how you’ll want to start if you’re starting from scratch.