“I’m just too busy executing to take on this buyer strategy work.” Sound familiar?  This is something I have heard many times in the last year.  And the funny thing is, it is almost immediately followed by a statement like, “I really wish we could find the time because I know it would really help us do a better job at …” Fill in the blank: targeting campaigns, nurture programs, content planning, content creation, etc.

I get the feeling that marketers are feeling like the stressed out hamster above, on the left — on a wheel, executing, and in general, too busy doing their jobs to do the work to understand their buyers at a level that would help them do their jobs better!

This mad rush to execution, driven by leadership, is fairly common, unfortunately. You may remember this Harvard Business Review study from 2010 that analyzed this dichotomy. They described the difference between Strategically Slow companies and Strategically Fast companies. Management in a Strategically Fast company will slow down in order to get the strategic work completed and in place so the organization can then execute with speed and confidence. The study found that:

…the firms that “slowed down to speed up” improved their top and bottom lines, averaging 40% higher sales and 52% higher operating profits over a three-year period.

If you are a marketer—product, content, demand or otherwise—getting the strategic foundations in place to do your job well is your pathway to value…instead of a wheel that you run on. If you are a marketing leader, aligning your organization to a set of strategic foundations about your buyer is essential to fast and profitable marketing execution.

At Akoonu, we built our Strategic Marketing Platform to speed up marketing organizations in three different ways:

• First, by speeding up the rate at which you complete your buyer understanding, messaging and content planning
• Second, by consistently operationalizing your strategy across your organization and systems, and
• Third, by increasing your ability to quickly adapt your strategy as your market or organization changes

How? Use Akoonu to research, synthesize and operationalize audience understanding through Buyers’ Journeys. Then, develop the strategic messaging and content plans that support organizational execution. With this in place, you can rapidly drive aligned buyer-centric strategies across marketing and sales, and reduce the onboarding time of new employees. Plus, the business processes required to quickly adapt and align your strategies will be systematized, enabling you to react quickly as your market changes.

The pathways to value are enabled by developing deep audience understanding and integrating those insights systematically. Benefits accrue to both people and systems across Content Marketing, Website Personalization and Demand Generation—as well as Sales Contact Strategies and New Hire Training. If you’re interested in feeling more like our happy hamster above on the right, you can find out how we help you find your pathway to value by visiting our new interactive pathways. Just click on the image below:

And remember, sometimes to speed up, you have to first slow down!