Forbes – How To Fix The Marketing Strategy-Execution Gap

Originally published in Forbes.

Your strategy was brilliant. The research was solid with clear positioning and messaging. The CEO signed off. Even the Grim Reaper chief financial officer sort of nodded. When you showed it to your marketing team, they all got it.

But when the campaign launched, messaging was disjointed, the creative a resuscitation of last year. And the metrics were worse. Average order value, monthly active users, bounce rate -- every key performance indicator (KPI) remained flat. What happened?

Strategy-execution gaps are common and not just in marketing. According to McKinsey, two-thirds of change strategies fail to execute. This isn’t surprising; a survey showed only 8% of executives excel at both strategy and execution (interestingly, almost no executives were great at one but not the other). Add to that a long-time bias to silo “thinkers” from “doers,” and it becomes a notable exception when a company nails both.

In the world of marketing, however, the strategy-execution gap often comes down to how marketing and creative teams work together....

View the entire article on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2018/09/17/how-to-fix-the-marketing-strategy-execution-gap/#67468f896d40