Sometimes, Marketing Works

"Sometimes, marketing works."

I don't say this as a coin-flip of a promise, but as an operational sanity check: what if this works? Because sometimes, marketing works. Are we ready for it if it does?

Sometimes a marketer will be asked to launch a lead gen campaign -- to promote a special offer, or attract customers through a new partner, or maybe drive downloads -- by putting up a link somewhere and driving traffic to a landing page.

And the answer should generally be yes, we can absolutely do this. And, it may work, it may drive a ton of form fills. And, what if it does? Because sometimes, marketing works.

Are we going to be able to track these specific leads from this offer or partner? Will the sales rep receiving them know what the offer's about? Does the partner need to get notified?

Do we have at least some spreadsheets in place, if not CRM automation, to track these leads from partner site to form to Sales to Customer Success for onboarding, to billing for the 15% discount, and then back to the partner for commission?

Does billing know about the 15% partner discount? Does Customer Success know how to onboard this new partner's customers?

We have to ask, and all of that's more than a link and a landing page.

Is the rest of the business ready for what happens if this campaign works? Because sometimes, marketing works, and we can waste a lot of money and lot of customer and partner goodwill by being really successful in a marketing campaign that results in a really bad experience.

A marketing campaign can be one quarter promotional (customer-facing calls to action: "please become a lead") and three quarters operational ("what do we do with this lead? What the hell happened to those leads? Does this promo code even go anywhere? What do you mean no one called those leads?").

People put a lot of faith, and money, into marketing, because it works. But we don't always think of the processes that need to be in place around it, from an operational, sales, partner and customer success perspective, to make sure we're not squandering those times that our campaigns really hit a home run.

That's our job as marketers, too. If you don't know what will happen, all the way through, then don't pull the trigger on that campaign until you do. Because sometimes, marketing works.