028 Is Your Marketing Plan Radical Enough?

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead asks the question, “is your marketing plan radical enough?” Most marketing plans are predictable, uncreative and safe. He will share today how to do away with your usual marketing plan and craft a radical one. 3x CMO Being an advisor to a lot of companies, Christopher shares how he has been part of creating, reviewing and critiquing a lot of these companies’ marketing plans. He further says that there are three things about these marketing plans: they are predictable, uncreative and safe.  Safe as in, most CMOs are more concerned with making their “internal customers”  happy. The reason behind this is that most CMOs are trying to keep their jobs. Ultimately, this ends up in mundane marketing plans.  “The longer I do this, the more I think that, if it’s legendary, its probably radical, at least in some way.” - Christopher Lochhead 3 Ideas For Radical Thinking Our job, ultimately in business is to be a leader, who enables our company to design and dominate a giant category that matters. The goal is to earn 2/3rds of the economics in a space that we created. “That in my opinion that, is the real job of the CMO, CEO and the entire C-suite. So I urge you when building or evaluating a marketing plan, ask yourself: Will this plan enable us to design and dominate a giant category that matters?” - Christopher Lochhead The second idea is that, do we have a radical way to evangelize our category POV? Legends market the category, not the brand but this is one of the common mistakes marketing leaders make. “You want them to buy into the thinking and to the language. and as they do that, they'll see things the way you do and your new way or different way of doing things will become the defacto standard. What you're really creating is this fear of missing out” - Christopher Lochhead Lastly, ask yourself: what’s a radical way to generate leads and drive revenue? Legendary CMOs design the category for the mid-long term and drive revenue in the “ASAP, right now” term. 3 Questions Again, to recap, here are the three radical ideas to consider before creating a marketing plan.  1) Will this plan, enable us to design and dominate a giant category that matters? 2) Do we have a radical way to evangelize our category POV? 3) What’s a radical way to generate leads and drive revenue? To hear more about creating a radical marketing plan, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.