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Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing Podcast. I'm Daniel Murra and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up.
We are back with another episode of the Marketing Millennials Podcast. I'm here with the Chief Marketing Officer of Customer IO, Jason Lyman. I'm excited to chat about annual planning. I think this is a good time to chat. We're approaching end of year and you might have made mistakes if you've already done it or you might need to fix some things right now, but I hope this conversation will help. But I want Jason first to go into like, explain your background a little bit, how you got into marketing, and then we can get into the detail.
B
Perfect. Well, Daniel, thank you for having me. Yeah, just a little bit about me actually didn't start my career in marketing. I spent about four and a half years working as a strategy consultant. So maybe that's a little bit about why I have a passion for planning and strategy development. But over the course of four and a half years, I spent a lot of time working with media companies who were being disrupted by new media technology. So this was a while ago. This was back when streaming was this new thing. The iPhone had just come out free to play. Games were blowing up. And through a lot of my casework, I was able to see firsthand the power that technology could have on end users, on business models. And I kind of knew that I wanted to work in tech and try to drive innovation forward by working more closely with products that are really kind of pushing the envelope or experimenting with something new. And so I decided to go back to grad school and did two years at Berkeley and use that to transition into tech. So my career span both kind of big companies and small. So I started my career up at Microsoft, working in the Office365 group up there. That's kind of where I learned how to market and sell a SaaS solution, learned what marketing looked like at scale, but also kind of realized that I wasn't a big company guy. Kind of wanted to go places where I could have more ownership, more direct impact, was lucky enough to join Dropbox pretty early There I was the second product marketer and worked through the kind of ipo. So I saw multiple stages of growth and maturity and that really kind of seeded my desire to work in the high growth phase of a company's maturity. So since then I've worked at a handful of startups and most recently I currently serve as the CMO here at Customer IO. Fun fact, I was actually a customer of Customer IO at Dropbox, Podium, Better Cloud and Ethos. So the four companies I worked with prior so I was able to kind of know firsthand the power of the platform. But as an outsider I saw a lot of potential from how we think about our overall marketing strategy. And so that's really what drew me to the role. And I've been here about almost three years now and so it's been an amazing ride during that time.
A
Yeah, I always found that you could find really good marketers. If you just get bringing in a customer who's like really understands the product and really understands how to use it as the marketer, it always becomes some of the best.
Employees in your company like people who actually love and have passion for the product. But I want to go into something that is happening right right now was happened a month ago but or is people are still doing it. But I think a lot of people annual plan for the next year marketing but you think of it as more of a way of being a growth engine for, for your company. So what is the number one mistake marketers make during the planning that immediately limits their growth potential?
B
Yeah, I think for me, you know, you need to make sure that whatever marketing strategy you develop is connected to the broader company strategy and where those priorities and goals are. Because it can be failure mode for a marketing team if their approach is built in a silo and their plan doesn't take into account some of the goals or metrics that the broader organization is trying to achieve. You know, I think a really kind of tangible example that a lot of teams might face is, you know, there's a lot of excitement for instance around you know, a new product investment or and that EPD is really putting a lot of resources behind. But then the equivalent kind of go to market investment to drive the launch of that isn't built into the plan and that then creates this disconnect. I saw this firsthand when I was at Dropbox. We were building at the time Dropbox Paper, which is has a lot of similarities to kind of notion today. And we had made a lot of, you know, great progress as far as kind of some of the desires of our earliest adopters. And, you know, we wanted to make this a really big swing and an anchor of, of our broader marketing strategy for, you know, the second half of the year. But, you know, we didn't align early enough in our planning process to have the budget necessary around promotion, having the right level of kind of investment in our kind of PMM resources to support this kind of evolution and storytelling that was required. And so for me, it's kind of one of those examples that I go back to pretty regularly. And it speaks, I think, to me, at least, the importance of having that conversation and connectiveness between what you want to do from a company perspective and what you need to be doing from a marketing perspective to really support the broader goals of the organization.
A
I want to go high level first, and then we'll go deeper and tactical of how other people could do it. But I want to start with what does it look like as a CMO to start the annual planning? Like, what do you go, what questions do you ask, like the CEO, the board, whatever, to make sure you start building the correct plan for 20, 26 or the next year?
B
Yeah, so I use a framework that I've seen that I've had a lot of success with that is the play to win frame. And as part of that, there's a few questions that you have to answer as a part of kind of building that out that I think translates into a pretty tangible set of outcomes and actions that a marketing team can rally around. So the framework really starts with this concept of what's our winning aspiration? And so it really kind of anchors the broader goal and the broader team around this aspirational goal that we're going after. The next question is, is where will marketing play? And so that really helps anchor the team around who is the ICP we're going after? How big is that audience? What are the characteristics? Where are they located so that we know where to try to find them as we go out into the world with our kind of broader communication approach? The third question then is, how will marketing win? And so that then becomes a question around what are the opinionated things that we believe as a marketing team we need to be doing to reach that audience and drive action from them? And I like to think about these as marketing's kind of strategic pillars for the year. And so these tend to be three to five opinionated statements around kind of what we feel like we need to do or where we need to invest most of our time, energy and resources. And then the fourth question is, well, what capabilities must be in place to deliver on that winning strategy? And so then you can then take those core strategic pillars and decide what are then the specific activities or actions that you need to take to deliver on those strategic pillars. And so then it starts to really break down what is a higher level approach into more tangible sets of activities that the team can then really rally around. And then the last question that you need to ask yourself is what are the management systems required? And so this is where you can then align resourcing and any new headcount request budget. What do you need to invest in from software and programs perspective to deliver those activities that you've outlined to make sure you can execute on the strategic pillars that you have. So it allows you to build that operational plan to support the broader kind of strategy that you've just developed as a marketing team. And so if you have alignment around those five questions, it becomes a really easy conversation with the CEO or with your peers across the organization because they can then see how your work ladders or connects into the broader work that the company is trying to deliver. So that's at least I think a common framework that I've used and found a lot of success with to drive that alignment at the company level.
A
Yeah, I think that's a solid framework and I think it's great to CEO other stakeholders that are the same because that's probably one of the most number one job of a CMO is making sure that all the leaders on the same page and making sure marketing is in the talks of every room. But I want to also go into as a cmo, once you've made this plan, what are you looking for your leaders under you to build to make sure that it look, it fits your plan. So what does it look like when you say, okay, here's, here's the question. If I've answered, I've now I'm with my DPS or scps or whoever's under you. What are you looking for them to build to make sure that we hit, they hit that ultimate marketing goal?
B
Yeah. So two concepts here that I think are important. One is driving towards multi level alignment. So like, you know, that plan, you know, covers everything that marketing is going to be doing. And so that plan then needs to be communicated to, between, from the CMO to their peers like the CFO or the CRO. And then similarly, I want my leaders that report into me to be having similar conversations but with a mind to what aspects of that plan are their Cross functional partners most interested in. So my head of demand gen needs to be having a similar conversation with the, you know, the, this, the VP of sales that's over, you know, AES and BDRs, you know, or this, the head of product marketing needs to be having an equivalent conversation with the VP of product around, hey, here's the marketing plan. But these are the pieces that you should care the most about and are these the things that you believe we should be kind of focused on? And then I think you can even go a layer deeper than that where you know, Maybe individual like ICs are communicating with kind of their peers that they're working with and making sure that they're bought in. So you know, you almost have this kind of layer cake of alignment that, that needs to be articulated. And then the second concept that I think is important is strategies can sometimes feel a little bit broad and ambiguous as far as what does that mean to me in the short term? And so every, you know, you need to then lean into the kind of operating rhythm that you have around planning and start to, to translate that into what does that mean in the short term. So my teams, we tend to use okrs and so I like to pair together the annual plan with hey, this is what our Q1 OKRs actually look like. So that you're able to then see and practice what does this mean? What are the commitments that we are going to deliver? What are the core, you know, results that we are, we are looking to drive in the short term. And so that starts to make the plan become more real for those cross functional partners. When you're able to pair the strategy with, you know, a set of okrs or again whatever your kind of monthly or quarter quarterly kind of planning cadence looks like that that then drives conviction and understanding around the approach because you're able to make it more real and more tangible for them. Them.
A
One question I also have is a lot of annual planning is always based on like historical, like reporting historicals, historicals and historicals. So how do you like bake in future opportunities that have not been like proven by historical because obviously you can forecast based on this is what we're going to do and expected revenues, expected ops. But there are some things that are swings that you're going to do that there's no historical based data that you can prove. But how do you, how do you bake that into the plan to make sure that you're telling the right story, that we should take this one big swing for the next year?
B
Yeah, so two things I think that I'll kind of add here is maybe mental models to help. So the first one is I've used this framework before, but it's the 70, 2010 framework. So 70% of the, of the commitments that you have as part of a strategy should fall in this like higher confidence bucket. So you know, you don't want to bet the farm on a strategy that you feel like, you know, has these, a lot of beta in it where there's these big upsides, but also could potentially have big downsides. Like you want to anchor around the things that you know are working, but then you need to make sure you're allocating 20% of your time and budget towards things that are medium confidence where they have these.
Higher upside associated with them so that you're able to have this opportunity to really kind of overperform.
What you're currently planning. And that's what drives motivation, kind of excitement and also too.
It'S the only way you learn enough to really continue to augment your approach. And then the last 10% should be in these lower confidence but like truly game changing bets that you're trying to make. And so, and so that, that, that allows enough that to me the like risk, reward, trade off feels really strong when you allocate a portion to.
Activities that would maybe fall in that bucket. And so I think that that that's one way to drive that mental model of hey, we want to do some things that are outside of the norm is if you think about your budget and time spent and making sure that they loosely align to this, this breakdown. I think the, I think the second, the second thing that you can do here is a lot of times, you know, people get in the habit of just rolling over the budget for instance that they had last year where it's like, hey, we, this is what we did. We know we're going to have 10% more. So you know, do we just start to grow things at a roughly equivalent rate kind of year over year that aligns to the overall number. And, and what I' try to push my teams to do is, is to have it effectively build it bottoms up every year so that way you're looking at every line item that you have and assessing is this something that I'm, I trust in that I believe or is this something that maybe isn't quite working or the performance has started to decline and as a result I want to reallocate that budget to something else or something new? And so I find that that kind of, you Know, starting from effectively a zero basis plan and then building up from there, tries to control a bit more for getting into the same rhythms. And it forces you to assess each line item and decide, is that something I want to double down on or not? And so I think those two mental models can kind of get you out of the loop of doing the same things over and can incentivize more experimentation as a broader team.
A
Yeah. I also want to ask you because a lot of annual plans die after like a Q1, Q2, because everything market happens, marketing happens. Things happen all the time in marketing. That gets thrown and you don't know, this happens in the market, this happens in the market. But how do you one, like build in flexibility to make sure that, okay, if something, if something goes wrong in my annual plan, we have, have backup plans, we know we could shift instead of being. I've been in companies where it's so rigid that we were not going off the plan, even though we're headed down that wrong road, because that's the annual plan and we're not gonna shift away from it.
B
Yeah. So for me, like, the thing I want to kind of keep consistent is these high level strategic pillars because hopefully there's enough conviction around. Hey, these are the core investment areas that we believe will drive the impact that we're looking for. But the way to achieve those pillars has a lot of different paths. And so I really try to make sure that I feel conviction around those pillars. And then that's where you need to pair the annual planning process with a really strong either monthly or quarterly planning effort, because that allows you. That builds in the agility that you can change things or tweak things every quarter or every month once you've started to learn things. And so that allows you to change your path or change your course if you learn something new or if things are kind of going off the rails. And so I think that pairing kind of works really well. Another concept that you might think about is when you think about metrics in particular, because a lot of times that's where, you know, marketing gets a lot of pressure to perform. You know, think about what are your. What metrics are your KPIs versus what metrics are your OKRs. So I think about KPIs as like 100%. We can't miss these metrics versus OKRs. Those are ones where they can be stretched. They can, you know, change quarter over quarter. You know, you can adjust them as you learn more. And so that way the team stays focused around look, we're not going to miss on revenue, we're not going to miss on pipeline, we're not going to miss on MQLs. But the things where we have flex on is maybe some of the performance of different marketing channels or the impact of different product launches. Like, you know, those are, those can be okrs and be things that, you know, we set these ambitious goals on, or they're things that can honestly drop out of a plan if they're not working. And then the last thing I would say is this is where you need to have a tight relationship with your finance partner. So if things are going off the rails and things aren't aligning, then you need to be driving as a marketing leader, a cmo, a VP of marketing with the cfo, to be like, look, there were some inherent flaws in the financial plan that we built. Let's take a step back and reassess. And so I've been at companies where we've reforecasted things after six months to better align with what expectations kind of should be. And then, and then that then cascades through the plan that marketing has for the second half of the year. So, you know, as long as you have that open, transparent conversation, you know, you can more effectively navigate some of that complexity that you might face when headwinds arise.
A
This is a twofold question, but how has AI helped you do annual planning? Because this is the question that probably you'll get a lot. And then what are some things that are built into your plan that are. This would say, like AI first principles that your team should follow to help them be better, to help hit the goal. So one is like, how you used it to plan and how are like, AI first principles that people can use to be better at their hit those okrs?
B
Yeah. So.
For the first question, as far as, like, how AI has kind of helped that process, I think one has been through just helping streamline the synthesis of data that we've gathered throughout the year that should then inform what we think our priority should be next year. So whether that is.
Working through the summary of performance data across the funnel, or whether it is amalgamating a bunch of customer feedback that we've gathered from all of the sales calls and customer case study interviews. And, and so that way we're starting with a really solid foundation of here's all the data inputs that we believe should inform the strategy. The time to collect that and synthesize that into takeaways has been kind of dramatically reduced. I think the second way is is that it helps to stress test some of the.
Opinions that you developed as part of the strategy development process and helping you assess if there's anything that you're missing in that. So it serves a little bit as kind of a validator of well, have you thought about this piece? Or what about, you know, this feels in conflict with some of the data that you provided as part of the, as part of the collection process. And so it really helps you build conviction and refine your point of view. And then third, it helps with just the synthesis and kind of content creation piece of that. So translating what can be discussions and design thinking efforts as a marketing leadership team into the kind of tangible outputs that you're then going to be sharing with your team and cross functional partners. So those are three ways in which it's, it's streamlined, shortens and hardened the kind of process and then as far as like how to use AI to like future proof kind of the strategy and what you want to do. One of the key ways that we've done it as a marketing team@customer IO is one of our strategic pillars is around investing in our marketing foundation. And we have dedicated.
Activities around investing in different tooling like building out the right workflows to enable kind of AI adoption more easily.
We're building into our plan commitments to rethink the way that certain processes work with AI in mind at streamlining that process. And then additionally we've pushed ourselves when we have headcount requests, are those headcount truly needed or can we get can we leverage AI to push out those hires or replace those hires? Those are a few ways in which we're kind of building it into our normal planning rhythms so that we're staying ahead and making sure that we are kind of AI first and how we think about our marketing strategy.
A
And I wanted to, because you said that you've used Customer IO at four other roles before. So I want to know how to best use a tool like Customer I.O. for annual planning. Like what are you doing? Because I'm pretty sure you are in Customer IO here as well. So you're using it. So how should people best use Customer IO to do annual planning and how has it helped your process be easier and make better decisions?
B
Yeah. So for those that aren't aware, Customer IO is a customer engagement platform that allows teams to create automated customer journeys that engage and convert. And so we're used through, used in common use cases around onboarding, activation, retention, cross sell, upsell. If you're doing any marketing in Those stages of a customer's life cycle, you could benefit from a tool like Customer IO. So our team has dozens of campaigns set up at each of those stages to try to drive our leads and customers through everywhere from onboarding, activation, retention. And then we use it to drive engagement, to potentially upsell them into our premium plans. And they have to interact with our sales team. And so as part of our planning process, we're actually going through all of our campaigns that we have set up and assessing the impact around what's working and what's not working. And thankfully inside of Customer IO we have an AI assistant that can help to do that at scale for us. So we can actually query.
The AI assistant to look at relative performance of different campaigns and it can kind of come back and let us know this is what working and what's not working. And so we're able to then suss out, you know, using AI capabilities in our platform to identify where we believe opportunities exist as we think about the kind of life cycle investments that we're making and that the performance of those campaigns, as far as what's working, what's not working, serves as an input into our broader annual planning process. And so that is at least a high level way of how our tool provides the necessary data and feedback to inform some of our decision making from a marketing perspective.
A
Yeah, I mean this is another way to use AI too, which you're, I mean your tool has it and I think if your goals are to improve these metrics of those life cycle metrics, like this is definitely a tool that is really great at that and inputting data and easy to use and flexible. But I also want to, I want to go into another question too because I, I think it'll be helpful. The marketers listening is what are some ways that like successful ICs or successful managers could go into annual planning to like help them accelerate in their career? Like what have you seen that you did to accelerate your career too? That helped you when, when it went to annual planning time and then hitting your goals and making sure you, you set up goals to help you win and be seen in an org. We are all marketers here, so I'll say it. I hate batch and blast messages. It's not 2010 anymore. We've got data, let's actually use it. That's why I love Customer IO. It helps you turn first party data into personal messages across email, SMS and push build it, automate it and make it not suck. Start a trial and join 7,800 plus brands already doing smarter marketing with Customer IO. Visit Customer IO to start your free trial today.
B
Yeah, so I think the best strategies are ones that come together through tops down thinking and bottoms up thinking. And so, you know, a lot of times the marketing leadership team thinks about things kind of maybe a bit more tops down in a sense of like, hey, these are the big areas that we know we want to make progress on. And these, this is kind of why we, why we think that. I think like where, where you can then augment that thinking is hey, these are some of the bottoms up themes that, that we're seeing in how we work day to day. And those should either validate some of the concepts or ideas that have come more tops down or they might identify gaps in the plan. As far as like we are seeing pain in this part of our broader marketing approach. How do we want to build solutions into our plan to address those? And so I would recommend that the, you know, ICs that are out there that want to get involved and help, you know, can you for your area of the business that you own and drive, you know, what are some of the insights and takeaways that you're seeing in your day to day and then taking that, those inputs and laddering it up into an opinionated point of view around what the team should be doing. Because I do think that.
That it's important people remember strategy is a set of integrated choices that requires trade offs. And so therefore you to be opinionated around we're going to do this and we're not going to do this. And I think that that's where I sees that a lot of benefit is they're closer to some of the day to day insights and they can be really, really impactful if they're able to ladder those insights into these opinionated takeaways and being really clear around, hey, this is where I think we should invest and this is where I think we should not invest. Because I think a lot of times where teams struggle is saying no to doing something. In the end they want to do everything. But you end up peanut buttering all the work and you don't see the impact. And so I would really lean on the team that's closest to what's going on day to day to provide some of that color and that insights around what we should not be doing to make sure that's really clear and then providing, making sure they're bubbling up these opportunities where hey, there's a chance to double down based upon the data that I'm seeing. In my scope or in my role.
A
Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, a couple of things that I did to do this, and based on what you're saying too is one is how could I do something that helps my boss hit their goal easily? And then the next thing is think about what are the business goals and actually know the business goals and see if I can move it even a little bit. One of the, like the business goals like a metric in the business. Because a lot of times you could have a great idea, you could do a great campaign, but it doesn't move any of those needles. So if you could figure out one thing that could move your boss's needle a lot of way, or the CMOS needle the other way, or a business metric, you probably going to be seen in the org versus saying like, I think we should do this email because it will have like an impact and not thinking about, about what your boss needs to hit or what the CMO needs to hit or what the business needs to hit. So like layering up those things usually as a IC is a good way to like think about it. And it's all based on what you said is like those principles that what are those opportunities look for those opportunities to make your boss look good and the CMO look good and ultimately the business look good.
B
Yeah, I think that concept of the cascade from business goal down to like in some ways the individual work that a team member can do, like as a cmo, if you can paint that picture for your team and help them see, hey, this is how your work ladders, you know, it drives a lot of motivation for those individuals and then it's really easy to celebrate them when they're able to deliver improvements there. Because you can point to, hey, this drove this metric. And this metric is one that the CMO cares about or the C team kind of cares about. And so I love that concept and I think that's such an important aspect of great planning, is making sure that everything feels like it ladders up from the smallest team in your department up through the various departments that make up the broader kind of company strategy and the goals that we're trying to achieve as an organization.
A
As a cmo, how do you make sure you get the like ground running and the motivation there, like Q1, like what is the. What are you going into? I mean, December is happening now. You had to start a little bit of the, the motivation to get the, the push. But Q1 rolls around, we need to hit our goals. Like, what are you doing to make sure the team is rallied, everybody's on the same page, they're hyped going into the like the night new year.
B
Yeah. So I think that one maybe underrepresented benefit of a good annual plan is it serves as a motivator that teams can rally around. And so people are excited about delivering on this plan that we have for next year. So I think it's important that you try to build that spark and generate that excitement so that they are ready to kind of jump in once the calendar flips from December to January. I think the second thing is instead of thinking about what you want to accomplish as a quarterly commit, I found a lot of success in anchoring teams around. This is what we want to complete in the first month. And so by being really, really clear around the need for a fast start, and this is how we're going to define a fast start, I think avoids the pitfall of people kind of easing into the new year. And I think that's particularly important, especially for those organizations that have a sales led motion where you're probably having some type of sales or revenue kickoff and you might be out of pocket for a period of time. And so it's important that. But that doesn't become an excuse to have a weaker January because then you're forced to play catch up in February and March. And so really anchoring the team around these goals that they want to accomplish in the first 30 days, it ensures that people are focused, but also too, it then gives you a building block to build on. Because if they can see success towards the annual plan and the quarterly plan in the first month, month, they then have this conviction that the broader strategy that's been developed is actually going to work. And so I think that kind of interim step of a monthly goal and a monthly kind of commitment is the second thing that I would really kind of anchor the team on. And then the third thing is being really reactive in that first month. And so that's where as a cmo, I want to be really, really close to the performance of the individual teams and really pushing on my directs to make sure that they are reinforcing that kind of urgency. Because I think that.
It'S usually not this ubiquitous thing where everybody is operating at the same level. You tend to find that it's one team or one pocket, but it has this kind of cascading implication associated with that. And so I think that there's a need for strong communic and collaboration with your leadership team in those first few weeks to make sure that you can work through any ambiguity or any disconnect that you didn't foresee in the planning process so that you can be agile and adjust in the short term. So I think those are the three ways that I would push as a leader to really ensure that you have a fast start to the year.
A
Last question I have for you is what is a marketing hill you would die on?
B
I think that's a great question. I think, I guess the one that's most top of mind for me right now is this false confidence that attribution is correct 100% of the time. I think in the end people can argue the benefits of first touch versus last touch versus multitouch, but in the end I think we all know that that marketing is much more complex than that and way more multifaceted. And so attributing all the impact to one touch point is probably the wrong way to go. And so having these battles around gauging success, knowing the inherent flaws that each attribution model has.
It'S important that people kind of take that into account. And so I lean much more towards a more pragmatic way of thinking, a more pragmatic approach when it comes to attribution, that these are directional signals that provide guidance around where you're generating the most value. And I lean maybe a bit more in using things like media mix modeling to drive some of that decision making. So I guess I am, you know, I get to sum it up, you know, attribution is a bit over overrated and I think we need to just think about it more, think about marketing strategy more holistically than focusing on having one attribution model being the end all, be all for all decision making within a marketing organization.
A
Well, thank you so much for coming on the pod. It has been really great and I really appreciate your time and learned a lot and I think people need to if you didn't set up your annual plan like that, consider it. If you aren't, use some of the motivation tactics to keep your marketing annual plan going for the rest of the year and not stop. So thank you so much much everybody for listening and appreciate your time.
B
Awesome. Thanks Daniel.
A
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear year, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.
Episode 373: How To Make or Fix Your 2026 Annual Plan with Jason Lyman, CMO of Customer.io
Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Daniel Murray
Guest: Jason Lyman, CMO of Customer.io
In this episode, Daniel Murray sits down with Jason Lyman, Chief Marketing Officer of Customer.io, to explore the critical components of annual marketing planning—specifically, how to build, adapt, and future-proof your 2026 strategy. They discuss the major pitfalls, frameworks for planning, the role of AI, fostering cross-functional alignment, and actionable tactics that marketers at every level can use to accelerate their growth and impact. Jason draws from a rich background across tech startups and giants, sharing both stories and battle-tested approaches to effective planning.
Key Point: Failing to connect marketing’s strategy to the broader company strategy.
Framework Components:
Quote:
"If you have alignment around those five questions, it becomes a really easy conversation with the CEO or with your peers across the organization..." – Jason [09:13]
Quote:
"You almost have this kind of layer cake of alignment that needs to be articulated." – Jason [11:36]
Quote:
"...the only way you learn enough to really continue to augment your approach.” – Jason [15:01]
Quote:
"Pairing annual planning with a really strong either monthly or quarterly planning effort... builds in the agility that you can change things or tweak things every quarter or every month..." – Jason [18:37]
How AI adds value:
Quote:
"The time to collect that and synthesize that into takeaways has been kind of dramatically reduced." – Jason [21:44]
Quote:
"We can actually query the AI assistant to look at relative performance of different campaigns and it can... let us know this is what's working and what's not working." – Jason [26:20]
Quotes:
"The best strategies are ones that come together through tops down thinking and bottoms up thinking." – Jason [28:21]
"If you can figure out one thing that could move your boss's needle... you’re probably going to be seen in the org." – Daniel [31:10]
Quote:
"...anchoring the team around these goals that they want to accomplish in the first 30 days ensures that people are focused, but also too, it then gives you a building block to build on." – Jason [34:26]
Quote:
"I lean much more towards a more pragmatic approach when it comes to attribution... attribution is a bit over overrated and I think we need to just think about it more, think about marketing strategy more holistically..." – Jason [37:34]
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