The Marketing Game [Full Guide]
Play to grow your business
Hello, welcome to the 12th edition:
The Marketing Game
In April, I published a series of posts “the Marketing Game” and they got over 1.5 millions impressions. So I’ve decided to create a full guide on the Marketing Game.
The objective is simple: Turn Marketing into a step by step game you can play and follow for your business
In this edition you will learn:
Level 1 - How to setup your marketing strategy
Level 2 - How to install a good marketing plan
Level 3 - How to execute with iterations
Level 4 - How to create marketing programs
👋 My B2B Content Marketing course is live!
121 participants joined my B2B Content marketing course this month. They are learning all my strategies to create a profitable content ecosystem.
💬 Free Linkedin Masterclass included
I added a 50-min Linkedin Masterclass in which I explain the strategy I used to go from unknown to 99,000 followers on Linkedin. I breakdown the strategies, tactics, copywriting frameworks, and 7 other tips.
💬 Here is what participants say:
- “Game changer”
- “Pierre has undoubtedly created the most concrete and actionable training in content marketing.”
“Incredible. I'm getting so much clarity on how I should be putting together my marketing strategy.”
“I liked it! Very CLEAR and CONCISE information without extra lyrics. This course is different from other courses where 70% of information is not relevant”
“The course is a practical step by step way to setup an effective content strategy.”
“The course is fantastic and amazing value for money! There are tons of new ideas and concepts I've never heard of before. Everything is presented really well too, easy to digest the content and understand the concepts.”
“I am loving the course. Pierre gets right to the point. I like that”
“Pierre has undoubtedly created the most concrete and actionable training in content marketing. The videos get straight to the point and the checklists/exercises allow for quick application.”
“The exercises, quizzes, and workshops help solidify the concepts. Even as a seasoned marketer, I'm still learning new things. It's a must-take for those serious about B2B content strategy!”
“I wish I had it when I first started posting - it would have saved me at least 6 months of guesswork and trial and error. Content is the future of marketing and this is the best program out there to learn it.”
Let’s start the Marketing Game
First of all, here are a few elements you NEED, in order to play:
A business (or at least a business idea)
Time to play the game (you’ll lose if you rush it)
A computer with internet
That’s about it - and that’s the good thing about business in 2024.
The entry barriers have never been so low.
Let’s jump into level 1:
Level 1 - Marketing Strategy
Step 1 - Everything starts with your target audience
Identify a target market with one main opportunity
Research this market and pinpoint a problem
Pull insights to build your business strategy
❌ A lot of players skip Step 1.
They jump straight to "Step 2 - Business Strategy"
They also often skip "Step 3 - Feedback Loop"
So their "Step 4 - Foundations" is unstable
You need to validate your business strategy with:
Your ideal customer
Your value proposition
Your brand vision
After that, you’ll be able to set up your marketing foundations:
The offer
The positioning
The messaging
❌ Some players stay stuck in Level 1:
"I think our value proposition is not perfect yet"
"We need to refine the messaging again"
→ At some point, you should launch (even if you still have incertitudes) and refine the strategy with iterations
At the end of the level 1, you should have a solid marketing strategy.
Target Audience with a clear problem
A value proposition to fix this problem
A brand vision to inspire your strategy
A precise and unique offer
A market desired positioning
A messaging strategy
Recap of the Level 1: Marketing Strategy
If you want more information - In this video, I explain in details the marketing strategy part:
Level 2 - Marketing Planning
🧠 Note: To start this level, you need to have completed the level 1. Because a lot of players jump straight to Level 2:
They ask directly "what channel should I use?"
or "what's the latest tactics to get clients"
The first thing you need to understand for planning is that marketing is far from being an "Art & Craft" department:
Only structured plans bring results
Data analysis fuels experimentation
The test & learn approach is scientific
Systems rely on engineering (not creativity)
Sometimes the strategy is perfect but the marketing team can't bring results because of planning. It feels like having a clear destination but no map to access it - frustrating.
So here are the 2 steps of this level:
Your Marketing Plan
In your plan, you should list all the elements that will guide the execution
The channels and tactics
The roadmap with timeline
The budget and resources
The objectives and KPIs
4 Problems usually happen during the marketing planning:
You have a bottleneck between strategy & operations
You don't have the right system to organize actions
You are trying too many tactics at the same time
You don't prioritize marketing actions correctly
And the planning problem often comes from:
Lack of systems → There is no marketing backlog
Lack of prioritization → There is no scoring system
Lack of workflows → Marketers work only with intuition
Your Marketing System
To build a strong planning system, you need 4 pillars:
1. A backlog to ideate and list marketing ideas
→ On what data do you base your ideas?
→ Where do you store those ideas?
→ Do they match your strategy?
2. A system to score and prioritize ideas
→ How do you score them?
→ How do you compare your ideas?
→ How do you prioritize based on score?
3. A workflow to deploy marketing actions
→ How do you start a new action?
→ How do you allocate resources?
→ How do you set the right timeline?
4. A place to track and report results
→ What results are you tracking?
→ Where do you report results?
→ How do you analyze results?
Planning is a crucial part of marketing results.
Strategy → Planning → Execution
Here is a graph to help you choose your marketing tactic
You need to allocate resources wisely based on:
- Team's time → how many hours available per week?
- Marketing Budget → how much can you spend?
- Skills → what can your team do and can't do ?
Recap of the Level 2: Marketing Plan
Once you’ve selected your plan and tactics, you can move on to the execution.
Level 3 - Marketing Execution
After the strategy and planning, you need to execute the plan with consistency and a set of skills. This is the phase where ideas are really tested. Before execution, everything is theory.
For example, you can’t simple decide on your positioning on the market. You need to choose your desired positioning, but then you need consistent messaging to access a perceived positioning.
5 Steps happen during the marketing execution
Plan your experiment in a backlog
Start the experiment (one by one)
Assess initial results and continue
Assess the viability (for a go/no go)
Assess the repeatability (for a go/no go)
And after (5), you can go back to (1) to iterate on the experiment.
During the process, your market is always at the center:
You use market insights to plan the experiment
You assess results based on market feedback
You collect quantitative data (CTR, CPMQL..)
You analyze qualitative insights & verbatim
You need to collect all these insights: they will fuel your decisions
Because a successful experiment is a combination of many micro-decisions based on market data:
- Should I automate a welcome email?
- Should I use copy A or copy B?
- Should I publish this content?
- Should I repeat the test?
- Is this tactic viable?
When you are starting marketing, all these questions lead to "I don't know". Overtime and with a good volume of execution, you start to identify patterns. And things get easier.
But you need a marketing backlog for that:
- Build your backlog as a second brain
- Take note of everything that happen
- Analyze data sets, identify patterns
- Get 100% clarity on what to do
So this way, you'll be able to do the step 3-4-5 of the 5-step iteration loop:
(3) Understand initial results to optimize
(4) Know if an experiment is viable or not
(5) Find out if the experiment is repeatable
Level 4 - Marketing Program
Once you’ve tried marketing experiments in your backlog, you can identify the most pertinent ones with those questions:
Does it have a good ROI?
Is it viable on the long term?
Is it repeatable? Can I get this ROI again?
Do I have the resources to implement it at scale?
Is it easy or possible to implement this year?
For the experiments which are not viable for the long term, you can choose to do a NO GO (cancel the program). Or you can also put them back into your experiment backlog to refine them.
The goal is then to turn the experiment into a fully integrated program. You will develop a long term roadmap (6 months for example). And your goal will be to integrate the program into the daily operations of every departments involved.
A marketing program can't work if it's not 100% 'integrated':
Everyone internally knows the program
Teams have a valid process to collaborate
There are resources allocated for the program
The responsibilities and OKRs are crystal clear
For example, a 'video channel program' won't become a $1M ARR program if the leaders of each department don't care about it. Here is the best situation:
CFO believes in the program ROI
CEO invites his network for videos
CPO collaborates for product videos
VP Sales include it in the sales process
People in the company need to be:
Motivated → "I believe in this program"
Aligned → "I agree with the CMO on this"
Incentivized → "I need this program to win"
The minute an experiment becomes a program, it's not only about marketing expertise anymore. It's about management.
Alright that’s the end of this edition - I hope you enjoyed it and that it will be helpful for your marketing strategy.
👋 My B2B Content Marketing course is live!
121 participants joined my B2B Content marketing course this month. They are learning all my strategies to create a profitable content ecosystem.
💬 Free Linkedin Masterclass included
I added a 50-min Linkedin Masterclass in which I explain the strategy I used to go from unknown to 97,000 followers on Linkedin. I breakdown the strategies, tactics, copywriting frameworks, and 7 other tips.
