Consolidate and codify sounds technical, but it’s actually a fairly simple idea. The consolidation step means taking everything you’ve done throughout your marketing strategy and combining it into a single, more effective piece of learning. The second half is to codify your learning, which means to arrange what you’ve learned into a way that makes sense. In this instance, that means a way that leads to action.
But before you can take any action, you’ll need to ask yourself a series of questions, in order to organize what you’ve been doing exactly.
Strategy.
- Do you have the right product?
- Is it relevant to the right target?
- Do you have the right customer?
Execution.
- Do you have a well‑documented content marketing plan and is it working?
- Are your objectives clear?
- Are you using the right marketing tactics?
- Do you have the right people doing the work?
Optimization.
- Are you testing?
- Are you learning?
- Are you implementing those results?
What’s great about the quad marketing approach is that, by having gone through the process, you should already know the answers to all of these questions. And everything you learned along this path should help you answer the final question Anita asks:
Are you clear on what those key “aha moments” really are?
Reflecting on those aha moments and knowing what built up to their discovery, will help you codify the learnings throughout this entire process to figure out what your company’s key drivers of success are. As you identify those levers for success, you should be leaning toward one of three actions for your business:
1) Pause. Maybe you need some more time to think about your business, your product and/or your marketing tactics and potential changes you should make.
2) Pivot. Everything you’ve learned is telling you to pursue a different business or maybe a different segment within your current business.
3) Pursue. Based on what you’ve done and learned, you should aggressively pursue the business moving forward and continue along on the marketing strategy you have in pace.
Anita’s framework really does take the complex process of figuring out your businesses marketing approach and organizes it in a way that makes sense. And makes action easier. With this process and, as Anita says, “. . . a little ingenuity, some hustle, curiosity and hard work,” making your idea something big is within reach.