Stop Doing Marketing

Before launching the next campaign, redesigning the website or adding another channel, stop long enough to work out what is actually happening. Diagnosis is not hesitation; it is the step that gives action a chance of being useful.

Symptoms arrive disguised as problems

Organisations rarely hand marketers a neat diagnosis. They say sales are down, engagement is poor, the website is not working or more leads are needed. Those statements can be important, but they describe outcomes and frustrations rather than causes.

The same symptom can come from very different problems. Sales can fall because fewer people are entering the category, because awareness has weakened, because competitors have improved, because conversion has dropped or because existing customers are buying less often. Each explanation points towards a different intervention.

Diagnosis should compress complexity

Richard Rumelt describes diagnosis as the first part of the kernel of good strategy, followed by a guiding policy and coherent actions. The useful point is not the terminology. It is the insistence that strategy starts by identifying the critical challenge rather than by assembling a list of desirable activities.

A good diagnosis is not a data dump. It takes messy information and turns it into a clear enough explanation to guide a decision. 'Traffic is down while conversion is stable' is useful because it narrows the problem. 'The website needs modernising' is a proposed solution wearing the clothes of a diagnosis.

Do enough research to act

There is a risk of taking diagnosis too far and making uncertainty an excuse to do nothing. Perfect information does not exist, and many marketing decisions are reversible. The goal is to reduce uncertainty to a level appropriate for the cost of the decision, then test and learn.

A useful final sentence is: 'Our main marketing challenge is ______ because ______.' The second half forces the explanation to carry some evidence. Once that sentence becomes credible, the organisation has earned the right to decide what marketing should do next.