1. The 7 Deadly Sins of Marketing
1

2. ClearAction Continuum
2© Copyright ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
• Marketing departments must justify their existence
• Now more than ever
• Perceived lack of accountability
• Easy target for cuts
• Marketers untrained in statistics
• Broken systems frustrate measurement
• Many hesitate to invest in evaluating program success
SIN #1: Ill-Defined Metrics

3. ClearAction Continuum
3© Copyright ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
SIN #2: Slammed Resources
• Age of the “Individual Contributor Director”
• Big title, scare resources, little authority
• “Do more with less” mentality
• Marketers feel overwhelmed, burned out, ready to jump ship
• Over-dependency on heroes, martyrs & superstars
• High turnover, costly mistakes, silos of knowledge
• Collapsed programs as key people leave or burn out
• Potential winning programs left abandoned from lack of owner

4. ClearAction Continuum
4© Copyright ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
SIN #3: Leaky Institutional Memory
• Marketing depends on accurate info, a historical view and pattern
recognition
• Knowledge in many marketing organizations is scattered all over
the place
• When people leave, huge chunks of organizational knowledge is
lost
• Info loss is major productivity killer and contributes to less
effective decision-making
• Previous marketing investments are wasted when lost insight
must be regained or reacquired

5. ClearAction Continuum
5© Copyright ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
SIN #4: Constipated Creativity
• Marketing is valued for creativity but increasingly constrained
in expressing it
• Inspired creativity is supported by strong collaborative
processes
• Creative burden on one outbound marketer (the “individual
contributor director”) limits out of the box thinking
• Poor knowledge management impacts creativity
• Lack of agreement and direction in company (mission, vision,
values) also inhibits creativity

6. ClearAction Continuum
6© Copyright ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
SIN #5: Dysfunctional Relationships
• Most enterprises operate in silos and are not structured for effective
collaboration
• Competitive, power and control-type structures pit colleague-against-
colleague
• Poor alignment of rewards systems only perpetuates this status quo
• Internal communication processes often lack authenticity and
accountability
• Communication disabilities and misalignment from within naturally
flow outward to customers, investors, the market, etc.
Source: * IDC Executive Brief,
“Tech Marketers: Use the Marketing Mix
to Build Awareness Plus Demand”, February 2004

7. ClearAction Continuum
7© Copyright ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
SIN #5: Dysfunctional Relationship (continued)
• According to IDC*, marketing outsourcing is becoming more common,
as vendors seek to maintain or expand program execution without
incurring additional full-time employee costs
• Most successful organizations can point to effective long-term
marketing supplier relationships as key
• Conversely, a pattern of failed supplier relationships often indicates
marketing department failure, rather than poor vendor performance
• The “bring everything in-house strategy”
• The myth that superstar performers are also superstar managers
Source: * IDC Executive Brief,
“Tech Marketers: Use the Marketing Mix
to Build Awareness Plus Demand”, February 2004

8. ClearAction Continuum
8© Copyright ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
SIN #6: Poor Decision-Making
• Many corporate marketing budgets leave program budget on the
table or allocate it to the wrong initiatives
• Time consuming to manage budget effectively
• Each marketing spend-decision creates more work
• Doubt about ability to successfully justify expenditure to
management
• Focus instinctively on high-visibility activities and C-level
“requests” over fiscal management
• Most decision-making processes are not explicit, leading to a
lack of accountability

9. ClearAction Continuum
9© Copyright ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
SIN #7: Inadequate Marketing Portfolio
• Many companies align fate with success of too few marketing
programs
• Over-reliance on any one particular program can derail a
company if key program loses momentum
• Many potentially high-leverage programs never get off the
ground
• For example, customer references, lead nurturing
• Companies attempting to do all their marketing online are
violating two well-known principals:
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
• Meet the buyer in the channel in which they are most motivated
to buy, not the one in which you are most motivated to sell

10. ClearAction Continuum
1010© 2018 ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
ClearAction Continuum
Clients of ClearAction Continuum
PARTIAL LIST

11. ClearAction Continuum
We center your business on customers
ClearAction Continuum
11
ClearAction Advisory is different:
 Alignment internally & externally
 Empower all levels & functions
 Tie into existing rituals, strengths
 Seasoned CX practitioners
= Advisory team
See ClearAction.com/advisory
© 2018 ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
DNA Master Plan™
(fast-track foundational mojo for CX leadership)
DNA Activation™
(all-hands-on-deck for CX)
Market Responsiveness Index™
(3 factors: 32% profit advantage)
DNA Transformation™
(cross-functional systematic CX)
Customer/Partner Engagement Optimization
(external & internal UX)
Human-Centered Design
(products, services, processes external & internal)
VoC Actionability
(external & internal UX)
Actionable Intelligence
(journeys, personas, lifetime value, metrics)

12. ClearAction Continuum
1212© 2018 ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
ClearAction Continuum
ClearAction clients’ experiences
Because each of the ClearAction
team members managed CX in B2B
for a number of years, they provided
personal examples and practical
tools that could be implemented right
away. It was incredibly beneficial for
us to work with them for several
occasions. They elevated our
collective knowledge and helped us
achieve a higher level of CX maturity.
– A. Chu, Dir Customer Experience
ClearAction is an expert in business
operations, and has been an
invaluable resource for us to learn
best-practices in many areas. They
taught us things that would not
readily cross our minds, but after they
explain, it makes total sense, and this
increased our efficiency and
accuracy in many areas. I highly
recommend ClearAction.
– K. Van Diepen, Dir Marketing Communications
ClearAction has been at the forefront
of helping companies like ours
reduce chaos, maximize resources
and achieve impactful results.
They’ve provided mission-critical
guidance to begin the process of
building a strong marketing
operations function that supports our
company’s growth, scale and
continuous improvement objectives.
– K. Chalmers, Dir Marketing Operations

13. ClearAction Continuum
13
We center your
business on customers
© 2018 ClearAction Continuum. All rights reserved.
ClearAction.com
ClearAction
company/201333
+ClearActionCXO
CustomerExperienceOptimization
Let’s keep in touch!