Emma Lo Russo

There’s a common misunderstanding that lingers among some of the loudest voices online, and it’s been on my mind lately.

With more and more C-level executives jumping on LinkedIn, a familiar idea keeps echoing: that thought leadership is just a content play – the practice of publishing content to an audience. But the truth is that genuine thought leadership goes way deeper than that. 

It isn’t just about content frequency or visibility. True influence comes from why you show up, and the clarity, care, and consistency you bring when you do.  

Real thought leadership involves genuinely sharing what you believe, what you’ve learned, and what you’re still figuring out – with honesty and depth. 

It involves sharing with substance, and representing yourself – your values, experiences, and evolving presence – in an open and authentic way.

The best content always starts with insight

You don’t need to be a professional writer to share powerful ideas (that’s where strong collaborators can help). But you do need to bring direction, clarity and lived experience. The substance has to come from you.

It comes from the patterns you notice in your day-to-day life, the moments that shift your perspective, the challenges that linger long after they’re resolved, and the quiet reflections that eventually want to be shared.

What gains traction (and what actually sticks) are genuine stories and meaningful contexts. But most importantly of all, original thinking. 

That’s the kind of content that people remember. Not because it’s polished or perfect, but because it’s real and most importantly, uniquely you.

So what makes it work?

In my experience, the most impactful thought leaders:

1. Have a strong sense of what they believe in, and aren’t afraid to say it.
2. Speak passionately about their work, their industry, the world they operate in – seeing both challenges and opportunities.
3. Don’t chase trends or try to sound like everyone else. Instead, they speak from experience and with intention.

And most importantly: 

4. Stay involved in the thinking, because they see the value in showing up to contribute. 

Great thought leadership should represent all the aspects that make you up.  Who you are as a leader, who you are as a problem-solver, and who you are as a human with passions, challenges, and a vision for the future. This kind of thought leadership grows trust, and over time, lasting influence. The kind that shapes how people think, feel, and act.  

When employees understand what their leadership is thinking, it empowers them and deepens their sense of purpose. It also helps attract high-calibre talent who resonate with your vision. 

Customers, and potential customers, get a clearer sense of your values and why you do what you do.  Investors, journalists, partners, and other important stakeholders in your ecosystem also feel the pulse of your leadership and organization through what you are sharing. It is a powerful form of influence for stakeholder groups — and it can’t be manufactured. 

It grows through presence, substance, and consistency. 

It’s not about visibility for its own sake

Something that’s easy to assume through thought leadership and personal branding is that it’s all about vanity metrics – validation, visibility, and recognition. Yet the leaders who leave the strongest impression don’t chase visibility. They earn it by offering something of value, unique to them.

They reflect before the post on what they’ve learned, share what’s shaped them, and speak to challenges with honesty, not because it looks good, but because they know it does good. For their teams, for their industries, for their customers, and for people watching and learning in real time.

Whether you know it or not, if you’re in a position to start investing in a thought leadership program, people already look to you for clarity, for a sense of what matters and for why. As if that’s the case, silence can be costly. 

So why not use your voice to do something real? 

What does showing up actually look like?

I often hear people say that they can’t be on LinkedIn or social media all the time. And they’re right, and they shouldn’t have to be. 

Some of my most powerful posts I’ve shared weren’t long or complex, but came from spontaneous moments of personal clarity. From a shift in perspective, a challenge I was still sitting with, or a story that mattered deeply to me. 

One that stands out to me was a post I shared after taking my mum to New York.

On the surface, it had nothing to do with business. But it was about leadership, and more importantly about legacy. It was me showing up as a founder, a daughter, a parent – all at once – and honouring the person who taught me how to hold those identities with care. 

It was a moment to  acknowledge I couldn’t have achieved what I had without the incredible support of my mum – especially when my kids were little. Taking her to New York was my way of saying thank you, and letting her live out one of her dreams. 

That post resonated deeply, and sparked commentary about support networks, gratitude, and the people behind our successes. It wasn’t planned, but it felt connected in a way no product post ever could. Why? Because it was honest, relatable and real. 

So when you’re proud of your team, proud of a product, it’s okay to share why. That’s how you earn the right to share your company news or product wins – when it sits within something larger, more human, and more valuable.   

The quiet power of thoughtful leadership

The leaders who build lasting influence aren’t always the ones with the loudest voices. And they certainly aren’t the ones who only post company news.

They’re the ones who reflect deeply, stay curious, and offer their perspective; not to dominate the conversation, but to lead and contribute meaningfully. Influence develops when leaders engage in the thinking behind what is going on for their industry, their customers, their teams and the world around them.  

When your voice, perspective, and lived experience shine through, not as a performance, but as an invitation to connect – it works.

What I’ve learned leading a team of thought leadership writers

One of the most common challenges leaders find is the belief that they don’t have time. But here’s the truth.

We actually work with quite a few thought leadership clients at Digivizer. When you work with a team of experienced writers and business specialists like ours, we don’t create content in a vacuum. 

We help surface what’s already there within you; your thoughts, insights, and stories you might not even realize are valuable yet. We draw on your experiences, research and trends then craft them into something that feels resonant, and unmistakably you.

When we start working with a new client, we have a few evergreen questions to help get the ideas flowing. Here’s a couple of tried-and-true thought starters:

• What’s a lesson you’ve learned recently that others might learn too? 
• What do you wish more people understood about leadership, or about this moment in your industry? 
• What conversation do you want to start — or shift?

Start there, and let your insight lead. You can always polish it later. 

The point here is that if you are busy, remember: your contribution is the thinking. Let others help with the rest.

Final thoughts: Why thought leadership matters

Thought Leadership is not being a brand spokesperson.  It happens every time you show up and speak with purpose. 

It’s about choosing what you stand for – and standing for it in public. So don’t wait for the “right moment”, and don’t underestimate the quiet power you already hold to shape how people see, feel, and trust what you’re building.

Because in the end, people don’t remember the posts that were perfect. They remember the ones that were real. The ones that helped them think differently, feel seen, or take action. That’s the ultimate definition of leadership: the ability to influence and guide others – in person, and in your online presence.

Feedback is the backbone of any high-performing team culture and one of the most powerful tools of effective leadership. But for many, it’s also one of the hardest parts to get right. When done well, it drives growth, builds trust, and keeps your team focused on what truly matters. But too often, feedback falls into one of three ineffective extremes: either it’s avoided altogether, delivered too late to have the right impact, or it’s delivered without care – leaving people feeling blindsided. 

I’ve worked across multiple ventures, including Digivizer, to build a culture that encourages open, honest, and constructive real-time conversations. The key? Creating an environment where feedback becomes a tool for growth, alignment and motivation – not confusion, misgivings or demotivation.

Radical Candor starts with Leadership

Radical candor, the concept popularized by Kim Scott in her book of the same name, offers an effective approach: direct, honest feedback paired with genuine personal care. It’s about telling people what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear. Importantly, it’s also not about being harsh; it’s about being real, setting clear expectations, and supporting personal growth. 

Throughout my leadership, I’ve learnt that culture isn’t just words on a page – it’s how we show up every day. If I expect my team to give and embrace feedback, I need to demonstrate it myself. Whether at Digivizer, goto.game, or in my personal life, I am committed to delivering radical candor with care.  It also means receiving feedback graciously in real-time – and acting upon it.

For example, when I see a leader avoiding tough conversations,we tackle it directly in their development plan.  They receive support to frame and navigate difficult discussions, but they don’t get to sidestep them. Feedback might be uncomfortable, but when it’s embedded in leadership and business success, it’s far more effective. 

Self-evaluation as a Tool for Growth

Continuous self-evaluation is something I’ve practiced throughout my career – not just at Digivizer. Whether it’s through 360 (or total) reviews, one-on-ones, or employee surveys, the goal is always the same: seek continuous feedback for reflection and improvement. 

As part of this, I invite my entire team to evaluate my performance anonymously and share the results in their complete rawness. Then, I reflect on and share where I will spend my time, energy and development, as well as how I will work to close any gaps.

This is the secret: it’s not about identifying gaps. To really improve, it’s about closing them. 

People often rate themselves higher than their peers do. That doesn’t mean they lack ability – it’s about understanding the perception gaps. If your team doesn’t see the same strengths you see in yourself, the challenge is making your impact clearer and changing those perceptions through demonstrated action.  This may involve improving communication, setting expectations, and leading with measurable outcomes and data. 

Playing to Strengths for Greater Business Impact

Rather than fixating on weakness, high-performers thrive when they know where they excel and can focus their energy there – rather than dwelling on their lesser-used strengths.  When there are performance gaps, guiding individuals to leverage their strengths and close the gaps is often the fastest and most powerful path to success.

In this way, feedback provides a roadmap for self-reflective growth; harnessing and amplifying strengths and giving tools to fix current growth areas to turn good into great.  

The difference between good and great

I often refer back to Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. The biggest message from that book still resonates strongly: the enemy of great is good. It’s easy to settle for good enough – especially when you have a team full of smart, well-intentioned people. But good intentions and hard work aren’t enough. Results are the ultimate measure of success. And you never want to hold a seat for an average performer when it could be kept open and held by a great performer.

At Digivizer and goto.game, we hire smart, talented, driven people, who get things done, are infinite learners and are not arseholes. This mandate creates the best environment for people who want to come to work and learn how to be better every day. The true mark of a high-performing team isn’t just about working hard; it’s about working smart. It’s about knowing where to focus, what to prioritize, how to measure impact, how to reflect upon it, and then act on it. 

That’s why Radical Candor is so important. It’s not about criticizing effort, it’s about aligning that effort with meaningful results.  It’s about helping people identify the way to get there, which is what you want to reward so it becomes a self-fulfilling culture taking you to great.

Building a high-performing feedback culture based on Radical Candor

So how do you start embedding Radical Candor in your business? These are my top 5 pointers on how to get started:

1. Model it: If you want an open feedback culture, you must model it yourself. Ask for and provide honest feedback in real-time, use examples and acknowledge results
2. Make it part of everyday conversations:  Feedback shouldn’t be a once-a-year event. Build it into your daily interactions with your direct reports and wider team – whether it’s in 1:1s, team meetings, quick catch-ups, or performance reviews.It must be addressed as it happens and then captured within a development  if part of a bigger need.
3. Focus on closing the gaps, not assigning blame: If someone isn’t meeting expectations, don’t just tell them that they’re falling short. Support them to understand how to bridge the gap. Encourage reflection, understanding, strategies to address, commitment, timeframes and agreed feedback loops.
4. Separate effort from results: Acknowledge passion, but stay focused on impact. What needs to change to get the desired outcome? Make sure that outcome and result is clear and measurable.
5. Encourage solutions, not complaints: It’s easy to point out problems. The real value comes from those who bring solutions. Ask for the solution, focus on prevention not correction.  This helps demonstrate that everything is open to change if it delivers a greater result.

Final Thoughts on Radical Candor

Radical Candor isn’t about being harsh. It’s about being clear, direct and challenging – simply because you care personally. It’s about creating a culture where feedback helps people grow and take ownership of their growth, rather than making them feel defensive, belittled or blindsided. 

I’ve seen firsthand how feedback when done right, and in real-time, fuels growth and leads to better outcomes. At Digivizer, we don’t reward effort alone; we reward results. Saying that,  we also equip our teams with the tools, the support, a love of continuous development and the feedback they need to succeed. 

That’s how you build a team that’s not just good, they’re great. 

I’ve been working in and partnering with agencies for over 30 years – for the past 14 years as CEO leading Digivizer and Gotogame – and I’ve seen it all when it comes to client-agency relationships. I wanted to share why some become long-term, trusted partnerships that drive incredible business outcomes and others fall apart before they ever really get going. Whilst I am proud of the many decade-long client relationships we have at Digivizer, there is much to learn in understanding any failures.

So what makes the difference? It’s not just about delivering great work. The strongest relationships, the ones that truly stand the test of time, are built on something much deeper: trust, shared goals, and a willingness to adapt and grow together. A client’s needs today won’t be the same in a year or two. Business priorities naturally shift, leadership changes, and market conditions and competition are constantly evolving. 

Agencies that can’t adapt to these changes for their clients don’t just struggle; they become obsolete. It’s not enough to deliver what was promised months ago; it’s about anticipating what’s needed in the months ahead.

Building strong foundations 

The starting point for any successful collaboration is ensuring clear business goals and measurable outcomes are understood and agreed upon upfront. This means aligning on strategy, budgets, roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators (KPIs) from the very beginning. Establishing clear expectations around timing – when deliverables will be made and when results are expected – sets the tone for the entire project. 

Investment must also be made in understanding the client’s business, industry, and competitors. The agency should be deeply familiar with the pressures faced by all stakeholders and the KPIs they are being evaluated and remunerated by. When you look to create a deep understanding of the client, brand, and market,  you ensure complete alignment with the agreed program and approach. This includes documented agreement of the strategy, plan, budgets, targets, timeframes, and outcomes. 

Taking time to agree to meeting schedules, communication processes, and approval workflows – and ensuring these systems are in place – lays a strong foundation for a successful relationship. 

Periodically Reassessing Client Needs

One of the biggest mistakes agencies make is assuming they know what a client wants without regularly checking in to see if that is still the case. I’ve seen teams continue with previously agreed strategies and focus areas, which in time are no longer relevant or working. If you’re constantly asking your clients, “What matters most to you right now?” and “How would you rate our performance out of ten?”, you’ll uncover if anything is misaligned. It also creates opportunities to realign, educate or quickly pivot if needed. 

Successful partnerships are never transactional – they’re dynamic. Agencies need to make a point of constantly recalibrating their approach and scheduling deep-dive sessions with clients. It’s important to ask your client where they’re seeing success, where they’re finding challenges, and most importantly, “What does success look like for their business?”.  It’s just as important to ask “What could we be doing better?”, and to see if their senior leaders feel the same way as them.  The more we understand their evolving needs, and explore with curiosity, the more we stay on the same page. Curiosity underpins all working relationships. I firmly believe agencies and clients should be open to proactively seeking, measuring, and acting on insights. This approach allows you to anticipate and welcome change – rather than merely reacting to it. 

Managing Expectations with Data-Driven Conversations

Misaligned expectations can be a major relationship killer. I’ve seen clients with ambitious goals, like wanting to double their organic reach in three months or reaching a growth milestone, but their budgets and plans just won’t deliver to those ambitions.  While these goals might sound great, without a solid strategy, data, resources, and budget to back them up, they can quickly become unrealistic and unreachable. 

It’s important to avoid conversations based on opinion or one-off data points.  I’ve observed clients reacting to a single person’s comment or personal opinion, which isn’t supported by data. In those instances, it is best to respond with concrete data.  As we all have access to real-time insights, we can either substantiate or challenge those individualized opinions with data-backed facts.  

The best client relationships are built on open, data-driven conversations. When you bring performance data into the discussion, you remove the emotion from the conversation and help shift the focus to practical solutions and new hypotheses.

Balancing Ego with Data-Backed Experimentation

Ego is a factor in any business, whether client-side or agency-side. Over my years of experience, I’ve learned the key to managing it is balancing passion with pragmatism. The most successful partnerships I’ve had have been those where we created a culture of experimentation – testing, and learning. When you prioritize data and insights over opinions, it encourages everyone to have a more open and collaborative mindset.

Rather than shutting down an idea, it should be viewed as an opportunity: “Let’s test this approach and see what the data tells us.” With a test-and-learn approach, the best ideas rise to the top – not just the loudest ones. It’s crucial to continuously test, be open to the results, and share the learnings, insights, and recommendations for what’s next.

I’ve seen how shifting from “my way or the highway” to data-backed testing transforms relationships and leads to better outcomes. It creates space for all voices to be heard, and the results speak for themselves.

Spotting Risks Before They Become Problems

Even when things are going well, it’s essential to still stay proactive. The most successful agencies don’t just react to change; they anticipate it. Subtle shifts in a client’s business, market dynamics, competitors, or even platform changes, can often signal bigger issues on the horizon. Whether it’s leadership changes, new decision-makers, market shifts, or a change in focus – it’s crucial to recognize these signs early and adapt accordingly. 

The stronger the relationship and commitment to continuous testing and learning,  the better equipped you’ll be to navigate these changes together. Staying attuned to these shifts and proactively assessing where value can be added is key to staying ahead of the curve and ensuring you deliver results that matter.

Celebrating Success and Growing Together

Long-term partnerships aren’t just about avoiding failure – they’re about celebrating success together. The best relationships I’ve had have been those where both sides are committed to long-term growth and acknowledgment of the progress and wins along the way. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing your team passionate about the clients they work for, fully invested in their success. 

When an agency becomes an extension of a client’s team – integrated into their goals, challenges, and vision – that’s where the magic happens. We also ensure our team bonuses are tied to client growth and satisfaction with us., aligning everything our team works on with the client’s success.  This mutual growth results in success for our employees, our clients, and our business.

We make a point to celebrate milestones with clients, whether it’s a shared case study, a simple note of appreciation, or a celebratory lunch. Acknowledging these moments creates momentum, and it’s in those moments of celebration that the true strength of the partnership is felt. 

The Enduring Power of Partnership

From my experience, successful client-agency relationships don’t just last because of great work. They endure because both sides are willing to evolve, communicate openly, and invest in long-term growth.

There’s nothing more rewarding than looking back at photos of your client and your team from earlier years, seeing how far you’ve come, and still celebrating wins together. Those are the relationships that stand the test of time, and they make all the hard work worthwhile.

As leaders, our role is to create a culture where everyone – no matter where they are or what time zone they work in – has an equal opportunity to contribute, grow and succeed. These days, we work in a digital, hybrid-working world, which has required us to refine what makes a high performing and successful team culture.. Success now means making sure every voice is heard, everyone has the same access to information and decision making and everyone has the same opportunity to contribute innovation and results. It’s crucial for attracting and retaining top talent.

When large corporations tried to push employees back into the office, the pushback was loud and strong. The Microsoft Work Trend Index 2023 makes one thing clear: hybrid work is here to stay. So how do we create a sense of equity in such a diverse, hybrid workforce? How do we manage performance? And how do we keep everyone feeling empowered, no matter where they work from?

At Digivizer, I work with an incredible global team spread across 12 locations in 6 countries. And with over 30 years of experience managing hybrid, global teams, I can confidently say that creating equity of opportunity starts with four key principles: 

1. Transparency of information, 
2. Frequent, regular and real time communication, 
3. The right tools with inbuilt collaboration, and 
4. A genuine commitment to equity of opportunity and experience.

Transparency of information

In hybrid or global teams, I’ve seen how easily information can be siloed if sharing and accessibility isn’t done thoughtfully. That’s why establishing a single source of truth across your business is so critical – it levels the playing field for everyone, so each team member has access to the same data, insights, information, people and updates. 

Back in 2012, McKinsey found that effective knowledge management increased productivity by 20-25% – proving when team members can tap into the same resources, they’re empowered to contribute. Psychological empowerment, which ties back to leadership, has a positive impact upon overall employee mental health and promotes a healthy workplace. Shared visibility is simple: it means no one gets overlooked, and everyone has the same opportunity to make an impact. This is why ensuring cultural values like transparency and rules around processes like sharing, responding and basic communication etiquette are important; they show a commitment to equality through a single source of truth. 

Inclusive Communication Practices

In a digital-first world, it’s easy for inequality to sneak in and for certain voices to dominate if we’re not mindful. This is why clear, direct, concise and simple communication is crucial; it holds a team together. As a leader, I’ve learned it is important to create formal access points like slack channels, meetings, agendas, and employee engagement feedback surveys where everyone can participate equally – and without bias and interruption. We need to be hyper-aware of how we communicate and the platforms we use within our teams. It’s not about what we say to our team; it’s about how we model, manage, live and respond to each situation and communication point. 

At Digivizer, we’ve introduced asynchronous communication tools to help level the playing field across our global team. Examples like recorded video updates, full team access to business priorities, projects, financials, and performance metrics supported by shared documents and messaging channels (we use Google Docs, Slack, Jira and Asana) allow everyone to share their thoughts, wherever they are. This means more introverted team voices aren’t drowned out by the fast-paced nature and dominance of audio to one voice at a time in live meetings, which we often time cap, so everyone has time to contribute. It helps overcome cultural differences in willingness to challenge or speak up about aspects of business. 

Empower through skill development

A commitment to skill development needs to be a core part of your team’s culture, especially as expectations can change so quickly. Providing growth opportunities will empower your team to thrive and react to any workplace challenge – whether it’s learning new applications, enhancing soft skills, presentation skills or to build leadership qualities. 

At Digivizer, we prioritize a culture of learning and curiosity to keep pace with the rapid evolution of digital technologies. I wrote about the importance of curiosity in marketing last year, because it’s critical to staying relevant and needs to be fostered in our teams. To build curiosity in our teams, we schedule learning talkings, lightning talks, work buddies and mentoring sessions so that everyone has exposure to researching, preparing, and presenting, as well as building and keeping accountability. It’s why our culture enables each team member to get curious, set their own goals, and track their progress.  It’s not just about hitting performance metrics; it’s about giving everyone the autonomy, resources, and opportunities they need to develop in their careers.

A culture of continuous feedback

In global teams, it’s easy to assume that feedback is happening just because we’re communicating. But meaningful feedback goes beyond casual conversation;  it’s also about team performance, accountability and feedback. To encourage this, we ask our team how happy they are out of 10, what it would take to get them to a 10 and gauge similar metrics on team and company performance and effectiveness. The idea is to promote and encourage ideas, and where priorities and focus should be given. When employees feel acknowledged and heard, they value and feel responsible for business success.

 At Digivizer, we promote a culture of feedback that flows in all directions with our team encouraged to provide 360 feedback, 1:1 feedback, real-time feedback and to practice radical candour. We actively encourage and support our team to “have the conversation” with team member(s) if they have a concern. Whether it’s about management practices, team dynamics, or any other topic, I’ve found that encouraging continuous feedback with a focus on “Above The Line behaviors” of Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility and calling out “Below The Line behaviors” of Blame, Excuses and Denial, helps our team grow stronger and build resilience. These characteristics are essential for building a high performing team and culture, and this focus keeps us in tune with our own behaviors – as well as the needs and sentiments of our employees. Together, we continuously grow and improve – led by conscious leadership. If you’d like to understand conscious leadership more (and about Above and Below The Line behaviours), there is a great reference video from The Conscious Leadership Group that explores the topic.

Committing to Equity of Opportunity 

Leading a global team in today’s hybrid, digital-first environment requires a strong focus on fairness, transparency, trust and inclusivity. When building and managing a global organization, you need to consider the culture, people, processes and systems to support equity of opportunity and experience. Ultimately, you win as one team – and it takes every employee to feel responsible for sharing, contributing, collaborating and making things work. 

What are your thoughts on managing a global team? Do you have any strategies that work for you? I’d love to hear your insights and what other steps you feel are critical to ensure success as I too am continuously learning and growing to lead as best I can.

I’ve seen in my career the conversation of brand marketing versus performance marketing come up time and time again. Often with polarizing views where the championing of one or the other becomes the debate. But in my view, this is the wrong discussion.

To be effective in marketing today there needs to be a focus on the customer journey, with brand building and performance marketing working in tandem, to build interest and serve customers at every single touchpoint.

The misconception of brand vs. performance

Let me start by saying brand is really how your business is perceived and experienced by the customer, in every touch point and “moment of truth”.  In today’s day and age – with greater empowerment from the customer, their ability to move from brand to brand at the flick of a thumb, with AI creating enormous amounts of content but also reasons for doubt – the biggest concern for brands is ensuring trust and authenticity. And this is required at every point, whether it is when you are promoting your brand for the first time and creating a first impression and brand promise, but also at every single ad and interaction with your brand that follows.  

For the purposes of this article, I am specifically talking about the argument of where to invest your budgets. Should it be in brand building? Or in performance marketing (converting potential customers into customers)?

Champions of brand marketing argue that a strong brand builds awareness and loyalty, and it is this investment that leads to future sales. They point to iconic brands that evoke emotional connections, resonate deeply with their target audience and result in repeat purchases.

On the other side, performance marketing focuses on immediate conversions and ROI.  Advocates highlight the power of data-driven strategies, of the importance of digital sales funnels, and clear call to actions, that deliver measurable results.  

In my view, both approaches are required, and by taking a one-sided view, brands will suffer from their limitations. 

Focusing solely on brand can lead to a lack of sales if customers don’t know how to find you when they’re ready to buy. Imagine a beautifully crafted brand story with no clear call to action – it’s like building a stunning mansion in the middle of nowhere but giving no one directions on how to get there.  

An overemphasis on performance marketing can create a transactional relationship that lacks emotional connection. Customers may be enticed by your targeted ad, but if they don’t understand your brand’s values and what way you are going to make their life better (easier, sexier), they’re unlikely to engage with your business or product, no matter how compelling the offer. 

The customer journey is key

The reality is that customers don’t exist in a vacuum of brand awareness or immediate need.  Their buying journey is a process, from not knowing you, to considering you, to buying from you. Marketers need to be present at every stage.  

In the early stages, brand marketing builds awareness and establishes both a position and the first brand promise and thus trust. Think of great videos, informative blog posts, engaging social media content, or thought leadership articles (just like this one!). These efforts educate potential customers about your brand’s story, values, and expertise.  

As customers move closer to a purchase decision, performance marketing delivers targeted messages and facilitates conversions. This can involve retargeting website visitors with relevant information, case studies, helpful tips, offering free value before you then make it helpful to offer an “opt-in” buy or exchange for free value.

Investing in brand: building a foundation for success

Brand is often the first marketing budget we see cut when money is tight but brand marketing is not a luxury, it is an essential investment. At Digivizer, we recommend to our customers allocating at least 30% of their marketing budget to brand building efforts. 

This investment creates volume at the top of the funnel that in turn makes performance marketing more effective. Consider brand marketing as an investment that targets new and potential customers and ultimately lowers the customer acquisition cost in the long run, i.e. the further down the funnel the customer moves.  

Think of it like building brand awareness as priming the pump – it creates a pool of potential customers who are familiar with your brand and more receptive to your performance marketing efforts, ultimately driving greater performance.

Building trust with digital marketing

It is no understatement to say digital marketing has fundamentally changed the consumer landscape. Today’s customers are bombarded with content and have become pretty comfortable with ad-blocking and other ways of protecting their online experience. 

Effective brand building in this environment requires creating engaging content that resonates with your target audience. This content should entertain, then infotain, educate, and build trust. 

The key is to create content that is valuable to your audience, regardless of whether they are actively looking to buy your product now or may consider it for later. This approach fosters a relationship based on trust and positions your brand as a helpful resource, not just a salesperson.

Finding the right balance

At the end of the day, the optimal balance between brand marketing and performance marketing will vary depending on your industry, product, and target audience. 

For a new B2B company with a complex solution, a higher allocation towards brand building might be necessary to establish reach, expertise and trust. For new brands, you want to ensure you have enough budget to create multiple touch points of your intended audience so they feel that you are bigger and more suited for them. However, for a well-known consumer product with a short buying cycle, a heavier focus on performance marketing might be more appropriate. 

The most important tip here is to pay attention to key metrics to guide your decision-making.  

Performance marketing KPIs like click throughs, time on site, conversion rates and customer acquisition costs are important. They help you measure the immediate effectiveness of your marketing efforts. But don’t neglect brand metrics like brand awareness, engagement, and sentiment analysis either. Like all metrics, a clear, data-driven objective should be set first.   

These metrics provide insights into the overall health of your brand and its impact on customer perception.

Continual measurement and improvement

It can feel like the world of marketing changes every day. Consumer preferences change, new technologies emerge, and the competitive landscape shifts. You should be regularly assessing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and be prepared to adjust your approach in real-time. 

Don’t be afraid to experiment and test different strategies. A/B test different ad copy, creative and web pages, analyze website traffic patterns, and gather customer feedback. 

Use data to identify what’s working and what’s not, and refine your approach accordingly. Think of the customer journey as a map, but remember that the map needs to be constantly updated to reflect the ever-changing terrain. Don’t throw everything out – work out what is working and what is not, focus first on fixing what is not so you are in a continuous state of improvement.

Moving beyond the debate

By moving beyond the brand versus performance marketing debate and embracing a customer-centric (value as determined by the customer) approach, businesses can create an effective marketing strategy. By focusing on the customer journey and using a combination of brand building and performance marketing tactics, combined with continuous improvement through performance insights, you can build new and lasting relationships with your customers to drive long-term success.

“Man’s mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.”?–?Oliver Wendell Holmes. This is one of my favorites.

As you can imagine, I meet CMOs all the time. When speaking with them, they all talk about how essential it is to understand their key audiences, prospects, value propositions and customers. 

One discussion I’m having more frequently is on how they are going about understanding Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences. This can be more challenging for a high percentage of CMOs when they’re inevitably at least a generation (or two) older than those they seek to market and sell to.

This has got me thinking. What makes a successful CMO, a successful marketing program, and a successful marketer?

I think the answer starts with curiosity – not only as a human trait or style, but as a strategic discipline.

Curiosity as the foundation

Those who know me and who work with me will probably agree that I have a high action bias. But I never start with action. I start with curiosity.

In my experience, curiosity informs knowledge, which informs insights, and these are the foundations we actually need to create the strategies that will deliver success. Challenging the status quo at the strategy development stage is best born out of curiosity, which feeds the questions and answers that being curious provoke and promote.

I’ve learned that being better informed helps you make better decisions. Knowing what is known and unknown, understanding what is fixed or variable, what is determining and shaping the hypothesis that you are building and testing. 

Getting to the bottom of a why (which may take layers of asking why), ultimately makes you a better strategist, and that in turn leads to better execution and results.

I’d argue that always asking for more information, understanding what influenced a particular choice, decision or outcome, measuring what results followed these decisions, and exploring what might be changed, is curiosity deployed to good effect.

Being open is better than being closed

It goes further than strategic development. Creating a culture built around curiosity embeds this approach to marketing across the whole organization. 

The quote at the head of this article is attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes. I love what it represents because it embodies positive change across an entire company, and embodies a discipline that can be learned by everyone.  

Curiosity then becomes part of a company, not the characteristic and style of a select few.

Part of turning curiosity from an instinct into a discipline in yourself and your team is remaining open – not just to new ideas or new opinions, but to changes of direction, to new opportunities. Not staying open is the pathway to failure. 

I also strongly believe that when you face difficulties and your head is hurting, or you are feeling uncomfortable by what you are facing, that is an indicator that you are experiencing an opportunity for growth. 

Seeing it as a positive, being curious as to why you are feeling that way, and where the opportunities are to learn the best path forward, leads to faster progress. The opposite to that is when people retreat or find difficulty, discomfort or pain as something negative.

The biggest danger to a leader is to set a marketing strategy and then forget it. Assuming that an initial set of inputs, questions asked and answers given, even based on hard data, will not change, is the definition of a lack of curiosity about your markets and customers. As one constant is change – things will always be moving. 

If you set and forget, you miss two things: changes in customers, prospects, and audience; and knowing whether or not your program is working. Your audience might be right and your program might be wrong. Your marketing might be supported, and your audience or market might have changed. Your competitors certainly will.

Systematic curiosity: from trait to discipline

The alternative is to be curious, to make being open systematic by continuously seeking, measuring and acting on insights. It’s important to recognize that an informed strategy represents an initial hypothesis that, almost inevitably, will change and if you are the driver of it, will change for the better.

In marketing, this translates to having always-on data points that deliver real-time insights on how changes in the markets you operate in have impacts on your customers.

If you can build a culture of curiosity in your organization you move to an approach that welcomes knowing what’s changed, away from the mindset that something is either right or wrong.

If you hire for curiosity, you can develop and nurture that culture across the organization, to create a question-based approach to people and data. 

Curiosity may have killed the cat. In marketing, it leads to better outcomes, helps you be better informed, and helps you make better decisions.

A version of this article also appears at digivizer.com

I’ve seen many attempts at digital transformation stumble because there were three things missing at the start of the project.

These three foundations – objectives, data and people – are not new concepts. Deloitte makes the point that getting digital transformation right takes more than just ambition and bold investments.

What is changing the impact of transformation success is the capabilities of teams inside organizations, including the need for increased accountability across ever-larger groups and teams, and for data-led decisions being made on everything from digital marketing to AI.

Building out that capability is crucial to the success of transformations. McKinsey placed it second only to capable leadership in importance. My experience and observations are that this, along with an ability to understand and act on data, is often overlooked.

Not focusing on the required capability building within the organization can lead to frustration especially with individuals, if they are suddenly being held accountable for results that they either have little control over, or which they have not been trained to analyze and act upon.

With business transformation, the objective is never a strategy

The digital transformation journey therefore needs to be planned for and managed. Organizations can’t just want things to happen, or expect things to change by company edict.

This was something we discussed late last year at a seminar held with the Australian Computer Society. A number of the panelists emphasized the point that the skills of employees need to be mapped to the needs of the business and the destination that is the new focus for the business. Where are they today? Where do they need to be tomorrow? What support, training, development and program of change do they need to be taken upon?

Success requires good people design, training and capabilities, measured against the organization’s overall objectives. This also includes review of KPI’s and remuneration that is tied to performance to ensure total alignment to the new outcomes you are looking to drive.

This is not a one-off process or approach. It’s a continued planned journey towards those pre-defined objectives. As one example, the concept of accelerated growth is attractive, but it requires the right talent in the right people, and the right type of investment,  inside the organization.

Without that, it matters little what the company or its senior management want: success by any full measure, won’t be possible.

Where to focus: multiple touch-points, customer expectations, first-party data

In working out what the transformation destination might be, along with the business objectives, the answer as to what needs to be solved, is rooted in the needs of the customers.

Their expectations change continually. Understanding both the changes themselves and the process of change is what triggers and drives the requirements of digital transformations.

At its heart, you need to understand how you can better serve and meet the needs of your customers, on their terms, when and where they wish to be served. This may be what is required to allow them to self-serve, but also in what information that is required to better support them from your people, or help them make better decisions around serving your customers and your business.

People’s capabilities can then map to customers’ needs. Otherwise, change in itself won’t create or deliver the desired outcomes. The capabilities of teams inside the organization may change, but they must meet the customers’ expectations.

An example of where I have seen this fail is the desire to upgrade a business’s web platform with a view that it will provide “everything”. However, the design of the website is either not mapped strongly enough to customers requirements, or the data that needs to flow and be available to the customer or internally has not been designed with the view of what needs to happen to it, or because of it, at the speed it is required. The other key failure point is having a great system built, but a team and those who need to get information, unable to do so or use it effectively.

Many commentators share the same, general areas of focus for success, but I think it’s helpful to distill these down to just three. These can be applied to organizations seeking to transform their marketing operations, all the way through to large companies seeking to transform their entire organizations.

Driver one

The first driver is that there are  multiple customer touch points, increasingly possible by smart devices and always-on digital connectivity. Very few of us now walk into a bank for a one-to-one engagement with a bank teller. And many of us do not wish to (for instance, I had to go into the bank last week to change an address for a business credit card. This was unable to be supported online and was a colossal waste of my time and a poor use of their time for something that could easily be supported online).

This goes much further than back-end apps and delivery processes. These multiple touch points represent new ways for brands to engage with customers, by creating previously unheard of customer experiences. So people’s capabilities need to be adept at e-signing and fulfilling these multiple touch points, across multiple data points.

Driver two

The second driver is that customers needs have changed. They expect much greater self-service, personalization, and they expect real-time responses on their terms, wherever that is, at whatever time that is. Particularly around support and when purchasing or tracking progress from you.

One implication of digital transformation is that every part of the journey needs to be considered, and a change here will likely directly influence a change over there. An accelerated success in one area can also lead to roadblocks in another, which in turn will frustrate customers who have been taken so far along a customer journey, but are now forced to wait.

Driver three

Finally, businesses need to rely more and more on first-party data, which means developing value to first exchange the permissions to obtain their data and to engage them as you hope, and in building trust with customers around acquiring and using their data to create positive and meaningful changes of value. And of course, this is increasingly driven and governed by regulation. Organizations that don’t get this right will add risk and costs to their businesses.

A complete understanding of all of these drivers will change any digital transformation from being something that an organization hopes or perhaps even demands will succeed, to something that will succeed with some degree of success, if built on objectives, data AND people capabilities.

This approach also minimizes the constraints (such as the ability to deliver through the transformed customer value chain) that can appear later in the transformation.

One thing we’ve seen with companies is that customers will not give organizations who cannot meet customer expectations the time and flexibility to catch up. Organizations will lose their positions in the market, their originality and competitiveness, and their ability to delight their customers.

Fundamentally, digital transformations are less likely to succeed if they don’t build people capability, aligned with a clear objective or strategy. BCG found that only 30% of digital transformations succeed. As BCG also points out, the inverse is likely to hold true: set clear objectives, align teams with those objectives, and transform the skills and capabilities of employees, that success will be achieved

Use data to inform and accelerate change, but also make data something more than a set of tools used by teams. When thinking about Digital Transformation, embed data and data-made decision making in the culture of the organization. Make data an essential attribute of the capabilities of your teams.

A version of this article also appears at digivizer.com

From Jerry Maguire to today, the revenue return on investment is ultimately what counts – something I was recently reminded of by one of our partners, who made the point that they will support organizations that help them generate revenue.

Measurement of marketing performance underpins this fundamental position and purpose. As Gartners’ Ewan McIntyre reminds us, understanding that connection in tighter economic conditions has never been more important.

He also reminds us, marketing budgets drop like a stone at the first sign of trouble and rise like a feather once the environment is more settled.

This helps to sharpen the role of marketing in any organization.

It starts with understanding how an organization makes its revenues and margin, and how customers in turn make revenues from their customers (for B2B).

Next is to understand where the opportunities are, and to assign priorities to those the organization chooses to pursue.

Finally comes the understanding of how to generate value – including the tactics needed to go after – and land – those opportunities already identified.

Easy to summarize and to understand. So why do we see so many gaps in knowledge and execution?

Where is the money?

We are across a lot of marketing data points. And we see organizations struggling to deliver value.

The explicit link between marketing effort and the need to generate revenue is, too often, broken.

It can lead to challenges when being busy is confused with being effective. It’s what I call the illness of busyness, of feeling productive, getting things done, checking activities off a task list, but not actually tracking towards where the money is to be found. One of my favorite sayings is to watch for the operation being successful, but the patient dying.

One example of getting this right is the design and building of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum in Spain. Architect Frank Gehry understood that the objective was about creating something of value and wonder to attract visitors to the city and region. 

The option of converting existing buildings that had laid abandoned for some years was rejected in favor of something new and spectacular that could fulfill the brief of generating economic growth in Spain’s north (an estimated €500 million in its first three years after it opened). 

Gehry kept his focus on answering the real objective, which was to create something that would attract large numbers of tourists to drive significant economic impact, and not making the mistake of designing a museum at the originally briefed location. 

(Note: this example was referred to in How Big Things Get Done by Professor Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner.)

Closer to home, an Australian financial services institution had the objective of becoming digital-first because it understood that’s where its future customers are to be found, and that’s the fastest way to compete effectively with organizations with larger budgets. 

Yet the organization continued to be busy doing the same thing that it had been doing before. The organization had to transform itself to follow the money. Even though the commitment and lip service to the new strategy was there, the old marketing habits were still in action. The gap between marketing and revenue had to be closed.

I think as a whole, marketers do understand their role: to create demand for products.

However, the best marketers have structured partnerships with their sales organizations and their impact on generating revenue.

The best will not only create demand but also support sales by taking customers along the path to conversion.

Both, though, are different from when everyone in the organization thinks this way. When everyone says “show me the money”, that is indeed when focus of time, resources and energy converts to revenue.

A version of this article also appears at digivizer.com

The recent article by Amanda Chicago Lewis on The people who ruined the internet touched nerves with a number of marketers worried about their brands, SEO gurus worried about their incomes, and business owners worried about what to do next.

Add in the opportunities and concerns about the impact of AI on marketing, content especially, and the debate was always going to be interesting.

The way through, or around, this debate is, as always, to focus on two things: the importance of what matters to customers, and the impact and value businesses seek to create in response and through every touch point. 

This seems obvious, but SEO and SEM investments need to make both of these easier to understand and deliver, more so than they currently are. This can end up being a never-ending game of chasing the Google algorithm.

Never forget to market

The job of marketers is to create the best match between what someone searches for, and what businesses have to say about solving their needs, or in answering their questions.

SEO is only the task of optimizing effort and resources deployed to create content designed to answer customers’ needs and attract them to websites. The relevance and value of content are the most important parts of the digital marketing mix. 

Everything else around it is designed to help map and match consumers to that content, and deliver it in ways and volumes that also make the CFO and CEO happy.

Removing complexity from search

Google’s acronym E-E-A-T – for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness – still rules. 

What’s most interesting though is the complexity that sits just beneath the surface of understanding search ranking and search query tracking. Google’s own general guidelines run to four pages of content alone.

Removing that complexity resets how search adds value to any digital marketing campaign. 

Websites should be designed, built and optimized for human customers, not for the Google algorithms. That means exploring the actual natural language and queries of the way people search, and designing sites that make it easy to access information, products and services, and measuring performance against those criteria and benchmarks. 

Performance measurement for all – not just the experts

This becomes increasingly important with the continued rise of AI, which can influence how search optimization and search query tracking might be deployed in two ways. First, how AI can be used in the actual creation of content. Second, how AI can be used to expose how others might be gaming the algorithms.

In both examples, measurement of performance becomes essential. For that to be as effective as possible, search query tracking has to be as accessible, easy and affordable as possible, to as many people in an extended marketing ecosystem, without compressing the validity or accuracy of the results.

That means removing the reliance on experts for data analysis. They are experts, but they are also expensive, and often siloed. They can only do so much. And since the role of creating relevant content falls to many, and the job is to increase the authority of the entire website, marketers and business owners can’t wait, nor  leave everything to a single source of expertise who holds all the data.   

That means giving in-house marketing teams, external marketing agencies, CMOs and CEOs access to the same organic search query data. And that means making the insights as easy to interpret and action as possible.

Then, the safety net and obstacles of complexity are replaced with accountability and collaboration.

At the start I said that there was a way through or round the debate about whether search had gamed the internet and, as a result, broken it. Ultimately, it’s the wrong conversation. 

One thing is certain: Google’s algorithms are not our customers. The better conversation is really about plugging data, including search query tracking, into strategy development and program performance management, to see the data and then make faster, better decisions as to how best to action it.  

Organic search results provide incredible insights into how customers are actually trying to discover  how to solve their needs. With personal social media posts becoming increasingly private and unable to be measured, search provides the largest open set of natural language data to inform strategy, marketing and content programs.

Organizations who will win in search will be making that information as widely available as possible, to every stakeholder inside and outside the organization.

A version of this article also appears at digivizer.com

That stakeholders are a forgotten audience within marketing programs may be more common than it should be.

I say this because in many cases, stakeholders are kept away from the unvarnished, objective, data-led, single source of marketing truth by those who control the data, who have something to hide, or have something to protect (usually their jobs).

In other words, vested interests are killing marketing programs.

Our experience is that many stakeholders, particularly C-level stakeholders, are frustrated at the lack of information made available to them by the marketing teams, the delay in receiving that information, and the biases in the information. 

And this is a business problem, not just a marketing problem. Stakeholders include, sales and business development teams, joint-marketing and co-branding partners, agencies and other external partners, in addition to the C-suite. All have reporting and ultimate budget responsibilities. Taken together with those responsible for delivering the programs, everyone who should influence how marketing is delivered, and therefore be held accountable for results, needs real-time access to single sources of truth about marketing program performance

Too often, we hear senior management and business owners say the opposite is the reality. 

As one business leader recently told me, “we realized too late that we spent a whole bunch of money on something that did not work, and we would not have continued had we known this earlier. We would have redirected the budget. And we’re not happy we’ve only just discovered this months after the campaign finished.” Waiting to find your budget did not work as hard as it could is an opportunity cost greater than the dollars wasted.

Better insights, better teams, better performance

There are other benefits in ensuring all stakeholders have real-time visibility. Transparency around real-time performance builds empowerment, upskills resources, and moves in all directions. 

Once a single source of truth about the performance of marketing programs is made available to everyone, without constraint or delay, marketing programs can  flourish. 

The collective learning muscle of the organization increases.

Marketing programs that already perform well can perform even better. 

Marketing programs that don’t perform well can be kick-started, redirected or discarded.

Greater trust can be built in agency and client relationships. There are no surprises, no place to hide, just the truth about whether the current marketing program is working as expected or not. Either way, resources can be deployed to best effect. 

Confidence is built with stakeholders who will be more likely to invest in success when they can see success. 

Decision quality improves as it can be based on real-time data and insights.

CMOs can prove the value of their strategies and demonstrate the quality of their decisions. 

Marketers and agencies can demonstrate the worth of their creativity and demonstrate how well creativity actually works for their customers.  Rather than working in silos, they have visibility into the insights from all aspects of the marketing program and customer touch points. These include organic search and social media, to best-performing creative, to what is actually driving valuable conversions on websites and from which platforms. These insights in turn drive better content outcomes.

Customers will relate to brands that clearly understand them.

And everyone wins. 

What’s wrong with marketing accountability

When Digivizer is invited to work with organizations, it’s often to address some of these concerns. Common factors include lack of insights, confusion, delays in information, competing silos, and an absence of truth into what’s working. 

Different teams try to justify their own reporting mechanisms or processes, often to justify the decisions they have made in external agencies or program development. We still see too many examples of teams seeking to show themselves in the best-possible light, or to rely on the agency they have appointed to do this for them.

That results in fragmented reporting. For every team with its own reporting process, targets, benchmarks and KPIs, there is another version of the truth. Nothing becomes clear, and the only thing that grows is the noise of competing claims.

As I said in a recent article, what’s interesting is that the C-suite is demanding more clarity. 

Recently, we’ve added two organizations that have rejected too many systems, too many competing teams and too many unchallenged claims about performance. They have turned to a single source of truth about marketing performance. 

We help with implementing this change, but what’s impressive is that their approach binds their extended ecosystems – their marketing team, management team and multiple agencies – into one reporting framework. This includes providing visibility and access to their finance teams. They use the awareness of real-time expenditure and conversions to estimate future revenues and book value. 

It’s worth emphasizing that this makes everyone in the ecosystem accountable as well. 

Ending marketing disunity

By removing a previous reliance on individuals to provide the insights, these two organizations – and their internal teams – now focus on consolidated data presented in a single, composite view.  

They no longer need to pay for valuable engineering resources or wait for analysts to provide the information. Instead they can invest in resources that add real value: developing  strategies, setting direction and making decisions that actually deliver returns.

The potential for team disunity and agency rivalry has been removed completely.

Everyone on these programs is empowered to seek the best possible return for the investment they are responsible for. These teams now research the opportunities that already exist, to provide inputs into strategies and to see how things are actually performing.

Making the data and the insights available (it can be found) and accessible (it can be understood) in real-time allows everyone to dig deeper into the meaning that they can see in front of them. That can be returns on a paid budget, the impact of creative executions, determining what content should be invested in or campaigns to be developed, or any other potential success factor.

New conversations, focused on performance

The discussion about performance continues to move towards what works best. This will be based on understanding why that’s the case, testing assumptions about what to do next, and focusing where success is either most-likely, based on past data, or simply demonstrated by results.

It is much easier to focus on a single area of potential performance lift within a digital funnel, than to try and move everything at once. Having visibility into everything, broken down into each platform, each stage of the funnel and each piece of creative, copy or destination, helps guide investment.

Ultimately, this comes down to business leaders deciding for themselves what they want to do about stopping the different vested interests in their organization getting in the way of better results.

They can replace the bullshit that results from different teams presenting different reports in different time frames, with one single source of marketing truth, that everyone has access to, whether they are a specialist or a beginner. 

They can close the gap between agency and brand.

And they can close the gap between failure and success.

Because the more powerful the spotlight being shone on the performance of marketing programs, the more accountable the extended business development and customer experience teams become, and the better the marketing results will be.

A version of this article also appears at digivizer.com.