“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
This famous line from A Tale of Two Cities also rings true when describing the modern-day tale of marketing and marketing technology managing the customer journey at the dawn of the AI era.
Disruption leads to good times – and innovation
It truly is the best of times because we are lucky enough to be working during a period of incredible disruption in marketing and business more broadly.
Why is disruption our good fortune? It’s an opportunity to break the status quo and forge the future. Great careers are not made from yesterday’s playbooks; they’re made by pioneering new ideas. A generational moment of disruption – such as we’re experiencing now – gives marketers the chance to innovate better ways of attracting, engaging and delighting customers. It’s also a chance for marketers to help pen the playbook that others will follow.
Be prepared for some bad times too
There will be days when it feels like the worst of times because things are changing so fast! Just keeping track of the weekly updates of what’s possible with AI – and the ways in which it can affect customer expectations – is an exhausting, full-body workout. But deciding which changes to embrace, when and how, and then actually driving their successful adoption throughout your organization is, frankly, the quintessential management challenge of the 21st century.
Embracing – and winning with – Martec’s Law
The struggle between the exponential rate of technological change and the much slower rate of organizational change is known as “Martec’s Law.” Picture yourself with one foot on a dock and one foot on a ferry as it pulls away. That’s what Martec’s Law feels like.
Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to overcome Martec’s Law. Operating in an environment where the pace of change will forever exceed our capacity to completely catch up is the new normal.
But don’t despair! This is actually an opportunity, as all great challenges are.
Because your organization is not the only one wrestling with Martec’s Law. Everyone else is too, including all your competitors. To win, you don’t need to escape Martec’s Law. You only need to be better at managing it than they are.
And you can manage it – by pulling two big levers.
Lever No. 1: Be strategic about which changes you embrace
You simply can’t chase all the changes in the market at once. Fortune favors those who focus. It’s important to continually explore new possibilities on the frontier. But you get your leverage by exploiting those that show the greatest promise. What’s going to be most impactful for your customers? What’s going to best harmonize with your other strategic bets? Make a few clear choices – which necessitates clear omissions – and put your weight behind them.
This will give you an edge over competitors who waffle too long or peanut butter their time and resources too thinly across too many choices.
Lever No. 2: Be more agile in how you embrace them
It’s all about how you operationalize those strategic choices. Being more agile isn’t a euphemism for “work faster” or code for doubling the amount of task switching everyone does. Such naive approaches have the opposite effect and end up dragging you down. Real agility is developed by building more adaptable approaches to technology, tactics and talent.
Insist on open and composable technical architectures that make it easier for you to quickly add, change or remove components, capabilities and use cases. Implement legit agile management practices in your processes, workflows and customer journeys: Think short feedback loops, iterative refinement and dynamic prioritization. Invest in greater training, enablement and empowerment for teams and individuals to fully tap the power of the new tools and technologies you give them.
These two levers aren’t magic. They’re muscles that can be developed. And they will help you win.
