How I Made it in Marketing Marketing, Communications, and Pricing Leadership: Business must have a relentless focus on ROI, which includes marketing (episode #35)
“Too often, our campaigns and their messaging are dominated by a social dynamic rather than a science dynamic. Our collateral suffers a ‘designed by committee’ process and thus speaks with the disjointed voice of compromise,” Flint McGlaughlin taught in Customer-First Objectives: Discover a 3-part formula for focusing your webpage message (https://meclabs.com/course/sessions/customer-first-objectives/).
I thought about this lesson when our latest podcast guest shared a famous Yogi Berra quote about theory and practice. That “science dynamic” Flint mentions, or the “practice” that Yogi mentions, usually translates into data-driven marketing in our industry. When I asked him about what role data plays in his decisions as a marketing leader, he told me…
“I've got a dashboard that's got my three strategies that I mentioned at the beginning – thunder, lightning, and structure. I've got four tactics under each. So that's 12. And I've got three-ish metrics – sometimes two, sometimes four or five – for each one of those tactics. So, I've got a pretty extensive dashboard, and that dashboard tells me directionally correct. I don't get hung up on 3,862 is 112 off of our plan. That is not useful. Just directionally correct.”
That guest is – JD Dillon, Chief Marketing Officer, Tigo Energy (https://www.tigoenergy.com/).
Here’s some quick info so you can understand our guest’s credentials. And then scroll down to listen to and/or read the top lesson-filled stories from his career.
Tigo Energy announced a $20 million round of investment last year, led by Energy Growth Momentum. With over 40,000 installations in over 100 countries on all seven continents, Tigo systems generate more than 1 GWh of daily solar production.
When I asked Dillon about his biggest career accomplishment, he told me that the stock of Enphase Energy rose from 72 cents to $200 while he was Vice President of Marketing & Pricing. He also noted that this happened during the Trump administration, which he called out because the administration was known as not having policies that favored the renewable energy industry.
Listen to our conversation using the embedded player below or click through to your preferred audio streaming service.
Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing
Some lessons from Dillon that emerged in our discussion:
- “Hit it where they ain’t” – “Wee Willy” Keeler (baseball player from the turn of the century)
- “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” – New York Yankees great Yogi Berra
- “If my uniform doesn’t get dirty, I haven’t done anything in the baseball game.” – Baseball stolen base leader Rickey Henderson
- The most important professional skill is getting things done at your company by pushing boundaries but also operating within the culture of the company.
- Regardless of job title, use your unique skill sets to accomplish mission critical tasks.
- Business must have a relentless focus on ROI, which includes marketing.
Related content mentioned in this episode
Public Sector Marketing and Communication Leadership: Multi-directional learners, multi-colored spiky hair, and wearing multiple hats (podcast episode #31) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/public-sector-marketing)
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