So many teams want to start generating leads before getting any kind of marketing plan in place, but that leads to sales and marketing getting misaligned. Natalie Nathanson is here to help realign your company and streamline the planning process so you can crush your objectives. Get ready to learn about the Three M’s your marketing plan needs to have, how to use data for informed execution, and reach your audience with content in their favorite format.   Busted Myths:   You need a marketing strategy in place before trying to generate leads! Without a game plan, you’ll get stuck in a cycle of wasting time and resources. When people want to skip creating a plan, it’s likely prompted by a lack of understanding of marketing. Takeaways    In B2B marketing especially, terms can have different meanings to sales and marketing which can lead to misalignment on the goals and methods. Make sure everyone has the same understanding of what qualifies as a lead. Creating a marketing strategy for your company should address both the short-term needs of the company and the long-term initiatives that push the company where it wants to go. When creating a good marketing strategy for an initiative, you need to know the Three M’s which are the market being targeted, the message of the initiative, and the mechanism to run the initiative.  The length and format of a marketing plan really depend on the scope of the initiative, however, it should always answer what needs to be deployed and what does success look like? Using informed execution relies on testing smaller ideas to provide initial indicators of what’s working during the planning phase of a campaign so that once it is time to execute the larger plan, it can be based on the data from the prior experiments. Your marketing plan needs to be flexible to accommodate the blistering pace of change in the world of marketing. Create good content in the format that your audience prefers to consume content in whether it be written, video, podcast, etc.   Quote of the Show:   “Long gone are the days of putting together a 12-month roadmap and then executing one month at a time until you get to the end” - Natalie Nathanson   Shout Outs:   Women Presidents Organization Entrepreneurs’ Organization The Marketing Book Podcast The Trojan Horse Affair Podcast   Book Recommendations:   Getting Naked by Patrick Lencioni   Links:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalienathanson/ Email: natalie@magnetudeconsulting.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/nnathanson Company website: https://www.magnetudeconsulting.com/ Ways to Tune In:   Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hard-corps-marketing-show/id1338838763 Amazon Music/Audible: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/37228621-2f9c-4905-a223-1844effb49dd Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/show/1vVLpNI1LssMTiL6Kdsamn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-hard-corps-marketing-show Google Podcasts: https://play.google.com/music/m/Im7mytmu2wa2mekhoeixlja5hpe?t=The_Hard_Corps_Marketing_Show YouTube: https://youtu.be/hIAZvYFp5zg