You probably don’t give much thought to No. 2 pencils. After all, note-taking apps and screenshots have practically replaced their functionality. And even before there was a smartphone in every pocket, pencils were merely the thing you used to do math problems or jot down phone numbers. Not great fodder for contemplation.

But pencils are more instructive than you think. Not only do they serve a simple (albeit increasingly insignificant) function, pencils also symbolize the complex process that goes into any great product. For our purposes today, that product is a marketing optimization strategy.

When you look at a pencil, you see a ridged wooden tool, painted yellow and topped with a pink eraser. But you don’t see the tree from which the pencil was made being logged, that log cut into smaller slabs, the slabs being carved into pencils. Nor do you see the graphite holes being bored and filled, the rubber erasers being shaped and fitted, or that trademark No. 2 being etched onto the final product. As the end user, you shouldn’t witness that process. The mark of a truly great product is that users get to enjoy it without ever seeing what’s under the hood.

Marketing optimization strategies are like No. 2 pencils in that way. Customers are so blown away by the brilliance of the message that they never wonder how those words came to be in front of them. But behind the scenes, numerous people and processes come together to bring those campaigns to life.

In this post, we break down the multi-faceted marketing optimization process and why each component is necessary.

1. Technology and Infrastructure

Each department in your company needs an organizational system. Everyone involved should understand their jobs,

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Do you want to know the worst sales question you can ask a customer? Take note, and never use it again. The worst sales question is: “What keeps you up at night?”

On the surface, that seems a reasonable thing to ask. You want to help the customer focus on the most important issue she’s facing. But by asking what keeps her up at night, you’re focusing on a problem that she already knows she has. That means she is likely already aware of the options available to her to address the problem.

Your ability to influence that customer is already limited if you are addressing a problem that they know they already have. Sure, you might be able to solve the problem a little more cheaply or more quickly, but is that enough motivation to drive the customer to action? The way to drive actual purchasing activity is to get them thinking about their business or problem in a way they haven’t considered before. You need to teach them something new and change their perception on how they view an issue.

Don’t one-up. Innovate.

Steve Jobs once famously said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” If customers had their say, they would have asked for smaller CD players rather than the iPod.

By the time your customers reach out to you, they’ve probably racked their brains over obvious solutions. Your opportunity lies in the space they haven’t explored, the options that never occurred to them. Most people can only think within the context of what they’ve already seen. You need to get at the core of what your customer wants to achieve and fulfill that in an innovative fashion.

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