And In Come The Bad Ideas

You have set your rebuilding process in motion. Even though the Information Technology Officer and the "Chief Customer Officer" think you are crazy for abandoning existing customers (which you have not done), you are in the process of pointing your Executive Team in the right direction.

Your Brand Response Marketing Team have met several times ... this is when the bad ideas come flowing in.

• "What if we did a postcard with 30% off and free shipping? And we rented a list of customers under the age of 40? That solves our Millennial problem and gets us new customers."
• "We would like $25,000,000 to create television ads."
• "Could we double the paid search budget and focus on keywords that align with products we have to liquidate, killing two birds with one stone?"

One way to stop the nonsense is to have your Brand Response Marketing Team analyze the competitive customer acquisition landscape.

In other words, ask your Brand Response Marketing Team to analyze three competitive sets.

1. How your competition acquires new customers.
2. How e-commerce brands acquire new customers.
3. How Silicon Valley brands acquire new customers, especially those that "scale" quickly.

Give the Brand Response Marketing Team one month to perform the research. Have the Brand Response Marketing Team present their findings to your Executive Team and to your Marketing Team. Ask the Brand Response Marketing Team to categorize tactics into themes ... you have offline tactics, online tactics, tactics where you spend a ton of ad dollars, tactics where you don't spend anything. Focus carefully on the tactics where you don't spend anything. There are TONS of tactics that do not require you to spend a single ad dollar. These are the tactics that already capitalize on your existing traffic, which is more than sufficient to grow your business. In your first few years of managing a Brand Response Marketing Team, this is where your home runs are likely to come from ... home runs, of course, because you'll get new customers, you will increase sales, and you will not generate expenses that alienate your Chief Financial Officer.

Pre-empt the bad ideas ... focus your Brand Response Marketing Team on tactics your competition, e-commerce brands, and Silicon Valley brands who "scale" quickly apply to their businesses.  You're going to see consistent themes that point you in the direction you need to move in.