Most teams confuse a marketing plan with a marketing strategy. They're not the same thing — and the difference matters more than you think. I've walked into a lot of marketing planning sessions over the years. And my first question is always simple: Why are we doing these things? What's the connection across all of this activity? And - most importantly - why would the customer care enough to engage? Most of the time, what comes back is a description of the calendar itself.

Most purchases don't start with an ad or Google search. They start with a memory . I spent nearly a decade at J.P. Morgan — Doing everything from building multimillion-dollar, global campaigns and managing sales enablement functions across some of the most complex B2B categories out there. And one thing I saw over and over again: Teams pouring budget into performance marketing while the brand quietly faded from buyers' minds. The research backs this up. Professor Jenni Roma