The Unified Marketing System (UMS) is a sustainable and scalable method for profitable marketing in your organization. This process helps identify and avoid the dissonance between what you say you want (i.e., “We need another warship”) and the inner desires that are hard to ignore (i.e., “I want to build a monument to my own greatness that can also serve as a warship”).

UMS is a linear process without a true “end.” The 13 Questions in the process are asked and answered across four different phases of activity. Each phase focuses on different types of work that contribute to the greater plan. Each question builds on the previous one, but if you can’t answer a question, then addressing it later is possible. Progressing through each question helps you determine which marketing activities will best serve your customers.

When you reach the last of the 13 Questions, work backwards to troubleshoot efforts that did not fulfill expectations. Doing this also helps you adjust any assumptions that may have been incorrect. You can also repeat the process from the start (do a soft reset), thus re-committing to your organization’s goals and resetting the next phase of your strategy. Over time, repetition happens faster and comes more naturally to you.

Among other things, answering the 13 Questions will help you create the following:

•  A true purpose and goal for your marketing activity
• A common set of objectives and stated milestones to help you track and achieve them
• A way to describe the differences and similarities between what it is like for you to sell and your customers to purchase
• A thorough understanding of who your customers are, what makes them tick, and how they make purchasing decisions
• A method for valuing your customers and understanding what it will cost to attract
  more of them
• A marketing budget designed specifically to fund your goals
• Marketing messages that will resonate with your customers
• A plan to make your relationships with buyers and customers more profitable
• A portfolio of marketing tactics to help complete your goals
• An understanding of how to adjust and refine your marketing program over time

As you begin this process, some questions might feel uncomfortable or give you pause. You may think, “What does this have to do with marketing?” By the time you have progressed to the end, though, you will see how each step builds on the previous one—and discover how understanding can gel with this approach.

All too often nowadays, marketing operates in a silo. In a more functional environment, marketing and sales would work together and in cooperation with the entire executive team. Marketing’s goals should be the organization’s goals and vice versa. The “Unified” name is more than a descriptor; it’s a reflection of how success happens.

It depends on your approach. Some will undoubtedly use this book as a “marketing boot camp” and try to fly through it in a week. Perfectionists who dot every “i” and cross every “t” might take the better part of a year to get through a full draft of their UMS work. But speed and quality rarely come together, and perfection is both expensive and unattainable.

While initially working through these materials should take about three months, fully implementing UMS should take about a year, depending on the time spent researching. The rest of the year, you’ll focuses on adjusting, refining, and working with your team to optimize the processes, develop a rhythm, and understand how much progress is possible.

It’s a myth that B2B and B2C are different animals. Creating strategies for one versus the other is not innately different. When it comes to leading and managing marketing, the fundamentals for both are virtually identical. It’s the tactics at the end of the process that make them different.

If the success of your business lies in your customer relationships—and if growth is tied to your ability to scale your relationships and relationship-building process—then UMS is a great fit. But if your business is purely transactional or commodity-based (when competition is based on price and/or availability with no customer loyalty), then UMS may not be the best approach.