Jason Bradwell’s A2E framework to better prioritize marketing ideas

RAMLI JOHN: You get an idea. You get an idea. Everyone gets a marketing idea. The problem with ideas are, it's a dime and a dozen. There's a lot of ideas out there. And with limited time, budget, and resources, what should your marketing team focus on? That's what, really, it's all about. That's where prioritization frameworks, like Jason Bradwell's A2E Framework, comes in.

JASON BRADWELL: So the A2E Framework is a document that's designed help marketing teams evaluate the value of an idea, to help give them focus, and to set context for reviewers and other stakeholders within the organization. And it's something that can be used for any kind of project, whether that is at a broad strategic level, or it can be applied at an individual artifact level.

RAMLI JOHN: Today, Jason Bradwell shares the five pillars of A2E Framework to help you evaluate marketing ideas and gain alignment. Today, you learn first the importance of gaining company- wide alignment. Second, the five pillars of the A2E Framework. Third, a real example of Jason's framework in action. And fourth, how starting a podcast has accelerated Jason's career. He will also provide the steps on how to get started right now. Before we start, I've created a free Powerups cheat sheet that you can download, fill in, and apply Jason's A2E Framework right away. You can go to Marketing Powerups to get it right now, or find that link in the description or show notes. Are you ready? Let's go.SPEAKER 3Marketing Powerups. Ready? Go. Here's your host, Ramli John.

Ramli John: Let's talk about marketing powerups. One of them we're going to be talking about is the framework you use, the A2E Framework. Before we get into that, I mean, one of the main purpose of this is really to align stakeholders and other teams in a company around work you do as marketers. Why is that so important? I mean, it's obvious for some folks, but I just want to paint a picture of importance of making sure everybody's aligned. Why is it important to make sure everybody's aligned as to what marketing is doing?

JASON BRADWELL: Yeah. I think there's two elements to this. I think there's an alignment within the marketing team, and there's alignment of marketing within the wider organization. So if we take the first one, it's important for a marketing team to be aligned because obviously that's how you produce high- quality work consistently. If everyone's just doing their own thing, and there's no coordination or alignment in between them, you're just going to have this highly- diluted hot mess of stuff that doesn't really tie into any commercial or brand objectives. So, it's important to have alignment within a team to make sure that you can perform as a function. The second part is, it's important for marketing to be aligned within the wider organization so that the function itself is perceived as a growth driver as opposed to a cost center. That's where, as marketers, we all want to be. Right?

Ramli John: Right.

JASON BRADWELL: If we're just the department within the business that is doing a bunch of crazy, random stuff that the CEO or the CEFO don't really understand the reason for, when it comes around to budget season, which is kind of where we are now as we're recording this, the line item called marketing is going to be the first to be slashed. Particularly in the kind of macroeconomic environment that we're in at the moment. Whereas, if there is alignment between the company, particularly leadership, and the decisions that marketing is making or the function, it just helps justify decision- making. So, that that's why alignment's important.

Ramli John: That's so true. I think often, as marketers, we should be marketing marketing in an organization.

JASON BRADWELL: Yeah.

Ramli John: It's funny how that wordplay is, but it's true. We need to communicate within our team, ourselves, what are some of the stuff we're doing? So that they can even rally around marketing, and share the stuff that we're working on, the new content we put out, so that everybody's excited about the stuff that they're working on. So, it makes sense.

JASON BRADWELL: Definitely.

Ramli John: I want to talk-

JASON BRADWELL: It's about building confidence. Right?

Ramli John: Correct.

JASON BRADWELL: It's about building confidence when the CEO and the CFO are having to make some tough decisions. You want them in a position where they already understand the thought process behind an investment into a particular channel, tactic, campaign, whatever. If they're coming to you after the fact and saying, " Why did we do this again," those words should be really sending a shiver down a marketer's spine. So, alignment helps fix that.

Ramli John: I love I that. I think that's so true. I love that word that you use, confidence. I think that's so true. You also use the word investment. Going back to what you said earlier, you want to want people to see, especially the leadership, to see marketing as a growth driver. As a positive investment in growing the brand, getting new sales, growing leads, or whatever the goal of the business is essentially.

JASON BRADWELL: Exactly right.

Ramli John: I want to talk about this framework now, the A2E Framework. Can you briefly go through the five pillars, and explain what each one is as to making sure that there's alignment within a company in terms of marketing?

JASON BRADWELL: Absolutely. So the A2E Framework is a document that's designed a help marketing teams evaluate the value of an idea, to help give them focus, and to set context for reviewers and other stakeholders within the organization. And it's something that can be used for any kind of project, whether that is at a broad strategic level, like, " What is the campaign we want to run over the next quarter or the next year?" Or it could be applied at an individual artifact level. So if we want to publish a piece of content, you can use the A2E Framework to help achieve some of those benefits I just mentioned. You said it's five pillars. The reason why there are five pillars is because originally it was called the ABCDE framework, but that became a bit of a mouthful when I was talking about this a lot with the team.

Ramli John: It's true.

JASON BRADWELL: So we just consolidated it to the A2E Framework, and that's A, the number 2, E Framework. Those five pillars are audience, belief, creative, distribution, and end result. So this is a Word document with those five titles, and it is to be filled out before you run any project or any campaign, or you publish any piece of content. And I can break those down for you. So audience, outlining exactly who it is that we want to target with this particular project. The more specific you can be, the better. If you can outline your ICP. If you can outline your buyer persona. If you can outline pain points and buying triggers. As much information to give anyone who's referring to this document a really firm understanding on who it is exactly we're going after, that's where you want to get to. The second is your belief. So, what is the specific message or messages that you are trying to convey to the market? Why should your audience care about them, and why are you, a company, best- positioned to be sharing that message, to be sharing that point- of- view? This one's really important because as you and I both know, there is a lot of generic commoditized content out there in the market. That's true. I think it's something going to get worse now that we're starting to see things like ChatGPT pumping out blog posts within seconds. So being really clear on, " Here's why we're different. Here's why what we're trying to say is different," is super- important. Creative. So, what are the specific assets or channels that we want to... What specific assets do we want to create, and what requirements or direction can we provide to help create them as quickly, and as effectively, and to high production value as possible? Here's also where you can provide examples. So if there is a particular style or guideline that you want to follow, you can also throw it into the A2E Framework in this section. You could also use this as your high- level project management spiel. So, " Here is who's responsible for each piece of creative, and here's when we kind of expect to need it by." I think you want to avoid going into too much granular detail. You want to save that for a project management piece of software. But if you're applying the A2E Framework to a three- month campaign and you know there's going to be a blog- post series, then saying, " Blog post series assigned to Jason, delivered by X," is a good place to put this. The D of the A2E Framework is distribution. Where are these assets going to live? How are they going to be promoted, and across what channels? And whether the assets will link to any other artifacts that you have in your domain. So for instance, if you have a podcast series that you're launching as part of this campaign, and you want to make sure you tie that podcast series back to your website, or another piece of content, or some sort of other channel, or you want to repurpose it, for instance, you include that in the distribution section. And then finally, end result. As the name suggests, it's a quantifiable, measurable result, and a series of milestones that you're going to use to determine whether the project has been a success. It's at the end of the A2E Framework, just because in terms of the acronym, it works. But actually, it's the most important part of filling out the A2E Framework. I've seen it time and time again. Marketers and B2B organizations, they have a great idea for a piece of creative, a piece of distribution, a piece of content, and they don't actually sit down and think, " Well, how are we going to know at the end of this whether we've been successful or not?" And if you can't answer that question, you really should just be taking a beat to figure out if this is the right time and the right idea to be rolling out with. So, those are the five pillars. Audience, belief, creative, distribution, and end result.

Ramli John: Well, I love it so much, because it's easy- to- remember. The A, B, C, D, E stuff. But I think the other thing that I love here so much is that people are actually really thinking through the thing. Before we recorded, you mentioned you're getting marketers to think the what, how, and why. The end results... Especially even distribute. I think often, especially in content marketing, distribution is almost an afterthought, which is unfortunate for a lot of content teams. And it's embedded right there. You're thinking about it. You're thinking about the belief, the positioning, and the audience. So it's about thinking through this, and even poking holes at this as a team once you've created is what I'm guessing the process is. But you fill this out, share it with the team, and the team is like, " I'm not so sure this is going to work out." And really get a discussion going. Is that what you see happened before when this is filled out?

JASON BRADWELL: Absolutely. So in terms of how you practically fill out this A2E Framework, it's kind of similar to that example with Amazon. They don't do PowerPoint presentations. Before every meeting, the lead of that meeting will write out a six- page document on exactly what it is they want to achieve. And then everyone at the beginning of the meeting will take 20 minutes, read it, and then they'll debate the idea. It's kind of similar. It's a kind of similar concept. So if, as a marketing manager or a senior marketing lead, I want to use the A2E Framework to help structure a three- month campaign, a quarterly campaign, I'll go away. I'll fill it out. I'll then provide it to my team to have a review, and it's a great conversation- starter. Is the idea sound? Do we understand who we want to go after? Do we, with all the creative and distribution activities I've outlined, have the capacity and the resources needed to deliver that? Is the end result tied to what it is we are, as a team, trying to achieve? So, yeah. From a marketing- team alignment point- of- view, it helps bring everyone on the same page. But then also, at the marketing- function- within- the- company alignment level, it means that you can hand it to your executive team, your CEO, or chief revenue officer, or anyone else who is going to be interested and impacted by this campaign. And they have an at- a- glance view of exactly what it is you're going to do, how you're going to achieve it, and why you decided to go in this particular direction. And at the end of the campaign, if you delivered it as you've said that you're going to deliver it... And look, caveat here. Things change. So, this shouldn't be looked at as a static document. It can and should evolve over the course, particularly, of a longstanding campaign. But at the end of it, if perhaps it didn't perform as well as you wanted it to, or perhaps it over- performed, it gives you a benchmark to go back and say, " Well, we were very clear on what we wanted to achieve, and how we wanted to do it, and why it was important. Maybe it didn't work as we expected, but we can now take some learnings from that and apply it to our next A2E framework." You aren't left in a situation where you're having to defend yourself on why you went down a particular road because no one can quite remember. You've got it documented.

Ramli John: Before we continue, I want to thank those who made this video possible 42 Agency. Now, when you are in scale- up mode and you have KPIs to hit, the pressure is on to deliver demos and signups. And it's a lot to handle. Demand gen, email sequences, RevOps, and even more. That's where 42 Agency, founded by my good friend, Kamil Rextin, can help you. They're a strategic partner that's helped B2B- sized companies like ProfitWell, Teamworks, Sprout Social, and Hubdoc build a predictable revenue engine. If you're looking for performance experts and creatives to solve your marketing problems at a fraction of the cost of in- house, look no further. Go to 42agency. com to talk to a strategist to learn how you can build a high- efficiency revenue engine now. You can find that link and the description below. Let's jump back in. That's an important piece, the documentation. I think having that is a good exercise on its own, especially with a remote team. Now, documenting all that stuff really works out well. I want to go to an example of this framework, and then we can go through B2B Better. It's a podcast that you have. For people who are tuning in, go check it out. I am one of the guests. Also, I've listened to a few episodes, and super- good stuff. It's also a newsletter. But also, I don't know if I'm spoiling the secret here, but it's turning into a whole consultancy business that you're working on. So congrats on that, by the way.

JASON BRADWELL: Thank you.

Ramli John: Can we walk through this on any part of maybe even a podcast episode, whatever you want, in terms of the audience, the belief, the creative, the distribution, and then the end result for it?

JASON BRADWELL: Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, you're right. B2B Better is the name of a lot of different things I'm working on at the moment. But you haven't spoiled anything. It's very exciting that it's become a marketing consultancy advisory firm for B2B solution providers. But yeah, we'll use the podcast as an example. So, I've been doing B2B Better for the last two or three years. It's evolved over that time. At the beginning, it was really just me talking to other B2B marketers in the midst of the pandemic, hitting record, and publishing it out there for the world to enjoy. It has become much more refined over the last year or so in terms of its focus, and that's been, in part, helped by having a tool like the A2E Framework to help focus things. So, going through those five pillars. For B2B Better, who is the audience I'm going after? I'm interested in reaching complex B2B technology solution providers. These are organizations that perhaps have in- house products, but they are packaged with either managed or professional services to solve a bespoke client need. That is a very different organization, in terms of how it markets and sells its solution, to a off- the- shelf, out- of- the- box credit card SaaS product. So, I think it's important to differentiate. It's my background. Those are the kind of companies I've worked with in the past, and I feel like they're the audience that I want to target and go after. So, tick. I know that. What is the belief? What is the message I'm trying to convey? The message I'm trying to convey is, within these organizations, the typical go- to- market commercial strategy is outbound sales. So you'll typically see organizations have maybe one to five in- house marketers, and then three to four times that number in salespeople. And they have probably been successfully running a cold- outbound sales approach for a number of years, but they are going to start to see, if they haven't already started to see, diminishing returns. It's a classic demand creation, demand capture debate. And I think, using those two terms, demand creation, demand capture, within the SaaS space, it is pretty well- acknowledged that you need to find that right balance between brand and demand. Not so much in the more archaic, I guess is the word I'll use, B2B solution space. They're taking a little bit longer to catch up to this new way of thinking. So the message I'm trying to convey is, " If you do not, as an organization, find that better balance, you are going to start to experience diminishing returns in terms of how much pipeline and revenue that you can generate. There is a new way of doing business. There is a new way of reaching the modern- day buyer in every industry, and my podcast is there to help you figure out what that looks like for your business." In terms of the creative, it's a podcast. It's a weekly narrative- driven series. So by that, I mean that I interview people, yourself included, on a particular topic. ABM, enterprise sales, social selling, or leadership, whatever. And I will take your answers and cut them with my own insights and takeaways based on the answers given by my guest. That's important, to define that within the A2E document, because there is a lot of interview- style podcasts out there. And I want to make sure that mine stands out, and that is in the narrative- driven style of it. In terms of the distribution, obviously it goes out to all the podcast networks, but I also cut little clips from each episode. I publish them across my personal social media account. I give those clips to my guests so they can publish them across their own personal social media accounts and distributed across my newsletter of 3, 000 B2B marketers. I cut it onto my website. And what I've noticed, and this was helped by the A2E Framework, helped me notice it, is, these are all the things that I want to do, but I'm actually only achieving maybe like 50% of the things I've said that I want to do in terms of my distribution because I have an operational challenge. It's just me doing everything. So the A2E Framework has given me a sense of my ambition, but it's also given me a sense of my limitations, so I can now try and rectify that gap. And the end result. What does success look like for a podcast? I mean, it could be sponsorship, and my podcast is sponsored. But actually, the revenue is not the main objective. For me, it's about connections. Can I build relationships with interesting B2B marketers who are working or can serve solution providers? And I put a number against that. So I want to make sure that I interview 52 people, one a week over the course of the year, that fit my ICP for the podcast. And if I've achieved that, then, for me, mission success. So, those are the five elements. Audience, belief, creative, distribution, end result. And they help me make sure that I stay on- track when it comes to B2B Better.

Ramli John: I love that. I think the other thing that I heard was, you were clear upfront on your limitation. I don't know if it's just me. I sense that often, I want to do everything. But stating the limitation is like, " Okay, here's the resources that we have. And because of that, this is what we can do at the moment." One of the other helpful pieces of this framework is that you're considering, " What do we need to do to get this, and what are some limitation and roadblocks that we might face?" Thank you for sharing that. I also love, the end result is focused mainly on relationships. I would agree. If somebody asked me the same thing with the show that I had previously, it really is about the relationships. Some of the best online friends I have now, I interviewed on the show. So that's really cool to hear, that we're similar there, with the show itself and relationships.

JASON BRADWELL: Absolutely, and I'll just pick on one thing on your first point in regards to that gap. I think, in some organizations, there is perhaps a misunderstanding at an executive level on how much can be achieved with how much. Marketing, you should just be able to put a lot of stuff out there. And, " Hey, we're writing the posts ourselves. It shouldn't cost us anything." So having something like the A2E Framework, it kind of triggers a sensible conversation when you are asking for things like budget. Because you can show it to the budget- holder, the one who's signing off, how much resource you're going to be allocated that year and say, " Well, yeah, here's our plan." They can say, " Well, it doesn't look like we've got enough distribution there, because we should be activating press and media. We should be doing events. We should be doing this. We should be doing that." It's like, " Well, we can't." I mean, now at least we're having a conversation about it, because we haven't got the resources we need. So, yeah. That's another good use of the A2E framework. It allows you to have those sometimes- awkward conversations with the other stakeholders.

Ramli John: So good. I love how this is so applicable in many things, including alignment, and then now we're talking about requesting budget itself. Well, thank you for sharing this. I really do appreciate it. I want to shift gears and talk about careers and powerups for other marketers. You've been in marketing for over a decade now, and I just wanted to hear, what's one thing that's helped you accelerate your career? A career powerup, so to speak. A marketing career powerup that's helped you level up, or go to the next level, whatever that is.

JASON BRADWELL: I mean, to stay on topic, I think the podcast has been a fantastic tool for me personally. I think, when you work in- house, which I have done for the last 10 years... And now I'm starting up my own business, my own marketing advisory firm. Particularly if you're working in an organization that does have a marketing function that is on the smaller side, it can be difficult to expand your horizons on what is actually achievable as a B2B marketer. Unless you're investing in your own personal growth. Taking courses, or attending events, or things like that. During the pandemic, when all of that was kind of shut down, having something like the podcast, which was a great mechanism in which to reach out to people I admired and who I thought were disrupting the status quo on how to win business in B2B, that really helped me continue to powerup in my experience and how I saw myself as a B2B marketer. Not everyone needs a podcast, but I think creating content where you can collaborate with your peers and colleagues outside of your organization is a really fantastic way of continuing to grow. I like to think of it as, it's like a college degree where you can choose the subjects and the professors that you want to learn about and learn from. So yeah, that would be my powerup.

Ramli John: That's so good. You're right. I think it's also, you're getting an hour of somebody's time. Somebody you look up to, who is an expert in that space. And you're right. It's like getting even one- on- one tutoring, private tutoring from somebody who is an expert in that space. You're totally right. I love that response. inaudible

JASON BRADWELL: Let me just caveat by saying... Sorry, Ramil. I'll caveat by saying, there should be a value exchange. I don't want it to sound like I'm saying, " Oh, you're pulling the wool over someone's eyes, and trying to get their time free- of- charge," or anything. I think you need to be able to provide value back to that individual. That's why having a public- facing channel-

Ramli John: That's true.

JASON BRADWELL: ...newsletter, podcast, what have you, you shouldn't be interviewing people and then just never publishing anything. Because where's-

Ramli John: That's so true.

JASON BRADWELL: ...the value exchange then? You know?

Ramli John: Right. You're right. And to explain for people, people who are coming on your show, they're trying to promote themselves. They're trying to promote their work. And the value you're giving them is, you're giving them a channel to distribute their ideas, and their thoughts, and their thought- leadership- ness to the world, essentially. To your own audience. So, that's a good point. Don't don't just take advantage of that situation and not publish it at all.

JASON BRADWELL: Exactly.

Ramli John: So great.

JASON BRADWELL: Exactly.

Ramli John: Thank you for sharing. I mean, the second- to- last question I love asking is around an advice you would give yourself. Particularly, an advice you'd give yourself to a younger version of Jason who is starting out in marketing. If you can travel back in time, what advice would you give yourself? That person who is just like, "Oh, okay, I'm new to marketing. What do I do here?" And then you show up with your beard and your older version of yourself. What would be that advice?

JASON BRADWELL: If it feels like you're stagnating, you probably are. At the beginning of my career... I'm naturally quite a cautious person, which begs the question why I decided to quit my job in the midst of a cost-of- living crisis and start a business. But at the beginning of my career I think I probably let that caution prevent me from taking advantage of riskier, but ultimately what would've been super- beneficial opportunities. It can be very easy to feel comfortable, and work at an organization that pays you a pretty good salary, and you understand the work. But 10 years can very quickly pass by, and you're still in the same place. It's a privileged position to be in. Not everyone can move jobs this easily, and I recognize that. But I would just say that if you're sitting there and you're listening to this, and you're thinking, " I've been in my role for a while and I really haven't seen growth, despite asking for it," then question whether that's the right place for you. That's what I would've liked to have told myself right at the beginning of my career.

Ramli John: Wow. That was such a fun and humbling chat with Jason. I've been a big fan of his work on Twitter and his newsletter. You can follow Jason on LinkedIn and subscribe to his newsletter and show at b2b- better. com. Thanks to Jason for being on the show. If you enjoyed this episode, you'd love the Marketing Powerups newsletter. Share the actionable takeaways and break down the frameworks of world- class marketers. You can go to marketingpowerups.com to subscribe, and you'll instantly unlock the three best frameworks that top marketers use to hit their KPIs consistently and wow their colleagues. I want to say thank you to you for listening, and please like and follow Marketing Powerups on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you're feeling extra- generous, kindly leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or leave a comment on YouTube. It goes a long way in others finding out about Marketing Powerups. Thanks to Mary inaudible for creating the artwork and design, and thank you to inaudible for editing the intro video. And of course, thank you for listening. That's all for now. Have a powered- up day.SPEAKER 3Marketing Powerups. Until the next episode.