If I've learned anything through my varied marketing experience, it's that there's never a single, best way to solve a business issue. There's just the smartest way possible given the realities of critical factors like timeframe, budget and expectations. So, that's how I tend to approach most marketing challenges. I'm also inclined to:

+  Listen and learn before I act – My first order of business with any strategic marketing endeavor is to assess what’s been working and/or not working (thankfully, digital marketing channels generate tons of useful data to leverage);  I refer to the most current best practices; and I seek input from key stakeholders, which can include customers and sales teams. This helps ensure solutions are insights-driven, internally supported and externally relevant.

 + Have a penchant for mining and applying research insights  –  In my experience, some of the most effective marketing solutions  emerge organically by uncovering a critical brand, consumer or market insight through research and leveraging it as the 'secret ingredient' of a brand or marketing strategy. 

+ Treat the 'customer experience' as paramount – To have real, sharable and lasting impact, marketing efforts need to add meaningful value to consumers’ interactions with a brand. Whether that involves trading a white paper download for email permission or an entertaining video for a native ad click-through, these brand-defining value exchanges are the critical building blocks of customer relationships. And they can become powerful drivers of brand loyalty.  

  + Be motivated by results – It's not always easy, but being able to measure the business impact of marketing efforts is mission critical. The challenge isn't knowing what you can measure (let's face it, you can measure nearly everything these days), it's knowing what you should measure. And equally important is strategically planning and incorporating effectiveness measurements into marketing initiatives as they're being developed. I'm also big on taking a test+learn+optimize approach whenever a client's budget, timing and tolerance-level permit.