Image source: The Innovation Enterprise[/caption] Funnels, dashboards, likes, SEO, SEM, CTR, social boosts, earned media, native ads, etc. etc. Thinking about all the tools and channels available to marketers can be overwhelming. And for every tool, there are at least 10 companies out there that want to help you with them. Don’t even get us started about using data. How do you decide which of these matters for your business? Which activations will move the needle? And how do you focus your work with limited resources? These are questions anyone in marketing needs to address. Flipboard’s CMO, Marci McCue, has developed her own thinking around them. Tomorrow, May 25, she’ll share her experience and insights with hundreds of leaders in marketing at the Chief Marketing Officer Summit, featuring speakers from Visa, Forbes, Buzzfeed, Coca-Cola and Condé Nast. For now, here’s a sneak peek of her talk: Marci believes it’s key to take a look at the evolution of your company and product and understand which phase you are in. This will determine which strategies and tactics make sense for your organization. You can do this by following these three steps:

1. Set goals by deciding what matters and looking at where your company is in its business lifecycle.

When everything is important—product adoption, brand awareness, revenue growth, buzz—how do you decide where to focus? One approach that tends to be underappreciated is to look at the business: where are you at in its lifecycle? For example, are you just starting out or is your product and market maturing? Knowing this will help you set your goals and create focus.

2. Look at the levers you have available

Once you have a clear goal, ask yourself where the biggest “needle movers” are that help you reach that goal. If your goal is to generate more exposure, your tools and tactics will be different than when you want to grow the numbers of users or clients. And if you’re in a phase where marketing needs to support revenue growth, the choices you make will be different yet again.

3. Focus your team

Particularly when your company transitions from one phase to the next, it’s important to involve your team. When they understand the stage your company is in and how that is driving marketing goals, they’re able to shift their focus. Sometimes this means new hires, but if you have a solid team, chances are they can adapt to new challenges and programs. It’ll only keep things interesting and exciting for them. Marci will dive deeper into each of these steps at the Chief Marketing Officer Summit in Seattle this week, and she’ll share how she has applied this approach to Flipboard over the last six years. If you’re able to join the summit, please say hi after the session. And it you can’t be there in person, follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #CMOSeattle. ~ChristelV is reading TheBeanCast