You should go upstream from time to time

It takes about 2 minutes to read this article

 had never heard of ‘upstream marketing’ and ‘downstream marketing’ before.

Until a few days ago, when one my connections started a new position as director of product marketing at a medical equipment manufacturer.

On LinkedIn, he listed his responsibilities: managing the marketing team, contributing to the company’s global strategy, and upstream & downstream marketing.

Turns out the concept of upstream and downstream was first applied to marketing in the early 2000s by Dr. Ram Charan.

Charan explains ‘upstream’ is about strategy and ‘downstream’ refers to tactics and execution. Each is different, but the stream is one and the same.

Just like it is in the Parable of the River…

A group of villagers is working by the river. All of a sudden, they see a baby floating downstream. The child is about to drown. The villagers rush into the water and save the child.

Soon after, they see another baby. And then another. Before long, there’s a steady stream of babies floating down the river. All in danger of drowning.

The villagers organize themselves into a frantic rescue team. Saving as many babies as possible. They spend all their time and resources pulling children out of the water.

Until one villager says: “I’m going upstream to see who is throwing all these babies into the water.”

I see something similar happen in many organizations.

Where marketers, business developers and subject matter experts are frantically executing as many brand building and sales activation efforts as possible.

Even when these efforts miss their mark.

When your marketing & BD efforts fail to deliver results, you shouldn’t try and do more of them. Instead, you should go ‘upstream’ to see what’s causing the issue.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What does the market look like? How are DESTEP trends (like the rise of AI and the influx of private capital for example) reshaping our industry and that of our clients? How are these trends impacting our clients’ expectations, their demands, and willingness to pay for a solution like ours?
  
• What should our value proposition look like? What is one our clients’ most painful, urgent, recognized, and expensive challenges that we can resolve for them? And, how should we present our solution in such a way that it meets their demands and expectations.
  
• What do our ideal clients look like? What are organizations that we would really love to work for, that provide us with high-value, meaningful work, and that could help us achieve our goals?
   
• What do the business goals for our organization look like? For the next year? And for the coming five years?

And then, you can slowly drift downstream…

• How are we going to achieve our business goals? What processes will we need to put in place? What skills are required? And, how will we track our progress towards our goals?

According to Dr. Ram Charan, “[Upstream marketing] is one of the missing links for generating revenue growth at many companies.”

The focus is simply too much on downstream marketing. All the visible things that are done to raise awareness, generate an interest and turn leads into deals. The things that according to Charan “enhance the acceptance of a [solution] that already exists.”

So, it makes a lot of sense to go upstream now and then. Especially, when you’re spending all of your time and resources on operational stuff.

Hope this helps!

---

Thank you for reading MBD Spark #97, sent on December 11, 2025.