The word strategy itself is one that often evokes diverse and emotive responses, and can be divisive as in the corporate world where it seems there are those ‘get’ strategy or ‘are strategic’ and those that are ‘tactical’ or implement, or ‘do’.   

Strategies are simply plans to achieve a goal. That’s it. No black magic. Some careful evaluation and robust conversation of course, but nothing more than good old planning and implementation. The primary element is to decide first on a long-term or overall aim then design a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.

It’s common to have many strategies – if you take a traditional larger business there’ll likely be an overarching business strategy and one for each of the following functional areas such as: HR/people, marketing, sales, operations, logistics, IT, finance and so on. Each of these may also have sub strategies that all line up to achieve the functional and the business goals, such as the IT team may have a strategy to move 90% of content to cloud by 2020, which underpins the IT strategy of being ‘weightless’ which supports the business strategy of having a remote, agile workforce to better respond to customer needs.

You get the point, strategies are simply well thought through longer-term plans. Which means there’s no special gene some have and some don’t, as reality is we all have the ability to develop strategies, we can all develop and refine strategic planning skills, and we can lead or be hands on in implementing them to actually achieve the result.

What does this all mean for marketing, and what does this mean for business owners, freelancers, intra-preneurs and founders today?

Investopedia have summed it up perfectly:

“A marketing strategy is a business' overall game plan for reaching people and turning them into customers of the product or service that the business provides. The marketing strategy of a company contains the company’s value proposition, key marketing messages, information on the target customer and other high-level elements.

The marketing strategy informs the marketing plan, which is a document that lays out the types and timing of marketing activities.”

 

In summary, your business strategy leads to your marketing strategy, which is distilled down into tactical marketing plans. There are lots of good templates, articles and guides on how to build your marketing strategy so we won’t get into that here.

The bigger question is why. Why invest time and resources doing one?

There’s a number of reasons, ultimately though they all tie back into one BIG one – performance. If you’re a for-profit business, performance usually means revenue growth so your marketing activities will focus on attracting, converting and retaining customers profitably. If you’re a for-purpose organisation, success may mean profit too or it may mean building a tribe of volunteers, becoming top of mind for donators or getting the general public to change a behaviour – none of which happens through good luck alone.

Let’s throw in a few analogies, metaphors and quotes here – if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there, you set off on a holiday with a destination in mind, fail to plan means plan to fail etc. Knowing what success looks like and having a plan to achieve it means you’ve got a good chance of doing so.

In fact, 97% NZ businesses are SMEs and 25% fail within 3 years. When it comes to business in general, marketing and sales are the biggest contributor to your top line, the ‘P’ part of your P&L, these activities determine your growth rate. Often times, in business we’re focused on short term goals, KPIs or that next end of financial year statement, and that drives a behaviour of ‘doing’ often at the cost of ‘thinking’. By ‘doing’ and racing to the next milestone, it can mean we’re focused on tasks and internal chatter, not what’s happening in the market – what’s changing with customers, competitors and the economy?

That’s the advantage of a good strategy and good leadership – it’s not just designed once and saved on a shared drive. It’s designed collaboratively and reviewed often for relevance and effectiveness. Interestingly for those that have a good strategy already, the challenge can be to ensure strategic alignment. HBR research shows that only 5% people understand the business strategy, so it’s fair to assume those understanding the marketing strategy may well be less, but it should be more. Marketing strategy is not designed to sit and stay within the person or people responsible for marketing! Share it and engage your colleagues, leaders, advisors, Board, investors and outsource providers and partners. If everyone understands the goal, they too can make decisions to move the business closer to that goal.

By taking a longer term view of your marketing by building a strategy, and having marketing plans to achieve this increases the likelihood of achieving your revenue and profit goals. Each year these plans build on the year before (or lessons are learned and things are adapted), and over time, the growth happens and the goal is achieved.

If you’re the person charged with developing the marketing strategy, what can you do?

  • Make time to develop it, allow time to really be focused and creative
  • Plan and schedule time to revisit and review it
  • Engage others to build it
  • Collect data, intel and insights about your customers and target market
  • Collect data, intel and insights about the market in general
  • Check for alignment with the business strategy
  • Develop marketing plans to implement
  • Share the strategy with internal and relevant external parties
  • Support implementation
  • Measure and assess implementation and use this data when reviewing the strategy in the future

 

If you’re not the person designing the marketing strategy, what can you do?

  • Support the person who is developing it
  • Understand it
  • Support implementation
  • Ensure you, your team and area is aligned where possible
  • Provide market feedback to the team ongoing
  • Encourage and participate in reviews to check for organisational alignment, market-relevance and performance

 

"Business has only two functions: marketing and innovation"

- Peter Drucker

 

This post is also featured on Actually Useful - a collective of Christchurch-based independent freelance marketing professionals with real, practical and proven insights and advice on modern marketing. There's a wealth of information there in both blogs and video briefs, so do head on over and check it out!