What Is The Strategy Void?

Why and How Do Strategy Voids Occur?

Strategy voids happen in business when leadership fails to recognise the value and necessity of translating their vision and plan to a simple, consistent story that can be understood by all stakeholders.  This story is encapsulated by the marketing strategy that builds a bridge across the void and ensures consistent, clear messaging, differentiation and relevant activities happen that are aligned to achieving the business strategy.

Strategy voids are a market problem.  They can happen at any time, and regardless of the size of the business.

How Do I Solve A Strategy Void Problem?

Strategy voids can be crossed - sometimes quite easily.  The answer is a marketing strategy bridge that connects the CEO's business growth strategy with actionable activity.  A solid marketing strategy should translate the business strategy into a simple, consistent positioning that enables organisations to develop content, plans, measures and actions that customers and employees feel are connected to the strategy of the business.

Voids Developing From Growing Pains

Even successful businesses can face strategy voids.  A business that grows through relationship selling 'in the room' can arrive at a natural junction where they know they need to implement a more formal marketing strategy.  They find they do not have the specialist skills required to build out a marketing strategy or to organise activity in a way that is manageable and meaningful.  Of all the strategy voids, this is the most difficult to avoid, it is a natural state that occurs during the growth of a business.

Voids Developing From Lack of Focus

Many businesses - particularly those that are born out of service offerings reliant on people - tend to evolve by saying "yes" to whatever a client asks for.  Any business is good business.  Eventually,  the business struggles to maintain control over what is sold and what is delivered.  Each client gets a custom answer that cannot be replicated and the business loses clarity over what differentiates it.   The void develops the more the business continues to strive forward with an ever-increasing, unintentional dilution of its value.

Voids Developing From Rushing At The Answer

Running a business day to day is a full time job.  There can be precious little time for taking a step back.  Businesses become highly magnified on their short term achievements and rush to the nearest answer.  When this happens, voids can develop quickly as reactive, knee-jerk answers are put in place without considering whether they align with overall business strategy.  This can feel like a series of 'gold rushes', each a chase in the direction of the latest thinking.  Voids of this type can be particularly damaging, with different business stakeholders finding themselves isolated and without a clear view of how they connect to each other or to the overall business strategy.

Voids Developing From Lack of Coherent Positioning

Similar to voids that develop from lack of focus, voids from lack of coherent positioning develop when businesses are unable to articulate a coherent story that is understood in the same way by customers and employees alike.  These voids can trigger secondary voids - such as those that develop from rushing at the answer as every leader interprets what they think is the positioning and applies it differently.  This void grows as each unique interpretation cascades through an organisation and out to customers.

Strategy Void Categories

From experience, we have seen three categories  - or business situations - that result in voids.  One or more of the conditions described in the previous section can be present.

Category #1 - Start Up Voids

Start Up voids are usually those associated with growing pains.  Businesses that have not, or have not had to, invest in marketing before will naturally arrive at their void.  Crossing a start up void is less about the positioning - this is usually clear in the mind of the CEO and senior team.  It is more about the ability, tools and time to take that positioning and be able to go to market with meaningful activities.

Category #2 - Stagnation Voids

Stagnation voids occur in businesses that have stopped growing.  They are independent of size of business - where a smaller business may experience a stagnation in growth as a whole, larger business may feel and experience the same happening within individual business units.  CEO's have taken the necessary steps to re-focus the business and have business strategy in place.  Crossing the void to action is the issue and they find themselves unable to move forward.

Category #3 - Integration Voids

Integration voids can be particularly troublesome.  Integration of a new business - from merger or acquisition - requires a revisit of story to ensure that both the incoming acquisitions and the existing business understands the new positioning.  Not only do CEOs have to deal with their existing organisation, but also acquired companies that have their own language and culture.  There is a huge amount of momentum around making an acquisition successful.  This can result in a story conceived by a few people being poorly cascaded and inconsistent.  

Move From Relationship Sell to Scalable Sell

While your business is stuck in relationship (or 1 to 1) selling, you cannot scale. Your business is at the mercy of your sales team.  They are clever - sometimes too clever - and the business they win can cause friction with product and delivery teams by saying "yes" to client demands.  When you move to a scalable sell, your consistent story extends from brand to product to delivery to post-delivery success and next sale.  Everyone talks the same story, meaning you see growth and improved profit.

Remove Unnecessary Marketing Spend

While CEOs stay on their side of the strategy void, marketing teams continue to generate activity on the other side of the void.  This activity is not entirely wasted, however it is not anchored to the business strategy with measures and metrics that roll up to the business metrics.  Activity is 'best endeavours'.  This means there is unnecessary spend and a more likely focus on marketing 'vanity metrics' such as cost per lead, views, engagement and leads.  By crossing the strategy void with a robust marketing strategy bridge in place, focus moves to activity and content that aligns to direction and focuses on qualified leads, quotes and deals closed or new clients generated from marketing spend.

Get Rid Of Your Marketing Strategy Headache

CEOs have an extensive list of responsibilities and problems that land on their desk.  Without a marketing strategy bridge, marketing will always stay with the CEO to own as a leadership sponsor.  Even if it occasionally goes away it will boomerang back sooner or later.  By deciding to cross the strategy void, the marketing strategy bridge ensures the business crosses the strategy void successfully and gets rid of the CEO's marketing headache.

What Is The Marketing Strategy Bridge?

The marketing strategy bridge takes you from business strategy to actionable activity by developing clear and concise messaging that can be understood by your customers and your organisation.

The marketing strategy bridge enables you to cross your strategy void.  It allows your business to move from relationship selling to scalable sales.  It creates opportunity to cut out the unnecessary marketing spend.  CEOs can get rid of the marketing strategy headache and remove the problem from their desks.

1 - Anchor Your Bridge

The first step in crossing your strategy void is to anchor your marketing strategy bridge.  This means developing the essentials that will form the foundation for all of your messaging, content, activity, measures and metrics going forward.

A good example of anchoring is to use a framework to generate your Positioning on a Page.

2 - Span The Bridge

With the anchors in place, you can build your span (the bit you use to cross the void).  Building the span means taking your essentials and building out the minimum viable content needed to get your new proposition to market.  It should also put in place a strategic marketing plan of inputs and outputs that teams can take and turn into actionable activity to deliver against that plan, such as the one below.

3 - Cross The Bridge

With the bridge built, it is time to cross.  It is important that everyone comes with you.  That means continuing to have the guidance and support that got your bridge in place and took the headache away.

Once you are across, you can move into an ongoing framework that will take your business through an evolving marketing journey that ensures your activities are always actionable based on the skills and capability of your organisation.  Have a framework that can be linked back to your business strategy.  This empowers teams and gives them not only sense of ownership and connection that their activity is contributing to the growth of the business, but also tangible plans and activities that they can see and link together.

The framework below is such an example.  Each phase provides guidance on the key content, channels and measures that are most relevant to that phase of activity.