According to Statista and Forbes, there are 15 million SMB owners in the US in 2023 who are concerned about marketing their business’ products and services effectively. This concern is not limited to SMB, for businesses who have the luxury of spending time on Corporate strategy, Gartner says more than half fail to execute those strategies effectively.
Statistics like these would seem to suggest that is would be natural for every company to consider marketing strategy as part of their execution. However, far too often, companies drive straight to activity. Often under time pressures to deliver growth, the mantra is “go, go, go, grow, grow, grow”.
That might work in the early stages where growth can be driven by the passion, drive and connections of those in charge. Once you get beyond that initial growth phase, things change. You will have employees, a structure that relies on others beyond the founders, and more than likely you will have investors to keep satisfied.
At this point, whilst I am a firm believer in 80% is good enough, then moving ahead with marketing activity without a marketing strategy is 20% effective at best.
Why?
- You’ve NO IDEA why you are doing what you are doing.
- You’ve NO IDEA whether your team has the skills.
- You’ve NO IDEA what outcome you want or what a good outcome looks like.
- Your team has NO IDEA if they are consistent in the message they need to get across.
I could go on. Four is enough to make the point. Suffice to say, it’s not going to end well.
I will say up front that these four points do not sound very ‘marketing-y’. I’d rather they were understood than sounded clever. They are the plain and practical issues that business leaders face.
In keeping with this plain language, a good marketing strategy is going to save you a huge amount of time, remove wasted effort and align money spent with business need. It will sort out the why, how, when, where and what.
Isn’t Marketing Strategy The Same As the Marketing Plan?
No. I’ll put myself up there to be shot down on this one. No marketing theorist definition here, this is how I think about it based on 30 years in the front line of marketing planning and strategy.
Marketing Strategy: “how do we deliver against the business growth plan”.
Marketing Plan: “what specific activities, channels, budgets, timing and resources do I need to deliver against the marketing strategy”.
I believe strategies work best when aligned to business planning i.e. annual with quarterly review. Marketing plans may have a top line annual submission for budgeting purposes, but at best the detail should be planned quarterly, and be prepared to adapt monthly based on performance.
So, how does marketing strategy answer the four “NO IDEAS” and get us beyond 20% effective?
1. Why Are You Doing What You Are Doing?
“To drive revenue” says just about everyone. Well, yes, but let’s ask that again – why are you doing those exact activities?
What business goal do they link to?
Are they driving short term gains?
Are they part of brand strategy and promoting our leadership in this space?
Are they for some other reason (personal gain, research, testing a hunch)?
A 'why' question can be perceived as if I’m asking you, you must be wrong, and I’d like nothing more than to make you look stupid. Not at all. This question is all about connecting what is being done with the business goal. It’s not that the answer is unknown, it’s that the question is not asked often enough.
For example, I had a conversation in the summer with a CEO who was investing in events. I asked my “why” question. I was not querying the wisdom. I was asking whether it was clear in their mind as to why that specific spend – that same spend that competes with every other priority in a smaller business – was the right thing now, and what business goal it was driving toward. Once the question was asked, he knew the answer (most CEOs will, it’s just that they are rarely asked to put it in the context of the growth plan). We talked about its value as brand and leadership with a possible secondary goal of creating new networks, new connections. Probably 70% or so branding and 30% relationship build. Knowing why helps set the right expectations for what a good outcome looks like.
| Takeaway: Marketing strategy will ask “why”. |
| It will provide linkage between marketing goals and business goals. If the goal is revenue, think clients won, pipeline created, or sales accepted leads . Marketing strategy does not care about CPC, Views, MQL and the like. |
2. Does Your Team Have The Skills?
This one drains energy, motivation and money like no other. It will often come about from a top-down edict brought on by “I saw company x doing this, we should be”. The problem with this is that if you have hired well based on the skills you need to grow based on your strategy, then it may not include the skills needed to do the activity. Or the activity may not be right for your customers, company, market or growth stage. Apart from the misery of your teams feeling like a failure, it’ll do nothing positive for your marketing budget either.
| Takeaway: Marketing strategy will ask “how and when”. |
| It will set out the plan for the inputs needed to deliver and the outputs to measure against. It will identify marketing’s contribution to the commercial goals, the financial commitments, the people requirements and the product needs. It will define the inputs so that the order of when these inputs should be carried out is clear. The marketing plan is then written against that strategy, flagging gaps in skills before the pressure of delivering activity comes to bear. |
3. What Outcome Do You Want, What Does Good Look Like?
Business growth plans goals are comprised of a mix of organisation goals: resourcing, finance, revenue growth, profit growth, product investments, acquisitions, client retention and growth. The job of marketing strategy is to identify those goals that it can and will influence and then set a path to deliver the marketing contribution to those goals. Some are easier to connect than others.
Example #1: There is a net-new revenue growth goal to move from 10% to 15% of total revenue. Marketing strategy can translate that into a target for net-new clients by quarter. This does not mean marketing cannot understand a revenue goal. It is to say that it is easier to understand for marketing teams who can then plan against known conversion to size the audience, spend and activity required.
Example #2: There is a finance goal to maintain a consistent upward trend %age in profit. Marketing teams will struggle to relate to this goal. Marketing strategy can set a ‘linking’ goal such as “cost threshold per sales accepted lead must not exceed ‘x’’”. This ensures that the marketing team can proceed with a relatable target that will contribute to a consistent level of spending to acquire the same result. It may not directly increase profit - that approach supposes that is always possible that marketing can continue every quarter to “do more with less”. It does provide guiderails that ensure spend does not negatively impact finance’s profit goals.
| Takeaway: Marketing strategy will detail “where to focus”, connecting business goals with marketing outcomes |
| It will perform the job of translating and linking company goals from across the business to marketing goals, allowing everyone in the organization to see (and appreciate!) marketing’s contribution to the whole business. |
4. Are your teams consistent in the message they need to get across?
Inconsistent messaging muddies the waters. This is an issue that effects the whole organisation. It’s not ‘just’ a marketing thing, but it most definitely is under marketing strategy ownership.
The problem here is that a business growth strategy doesn’t need to come down to the level of key messages. It stays at ‘North Star’ level, articulating more lofty goals and statements that contain the core message wrapped up in the language of investors and business leaders.
Let’s be clear. Failure to be consistent results in the ‘three Ds’ of messaging failure:
Dilution: whatever you started out with, by the time it has passed from business unit leader, to team leader, to team member to customer, it’s a watered-down version of itself (if you are lucky).
Diversion: each leader (at whatever level) will ‘tweak’ the message to better fit their own goals. The effect of this is to have a message that ends up diverted from its core and be focused on the individual business unit, not on the focus of the business growth strategy.
Difference: Left to their own devices, everyone who talks about the company will come up with their own message. Not only will it read different, it will risk meanings you never intended and at worst, will be plain wrong.
| Takeaway: Marketing strategy will ensure everyone knows “what” the message is and can understand and deliver it consistently. |
| That doesn’t mean scripts – everyone wants to feel they can still be themselves when they talk to colleagues and customers. Think keywords, focus phrases, core statistics and statements that people can weave into their own narrative. The acid test- what customers see on social and website is the same as what they hear in sales meetings and from customer teams. |
Taking Your Next Marketing Strategy Steps
So why bother with a marketing strategy? Simply, it is statistically likely to fail if you don’t. Studies have shown that 60-90% of strategic plans never full launch. Being implementation-ready is a critical element. As HBR puts it “Just because a strategy is formulated, doesn’t mean it’s ready for hand-off to the front-line for execution.”
Oh - and as for the guy in the Blog photo? A photo from a recent trip to Portsmouth. I loved his slightly quizzical expression. He seems certain and yet somehow not 100% convinced - should I bother, should I not bother? It seemed a good fit for this post. If you are interested, he's the figurehead from HMS Vernon, a frigate that ended life established ashore at Portsmouth in 1923 on the site that is now Gunwharf Quays. If you like these sea-going sculptures, and are in the UK, there's a huge collection at the Cutty Sark, part of the Royal Museums Greenwich.
If you are hungry for more on marketing strategy, then go straight to learning how Chiltern Marketing Strategy can help you by building out your marketing strategy bridge. Or, if you’d like to read more, then take a look at why marketing strategy helps your business cross its’ strategy void.
