Marketing strategy? What marketing strategy?
This year feels like we’re coming back to life. We’re going on our first family holiday in the sun in the summer, after our last one in July 2019.
Before we go any further, it’s important to note this is a first-world problem, people. All these folk going “Oh my god I NEED A HOLIDAY, this is simply AWFUL.” Well, no, it probably isn’t that bad. Food, clothing, shelter, safety? You’re mainly OK then.
So back in middle-class ignorance, I NEED A HOLIDAY, this has been simply AWFUL.
My wife and I (well, really my wife, truth be told. She’s much more organised and decisive than I am) booked to go to France in the summer of 2020. Unbeknownst to be, the wonderful woman had also booked a week-long cruise for my 40th in April of that year. Clearly, as it turned out, neither of these trips happened.
After much jiggery-pokery, we finally got our money back and rebooked for summer 2021. Pandemic’ll be over then, right?
“ROFL! Psyche!” laughed coronavirus. Bah.
So this year, we’re going to Mallorca for 10 days. Definitely. Nothing can go wrong with this plan.
Now, imagine you’re thinking about a holiday and you have a conversation with your other half like this:
“Let’s go on holiday next year, sweets.”
“Sounds great, smooshy-poos, let’s do it.”
“Cool, we’ll pack the bags the night before and head off.”
“Well, hang on. First of all, I’ll pack the bags otherwise none of us will have any pants on holiday. Second, where are we going?”
“What? That doesn’t matter, we’ll just go on holiday.”
“Er. Smooshy-poos, don’t we need to know where we’re going?”
“Nah. We don’t have time to work that out. We’ll just fire the kids in the car and drive to the airport and go on holiday.”
Now, this is patently ridiculous. You would not – could not (for the Dr Seuss fans among you) – go on holiday without having a destination in mind, a clear plan for how you were going to get there, who you need to enlist to help you, and an idea of how much you’re willing to spend vs how much it’d cost.
And yet, when it comes to marketing, this is exactly what happens.
“We need to be on social.”
“We need to do SEO.”
“We need some video.”
“We need some advertising.”
As an in-house marketer, or a business owner, or an external partner, the ONLY response to the questions above should be “How will this help to deliver your strategy?”
I’d bet my factor 50 sunblock that at least half of the time you’ll get an answer along the lines of “Er…” Which means: “Well, smart arse, we don’t actually have a strategy.”
Jumping straight to tactics is very tempting because it’s always desirable to Do Something, particularly when so many plans end up in a file gathering dust.
Maybe it’s worth a quick moment on what I mean by ‘marketing strategy’. First, what I don’t mean is a content plan. That is tactics.
A strategy is how you will use external and internal communications to help your business succeed. It should be very clear how your marketing strategy advances the objectives of your business. If it doesn’t, it’s not going to work.
Marketing and the business, to my mind at least, are inextricably intertwined. Marketing lets the business deliver on its potential. You might read about businesses which have wild success without marketing. Well, actually, no they don’t. They might have wild success without advertising or PR, but that’s not the same thing.
At its heart, marketing is understanding who is likely to buy your service or product, why they need it, how you can help them, how you can reach them, and how much you’re going to charge them. Bar one or two other details you might want to chuck in, that’s really it.
What makes it hard to do, and why there are so many books and podcasts and websites and webinars and people like me covering the subject, is that successfully working out the detail of a marketing strategy is quite complex and time-consuming. Now let’s not pretend we’re splitting the atom here, one can over-egg these things. But it’s not as simple as banging out a couple of Facebook ads and booking your appointment with an estate agent in Monaco.
Understand your audience. It’s not you. Do some proper research.
Understand what they want. It’s not to buy your stuff.
Understand how to make them happy and interested. It’s not to talk about yourself.
Understand how to measure success. It’s not going to happen immediately.
I think the biggest hurdle to be cleared by most businesses and some marketers is the time this stuff takes. I’ve seen it so many times – the business is going along nicely, then something happens and marketing comes onto the agenda.
So, the decision is made to speak to an agency or similar and get some campaigns moving. There are pitches slated for the next couple of weeks, with haste the only real imperative for very short timescales.
Businesses aren’t successful (or not for long, at least) by flying by the seats of their pants. Good businesses look at the detail and spend time getting things right. There are companies devoted to helping their clients look into every nook and cranny before a merger or acquisition. Private equity companies and banks want to know every detail before backing a deal. Quite right too.
The approach to marketing strategy needs to be similar, in the sense that it needs proper time, effort, thinking and diligence. My dear mammy used to say “More hurry, less speed”, normally when she was rushing about trying to get us out to school or something, and invariably when an essential item had been left upstairs / been covered in toast and jam at a very inopportune time.
Proper, methodical strategy might not feel as sexy as getting an ad or a campaign out of the door, and it probably isn’t. But if those sexy tactics aren’t based on a sound strategy, they’re much more likely to underperform.
Spending the time, effort and, yes, investment on a solid strategy will reveal insights and opportunities you might have missed, highlight weaknesses you might not have realised you had and give you a decent chance of getting to your intended destination without too many frustrating detours.
