So here is one word I really hate – “Strategy”.
It’s the most used words, up there with disruption, in the English language. I think a lot of people get it wrong with what it means and how to do it.
So, after 16 years in business and seeing all manner of strategy consultants and marketing experts, we’ve combined everything we’ve learnt, and from feedback by customers it far the best strategy they ever seen.
So ultimately, a Marketing Strategy is:
- WHO – Getting really crystal clear on who our target audience is and knowing them better than they know themselves.
- WHAT – What are you really selling them? What value are you brining to the target audience? What’s the emotional connection that you need to make? And its not features and benefits
- WHERE – Where are they? What does the customer journey look like? What are the 27 possible touch points you’re going to have? Inline with the points above, you need to continually demonstrate value at each and every touch point. What does your website need to do? What does that 1st phone conversation need to do? Really defining out what that journey is and what you’re doing at each step of the way.
- TODAY – Where are you today? This is why you analytics (tracking and reporting) is so important as it tells you exactly what’s working, what’s not working, what do you need to fix, what is the low lying fruits?
- TOMORROW – Obviously clarity on tomorrow, or as we like to say, your Everest. Where we are going? 3, 5, 10 years, what’s the Everest that we are going after?
- ANALYTICS – What’s the tracking and reporting we need in place to make sure we know if we are on track or not? How do we know if we are on the right path or not, do we need to shift paths?
- RESOURCES – What are the resources? Time, money, effort and most importantly people. Apart from paying Google/Facebook money, marketing is all about people doing good things.
- MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK – How are we going to manage these channels? What’s the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually framework you need to continually grow and improve?
- PLAN – Then it’s putting it all together into a plan of attack. We love 90 day plan of attacks. Anything longer is too long, it’s like that saying “a good plan goes out the window as soon as the fight starts”. 90 days works really well. It gives you the direction and compass you need but allows enough to change and chop.
