You know that feeling when you leave a really great project kick-off, get back to your desk (or maybe, more likely) end a Zoom call, and you realize you retained none of the actual strategy behind the brief?
Before you start jumping to conclusions about needing a new career, stop for a second and make sure the strategy was actually made clear. It’s that whole thing about not leaping before you look, and we can’t tell you enough how important that is. In all things really.
We can be spontaneous, I mean, you know us, we like impromptu happy hours and lunch at 10:30 a.m. but strategy is not the place to “wing it.”
A marketing strategy needs to support your business goals and that usually comes down to leads, whether a lead is defined based on revenue or people. It’s your ROI (return-on-investment for you daft ones).
So, with that in mind, let’s dive into three of the top reasons you need to start your next marketing initiative/campaign/year with a well-documented strategy:
1. Your passion for your business will cloud your judgement of what your customers actually want.
This may sound like tough love, but it’s gotta be said. As an operator or owner of a business, you have a certain affinity for your product or service that is difficult to look past when developing your strategy. We know you’re awesome, but it’s important that your strategy is based on research and actual customer feedback to really understand the benefits, limitations, and opportunities for your brand. “Knowing” how great your product/service is and thinking other people are on the same page is flawed logic.
2. Because the “spaghetti against the wall” approach is fruitless and can get expensive quick.
Far too many businesses adopt the “spaghetti” approach, one we have a particular issue with and for good reason (the biggest being the waste of perfectly good spaghetti). Developing a strategy and getting it down on paper is hard work, which is why so many people skip it and go right into implementation and then they are just so darn confused why nothing worked. You have to put in hard work upfront to understand your customers, what their motivators are, and what your product/service brings to their life that would make them give a shit. Does that mean that everything in your strategy is going to resonate, absolutely not, but you at least know you will be implementing tactics that have a much higher likelihood of success than wasting a bunch of money and human capital on tactics or messaging that just won’t work. Work smarter, not harder, how many times do we have to say it, people?
3. Your entire company needs to be able to understand the “why.” If it’s just in your head you’re doomed.
To be honest, this is probably the most important reason you need a strategy… because you need everyone in the company working toward the same goals. Novel concept, we know. You want to make sure everyone in the company understands who your customers are, how to talk to them, and the type of messaging that is going to resonate with them. You won’t be helping anyone on your team or your company if you are not communicating your goals and tactics regularly.
Make sense? As you might have guessed, we’re really, really, really good at strategy development and implementation. So, if you and your team find yourselves staring blankly at each other when someone even vaguely mentions the phrase “So…what’s the plan?” It’s well past time you reach out to us to get yourself a share of that sweet, sweet, ROI.
