A Note on Strategy

I was once told by my (then) boss, “You need to think more strategically”.

He was right. I knew that right away because I had no clue what it meant.

So I started learning about and trying to understand strategy. I read everything from googlable definitions to Michael Porter. I got better at theoretically understanding and defining what strategy meant but the concept of thinking and working strategically still eluded me.

That was a long time ago and I’d like to think that I’m much better at strategic thinking now. I’m also much much better at executing strategies.

I soon moved on from that company. Not because of what my manager said, but we had different styles of working and different opinions on important issues.

But we had one thing in common –?neither of us seemed to understand what “strategy” really meant.

Since it was something that I learned the hard way, I thought I’d share it with you. And since most of my network is marketers, I’ll keep this one about marketing strategy, but the process can be generally applied across disciplines.

Just know that your marketing strategy is a derivative of your business and product strategy. And just like those two, it’s closely tied to the market you play in, the competitive landscape, and most importantly, the customer.

Research

Although research methodologies are outside the scope of this essay, this is step zero.

Before you can leverage what I’m about to share, you need to know the market in and out. Talk to your customers and potential customers, listen to sales calls, and gather insights from internal team members across customer-facing functions who have been doing it for a long time.?

You’re not only gathering facts, but also the perception of the people who matter.

Book recommendation: If your role involves market or user research, read 'The Mom Test'. It has transformed the way I do qualitative research.

The internal dialog

Here’s an internal dialog that I use to arrive at the marketing strategy and start to envision how the execution would play out.

A lot of this might sound simplistic. I’m not going to give you the “it’s simple but not easy”. If you know your customer inside out and know everything you can possibly know about the domain, it can get pretty easy. So, don’t skimp on research.

You: What’s the goal that we’re trying to achieve?

Also, you: <States a BS superficial version of the real goal>

You: No no. What’s the real goal?

Also, you: <Says something meaningful that would move the needle or differentiate your product/service in the competitive landscape>

You: Good. Now, what’s the best way to attain that?

Also, you: It would be awesome if <the best way>.

[This might also take some back-and-forth, since most of us are tethered to our comfort zones. Push yourself to think big. Don’t worry about feasibility during the ideation phase.]

You: Let’s deconstruct the execution. How would this play out tactically?

Also, you: <A detailed discussion to reverse-engineer the vision of the perfect future where you achieve your goal and win the market>

You: Do I/we have the capability to do that?

Also, you: Never done anything like that!

[Most conversations either end here due to talent/skill limitations, depending on whether you’re a manager/IC, or start at talent/skill which flies in the face of thinking strategically.]

You: Has anyone else done something like that?

Also, you: Yeah, <brand name> did something similar.

[It’s highly unlikely that it’s never been done before. If you can’t think of examples from your space, look outward.]

[Sadly, most managers start their “strategic thinking” here.]

You: Can we learn more and create the playbook as we go along?

[In the beginning, it might feel like building an aeroplane mid-flight, but once you get the hang of it, it’s the funnest thing to do. Just don’t underestimate the importance of planning.]

Also, you: Hell yeah! If that’s what it takes, I/we will figure out a way to make it happen.

[Then you go out there and execute.]

A concrete example

I was compelled to write this for two main reasons:

1. Over the last couple of years, I’ve marketed to three different audiences that had very little in common. This required 3 different strategies, each of which required brand-new playbooks.
2. If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat all problems like nails. I’ve fallen into this trap before and I still see marketers sticking to their playbooks despite the context around them changing dramatically.

At Atomicwork , we pivoted the business-level strategy from selling to HR (and also IT) to a full-fledged IT Service Management (ITSM) product last year. For context, ITSM is a brutal space with an established market leader, ServiceNow, that enjoys an undisputed monopoly in the enterprise market.

ServiceNow has dominated the market for so long that Gartner stopped seeing the point of repetitive annual research and briefly retired the ITSM magic quadrant.

Let that sink in.

Our differentiation, from a product perspective, was an AI-first approach that freed us from established product playbooks and allowed us to build from first principles. The incumbents were bolting on AI features on a legacy architecture and we didn't have that tech debt.

From a marketing perspective, we needed a strategy and a tactical plan to put things into action.

Here’s how that conversation went.

GOAL

Us: What’s the goal that we’re trying to achieve?

Also, us: We need to generate leads by targeting mid-market and enterprise IT leaders and CIOs.

REAL GOAL

US: No no. What’s the real goal?

Also, us: ITSM is a crowded space with an established big dawg. We need to cut through the clutter and build brand awareness for Atomicwork.

Eventually, we need to make it look like a 2-player market and make the rest of the players seem irrelevant, at least for IT leaders who are ready to move to a mature platform.

APPROACH

Us: Good. Now, what’s the best way to attain that through marketing?

Also, us: We need to establish Atomicwork as a thought leader in the ITSM space.

We also need to counter-position ourselves as a modern alternative to ServiceNow.

[Vijay, our CEO, wanted to do this a lot sooner than we’d planned. We pushed back at first, but after seeing early signs of it resonating, we ran with it. Again, research helped.]

Us: But ITSM has existed for 30 years and it has certifications older than some people on our team.

Plus, no one wants to hear that the thing they’ve been doing for decades is wrong, especially from a 2-year-old “vendor” with a product to sell.

[My previous gig was for a fairly new discipline with no publicly available playbooks, so ‘education’ as a strategy worked perfectly. This time, it wasn’t as straightforward.]

Also, us: [Backed by user research] The only major change in ITSM in recent times is the explosion of AI. There’s a lot of uncertainty around AI and there’s top-down pressure from the C-suite to adopt it. Naturally, the demand for education is high.

It also perfectly aligns with our product differentiation. BINGO

It’s settled. We need to establish Atomicwork as the thought leader in ‘AI in ITSM’.

[Our main insight for counter-positioning against ServiceNow was that they won the cloud movement against on-prem incumbents that were too slow to adapt. This time, they’re the legacy solution and we’ll fight to win the AI movement.]

REVERSE-ENGINEERING

Us: Let’s deconstruct the execution. How would this play out tactically?

Also, us: We need to build a resource library that needs to become the go-to place for anyone looking to learn about AI in ITSM.

IT leaders want to know what their peers are doing and what are their apprehensions when it comes to AI adoption. Step one needs to be a deeply researched report titled “State of AI in IT, 2024”.

It needs to be of such high quality and it has to be distributed so massively that it quickly puts us on the map.

CAPABILITY

Us: Do we have the capability to do that? [The report, to start with.]

Also, us: Nope. Never done anything like that!

Us: Has anyone else done something like that?

Also, us: Yeah, another brand owns an annual report titled “State of ITSM”. But AI in ITSM is a big enough differentiator with proven demand.

Us: Can we learn more and create the playbook as we go along?

Also, us: Hell yeah! If that’s what it takes, we’ll figure out a way to make it happen.

The execution part is highly subjective and outside the scope of this essay.

In a nutshell, the ‘State of AI in IT’ report involved extensive research, both qualitative and quantitative. We partnered with Stephen Mann , a forward-thinking ITSM veteran who is a thought leader in his own right, and got other IT leaders to share their commentary on the data.

The impact was outsized as well. Some of the biggest communities in the ITSM space started citing the data and insights from the report for their content and presentations.?

One of them?– ITIL , which is the most popular framework for IT teams and the most sought-after certification for IT professionals – invited us to present our learnings to their premium community members.?

I think it’s safe to say that it put us on the map like we’d planned.

To cement our ownership of the concept and its mindshare, we published the 2025 edition of the report a year later.

Over time, we partnered with more IT leaders to help the IT community benefit from their expertise through webinars and a podcast series. On the ground, we organize CIO meetups to help them connect and learn from their peers.?

One common theme of discussions during the CIO meetups, with zero influence from us, is their mutual frustration with ServiceNow’s monopolistic practices and arm-twisting through incremental cost inflation and platform complexity.

Sweet!

Here’s your homework: If you were in our shoes, how would you leverage this last piece of insight? Both strategically and tactically.

If you read the entire piece, thanks. I have a couple of requests:

1. If you know someone who might benefit from this, please share it with them. The job market is a bloodbath right now and sharing knowledge is the most positive-sum game ever.
2. On that note, if there is something you wish you knew when you were starting out, and want to pay it forward, please document it and put it out there. You never know whose career trajectory it might end up transforming.