The Power of Strategy in Marketing

Have you heard this coming from a Marketing Organization? "We are already doing Social Media, or We already have analytics, or we are already doing SEO, we are already using the best campaign tool in the market, but when it comes to impact to business, it’s not up to their expectation"

In these cases, the problem lies in the execution that lacks the robust strategy behind it. Check out this article about how Economist was able to grow its subscription by rethinking its Social Media Strategy.

How social media is powering The Economist’s subscription growth - https://digiday.com/media/how-social-media-is-powering-the-economists-subscription-growth/

Additionally, you probably have heard this as well – We are posting more than 20 posts every week and we see a lot of engagements (likes, comments, etc.), but not getting leads/subscription/purchase/etc. Again, refer to the article above wherein Economist reduced the posting from 50 a week to 4 a week that yielded higher subscription.

So, what does strategy bring to the table?

It helps you rethink and redefine your Goals, define specific use cases to meet those goals, and set Priorities to execute the ones with maximum ROI Potential, in turn strategy brings focus to the work, and growth to the business. Please note the returns could be in the form of increasing revenue, reducing cost, or increasing customer satisfaction/loyalty

There is a lot that strategy brings to Marketing in the digital era. Here are some of the outcomes of a strategy work:

1.       Digital Goals

Defining goals backed by analysis and discussion ensure that you are defining goals that are feasible and a bit stretch, but achievable. E.g. x number of purchases from paid campaign, y number of leads from emails, z number of subscriptions from social media

2.      Prioritized Use Cases

Defining prioritized use cases will connect your what to why. E.g I want to post a tailored content for the weekend on social media to drive repeat visits (customer loyalty). You should be able to tie your use cases to one of these goals - increase revenue, reduce cost or increase customer experience and loyalty

3.      Roadmap

The strategy is not for a short term - 1 months, or 6 months, or a year. Strategy should be defined for at least a couple of years. Hence, a roadmap is must to bring in phases and show evolution of marketing over time.

4.      Capabilities to be developed

Identifying the capabilities that are needed to execute the strategy is key to the success of its strategy. Hence, as part of the strategy work, one should also define what’s the capability that a firm should have to successfully execute on the strategy.

5.     Marketing Technology Landscape

As Scott Brinker say, "Marketing Technology is Marketing".

It is indeed true since technology has penetrated every aspect of marketing including creativity driven marketing. There are 1000’s of tools that help automated and optimize the marketing effort. Even though you come up with a great creative, technology can help you test it out in the real world before the general availability. So, it is critical to identify those tools that are best suited for your business, its growth and the current infrastructure.

6.     Architecture

Since Technology has a big play in marketing, as part of strategy work we should define the architecture by assessing what exists, and considering digital goals and budget. Additionally, the architecture should be aligned to Digital roadmap so that the right set of capabilities are plugged in overtime as per the roadmap.

7.      Operating Model to sustain and evolve

Now that a company has answered why, what, when, and where of marketing, operating model defines how of marketing. It helps in setting up those processes and identifying those skills that are needed to be successful in execution. In defining the operating model, you would also be evaluating on building capability in-house or partnering with vendors or service provider. With those analysis, the operating model should be defined to sustain, innovate, and evolve Marketing.

Conclusion – Like strategy without execution has no value, execution without strategy has no value.