Driving Marketing Strategies That Work

First, there is a distinct difference between marketing strategies and marketing plans. The difference is important.

Here’s a well-articulated distinction by a trusted source: According to Investopedia, “Marketing strategies should ideally have longer life spans than individual marketing plans because they contain value propositions and other key elements of a company’s brand, which generally hold constant over the long haul. The plan outlines marketing activities on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis *.

My two cents: Marketing strategies define what your business is and why it’s here, i.e., your mission, vision, and values. They can also contain other enduring information to serve as checks and balances for your plan, like your UVP (Unique Value Proposition) or attributes such as your look and feel, voice, and tone. Again, it’s who you are and why you’re here.

The marketing strategy is typically created and managed by leaders, executives, and managers.

• Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
• Executive Leadership Team
• Marketing Director
• Market Researchers
• Product Managers
• Brand Managers

The marketing plan is derived, in part, from the strategy, which it uses as a framework to ensure consistency and continuity. It contains changing marketing drivers, such as current business objectives, competitive analysis, and target market analysis. It also supports the plan’s proposed execution, like market research and SWOT analysis.

Most recognizably, the marketing plan contains a plan of attack, often by week, month, quarter, and year. It spells out the marketing mix or the “4 Ps:”

• Product(s) or Service(s) description and its features.
• Price(s) strategy and pricing models.
• Place(s) or distribution channels and methods of delivery.
• Promotion(s) include advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and other promotional activities.

While the marketing plan typically contains the marketing budget, I will cover it in the next article as it requires special attention.

Marketing plans are created and managed by (depending on your team):

• CMO (oversight)
• Marketing Director
• Marketing Managers
• Product Marketing Managers
• Campaign Managers
• Marketing Analysts
• Sales Team

Own Your Objectives: A Business Leader’s Crucial Role in Marketing Success Starts Here

As a business leader, your role in the marketing plan is to define the business objective(s). If you want to master the marketing game, you have to get this right, and it might be trickier than you think.

The importance of clearly defined objectives cannot be overstated. After all, achieving objectives is the only real measure of success, and unclear objectives are the primary cause of failure. According to the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Pulse of the Profession report, nearly 40% of business projects fail due to unclear objectives *. The situation worsens for technical projects, where that figure skyrockets to 75% *. So, don’t screw it up :).

Case in Point: A global multi-billion dollar-per-year packaging company had a $500k budget and wanted to convince companies to put soup in cardboard packaging. I was working with them because I had a unique programming capability, and it was the only way for them to pull off an amazing digital ad they wanted to create for display in online trade magazines. One day, I asked how many of these soup makers they were trying to reach. Their answer and my response changed my career. They said they wanted to reach about 20 manufacturers. I said, there’s a better way to do this and crafted a very intimate and personalized campaign for each prospect (using the original ad concept), and we reached out to them directly. I made more money, and the multi-billion dollar per year company saved 90% of their budgeted money and got better results than they hoped for.

If they had started with the result (convince 20 soup manufacturers to package in cardboard boxes) instead of the solution (build us an ad and run it in these digital magazines), I could have saved them a bunch of time, too.

In just one conversation we:

• Clarified the objective – convince 20 soup makers that cardboard containers were superior to cans
• Aligned the marketing approach to the most likely to achieve the result – personalized ads sent directly to the audience
• Simplified the monitoring and control of results

If they had started with the result (convince 20 soup manufacturers to package in cardboard boxes) instead of the solution (build us an ad and run it in these digital magazines), I could have saved them a bunch of time, too.

Employing these three tactics is the bare minimum if you want to have a chance at success.

• Communicate objectives in terms of the results you want, or be clear about why you’re embarking on any initiative. For example, if you want to improve efficiency, you cannot communicate that you want to increase automation because it is entirely possible to improve automation and decrease efficiency.
• Consistently use the same terminology and phrasing when communicating your objectives to ensure clarity and recall.
• Communicate all the time and everywhere.

If the only thing you do is commit to your objectives and communicate them clearly, consistently, and constantly, it will be transformative. Expect these results:

• Everyone will be aiming at the same target.
• You’ll get valuable input from teams involved.
• Being specific about your desired results allows you and your marketing team to measure performance using the same KPIs, which is almost unheard of in marketing. In theory, this solves one of the top frustrations.

Marketing Plans Fail When They Fail to Include Measurements That Matter

One of the biggest frustrations in marketing is – when it comes to measuring performance business leaders and marketers are speaking different languages and, quite frankly, most of the time they’re talking about different topics. For example, driving traffic to a website may not increase revenue or even generate qualified leads. It may just drive traffic to a poorly performing website. Social media engagement may not do anything to build an audience, although that’s what most would expect it to do.

The bridges needed to connect these gaps may not exist, and it is your job to facilitate building them. In other words, pony up some dough. The investment will be worth it.

The goal is to connect business and marketing systems that generate automated reporting, connecting the dots between marketing activities and their impact on the business. Information Systems teams, IT teams, and Marketing teams can be very “protective” of their systems, so before you begin, I highly recommend bringing in a third-party consultant to help you make an unbiased decision on handling this project.

Once you have a system in place, it will make an immediate difference, but it may take a few quarters to a year for the system to be completely dialed in. Ultimately, however, this is a huge win for both sides.

Change the Perspective on the Marketing Plan, and You’ll Change Everything

Business leaders frequently express frustration with the inability to align business objectives and marketing activities. Part of the problem stems from historic laziness in crafting marketing plans and budgets.

Most plans and budgets list marketing activities and channels something like this:

• $50,000 – Social media strategy
• 25,000 – Content development strategy
• 67,000 – Digital marketing strategy
• 32,000 – SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy
• $8,500 – Email marketing strategy
• $12,80 – Content marketing strategy
• $7,800 – TV
• $4,800 – Radio
• $9,200 – Print

The best way I can describe this – in a non-profane manner – is as a complete and utter disaster. That’s actually putting it mildly. First of all, most of those things fall under Digital Marketing, so if they exist as separate items, then what are you paying for when it comes to Digital Marketing?

More importantly, this arrangement typically mentions the business objectives in one section of the marketing plan, and the list of marketing activities another section. Moreover, the list of activities does not typically connect the dots for how they will impact any specific current business objective. This not only breeds ambiguity, it is lacking in accountability. I’m not talking about who to blame, I’m talking about exactly which efforts go toward which objectives.

How did this get so bad? Easily—this is how it has always been done. In fact, we (my first company, Web180) have been pioneers in Digital Marketing long before the term “Digital Marketing” existed. We probably helped make some of those first plans and budgets because there was nowhere to put things like SEO, Pay-Per-Click, or display ads.

Here is how you get your team to upgrade your marketing plans:

• Request that the marketing plan focus first on each business objective.
• Then, within each objective’s section, describe the marketing activities that will help achieve it. This way your marketing team will align marketing activities with business objectives.

If you struggle to visualize this, it will become very clear in the next article on straightening out your marketing budget.

It’s a long article. Let me summarize.

• • The Marketing Strategy is the organization’s marketing foundation and is based on current business objectives.
  • The Marketing Plan details the current business objectives and, when done properly, will clearly align marketing efforts to achieving business objectives.
  • Your most important role when it comes to successful marketing is to clearly define the business objectives.
  • You will help facilitate connecting the dots between marketing KPIs and business KPIs.

Two Bonus Points

• If something in the marketing strategy or marketing plan doesn’t pass the sniff test, your marketing team should be able to support their decision to spend money and perform marketing activities with well-founded data. Don’t be afraid to ask for it.
• Make sure your marketing and sales team(s) work together to craft the marketing plan. This can be transformative and generate beautiful results.

The PURE & Simple Marketing Approach requires a deep understanding of your objectives, rethinking how marketing strategies, plans and budgets are formulated and upgrading the connection between marketing KPIs and business KPIs. In just a few months the shift in your marketing performance will be transformative.