Marketing Applied Part Three: Tactics Without Strategy Is the Noise Before Defeat

“Strategy is one element in a four-part structure. First are the ends to be obtained. Second are the strategy for obtaining them, the ways in which resources will be deployed. Third are tactics, the ways in which resources have been deployed are used. Fourth are the resources themselves. Strategy and tactics bridge the gap between ends and means,” Fred Nickols, Harvard Business School.

In our previous blog, we looked at the importance of brand awareness and how that’s different from mental availability. In this third blog of marketing applied to the insights sector, we’re looking at what might seem to be an easy one: strategy.

Research and insight professionals, of all people, should know why strategy is so important. Your role is to define audiences, support innovation, develop products, refine messages and communication, support brand growth. But when it comes to your own organization, are you applying the same principles?

Our clients know that when they start working with us at Keen as Mustard, before they start on their path to fame, there’s a “foundational” stage (the F in FAME!). This is when we work with you to nail down your strategy. To many people this feels like a daunting step, a bureaucratic hurdle that doesn’t solve their sporadic LinkedIn posting problem, or the occasional blog content. Very often you want to cut to implementation. You want that content and results straightaway. You want to see those followers flying in, and those website clicks skyrocket.

But strategy must come first. Without a strong marketing strategy, there’s no successful implementation. Mark Ritson agrees: “If marketers want to be taken seriously, they must end their preoccupation with tactics and tools and focus on their strategy.”

Diagnose the problem

I know what you’re thinking. “Why can’t we get on with it?! Why do we need to define objectives, tone of voice, messaging, and positioning if all I want is some LinkedIn posts?” There are several reasons.

First, you can’t know what will work before you diagnose the problem. If you don’t know where your pain points lie, and what your objectives are, how can you address them effectively? The foundational phase, used to define the strategy, will inform the perfect marketing mix for your goals.

[related-article title="Marketing Applied Part 2: What You Need to Know About Mental Availability" url="https://www.greenbook.org/insights/grow-your-insights-business/marketing-applied-part-2-what-you-need-to-know-about-mental-availability"]

If you don’t know who you’re talking to you don’t know what to tell them. Defining your audience, and ensuring you are different from your competition, is the first step towards a content plan that is relevant and valuable to the people you’re trying to reach.

And then, without clear internal alignment on why you are different, the benefits you provide and purpose in providing them, you won’t be able to get cut through with your communication.

Align on goals

Before you start you want to start thinking about your goals (chose one; at most two!). These must be reflective of the budget you’ll need to invest in your marketing efforts. Want to triple your revenue in the next year? Then, (spoiler alert!) $12K won’t cut it. Want to launch into a new market? You need to put significant investment into getting yourself out there.

Understand the market

Next, do the research! Our approach is to use a triangulation between understanding the market and the competition, understanding your audience, and aligning that with your offer and services. You need to find the sweet spot where all three overlap.

When looking at the market, you want to identify your real competitors: the companies you lose business against more often, those who have a similar offering, and those “aspirational” competitors - are the competitors of today also the competitors of tomorrow? Who is bidding on what on Google? Who are you up against if you are trying to shift your position in the market? Try to look at the market with new eyes and take an outsider’s perspective – if you were a client what would you think or do?

Define and target your ideal client

It is always helpful to get an external person to conduct customer and internal stakeholder interviews. At Mustard we go beyond just interviewing clients and stakeholders by also interviewing industry leaders from our global network about their perceptions of your company and how it fits in the market. Do they know about you? Who do they think your competitors are? These really are eye-opening conversations.

This work should help you define who is your ideal client? Think about their seniority and level of experience, the type of organizations they would be working in, and which industries. Think about their mindset (e.g. are they risk-takers? Or are they more comfortable with what’s familiar to them?), and more than anything think about the benefits that you’ll be bringing to them.

Bear in mind that in B2B 95% of prospects aren’t in the market to buy at any one point in time, so your marketing spend is better utilised by going after a wide pool of customers who might consider you in future. You can then narrow down to specific segments later on, when you’re looking at building targeted tactical campaigns with your short-term activation budget.

So, don’t worry too much at this stage about detailed personas or clever segmentations. You want to target a wide pool in B2B but with a specific message. For example, some years back Zappi launched the tagline ‘data for creators’. This clearly shows their ideal client is a creative person or someone in the creative industries. This is a wide pool as everyone likes to think they are creative…but also specific in its definition of its offer to them.

Something to consider, is the “spillover”, which is the power of a segment of influencing other segments. For example, by targeting your offer to CMOs, creative and advertising agencies will also be interested in working with you.

Focus on what you’re really good at

Strategic marketing is about understanding what you have that makes you stand out and connecting that with your market. Take a good look at what you do, at what you are really good at, chose that one thing and be totally focused on it. Like the Zappi example above, this does not mean you won’t attract people who want other stuff, but it does mean you can be really clear and memorable with your Brand and messaging.

It takes guts to be choice-ful

Strategy is about choices. As the business and strategy giant Michael Porter said: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do”. Don’t linger in the purgatory of trying to do everything and trying to say everything. Choosing what you don’t want to do is as important as choosing what you want to do. Strategy is meant to be intentional.

The three things to remember

Defining your marketing strategy is a fundamental step for the success of implementation. It’s how you spend time (and money) to save time (and money). Careful planning upfront will make sure not only that your execution will get cut through, but also that your organization will be aligned in a clear, singular, direction. Here are the things to remember:

1. Implementation without strategy will lead to inexorable failure.
2. Don’t bypass the foundational stage (understanding the market and the competition, understanding your audience, and aligning that with your offer and services) to define your positioning.
3. Deciding what not to do, is as important as deciding what to do. Set only a couple of objectives, communicate one message, and do a few things but do them well.

One of the final pieces of the strategy puzzle is positioning. This is what you want your customers to think when they think of your company. Don’t panic, stay tuned! We will come to positioning and value propositions in our next marketing applied Greenbook blog.