Strategy and Execution

Marketing is big and wide. It’s so many things. And often times when we think about marketing from the perspective of the customer, we’re focused on the tactical piece. Unless it’s really off base. Recently in one day’s mail I received three different advertising post cards that made me wonder if these marketers had any strategy at all behind their tactics. Clearly I was not in the target demographic for any of the three products.

It’s possible that sometimes there’s too much focus on the tactical. When we have a company that comes to us talking first about the tactical, we have to sit down and slow down and understand who they are and what behavior change they are trying to guide with their marketing.

If you’re trying to build sales and you’re looking for a company to partner with on marketing – first take a look at who you are. Think about these questions:

• Who are our best customers?
• Why do they find value in our products?
• What is their story about the relationship with our brand?
• What have we done right with them?
• Where do we need to improve?
• What is it about them, demographically, that makes them a good fit for our product?
• How do we find more customers like them?

Once you know some of these answers, it becomes easier to build a marketing plan based on strategy instead of falling victim to trying the next cool thing.

It’s important for a potential marketing partner to be able to have the experience to make a strategic recommendation and then help with or handle implementation, rather than just say “we do X” and be unable to make that “X” really tie in with the rest of the strategy.

A potential partner should ask enough questions to know why you need them, where they add value, and they should feel comfortable talking about the return on investment that you should expect, based on their experience.