The Most Important Thing for Your Brand: Marketing Strategy - Part 1
It’s time to recognize the MVP in the room: Marketing Strategy.
We come across many brands who have opted to skip marketing strategy in order to get to work on sparkly things like creating a website, photography, social media, etc. Sound familiar? The problem is that a lack of clarity and direction not only makes it near impossible for your teams to execute a brand vision but actually prevents your target audience - remember your target audience? The people whom you do ALL of this for - from finding and falling in love with you.
Why? In one word, confusion.
Don’t get me wrong, I know YOU get it - but hear me out.
Meet our hypothetical friend, Sandy.
Sandy has an inner calling to create curated self-care boxes that match your mood. Sandy is an entrepreneur on fire with secured funding and is ready to bring her vision to life with prototype boxes in hand.
Sandy begins her marketing journey with what seems like a logical checklist:
Get photos
Design a website
Hire a social manager/team
Start posting on social media
Invest a small amount of money on social
Oh, wait... Sandy’s social isn’t growing and she’s not getting much traffic to her website (or sales).
What happened?
When Sandy hired her photographer, she didn’t share how the photos would be used or the strategy behind the creative direction. She didn’t think about the type of images she’d need for her site and that she needed content for her social media, as well as other future marketing efforts. The photoshoot resulted in content that didn’t get her very far and didn’t match her vision.
When Sandy’s social manager began posting content, they focused on selling in every post. They didn’t know how to grow their community by sharing valuable content and information because Sandy said that everyone will love her products and she needed to make sales ASAP. Her team boosted posts that didn’t have much traction and didn’t narrow targeting because they didn’t know who the audience was.
Sandy isn’t a big fan of emails and didn’t want to bother people with even more junk. She didn’t realize how incredibly profitable email marketing can be and that when providing something valuable to your perfect audience, it’s not junk to them.
Sandy didn’t spend time to develop a strategy that would have provided:
The right content and creative direction (images/video/graphics/memes)
The right messaging (values, tone of voice, and content categories)
Clarity of her dream customer (buyer and social persona)
Opportunity to make a lasting connection (email opt-in and ongoing mailings)
Not to worry, Sandy. We got you.
The proof is in the pudding when it comes to prioritizing strategy, especially marketing strategy. In this post, we dig into the reasons why a marketing strategy (and subsequent marketing plans) is not only worth your time, it’s an absolute necessity.
Let’s get solid on the basics.
What is a marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy is shaped by your business and brand strategy and contains a high-level purpose. An ideal marketing strategy helps a business identify why their offering is unique (aka competitive advantage), the problem it solves (aka value proposition), and whose' problem it’s solving (aka target audience), along with key messaging that helps shape how consumers see the brand - those things that should not change vastly over time.
Think of a marketing strategy as an evergreen foundation for your marketing ecosystem that current AND future marketing planning can refer back to for a gut check. It is, in essence, the holy grail of why your brand should matter to your consumers.
What is a marketing plan?
A marketing plan is a roadmap driven by the overarching marketing strategy for what and how you will communicate to your consumers. A typical marketing plan is less permanent and focuses on how you will achieve objectives through clearly defined tactics and related metrics. AKA these are your marching orders and how you are going to convert over a period of time. This helps keep your planning SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-based).
Chosen tactics should help bring campaigns and brand initiatives to life with a clear explanation for how you will determine and track success. You may create an annual marketing plan that provides a basic framework and budget allocation, then develop a secondary layer that is broken into quarterly sections with more granular detail. As the world shifts and changes, it’s important to infuse the opportunity to be flexible, to test, and to optimize in order to achieve desired results.
What is the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan?
The marketing strategy is the why and the marketing plan is the what and the how. Think of a marketing plan as something you may do for a finite period of time with a focus on logistical details and execution, where a marketing strategy is the north star to keep the marketing plan on the right path.
Why create a marketing strategy and related marketing plans?
Good question.
They provide the vital foundation for your entire team (internal and external)
They provide clarity in your marketing content
They help set your brand apart from competitors
They give you a true understanding of your ideal customer and how you can help them
They specify plans to execute initiatives based on clear objectives
They provide measurable goals based on predetermined KPIs
They give you and your team a clear budget based on sales projections
Whenever I see a brand that seems to always change their style and messaging or have different messages across their marketing channels - it's pretty clear they lack a solid strategy and direction from the top.
Who should be involved in creating a marketing strategy and marketing plans?
A marketing strategy should be a team effort in order to get buy-in from leadership. Depending on the size of the business, the marketing team/individual/agency should work with the leadership team to define the goals, values, and target audience based on the business and brand strategy. As we mentioned at the top, goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, and time-based). A marketing lead can contextualize the information and present their expert recommendations when it comes to outlining the best way to convey the value of the business offering and how to reach an ideal target audience.
Now that you know what a marketing strategy is and why you need one, stay tuned for the second part of this series to learn about the specific components of what you’ll need in your marketing strategy AND your marketing plan (yes, they are different).
Written by Arica Rosenthal