What is Strategy?

There tends to be at least 2 schools of thought in marketing. The first is of those that believe that through repeated exposure, you can build a ‘brand’ by ‘positioning’ your company the way you?d like in the minds of consumers. The second are direct marketers, who believe you should provide enough information to move prospects to the next level and always ask for the next step – contact you, visit your website, etc. Group 1 believes in the subtle process of building ‘awareness’ while Group 2 believes that if you don’t ask people to buy, they won’t. Group 2 also tends to look down on Group 1 because Group 1 doesn’t believe you can measure the results of every aspect of your marketing campaign.

So, with current marketing buzz surrounding ROI, response rates, and conversions, you can understand why direct marketer and copywriting guru, Bob Bly writes in his latest newsletter

There’s a ton of seminars, conferences, books, Web sites, articles, and e-zines being published today about all facets of marketing, both online or offline. But it’s not easy to determine which are worthwhile.

Solution: When you read the material or listen to the program, watch for certain buzzwords.

If material repeats these over and over again “branding,” “image,” “planning,” “strategy,” “vision,” “touch,” “creative,” “customer experience,” and “awareness” the speaker or author has likely not generated direct sales for any product or service through advertising, and his or her advice may be suspect.

On the other hand, if you hear terms like “response,” “ROI,” “break-even,” “cost per acquisition,” and “dollars per name,” the speaker or author is probably a direct marketer who actually knows how to create advertising that sells, and may be worth listening to.

While I believe in a mix of the two, I’ll take this opportunity to defend planning and strategy because while it’s true that they are buzzwords, their core meaning is important to any marketing campaign.

What is strategy? It is a game plan that should explain what objectives should be accomplished, which industries and markets you are going to do this in, and how you are going to accomplish this taking into consideration your limited resources, your environment, and your competition. A well developed strategy contains a number of components:

• scope – how many industries and markets you will focus on and how many products and services you will offer to those industries and markets
• goals and objectives – what you hope to accomplish with each product or service in each market. These must be specifics such as growth by X%, increase profits by $Y, or return on investment of X%
• how you use resources – you will always be constrained – by budget, time, staff, knowledge of subject matter, government regulations, etc – so you can only do a finite number of activities to achieve your goals. How can you best utilize what you have to get where you want?
• identifying a competitive advantage – numerous articles have been written on how to sustain a competitive advantage. Many academics have argued that in today’s information age, gaining a sustainable competitive advantage is virtually impossible. Competitors can easily look at what you do and imitate you, perhaps even improve on your current processes and beat you at your own game. This tends to be where ‘branding’ and ‘positioning’ come into play. Because so many products and services are virtually identical, marketing’s job is to make them sound different and more attractive than your competitor’s offering (without of course making false or fraudulent claims!)
• synergy – this involves coordinating all your activities around your core corporate philosophy – that mission that drives your firm and makes the whole greater than each part would be by itself.

All of this takes planning. You don’t just wake up one morning and know all the answers, just like you wouldn’t haphazardly play someone at chess and hope that in your randomness you get lucky and win. If you’re playing someone who has any idea what they are doing, you’ll get your butt kicked pretty badly 99.99% of the time… Business works the same way.

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