Strategic marketing in 9 steps (do things right)

Step 1: The directors’ vision

What is the “strategic” in strategic marketing? It is defining and achieving business objectives by doing the right things in the right way, through a considered and measured approach: knowing where you want to be, and having a prioritised, resourced plan to get there. That starts with knowing where “there” is.

Whether the company is a large corporate or a small business, start with the aspirations of its leaders. Ask them to imagine standing three years from today, looking back at what the business achieved. Consider:

• Company size aspirations, including financials and market share
• Target markets and countries
• Customers and sales channels
• Solutions, products and services
• Personal and non-financial aims, such as corporate social responsibility
• Investment appetite and where the funding comes from

Not every answer will be known at this stage, but together they scope the strategic aims. Everything that follows is guided by this input, and is either prioritised and realised in the later plans or realigned to what is realistic once the constraints are visible.

Step 2: The business audit

With the directors’ input, review the current state of the business. What does it do well? What needs to improve? What has worked so far, and what has not? Then look at:

High-level financials by area. Which areas create the sales, the margin and the profit? Look at them separately: profit does not necessarily follow the highest sales.

Sweet spots, products, pricing, marketing and process. Identify where the business is genuinely strong, where you win and why. Knowing where you are strong lets you direct resource to where it will be most productive.

Business outlook. If the business continues on its current trajectory and takes no action, where does it end up? This starts to show the gap between where the directors want to be and where current activity leads.

The committed roadmap. Consider what is already committed, because it will consume attention and resource. When those items are delivered, how do they contribute to the aims? Are they still the priorities?

Internal strengths and weaknesses. Be careful not to wear rose-tinted glasses about strengths, or to be unduly pessimistic about weaknesses. For more on this, see our post on creating prioritised business and marketing strategies.

Voice of the customer. To counter the rose-tinted glasses, go to Gemba — the Japanese term for “the actual place”, where the service provider meets the customer. Go to your customers, get constructive feedback, and feed it into the planning.

Headwinds and tailwinds. What is pushing the business along, and what is holding it back?

Step 3: Market reflection

Consider your target market, your competitors and where growth is likely to come from.

Market size and growth rates. Which markets and segments have high compound growth? Roughly how large are the ones you might target?

Market and industry trends. Which trends should shape your strategy? Consider the vertical and horizontal markets you will operate in. Would focusing vertically help you differentiate, could you significantly improve your value proposition by doing so, and do you have the resource to do it properly?

PESTLE factors. Political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors that could materially affect the business.

Competitors, positioning and their marketing. The value you offer needs to be at least equal to, and preferably better than, your competitors’. Review their positioning, value proposition, messaging and marketing relative to yours.

Customers, buyers and influencers. What is the profile of your current customers? Decisions inside companies are often made by teams. Who influences and who decides, now and in future?

External opportunities and threats. Round the picture out with the outward half of a SWOT.

Intelligence at this stage guides every decision that follows. Use free or paid research and digital tools to identify attractive markets that fit what you already do well. Our post on aligning to what buyers actually search for shows how much difference this exercise makes.

Step 4: Mission and vision

With the directors’ view and both audits in hand, write a first pass at the mission and vision.

• Mission: a summary of the company’s business, its core objectives, and its approach to reaching them.
• Vision: a summary of the desired future position, including purpose, goals and values.

You can revisit both as you work through the remaining steps, to keep them aligned with what is realistically achievable.

Step 5: Vital objectives — the what

Now identify the vital few: the 20% of objectives that, achieved, will deliver most of the growth and bring the vision and mission to life. Consider:

• Market share and financial objectives
• Customer and segment objectives
• Solution, product and service objectives
• Sales and channel objectives
• People objectives

Objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, ambitious, realistic and timed.

Step 6: Strategies — how the objectives will be achieved

Capture every idea that might combine to achieve the vital objectives, then select and prioritise:

• Brainstorming and fishbone analysis
• A business impact assessment or matrix
• The Boston Consulting Group matrix
• Investment analysis, such as NPV and IRR
• Balanced scorecard objectives, covering internal processes and learning and growth

You do not need to use all of these. They are there if you want to consider the full breadth of options.

Once the strategies are selected and prioritised, build the marketing plan that will deliver them. That plan covers:

• Solutions, products and services, including the whole product offering and offensive and defensive positions
• The value proposition: client challenges, your solution, the value, and the proof
• Unique selling points and differentiators
• Brand and messaging strategy: principles, guidelines, value proposition, messaging, value sheets
• Content strategy: videos, infographics, papers, blogs, brochures
• The communication mix: social, email, ads, events, shows
• The customer journey, from first contact to loyal customer
• Considered campaigns, outbound and inbound
• Markets, customers and customer segmentation
• Sales channels: direct, indirect, e-commerce
• Channel partner programmes: structured, progressive and motivational
• Sales enablement: aware, motivated, skilled, convinced, equipped
• Sales incentive programmes
• Revenue and margin
• Licensing and structure
• Relative positioning
• Sales promotions and programmes
• Benchmarked best practice
• The martech stack and tools
• Marketing operations
• Measurement methodology
• Internal or external resource, skills and competencies

Step 7: The program plan

Constant, relentless focus on owned and resourced actions is what turns a plan into growth. For each of the vital few objectives, write a summary program plan containing:

• Program description
• Program objectives
• Target audience
• Specific actions, each with an owner and a due date
• A single named owner for the program as a whole
• Resources and budget
• Key performance indicators

Where the actions are complex, a more formal project management approach and tooling will help.

Step 8: Daily and visual management

Daily management is the ongoing review that keeps focus on execution, so the marketing plan is delivered properly and produces the results it promised. Despite the name, set the review frequency so that every review adds real value and its actions can actually be progressed.

Align the review structure with the structure and priorities of the plan. Individual campaigns and programs might be reviewed weekly, while the marketing plan they feed into is reviewed monthly.

Visual management puts the plan’s key indicators somewhere people can see them, updated with the latest data, so progress against the objectives is obvious. A traffic-light representation works well: the review then ignores the greens and concentrates on the ambers and reds. That is management by variance.

Step 9: Risk assessment

With the strategy built, assess the risks to achieving it and put mitigations in place:

• Identify the business risks to each objective
• Score them on probability and impact
• Develop mitigation strategies weighted by likelihood and impact
• Give each mitigation an owner, an action plan and a completion date

For more on a structured approach to growth, see our 8 steps to strategic growth.

Putting it together

Follow this process and you put the strategic into marketing. It keeps you focused on the right things and executing in the right way, so the business achieves what its leaders set out to achieve.

If we can help with any of the nine steps, get in touch. Work is scoped by outcome, not by hours.