Moving from Chaos to Structure: The Importance of Marketing Strategy
In five words, strategy is about moving from chaos to structure.
When I was researching Episode 2: Marketing Strategy I vividly remembered my university days, learning about marketing. The importance of strategy was a central theme. The key takeaway was clear: having a strategy is crucial, as otherwise, the marketing activities would lack purpose.
Note:
This article features content from the Marketing Made Clear podcast. You can listen along to this episode on Spotify:
The Pitfalls of Scattergun Marketing
Terms like “rudderless marketing” or “scattergun marketing” describe a chaotic approach. Scattergun marketing involves trying everything without focus – creating content on the fly, engaging in social media without clear objectives, lacking a posting schedule, and failing to review and analyse results. Not good!
Rudderless marketing refers more to the consequences of scattergun marketing. Even skilled content creators can be ineffective without clear goals, whether it’s gaining new customers, retaining existing ones, increasing sales of specific products, or promoting online vs. in-store purchases. Each goal requires a tailored approach.
Long-Term Thinking in Strategy
Strategy infers long-term thinking. Brands like Wish.com, which set high expectations and underdeliver, fail to sustain long-term success. They often rebrand and try again, but consumers become wary.
When discussing positioning later in the season, I’ll cover how brands position themselves for different segments. Some, like divorce lawyers, have a single position, while larger firms offering a range of legal services need diverse marketing strategies. For instance, a large law firm needs separate strategies for B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) clients.
Key Elements of a Marketing Strategy
Each strategy should involve:
- Reaching potential customers: Ensuring the right people know about the firm.
- Engaging potential customers: Helping the right people understand the benefits of doing business with the firm.
- Converting people: Closing sales and starting business relationships.
- Retaining customers: Encouraging repeat business.
The Problem with Reactionary Marketing
Reactionary marketing is common. Even companies with strategies often react too much to external events. While reacting to the environment is essential, making it the core strategy is problematic. Constantly reacting to competitors means you’re not in control or working towards your goals, making it difficult to measure success.
Despite this, some reactionary campaigns are memorable and effective, like KFC’s humorous response to a supply chain issue or Burger King’s playful jabs at McDonald’s. However, these are parts of a broader strategy, not the core approach.
To Me, Marketing Strategy is all about:
- Understanding your target consumers
- Understanding their motivations
- Understanding your competitors
- Understanding your objectives
- And coming up with a plan to reach them
A company’s marketing strategy to then use all of this understanding or knowledge, or expertise to create a mutually profitable long term relationship between that company and their target consumer or customers
And this is achieved predominantly by putting yourself in the best possible position to win your ideal customers.
Will Green MA MBA
The Role of Consistency
Marketing Week reported that McDonald’s strategy is fundamentally aligned with its business goals which emphasise consistency. They describe their approach as maintaining a level of stillness, grounding themselves in their business strategy. They prioritise consumer data and ROI (Return on Investment), ensuring they are always in control.
They state the importance of:
Keeping honest to what is actually going to drive those growth levers that are in our business strategy keeps us really grounded in terms of that prioritisation.
We are relentlessly curious about what happened in the market, what’s happening with our customers. What are the drivers of business?
We now know without a doubt that when we invest in work that builds our brand it builds 1.5 times higher ROI in the near term as any other type of work
Conclusion
In conclusion, a well-defined marketing strategy transforms chaos into structure. It aligns activities with long-term goals, differentiates approaches for various segments, and ensures consistent, measurable success.
Up Next:
Marketing Strategy Definitions
