MISALIGNED MARKETING: STRATEGY, TACTICS, and MISCONCEPTIONS

MISALIGNED MARKETING: STRATEGY, TACTICS, and MISCONCEPTIONS

So many of the client projects I’ve worked on and managed over the years have been the result of (easily avoidable) errors.

The irony: most of the errors I've worked to correct occurred at the very outset of the process, before any marketing efforts were (actually) underway.

Often: it’s a failure to establish a coherent marketing strategy (of any sort). 

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Remember: strategy is the high-level overview (or: the “what” and “why”) of your marketing efforts (informed by your beliefs about your unique value proposition, target audience, and the landscape of the market), whereas tactics are the “how” - actions you take to bring that strategy to life.

It’s (more than) necessary to have both in place for effective marketing: a sound strategy re: marketing informs your tactics, ensures they work in concert with each other for a specific (business-related) purpose.

In other words, if you’ve, say, thrown some money at ads on LinkedIn and are seeing an uptick in traffic, but you don’t have neither a strategy for translating traffic into qualified leads into converts (that is, revenue) nor relevant metrics to measure success (or lack thereof) by, your money (not to mention time and effort) has been wasted.

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This feels so intuitive, so why do so many brands move forward with tactics sans strategy so often?

Strategy is a bit abstract, whereas tactics are more visible, discrete actions producing a tangible result (in other words: something to show for your work).

You (as a marketer) probably get this: marketers are under a near-constant pressure to justify the worth of the work they do.

The irony in this: it’s not conducive to the sort of results you want and (most often) leaves you with data that doesn’t actually tell you (or those you’re in a rush to show something to) anything of relevance (or use).

Even so, it’s not an easy urge to ignore (because, at the end of the day, this is - for a good many of us - just work) which is why uninformed tactics can be found (most) everywhere. 

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Ask yourself: what are your primary business objectives re: marketing for the next few quarters? - and what metrics are you using to measure success (or lack thereof)?

With this: what are the strategies associated with these objectives?

Be honest: where are the disconnects?

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TLDR: without a coherent (documented) strategy, you’re wasting your time, effort, and money re: marketing.

WORTH YOUR TIME:

• PODCAST: “The ‘first principles’ of marketing,” with Kipp Bodnar (Chief Marketing Officer, HubSpot) and Kieren Flanagan (Chief Marketing Officer, Zapier) | Marketing Against the Grain ..
• ARTICLE: “Deliberate doubt: the art of questioning our assumptions,” by Anne-Laure Le Cunff (Founder, Ness Labs) for Ness Labs .. 
• BLOG: “Why working quickly is more important than it seems,” by James Somers ..

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That's a wrap.

But before we part ways, another thing for you: a newsletter you might find useful.

If you want to be in the know re: artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science, give this a read: https://tldr.tech/ai

It's technical, but in a way non-techies can digest.

Cheers.