Budgets are tight, and resources are scarce in today’s business world. Organizations are, therefore, forced to make cuts. It is essential to cut costs to improve profitability or to stay competitive.
Some organizations also reduce the time and resources spent on strategy or strategic processes in response to an overreliance on expensive strategy consultants, many of whom did not provide a clear return on investment or value.
It is counterproductive not first to establish a solid foundation for your marketing strategy. This will lead to costly mistakes in the future, both for you and for your entire organization.
Today, execution is the new strategy. The book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, former CEO of Allied Signal, is a bestseller. Amazon.com’s bestsellers list has 168 titles.
Marketing organizations are also increasingly focusing on execution over strategy. Many executives doubt the value of investing in marketing strategies if they already have a defined business goal. They expect the marketing team to execute a plan.
The success of a marketing plan is often judged on the tangible deliverables a team produces – a series of events or press releases, marketing materials, websites, etc. These deliverables are essential to the company and attract attention from inside and outside. Therefore, they must look great, regardless of whether they’re printed or online.
The packaging, or the look and feel of it, is an integral part of marketing. The packaging of many important messages, especially those on Target, was plain, unattractive, difficult to read, or ugly. It will fail to impress when attractive packaging is combined with poorly thought-out content (or, more importantly, that’s not strategically on target).
Before creating those high-profile (and expensive) marketing materials, you should build your marketing program solidly. You must also ensure that your team knows the main elements of your strategy and can articulate them clearly.
Take the time to fully understand what it takes to make a marketing initiative successful before executing a large-scale strategy.
Make sure that you know your customers and their needs.
Understand the current market conditions. Know your competition and their strengths and weaknesses. Remember that your biggest competitor can be the status quo!
Be the devil’s Advocate. Find out what can go wrong. Learn what you can expect your competitors to do. Be honest. Consider possible pitfalls before you start the project. Not after you have already stumbled into them.
After you have completed this analysis in an organized and logical manner, define clearly your unique differentiation or value proposition. Communicating your positioning in an organized, concise, and neat fashion is essential. You can ensure that everyone involved with the initiative, from key suppliers to vendors, will understand and use the message in their marketing.
What will happen if you do not take the time? Answer: It’s pretty simple. You may quickly find yourself on the wrong track if you don’t know what you are doing. You may be executing your plan flawlessly but against the wrong objectives. This can be costly in marketing, not just in dollars but in terms of lost time, market share, and corporate reputation.
Imagine this: You spend a lot of time and money on your organization to get the proper mountain climbing gear for your team, teach them how to use the equipment, and motivate them to climb a particular mountain, only to find out you’re at the wrong summit, or worse, you should have never been climbing mountains, but instead deep sea diving.
Make sure you develop a marketing strategy that is well thought out and fully developed. This may take more effort upfront but will pay off over time. It’s worse not to know where you are going than to arrive at your destination only to discover later that you don’t want to be there.