Management Perspectives

According to a research reported in the Harvard Business Review, 95 per cent of a company’s employees, on average, are unaware of, or do not understand, the company strategy. My new book, Brand Vision: The Clear Line of Sight Aligning Business Strategy and Marketing Tactics, hopes to change that by offering simple, easily implemented tools making sure a company’s marketing program connects to its business strategy.

MYTH 1: Every brand needs a Facebook strategy. Or a Twitter strategy. An Instagram strategy. An email strategy. Don’t they?

In a word, “No.”
When you say you have a strategy for something like Instagram, you’re trying to say you have a plan that has been thought out, considered carefully. That the things you are proposing are important, well worth the effort. And that you are not suggesting something haphazard. You may even have tried to outline the business case, proving the company will benefit. That is all well and good.

Unfortunately, some people go further than that. Directly or indirectly, they are saying their Facebook strategy is so important, it does not need to coordinate, complement, or play well with anything else their company is doing. Because it is so important, so special. It is free-standing. It does not have to work with their advertising. It is too critical to fit into their marketing program. And yes, it is even more important than their business strategy. It is above all that.

Sorry, I am not buying that. Because tactics are not strategy.

A brand has one strategy. Just one. It can employ dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of tactics (like Facebook posts) in furtherance of that strategy. But you get only one strategy. As a marketer, it is your job to make the most of it. And to make that strategy come alive through marketing.

A rogue ‘strategy’ not only doesn’t support the business strategy, it undermines it.

Myth 2: Marketing deserves a free pass when it comes to business strategy

They never actually said it, but some of my colleagues or former clients seemed to be operating under the assumption

that marketing does not have to follow all this boring strategy stuff. You know, with Facebook and Twitter and all the cool, flashy media, shouldn’t marketing get a free pass?

The answer is not just “No.” It is “Emphatically, no.” Maybe even “Hell, no.”

Marketers need to understand that strategy is more important than design and aesthetics. More important than Instagram or Facebook. From a marketing perspective, those tools exist to support strategy. Period. And the role of creative efforts is to articulate and implement the strategy in communications at all levels. If your great idea does not work with and even enhance (or, better yet, illuminate) the corporate strategy, it goes. It is really that simple.

MYTH 3: We need to be digital first.

Admittedly, too many marketers in the early part of the century dragged their feet, still thinking in print or conventional marketing terms. They were not fully utilising the new capabilities represented by the advances in the latest technologies, especially social media.

But we have gone through that. And now it is time to retire that bit of advice. Not just time to retire it, but to discard it entirely.

I admit I was never 100 per cent comfortable with the ‘digital first’ craze. Here is why: quite simply, digital communications are essential tactics in any marketing strategy. But they are only tactics.

An ‘enhanced digital centered business marketing strategy’ is nothing more than a tactics-driven business marketing strategy. Or really, it’s no strategy at all, just a bunch of tactics strung together on a wing and a prayer.

 

Any modern program, of course, is going to have digital tactics. You’d be shooting yourself in the foot if you didn’t. But the tactics need to come out of the strategy, not the other way around.

And rather than “digital first,” the catchphrase should be “strategy first.”

MYTH 4: Gate content if you want leads.

Content gating has been around almost since the beginning of the internet. I sat in one meeting where an aggressive marketer wanted to gate all of his company’s web content. And I’ve seen many occasions where gating was routine, even for information like data sheets or product catalogs.

Multiple sources quote David Meerman Scott’s estimate that users download ungated content 20 to 50 times more often than gated content. The reason? No one wants to cough up their contact information gratis. They want something in return, like proprietary information or research. CAD drawings or free samples.

Datasheets or even case studies simply aren’t enough. Most people expect to get them without registration. And for good reason: your company benefits every time someone downloads them. And if you don’t give them that information without conditions, perhaps a competitor will.

Compared to the old, pre-internet days, today’s instant downloads are a bonanza for marketers. No printing, no postage, no handling costs. The prospect downloads the data using their equipment and their printers (if they go that far). All in real time. All at their expense.

What sense does it make to penalise your audience by requiring that they register when you want them to have that information?

I get it. Everyone wants leads. But by putting your needs ahead of theirs, you are making your problem their problem. That is not a good look. And not a great way to start a relationship.

MYTH 5: Search has better RoI than online advertising.

Or than public relations. Email. Social posts. Or whatever.

Can you calculate the response rate of individual tactics? Obviously, the answer is yes.

But should you go so far as to try to determine the return on your marketing investment from individual tactics? My answer is, “Definitely not.”

Since the 1960s , marketers have known that prospects need to see a message many times before they act. The count at that point, was seven—even touches before anything happened.

In today’s over saturated media landscape, that number has not gone any lower. Prospects see ads, open emails, read PR placements, see tweets, hear a hallway conversation, and then do a search. So which tactic gets credit for the lead?

The reality is that the sale belongs to the entire program, not any individual tactic. And rather than arguing over which one worked, we would do better to think in campaign terms, anticipating, and planning for, a multitouch experience. With tactics designed to work together to achieve our marketing and business objectives.

You rarely hear that story these days because there is so much fragmentation. Specialised vendors who want to sell you on their solution, whether it is a programmatic ad purchase, an email program, an Instagram plan, Facebook ads, or analytics.

It is not surprising that marketers are looking for a silver bullet. The one thing that will work no matter what. Because integration of all these media and tactics is hard. Very hard.

But it is what works. Always has. Always will.