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What is strategy and why is it important in your business?
Building a comprehensive marketing strategy can do wonders for saving time, maximizing ROI, and achieving business goals. This strategy doesn’t need to be overwhelming, it just needs to be intentional – linking your goals with aligned actions.
Not everything will work. But the more you’re able to define your audience, clarify your desired outcomes, establish clear goals, and refine your messaging, the more confident you’ll become in your efforts and decisions.
Connect your goals to an action plan that will guide you to success
When I talk to clients about their goals, one of the missing pieces tends to be an action plan. They have their vision, but what’s unclear is how they’re going to (realistically) get there with their current resources.
An action plan breaks down each goal you have into parts, taking you step-by-step closer to meeting the goal.
Let’s explore this with a basic example of some short-term goals that are connected, with moving parts.
How learning chess reinforced my love of strategy and strategic marketing
Earlier this year, my son decided he was going to teach me how to play chess, and despite my initial disinterest, he not only managed to successfully persuade and teach me, but I even almost won a game against him...once!
As green as I am on the chess board, I have a deep appreciation for the time players spend learning various tactics, as well as the skilled practice of thinking through and playing out different scenarios. Thinking strategically in marketing and business is a lot like a chess game, which is why chess is so often used to visually convey strategy.
Let’s explore the parallels between chess and business and marketing.
Stop planning and start doing (or vice versa)
Are you planner? I am. At its best, planning is an incredible tool for gaining clarity on the next steps you need to take in your business. At its worst, it can lead to analysis paralysis, stunting your ability to take action.
On the other hand, you don't want to put something out into the world before it's ready to go. You need a minimum viable service (or product), and a plan to launch it to your ideal customers.
Sometimes a shortcut doesn’t seem like a shortcut
Advice and ideas come from so many people and places, with promises of great results. But the routes they want you to take can be so much longer and hurt your business by not working as expected.
In truth, strategic planning is a shortcut. It just doesn’t seem like one. It takes time and thinking and it can even be a difficult investment in your business.
If you're always doing, you never have time to think
In a very busy world where we are connected to what everyone else is doing at all times, there’s a certain pressure to be busy.
And where there’s this need to always be productive and busy (and to have something tangible to show for it), blocking off time to essentially “do nothing” can seem absurd.
However, time and time again, research reveals that mental rest is just as important as physical rest.
If you’ve ever had a great idea in the shower or on a walk, you know the power of uninterrupted, intentional reflection and thinking.
Strategy vs. plan: What’s the difference, and why does it matter?
I talk about the importance of planning a lot. But strategy and planning aren’t the same, and it’s essential to understand the difference. I haven’t talked nearly enough about the strategy that guides planning. Because if you don’t have a strategic foundation in place, even the best plans may not generate the results you want.
Strategic marketing vs. marketing as a service
Marketing is an interesting discipline in today’s world. In some companies, the team ends up relegated to service status, playing a reactive role in supporting sales. I’ve started referring to it as marketing as a service, or MaaS, since everything as a service is all the rage these days. For larger organizations, I’m not a huge fan of this approach since there’s usually significant investment to salaries of qualified individuals who understand the business strategy and build plans that help move it forward.
Grow your audience with guest blogging
Guest blogging is preparing content that is posted on the blog of a website other than your own. I submit at least one "guest" blog post a month at a minimum as President of the Women's Business Network, because I write the President's Pen which is published at the beginning of each month. I link back to my own site each time, which brings me to the benefits of guest blogging. I occasionally manage to sneak in posts on other sites as well - this is something I want to do more often.
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