strategy first

When it comes to marketing, there’s no shortage of ways to spend money. But what does your spend get you, and how do you know?

Every business has finite resources. The challenge is knowing which investments make sense for your business and which don’t.

That’s where strategy comes in.

Before investing in a website redesign, an ad campaign, SEO, content or the latest can’t-miss platform, a savvy business owner needs to know what he’s trying to accomplish. Who’s the target audience? How do you solve their problem? What makes your product or service the best choice? Where are the real opportunities for growth?

Those answers determine where the money goes.

Sounds obvious. Yet companies routinely make marketing investments in reverse. They choose a tactic, then try to make it produce a result.

Maybe the website really does need a redesign. What business problem will the new site solve that the current one doesn’t?

Maybe paid search will generate leads. Are they the right leads? Will they convert? Is that the best use of marketing resources?

Maybe more content would help. What role will it play in moving a prospect toward a sale?

A tactic is only as good as the strategy behind it.

 

an integrated system

A prospect sees a LinkedIn post, visits your website, signs up for an email, hears from a salesperson and comes back to the site three months later before making contact. Which tactic gets credit?

Wrong question.

A strong brand marketing system is designed so those investments work together. The same positioning, value proposition and core messages carry through every point of contact. Each encounter builds on the last.

That doesn’t mean ROI doesn’t matter. It means looking beyond the easiest things to count and asking whether the total marketing investment is helping generate the business you want.

 

spend with purpose

There will always be another tactic to try, another platform to join and another vendor promising results.

No business needs to do all of it, and especially not all at once. “Random acts of marketing” have a real cost, with little assurance of a meaningful return without a plan.

The craft is in evaluating marketing investments against the company’s business goals, then determining how the tactics fit together and what each should accomplish.

That’s what strategy gives you: a basis for deciding where to spend, where not to spend and how to make each investment work harder.

Strategy before tactics isn’t a marketing philosophy. It’s how you get more return from every marketing dollar you spend.