Hands up who has a written digital marketing strategy? In a recent seminar that I ran only a few hands went up when I asked this question. We all know we should have written one - but very few of us do. And for those that do they very rarely read it again after it's been written.
If so many get by without a written marketing strategy and those that have one rarely read it - do we really need a marketing strategy?
Let's start by looking at what a strategy is.
The definition of strategy
A high level plan to achieve one or more long term goals under conditions of uncertainty.
I love this definition. It's really simple and contains all the key points.
Long term goals
When you are going on a journey and you need to get other people there too - you need to know exactly where you're going. It's easy to get distracted along the way. And when you need others help to get there - it's even more important that you can easily keep them focused on the destination.
In my experience, the senior director of the business usually has the long term goal in mind all the time. It's the most common reason I find why they don't have it written down - because they know it intimately.
Writing it down and sharing it with the whole team - means everyone in the business knows where they need to take it. You'll also find that you'll need to reinforce the message at least every 3 months - so that the ship doesn't drift with the various winds and waves that will be doing their best to blow it off course.
Another question that comes up a lot - is how long is long term. Long term is the length of time that's right for your business. For many 3 years is about right. The world is changing fast. You may have a vision for 10 years and a plan for 1 year, but 3 years is a good guide for long term business and marketing goals.
If you're a business owner you'll need these goals to help you evaluate your marketing decisions and investments. For marketing managers you'll need it to keep the team focused and as an important reference point when getting decisions from the board.
Slides from my recent seminar:
A high level plan
One of the reasons that people end up leaving their strategy unread in the top drawer is because it's too long.
A robust digital marketing strategy will inevitably have a lot of work that goes into it. At LexisClick we always run a marketing audit to start with and then put together a detailed strategy that will mount up to a number of pages. We don't leave it there.
What we do is summarise all of the detail into a visual summary that we fit onto a single side of A3. To make it easy to get to the detail we include references to the full strategy document. That way you can easily reference the strategy on a daily basis and dig into the detail when you need it.
There is no point in doing all of the work that goes into a comprehensive strategy if you aren't going to make use of it.
A high level plan not a detailed marketing plan
A strategy is a high level plan. Think of it like a map - it has lots of detail - but it doesn't give you a line by line account of the journey you are going to make.
It is there to reference when you need it. To keep you on course and help you decide on the next set of actions you are going to take.
At LexisClick we use 90-day marketing plans that have the detail of the actions that we are going to take to deliver on the strategy during that period. Which leads neatly into the final point - conditions of uncertainty.
Conditions of uncertainty
As a wise man once said 'one of the only certainties in life is uncertainty'. All of us with a few years of business experience under our belts know that we'll be incredibly lucky to go on a straight line from where we are to where we want to get to.
It's a bit like going on a long journey by road. If you hadn't driven the route a number of times already you'd be unlikely to start without planning your route. So imagine you're going on a journey and you've planned your route. You get started and about 2 hours in you see the signs of traffic backing up. You then hear on the radio that traffic is delayed by an hour on the route you were planning.
So you pull over and consult your map. You see that you have two alternative routes that you can take that join your original route a few miles after the reported incident. You decide on your new route and get on your way again. It takes you about 30 minutes longer than you initially planned, but at least you weren't stuck in traffic for an hour.
A good written strategy will work in a very similar way to the map in the story above. It'll give you your chosen route as well as other options in case of potential events. Should those events take place - which in all likelihood at least a few will - you'll be able to plan your new route in more detail - so that you end up at the same destination, even if it's a bit later than you originally planned.
Also if you're fortunate enough to arrive early you'll know when you've arrived. In my experience there is nothing more frustrating than arriving late because you overshot the destination.
Inbound marketing is a combination of a large number of detailed marketing activities - many of which are developing at a rapid rate and make use of various third party channels like search and social.
Factoring in these conditions as well as external economic and political events - there will always be plenty of uncertain conditions. On top of this with all of the detail in the activities themselves it is very easy get lost in the detail.
That's why it's more important than ever to have a digital marketing strategy in place to help you plan your way through what can be a complicated maze. To help you navigate it more easily you'll want a map and ideally an experienced guide.
The most important thing that I want to leave you with is to put a strategy in place and refer to it often - especially when you're facing conditions of uncertainty.
If this post resonates with you and you would benefit from a detailed strategy and an experienced guide - please use the form below to book a free 30-minute consultation with me.
