We’re going to cook a meal together, but I forget to tell you who we’re cooking for or why. I just tell you to come over with some ingredients, we’ll cook, we’ll have a good time. So you select the knives, set up a cutting board and some little bowls, get all your ingredients together, and arrange everything efficiently for a sweet potato soup. I just start going for it: I dump some oil into a pan and start boiling some water, and while that’s heating up, I go digging in the fridge for something to toss into the frying pan.
We’re constantly in each other’s way. Your methodical planning is putting a damper on my frenetic improvisation. We’re annoyed and frustrated with each other. Since we didn’t plan our meal together, we end up with garlic bread, pasta, and sweet potato soup. We decide to dump the soup over the pasta and call it sauce.
Finally, we set our weird pasta and garlic bread on the table—only to find that our dinner guests are on a low-carb diet.
This meal was a disaster! Not only did we possibly do irreparable damage to our friendship, we made food that no one wants to eat. What happened?
It turns out that our strategies were not aligned. You had planned out one thing; I wanted to just throw together whatever popped into my head. Both of us forgot to consider what our guests even wanted.
In business, just like when making dinner for a host of guests, we all need to be on the same page. Marketing, sales, and operations all need to be pulling in the same direction, working toward the same goals. That’s why this article isn’t just about creating a “good” marketing strategy but about creating a marketing strategy aligned with business goals. A well-constructed marketing campaign aimed at, say, customer retention isn’t going to work if the rest of your business is focused on finding new leads. You end up making pasta for someone on a low-carb diet. Let’s make the next dinner party a little (OK, a lot) more successful by getting in alignment.
Strategy Requires Knowledge
Marketing strategy is rooted in a sound business strategy, and strategic thinking requires knowledge. You’ve got to know your business: strengths, weaknesses, capabilities. You’ve got to know your customers: who they are and how they interact with your business. You’ve got to know your competitors.
Know Your Goals
With this knowledge in hand, you can articulate the goals of your marketing campaign. If your overall growth strategy is to grow by converting current leads into customers, but your marketing department decides to market to people who have never heard of your business, you’re not going to achieve your goals.
Likewise, if your business plan points to your superior quality and customer service as your unique selling point, but you create a marketing strategy based on your prices, you’re only going to confuse and alienate potential customers. Everybody in the business has to be on the same page regarding not only the overall goals of the business but the strategy guiding the completion of those goals.
Know Your Capabilities
What’s your budget? What are the specific talents of your team? Can you run an effective paid advertising campaign, or are you better served by inbound marketing? Answers will differ from business to business. There isn’t necessarily a right answer, just one that is right for you, relative to your overall business strategy.
Decide How to Measure Your Goals
How do you know whether or not your campaign is effective? You set goals and then measure your campaign’s performance against those goals. As always, your business goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound.
The nature of your goals will determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If the goal is to increase leads, you’ll attach a number and a time frame to that goal. KPIs might also be tied to increasing website traffic or social media engagement, increasing sales by some percentage, gaining a certain number of positive reviews within a certain time frame, or training some percentage of your sales team on a new technique within a certain time frame.
Reevaluate at Regular Intervals
Sometimes, it’s hard to get a handle on whether or not a goal is achievable or realistic, especially if you’re trying something you’ve never tried before. That’s why it’s important to come back every now and then to reevaluate your methods. Were your goals too lofty? Did you ask too much of your team? Or maybe your goals were too conservative and you find yourself over performing and with extra capacity.
Marketing Strategy Is Business Strategy
As you plan for growth and set goals for the year, it’s important to remember that marketing isn’t an extra thing added on top of business strategy—it’s an integral component of it. When you get your marketing team working in step with the rest of your teams, you won’t end up cooking some strange dish that no one can eat but a harmonious meal that will leave everyone with a metaphorical full belly.
