Marketing strategy

A strategy is not a thirty slide deck. In a usable form it is one page with four things: the target customer, the reason to choose you, two or three channels where you reach them, and the number that tells you it is working. Everything else is execution. It is written by the owner, or by a marketer with the owner, not by an agency alone, because an agency cannot decide who the company does not want.

Why marketing runs expensively empty without it: a company with no strategy does everything at once, because it has no reason to refuse anything. Three social channels, an occasional newsletter, a sponsored tournament and some paid search, each getting a tenth of the attention. The budget is not small, it is scattered. Put the same money into one channel and one message and the difference usually shows within six months.

How to get there: start by looking at where your last twenty customers actually came from, not where you wish they came from. Then write down what competitors claim and cross those same words out of your own copy. Finally pick channels based on where those customers really are and set one number to watch. Two or three meetings, not a quarter.

An honest limit: a strategy on paper has never sold anything. We have seen companies with an excellent strategy and an empty blog, and companies with no strategy that grew because the owner answered the phone faster than the competition. It earns its place once you have more options than capacity, which is almost always, but not before you know what you are selling.

Every strategy we write ends with a sentence about what we will not do next quarter, and that sentence is in bold. Without it the priority list quietly expands to everything. Try it today: write down three things you will deliberately not do before the quarter ends.