Why Should You Invest in a Marketing Strategy?

With so many free tools in the marketplace to enhance one’s marketing program, it can be tempting to test the waters to see what sticks. But, at the end of the day, without a strong roadmap in place and clearly defined goals it will be challenging to determine what made the most impact and how to replicate one’s successes in the future.

Oftentimes, when people hear the word strategy, they either get excited to big thinking or new ideas, or they get frustrated that they can’t just started with execution. While strategy does require an investment of resources – time, talent and budget – it is a roadmap that not only guides marketing but a plan that links marketing and business development, marketing and fundraising, marketing and talent acquisition, and more.

Let’s start by looking at this scenario, which may feel all too familiar for some in-house marketers:

You work with a program team within your organization to coordinate an event with key community figures, a generous donor and the executive team. With the help of your PR consultant, you secure an array of digital, broadcast and print coverage and morale is high. While you’re still basking in the success of a great event, another program head within your organization catches wind of what just happens and wants to know why their milestone event never made it to the news. And, sadly, it’s because you never knew it even happened.

The above scenario illustrates a few common pain points:

–It is challenging to maintain a 360-degree view of all programs and services within an organization, at all times, when there isn’t a centralized marketing/communications plan in place.

–When strong program leads are focused on what they do best – i.e. running their programs – they don’t always have their marketing caps on their news-value antennae up.

–Achieving equitable representation of diverse programs and services across all of an organization’s marketing/communications channels can be challenging without a clear plan in place.

Now, let’s look at how these pain points could have been avoided:

1. Convening the key players to contribute to a marketing plan – if all program leads had an opportunity to share their goals for the year ahead this other program’s event may have already been on the marketing team’s radar.
2. Building a mechanism for story collection into the marketing plan – this gives staff an opportunity to share their news on an ongoing basis while delivering information to the marketing department in the manner and medium they need.
3. Setting priorities – building a marketing strategy/marketing plan requires organizations to set goals and priorities programs, services and initiatives. These priorities may be set based on revenue potential

Having already looked at some common pain points organizations without strong marketing strategies place, it’s time to look at what makes a marketing strategy effective:

1. Clearly Defined Goals – What? By Whom? By When? Make things as measurable as possible to you don’t spend the final weeks of your twelve-month plan looking back and wondering how you’re going to effectively compare campaigns alongside one-another.
2. Concise and Compelling Message Points – From keeping multiple spokespeople on the same page during media interviews to ensuring collateral materials maintain a consistent voice, carefully crafted message brings immense value to organizations of all sectors and scale.
3. Documented Priorities – Whether your business boasts a robust line of products and services, or your nonprofit is the social-services go-to for all residents in a 75-mile radius, it can be hard to give every great thing an organization does its time in the spotlight. This is where agreed-upon priorities come in.
4. Research – Trends, data, projections, stakeholder insights and more can strengthen a marketing strategy significantly. Yes, aggregating this data may require more time to develop the overall strategy but it is, without question, time well-spent.
5. Roles & Responsibilities – It truly takes a village to pull of a capital campaign, brand launch (or relaunch), acquisition rollout and more. Putting roles and responsibilities into a marketing plan can save time and headaches in the future.
6. Timeline – Don’t just log the actual days of your events, key milestones, investor meetings, etc. Fold production time, status meetings and all executional tasks into your timeline – with a nice cushion – to ensure you aren’t launching your Hispanic Heritage Month marketing campaign (or any other campaign that is important to your business for that matter) on the last day of the month, leaving no time to amplify the reach of your efforts.
7. KPIs – Measure, measure, measure. Then measure some more. Make your metrics as specific – and realistic – as possible. Also, make sure they are tailored to your company or cause.
8. Plans for Ongoing Competitive Assessment and Analysis – If you launch a strategy at the beginning of the calendar or fiscal year and don’t take another look at what the competition is doing until the next year’s planning period rolls around you stand to lose a competitive edge and be late to the game on refining your approach in response to competitors’ efforts.
9. Wiggle Room – You will need to pivot. You’ll want to do more of what’s working well. You’ll want to pull back on what’s less successful. And, more likely than not, you’ll want to try something new. Make space for all of it.

Developing a strong marketing strategy takes time, talent, budget and a commitment from the executive and marketing teams to dig deep. And, this process can greatly benefit from the engagement of a marketing partner who can balance your team’s deep internal expertise with an objective perspective and insights from their own industry. Ready to take the plunge and give your company a key advantage by developing a marketing strategy? Let’s chat.