Everyone seems to have a strategy these days.
A social media strategy. A content strategy. An advertising strategy. A LinkedIn strategy. An SEO strategy.
And I get it. Strategy is a nice-sounding word. It suggests that we've thought things through rather than simply started doing stuff and hoped for the best.
The trouble is, there are probably as many definitions of "strategy" as there are of "marketing".
Which creates a fairly fundamental problem.
How do you know when you've actually got one?
You might have customer personas somewhere. Your social media person has created content pillars. Your agency has a campaign plan. Someone has produced a very attractive PowerPoint presentation.
But what are the acceptance criteria?
How do you know when your marketing strategy is actually done enough for you to start making good decisions from it?
Engineers know what "done" looks like
When an engineer designs a machine, they don't start by choosing some components they quite like and bolting them together.
First, they need a specification.
What does this machine need to do? What are the important requirements?
That gives them something to design against and, crucially, something to test against.
Has the design met the acceptance criteria?
Marketing needs the same thing.
Otherwise "doing strategy" can become a never-ending discussion about customers, competitors, messaging, brand, content, funnels, channels and campaigns.
You need to know what done looks like.
And for a small business, I think there are three fundamental questions your marketing strategy needs to answer.
But first, there's one source of confusion worth clearing up.
A social media strategy isn't necessarily a marketing strategy
This isn't a criticism of social media strategists. Or advertising specialists. Or content marketers. Or SEO consultants.
They often do a lot of very good strategic thinking around audience, tone, content, campaigns, targeting and budget.
That's real strategy.
But it's strategy scoped to a channel that's already been chosen.
Someone has already decided that this business should be investing in social media, advertising, SEO or whatever that particular specialist provides.
And it's not really fair to expect the specialist to make that decision objectively.
It's a bit like asking someone who sells gearboxes whether your machine needs a gearbox. They'll probably say yes!
They might be brilliant at helping you choose the right gearbox once you've established that you need one. But deciding whether a gearbox is the best solution sits further upstream.
It's the same with marketing.
In a larger business, that thinking would normally sit with the CMO or Marketing Director. But smaller businesses often don't have one, and the CEO isn't necessarily a marketer.
So we go straight to:
"Should we post more on LinkedIn?"
"Do we need Google Ads?"
"Should we start doing email marketing?"
They're perfectly reasonable questions. They're just not the first questions.
Channel is an output, not an input.
So, before you start choosing channels, let's check your strategy against three acceptance criteria.
Acceptance criterion 1: Who are you specifically trying to sell to?
Not "SMEs".
Not "engineering companies".
Not "business owners".
Who specifically are you trying to attract, and what matters to them?
What problem are they trying to solve? What are they worried about? What matters when they're choosing between their options? Who else influences that decision? What might stop them buying?
Not everybody in your business needs to know all of this.
Dave the programmer doesn't need to describe your ideal customer in detail. He needs to build the software his team leader has specified.
But the people making decisions about the product, sales and marketing do need to know. A Product Manager, for example, needs to understand the customer's context, concerns and priorities to decide which features matter and which should be deprioritised.
The same applies to marketing.
So here's acceptance test number one:
Can you clearly and specifically describe the customer you're trying hardest to attract, including what matters to them when they're making the decision to buy?
If not, there's a gap in your strategy that needs resolving before you can confidently decide where to invest.
Acceptance criterion 2: What are you selling, and why would they buy it?
"We sell engineering consultancy, Ros."
"We make software."
"We manufacture widgets."
That's what you sell.
But it isn't necessarily what your customer is buying.
Your customer is trying to move away from a problem or towards a better situation.
And they're not simply deciding between you and a competitor. They could do nothing. They could solve the problem internally. They could spend the money on something else entirely.
Your strategy needs to connect what you sell with what your chosen customer actually values.
So, acceptance test number two:
Can you clearly explain why this particular customer would choose what you offer over the alternatives available to them - including doing nothing?
"We provide excellent customer service" isn't going to get you through the test.
Specificity matters.
Acceptance criterion 3: How do they get from never having heard of you to becoming a customer?
Imagine someone who would make a fantastic customer for your business but, right now, has absolutely no idea you exist.
How do they get from there to buying?
For a low-cost, low-risk purchase, that journey might be extremely short.
For the complex, technical and high-value businesses I tend to work with, it's usually considerably longer. Buyers might need to understand the problem and their options, research suppliers, involve other people, assess the risk, find budget and get approval.
Your marketing needs to help them make that journey.
So acceptance test number three is:
Can you map out how your customer gets from never having heard of you to buying from you, including the important decisions and stages along the way?
If you can't, there's another gap in the strategy.
Because once you can, the channel questions become much easier.
Instead of asking, "Should we be doing LinkedIn because everyone else seems to be?", you can ask:
"We need to reach these particular people at this particular point in their buying journey. What's the best way to do that?"
That's a much better question.
But what about marketing objectives?
There's another important piece of the puzzle: what does your marketing actually need to achieve?
If your business wants to grow by a certain amount, what does your marketing machine need to produce to make that happen?
How many customers? How many enquiries? How much additional revenue from existing customers?
I think of the distinction like this:
Your strategy defines the machine you need to build. Your objectives tell you how much that machine needs to produce.
You need both. A beautifully thought-through customer, proposition and buyer journey isn't much use if you don't know whether your marketing is producing enough. And a target of 30 new customers isn't much use if you haven't designed a credible way of producing them.
So, do you actually have a marketing strategy?
If you can answer all three acceptance tests clearly and specifically, I'd argue you've got the foundations of a marketing strategy.
Even if nobody has ever put the words "Marketing Strategy" on the front of a 60-page document.
If you can only answer one and a half, you've probably got some useful knowledge, opinions and marketing activity.
But you haven't got a complete strategy yet.
And that's useful to know because now you know what's missing.
That doesn't mean everything has to stop while you spend six months creating the perfect strategy.
I'm a big believer in Agile Marketing. You need a minimum viable strategy.
Get specific enough about your customer, proposition and buyer journey to make sensible decisions. Then build, measure and test your assumptions. Learn what works and improve your strategy as you go.
Marketing isn't something you design once, switch on and admire forever. Like any useful machine, it needs testing and fine-tuning.
But you do need enough of a specification to know what you're trying to build in the first place.
Otherwise you can end up with a beautifully engineered gearbox sitting on the workshop floor. And everyone wondering why the machine still doesn't work.
If you're struggling to answer the three questions clearly, that's exactly the sort of problem we can untangle on a Clarity Call.
TLDR? Here's a summary...
What should a marketing strategy include?
At a minimum, your marketing strategy should clearly define who you're trying to sell to and what matters to them, what you're selling and why they should buy it, and how they get from never having heard of you to becoming a customer. Those three things give you the foundations for making sensible marketing decisions.
What’s the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan?
Your marketing strategy defines who you're trying to reach, the value you're offering them and how you'll help them through their buying journey. Your marketing plan turns that strategy into action by prioritising the activities, channels, responsibilities, timings and budgets needed to achieve your objectives.
What’s the difference between a marketing strategy and a social media strategy?
A social media strategy defines how you'll use social media effectively, including your audience, content, messaging and approach. An overall marketing strategy sits further upstream. It helps you decide whether social media is actually one of the right channels for reaching your customers and supporting their buying journey.
Do small businesses really need a marketing strategy?
Yes, but it doesn't need to be a 60-page document. A small business needs enough strategic clarity to make good decisions about where to invest its limited time and money. A minimum viable strategy that you can test and improve is far more useful than a complicated strategy that never gets implemented.
How do I know if my marketing strategy is working?
Start with clear marketing objectives based on what the business needs to achieve. Then measure whether your marketing is attracting the right people and moving enough of them through the buyer journey to deliver those objectives. Your strategy defines the machine you're building. Your objectives tell you how much that machine needs to produce.
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