Strategies before Tactics

I get a lot of my blog post ideas from interacting with clients. I was recently reminded again how important it is to approach brand management and marketing at a strategic level before identifying and executing the supporting tactics. 

What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to increase brand awareness, change brand perceptions or behaviors, introduce the brand to new market segments, increase the perceived value of the brand, create more emotional connection to the brand, move the brand more upscale, extend the brand into new product or service categories or something else? What are you trying to accomplish?

Bosses who want marketers to jump right into "actionable" tactics without providing the strategic direction first do the brand a great disservice. 

Run in the other direction if you hear any of the following requests outside the context of a specific brand management or marketing strategy (or, better yet, ask what objectives or strategies these are intended to support):

• I want you to run some ads in [a specific medium].
• Come up with some "out of the box" marketing ideas and execute them.
• Create a new marketing campaign.
• Start advertising on Facebook.
• We need to start using QR codes. 
• We need to come up with a new logo. This one has been around for too long.
• Just do something different. The other stuff hasn't been working.
• Create a campaign for Millennials. Baby Boomers are starting to die out.
• I'd like to see some big outdoor advertising.
• You need to decrease your marketing budget by 30%.
• I would like you to run an ad featuring me. Work me in somehow.
• I got a great deal with the [call letters] radio station for some advertising. Reach out to them to buy some ad time.

You may laugh at some or all of these or maybe you have experienced one or more of them yourself. Either way, make sure that every brand management and marketing plan or action is based on some carefully thought through objective. 

This may seem basic, but I am surprised by how many organizations seem to jump straight to the tactics before thinking through what they are trying to accomplish with the tactics. 

Get the Brand Message Right

I have worked with clients who are totally focused on the media plan or the social media tactics or on which marketing communication vehicles to use and what the spend should be for each of them. But they completely neglect the brand message. 

Admittedly, marketers must carefully choose their brands' target markets and then identify communication vehicles that can reach those markets with the greatest effectiveness and efficiency. And admittedly, most of the impact of brand communication is on building brand awareness, not changing brand perceptions.

But having admitted to both of these, I contend that the most strategic part of what is largely a series of tactical marketing exercises is choosing the right message - one that reinforces the brand's unique value proposition. The message needs to be emotionally compelling, unique and believable for the brand.

I find that more often than not, true marketers get this. But people who have come from operations, engineering, finance or even general management backgrounds (or new, inexperienced marketers) often default to the tactical decisions while paying little to no attention to the message itself. Or sometimes, they decide that the message should be some gimmick (e.g. a celebrity endorsement), or worse yet, a giveaway or a price discount.

I have had marketing decision makers tell me that they don't have the time to determine what the optimal brand message should be. Maybe next time. 

You are wasting your marketing communication spending if you are not using the marketing communication vehicles to convey the right message. Before you jump into the weeds of the marketing communication tactics, step back and make sure you have the right message to communicate.