Is Your Marketing Strategic? How to Apply Strategic Thinking to Achieve Your Business Goals
I visited the Windy City this week to brush up on my strategic thinking skills at the American Marketing Association’s “Strategic Thinking is a Muscle: Work it or Lose it” event with speakers Shane Johnston and Todd Coats.
As the title suggests, you’ve got to strategically think or else your skills get rusty. The speakers provided great tips, statistics, and examples to help take my strategic thinking up a notch.
Why is strategic thinking important in marketing?
You have business goals, such as to grow your business by 10% in 12 months. And you know who your target audience is and have data showing their habits or preferences.
But then what? How do you connect with your target audience on a basic human level while showing how you are the best company to solve their problem or provide a service? That’s where strategy comes in.
With strategic thinking, your marketing team takes your business goal, audience, and research and crafts a plan and message that resonates with people.
The speakers illustrated this with the example of the Michelin Tire ad campaign in the 1980s that included a baby next to a tire and the line, “Michelin. Because so much is riding on your tires.” The company changed course from typically boasting about the specs of the tire and targeting men to appealing to women and the basic need to want to protect your family when driving in the car. Michelin had research that showed women made purchasing decisions when it came to tires, so the company crafted a message that spoke to that audience.
The campaign was wildly successful and stood out because Michelin differentiated itself from the other tire companies at the time.
Strategic thinking lets your marketing team take the data and research and find what makes your business or service stand out from competitors. As one of the speakers put it so well, “It’s better to be different than better” when it comes to reaching an audience.
It’s easy to want to rush to promote a new service or product because your company is excited about it. But taking the time to strategize how to promote it and through what channels will give you a greater chance at connecting with clients and prospects.
For instance, there’s no point in spending time and resources on creating and running Snapchat and TikTok accounts to demonstrate your new product when your target audience is in their 50s and typically uses only Facebook and LinkedIn.
Johnston and Coats, the AMA speakers, reinforced the importance of using data, interviews, and experience to develop insights about your customers and clients, which helps your marketing team to develop a winning strategy to reach your business goals.
Are you ready to think strategically about marketing? We can help! We provide professional services firms with marketing solutions that directly support their business development goals.