Is Your Marketing Strategy Lonely?

By Susan Oakes • 16 Comments

You want to be part of something yet you are ignored. marketing strategy left out

It doesn’t matter how you know you would be a big help. Others for various reasons are shunning you.

You feel lonely, unappreciated or even angry.

This is how a marketing strategy may feel if it were a person.

However unlike a person a marketing strategy can only be included if you decide to select it.

Today one of the essential parts of business is often left out or mistaken for tactics. The marketing strategy is needed if you want your business to grow.

Here are a few ways to see if a marketing strategy is feeling lonely in your business:

  • You know there should be strategic key areas of focus, but you can’t decide between them.
  • Your marketing objectives are mistaken for marketing strategies and the objectives never tell you they have a different role to play. They are just happy to be part of the team.
  • Some marketing tactics are getting lots of attention such as content, email and social networks. They like the attention so they do not want to be in a supporting role to the marketing strategies.

It is in many ways a marketing strategy is the glue between your objectives and your tactics. It provides the direction and focus for your business. And it simplifies your marketing for the benefit of your business and for your customers.

Importantly it can help get you out of being overwhelmed with all that is expected of businesses today. This is because you can quickly judge whether the tactics will support the strategy to achieve the results you want.

This saves you giving them a go to see what may happen and it can help you not to give up on the tactic too soon.

Over to you: How do you make sure a marketing strategy is not lonely in your business?

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16 Responses to Is Your Marketing Strategy Lonely?

  1. Daphne Bousquet says:
    February 26, 2013 at 6:22 am

    “Simplicity tries to include its perfect partner for business growth but keeps being outvoted, especially by complexity.”

    Isn’t it funny how we always want to make things more complicated than they really are? Especially when there are so many tactics (bright shiny objects) we want to use.
    Daphne Bousquet recently posted..Your Most Burning Workshop Questions. Answered.My Profile

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    • Susan Oakes says:
      February 26, 2013 at 9:59 am

      Hi Daphne,

      Welcome to the blog. You are right about making things complicated and probably half the time we don’t realise it until it is too late. And have to agree about shiny objects. Do you have a tip you can share how to stop making things complicated, perhaps from your business experience?

      Reply
  2. Susan Cooper says:
    February 26, 2013 at 7:02 am

    That is a hard one for me. Because I’m a business of one makes it a lonely process. However, I have developed some great friendships (such as yourself) that have made that not to be to case so much as it use to be. I love the way you describe marketing strategies being the glue between objectives and tactics. That is a great statement. :-)
    Susan Cooper recently posted..How To Properly Store Wine: WineMy Profile

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  3. Jeannette Paladino says:
    February 26, 2013 at 3:08 pm

    Susan — when I taught management development at my former bank we spent a lot of time discussing the differences between marketing objectives, strategies and tactics. You’re quite right. Most people are working on tactics 90% of the time. Strategy is a course of action, a path, to reach a measurable objective. As you state, the tactics are the specific steps you take to carry out a strategy.You can get mired in the weeds if you don’t have your eye on the target.
    Jeannette Paladino recently posted..LinkedIn and Blogging Social Media Tools of Choice for Inc. 500My Profile

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  4. Evan says:
    February 26, 2013 at 6:25 pm

    yeah, marketing tactic is like Elvis – we could live without him but who would need such life?)))
    Evan recently posted..Top 40 Great Blog themes for WordPress 2013My Profile

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  5. Ti Roberts says:
    February 27, 2013 at 1:51 am

    Susan,

    I remember the days of when I was lonely in my marketing strategy. I was an introverted SEO geek who wasn’t getting any results with it anyway. So I decided to run hard in the other direction and get extremely social. Now I have way more traffic, engagement and what’s more, I’m not lonely anymore!

    Thanks for sharing your insights with our bizsugar community. :)

    Ti
    Ti Roberts recently posted..Why Traffic Does NOT Equate to Money (My Response to Ana Hoffman)My Profile

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  6. Catarina says:
    February 28, 2013 at 2:57 am

    Like the analogy you used in the beginning Susan. Imaginative in combination with the picture!!

    Both you and Jeannette are right about the confusion objectives, strategies and tactics.
    Catarina recently posted..Are you innovating on a continuous basis?My Profile

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  7. Steven Papas says:
    February 28, 2013 at 8:22 pm

    Hello Susan.

    Really nice topic,im also agree with daphne.Its not always so easy,sometimes its get complicated but the main thing is how we handle the situation.

    ~steven

    Reply
  8. Becc says:
    March 11, 2013 at 12:42 pm

    I am trying to get a good understanding of all of this as it is so new to me. Thank you for your articles that help me to gain some simplicity out of the complexity :)
    Becc recently posted..Weight loss, how I have sustained itMy Profile

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