Michael Porter tells us that “winning business strategies are grounded in sustainable competitive advantage“. Today, companies are making strategic decisions more frequently than before, forcing companies to move away from using the traditional approach of a strategic planning process. This shift increases the need to focus on the timeless aspects of marketing strategy that can drive competitive advantage, and to be able to quickly pressure-test strategies.

Most organizations build a marketing strategy designed to match industry best practices or deliver an operational imperative rather than leveraging a strategy that emphasizes the creation of competitive advantage. A global study by McKinsey found that very few companies’ strategies are derived from data and insights not available to competitors. 

Exploit Your Competitive Advantage To Improve Your Marketing Strategy

Your Marketing strategy should be based on your competitive advantage. As you evaluate your Marketing strategy from the perspective of how well it reinforces your competitive advantage, make sure your strategy addresses these seven questions:

a) What problem are we uniquely solving?
b) What advantage can you tap?
c) Which market segments offer the best opportunity?
d) What would put you ahead of a trend?
e) What uncertainties do you face and need to address?
f) What big bets does the strategy enable us to make?
g) How does the strategy enable us to minimize regrets?

Use these questions to stimulate your thinking and facilitate an internal dialogue to develop a strategy and assess its strength. To answer these questions, you need to know the market and customers at least as well if not better than, the competition. You must be adept at gathering competitive intelligence. This work requires marketers to be good at good old fashioned detective work associated with research and recon.

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Four Steps for Developing a Good Marketing Strategy

To develop a good Marketing strategy you need to know the problems being faced by the marketplace. People who develop good strategies do their homework and conduct research. A good strategic statement will be short and focused with one clear customer benefit that separates the company, its product/service from the competitive set. Start with these four steps to develop a good strategy.

1. Have clearly defined customer-centric business outcomes. It can be an outcome around a customer or market category, customer acquisition, segment share etc.

2. Define Marketing objectives that are linked to the business outcomes.

3. Determine the current mindset of all your targets: prospects, customers, industry analysts, influencers, etc. If you don’t know, do your homework. Develop your SWOT based on your homework so you can determine your strategic alternatives.

4. Based on your objectives and analysis, develop 3-5 concise strategy statements. Have everyone punch holes in each one. The strategy still standing after the smoke clears is the one to run with. Substitute the competition’s product/service for yours. If your strategy works for them, you’re still missing the singular essence that makes your product/service better. Rework your strategy until this important criterion is met.

Make Marketing Strategy More Than An Annual Exercise

Ongoing uncertainty and constant change can play havoc with your organization’s strategy.  Annual strategy meetings are no longer sufficient. Instead, senior-leadership teams must meet much more frequently to surface critical issues, discuss the ramifications, evaluate and revise scenarios, and make more fact-based, timely decisions and communicate course corrections.

To improve your Marketing strategy and keep it evergreen:

1. Define a rigorous ongoing strategy process to review and prioritize critical issues that can impact strategy (competitive moves, regulation, world events, etc.).
2. Review key internal and external factors that may be impacting corporate goals and direction.  Set a limit on the number of issues to be discussed at each meeting.
3. Establish a process for communicating and implementing strategic direction and adjustments.
4. Revisit and, if necessary, adjust corporate goals (e.g.  growth) and direction at least monthly.
5. Establish and implement a process for identifying gaps between the current strategy and aspirational goals and performance targets.
6. Decide what strategic adjustments are needed and modify the tactical plan accordingly.
7. Operationalize the strategy.  At the end of the day, strategy is about the actions you take. Therefore, one of the highest priorities of a top-management strategy forum is to ensure disciplined implementation of key strategic initiatives.

Repeat regularly so gaps can be addressed quickly!

Improve Your Marketing Strategy Success

These three basic steps will improve the odds for your Marketing strategy’s success:

1. Focus on existing customers. Given the high cost of customer acquisition, marketing to your existing customer base is likely the least expensive route to profitability. Maximize your previous investments by nurturing and growing your existing customer relationships.  Seize cross- and up-sell opportunities to generate additional revenue.
2. Know your real customers. With cash conservation the rule today, it’s important to spend resources wisely. Identify your best customers and prospects and immediately approach them with a meaningful dialog. Your best customers and prospects have the most potential for repeat business that will deliver the greatest return on investment.
3. Clone your best customers. Profile your best customers and then look for prospects that most closely resemble these. Analyze every characteristic of existing customers to determine what made them loyal customers. The first step is to identify those existing customer assets that have the greatest value, then target the prospects that resemble high-value customers.

Ready to revisit your Marketing strategy?  We can help. Give us a call or drop us a note and let’s chat.

FAQ:

1. What problem are we uniquely solving?
2. What advantage can we tap?
3. Which market segments offer the best opportunity?
4. What would put us ahead of a trend?
5. What uncertainties do we face and need to address?
6. What big bets does the strategy enable us to make?
7. How does the strategy enable us to minimize regrets?

1. Define customer-centric business outcomes: Specify measurable outcomes (e.g., customer acquisition, segment share, category growth).
2. Link Marketing objectives to business outcomes: Ensure objectives directly support the outcomes.
3. Assess the mindset of your targets: Understand prospects, customers, analysts, and influencers. If you don’t know, do the research. Build your SWOT from this homework to identify strategic alternatives.
4. Develop and pressure-test 3–5 strategy statements: Create concise strategy statements and have stakeholders “punch holes” in each. Substitute a competitor’s product/service for yours—if the strategy works for them, it is not distinctive enough. Rework until the strategy reflects a singular, defensible advantage.

• A rigorous cadence to review and prioritize critical issues impacting strategy (competitive moves, regulation, world events, etc.)
• Regular review of internal and external factors affecting corporate goals and direction (with limits on how many issues are addressed per meeting)
• A defined process to communicate and implement strategic direction and adjustments
• Monthly (at minimum) revisiting of corporate goals and direction
• A process to identify gaps between current strategy and aspirational goals/performance targets
• Decisions on strategic adjustments and tactical plan modifications
• Operationalization of strategy through disciplined implementation of key initiatives

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