I can remember it like it was yesterday: I and some others from my agency team along with the client’s CMO were sitting in the office of the CEO for a Fortune 100 company presenting the advertising campaign for the year. The CEO looked at us and pointedly said, “Strategy is results!” What he meant was that the strategy doesn’t matter as long as you are producing results. This CEO saw: strategy = analysis and execution = getting things done, and he attributed more value to doing than to analyzing. Strategy statements like “Being the brand of choice in the vertical markets we serve” and similar statements were not for him. And frankly, I’m not a fan of them either.
But, any seasoned marketer knows that a marketing strategy is about the series of choices you make on where to play and how to win to maximize long-term value. Execution is producing results in the context of those choices. Therefore, you can’t have good implementation without having good strategy. Most everyone would agree that you just can’t achieve good results without having good execution; similarly, most would agree that having a good strategy alone is no guarantee for success. But, too many jump to the wrong conclusion that this makes execution or implementation more important than strategy. OK, so let’s look at that for a moment.
It’s pretty obvious to all that creating “The Strategy” is cool…it’s sexy. And who wouldn’t want to be part of the team that developed “The Strategy,” right? But actually creating it right requires thought, knowledge, and understanding of the audience and marketplace, and creativity. Look at any university setting and you’ll see that MBA courses stress strategy. We worry about social media strategies, mobile marketing strategies, strategies for enhancing customer engagement or customer experience, advertising strategies, SEO strategies, lead generation marketing strategies, sales strategies, and on and on.
You’ll get no argument for me when saying that a well-thought-out and written strategy is critically important to business success. But here’s something that a lot of marketing people don’t always consider to the extent they should: the soft underbelly of strategy is implementation. Without implementation, even the most brilliant strategy is just words, a hope, an untested premise. We all know this intellectually, of course, but we don’t necessarily follow through on that knowledge and make it the priority it should be. Implementation is generally left to some coordinator or least experienced member of the team. Or even to an automated program.
Okay, we all know that the implementation and all the hard work that goes along with putting a strategy into the marketplace has to be done by someone. Initiatives don’t get completed by stating them on paper; they require action, management and follow up. And from my experience working with organizations of various sizes, I’d say that no VP of Marketing or CMO can – or should – try to do everything. But in the same breath, we can’t just assume that everyone who is diligently working on the tactics is actually supporting the overall marketing and business strategy that was created. Implementing different pieces of the program is not the same as true implementation to achieve the organization’s business objectives. Poor tactics, poor coordination, and poor implementation of even a great strategy have led to as many flops as a poorly created strategy.
Here’s a quick real life example: An athletic shoe manufacturer sent me email after email telling me to stop by their upcoming trade show booth, and by turning in a printed copy of the email, I would receive a certificate for significant savings off their athletic shoes. Guess what happened when I showed up at the booth? No one, and I mean NO ONE at the booth knew anything about the offer. “Don’t know what this is all about,” or “No one told us about this,” were all anyone there could say.
So, at the risk of being overly obvious, the heart of the implementation of a marketing plan is the execution, the actual doing of the planned marketing activities. Successful marketing implementation requires:
Mere implementation is not always that difficult. The hard part is implementing things in an organized way. And, it’s the cohesiveness of the strategy’s implementation tactics where the revenues (the results that the Fortune 100 company CEO talked about) will be generated.
####
Rolf Gutknecht is vice president, director of account services for LA ads. To discuss your thoughts with Rolf on this blog or any marketing matters, email via this link, or visit www.LAadsMarketing.com. You can also connect with Rolf on LinkedIn.
Not too long ago, I 
watching a series on PBS about the Seven Deadly Sins (Wrath, Pride, Envy, Greed, Sloth, Lust and Gluttony) and things started churning in my mind. So I decided to list my “Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing,” given what I continue to see taking place within marketing and marketing departments across all different industries.
Guessing
In the Dilbert cartoon series, Dilbert says that “marketing is just liquor and guessing.” Funny…but as we know, a bit simplistic. Yet, too many companies assume that there is absolutely no need to substantiate their beliefs about the marketplace, about what their prospects want, about why their customers are buying, about what people think of their brand, about most anything having to do with those whom they want to purchase their products or services. Generally the thinking is that no one can know the marketplace as well as the company and the market will accept whatever you offer. Guess (pun intended) how that turned out for Kodak, Borders Books, TWA, and certainly some companies in your own industry! Ask yourself, when was the last time that your company committed the time and resources to do some marketing research…qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic, etc. And do it right.
Marketing by Committee (Indecisiveness)
I’m not sure why, but when it comes to marketing, everyone seems to have a say. Partners, staff, associates, spouses, and the janitor all want to give their two-cents. How about an accounting committee to help figure out where the credits and debits are posted? Or an office supply committee to pick out the colors of pens you order? Many executives forget that great marketing is not about what they like. Great marketing is about what works.
Committees, by nature, are full of compromises so solutions are usually watered down versions that will wind up doing little or nothing to accomplish your growth goals. Marketing by committee leads to lots of bad ideas and poorly thought out plans. Instead of bold strokes from the marketing brush, you get a sea of beige. And then it doesn’t work. Who would have thunk it! The solution is to decide on objectives and budget, and then write a marketing plan. Once the plan is approved, ONE person gets appointed within the organization to take on the role as “the decider.” Empower him or her to make all the courageous decisions required to position your company to dominate your category.
Inconsistency
When different aspects of your marketing messages don’t reinforce each other, the inconsistencies alienate prospects and current customers. Inconsistent marketing distorts clear expectations, makes potential customers unsure of the characteristics of your products and creates unhappy customers who don’t get what they expect. These inconsistencies affect businesses by reducing both initial sales to consumers as well as repeat sales from dissatisfied customers. Also, be consistent with your marketing plan. Don’t stop running an ad, for instance, just because the first insertion didn’t ring your phone off the hook. Give your campaign time to work, but you also need to know when a change in direction is a good idea. Remember, people are not paying that much attention to you, but when they do, it helps if the message you’re saying now is similar to the message that they heard the last time.
Complacency
It’s out there right now. Lurking in the shadows of your success. It is the silent business killer that strikes without warning and can bring even the biggest and the brightest companies to their knees. What is this hidden terror? Complacency. We all know it better as the dreaded “status-quo.” It generally takes the form of “whatever we did last year.” Except, things change. Your competitors are changing things up. Your customer’s needs are changing. The marketplace is changing. A few things to avoid complacency: Keep looking in your rearview mirror to see what your competitors are doing. Listen to new ideas as the next big idea may not come out of your own mouth. And, strive to always do better even before you are forced to react to a competitor’s challenge.
Lack of Focus
Okay, so after reading articles by “experts” about how you should have a customer engagement program in place (so you can be more “customer-centric”), you’ve put your company on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. Heck, you’re even ready to go when the next big social media platform launches. You’ve got your product literature online, and your Web site has a blog and videos. Not to mention all the offline activities ranging from tradeshow activities to advertising to PR, etc. But why did you believe you needed to be in ALL of these social media locations in the first place, and, just as importantly, who is making sure that all of these activities work together?
Narcissism
It’s ridiculous that I have to say this but the memo has not reached the desk of many marketers, so here goes: “It’s not about what your company wants to say but rather about what the customer wants to hear.” (I feel better having said it.) Look, if you want to market based on your personal preferences without regard for what works best with your prospects, that’s your prerogative. But I’d suggest that your company’s marketing not be so self-absorbed. Remember, you don’t buy from you, others buy from you and they don’t care about your business and your troubles nearly as much as you do. Most people are tuned into Radio Station W.I.I.F.M. —“What’s In It For Me!” If your marketing message is all about you, then your customers won’t notice what you’re saying. Please begin to “tune” into your customers, find out what they really want and focus your message on them.
Confusion
Maybe, just maybe, the deadliest marketing sin of all is not having one over-arching marketing strategy – and insuring its implementation through all your tactics. Executing marketing tactics without having a well-developed integrated strategy is like leaving your roadmap tools at home and taking off on the drive without considering if you’ve chosen the right road. You wouldn’t haphazardly set off on an important trip in your car so why let it happen with regard to your company’s marketing activities. It’s easy to start with the “how” but if you haven’t identified the “what,” you may find yourself spending a lot of time executing tactics that don’t take you where you want to go and in so doing, you’ll be wasting time, resources and losing out on sales-producing opportunities. What is needed is one single integrated strategy that looks across all delivery platforms whether online or offline, print, broadcast, or mobile. Your customers don’t have an online self and offline self and neither should you. Think holistically about all your marketing initiatives.
Yes, there are more Deadly Sins that I could have talked about, like trying to be a “do-it-yourselfer,” or not measuring your activities, or saving yourself into bankruptcy, but the above are the Seven Marketing Sins I rank topmost. Now, let us all go out and to the best of our ability, sin no more.
####
Rolf Gutknecht is vice president, director of account services for LA ads. To discuss your thoughts with Rolf on this blog or any marketing matters, email via this link, or visit www.LAadsMarketing.com. You can also connect with Rolf on LinkedIn.
We’ve all had an experience with those finance/accounting types who drive us crazy, requiring that any and all marketing initiatives be measured and that we justify our expenses. More times than not, we spend lots of time trying to come up with metrics that will satisfy them. But in doing so, as marketers we sometimes come up short in the mind of the finance guys and then you hear things like: “Marketing just doesn’t understand numbers,” or “when campaign results don’t stack up, admit it and then figure out how to move forward.” Alternatively, Marketing Directors, say things like: “Finance doesn’t know what good marketing can do for our brand,” “Marketing is not just about spreadsheets,” or “When was the last time they went out on a sales call?” Yup, we’ve heard these and other responses on more than one occasion.
With all due respect, I’d like to put it out there that maybe a majority of the problem doesn’t always start and end with the financial folks. How’s that? Well, sometimes, it seems as if the marketing people and the finance people are just talking two different languages. Certainly, each has a different “world view” of business. For example…
We talk a lot about strategy and forget about tactics.
Because of the sexiness associated with Strategy, we marketers like to call almost everything we do “strategic.” In fact, almost every component of marketing now seems to have its own strategy: Online strategy. Social media strategy. PR strategy. CRM strategy. And it just keeps on going. Well, for the folks in finance & accounting, there’s a critical difference between a strategy and a tactic! The word “tactics” in their minds is immediate, all about bringing in income sooner rather than later. “Strategy” to them is more about a longer-term income stream that won’t likely show up on next quarter’s P&L statement. So, if tactics and strategy play different roles in ROI, and all we do is stuff that’s “strategic,” maybe the CFO is right to wonder if what we do will ever positively affect the bottom line? And when?
More times than we should, we talk high expectations. And then deliver less than startling results.
Too often, marketers jump on the latest fad and technological ‘’silver bullet’ and declare that this is the answer we’ve all been waiting for. Some people in marketing are too quick to buy into what others are doing, even if it doesn’t actually makes sense for your industry or company. And there are some chasing the rainbow looking for the pot of gold. For example, five years ago, there were people writing books, blogs and commentaries telling everyone who would listen that because of the internet, brick and mortar businesses would decline and that we’d all be working virtually by now. How has that turned out?! Hmmm. I’m glad I don’t have to eat those words. I’m not suggesting that as marketers we sandbag the anticipated results for any marketing effort or campaign we’re launching, but we do need to watch just how rosy a picture gets painted, because the numbers people will hold us accountable.
We spend almost no time developing relationships with “those people in Finance”.
When I started in the Marketing Department of a large Fortune 100 organization, the first piece of advice I received from my boss (who had my job before being promoted) was “go and make friends with the people in Finance.” “Making friends” were the key words because that’s when things start to happen. It’s amazing when marketing and finance people begin having lunch together and start to understand how each department sees the world. When was the last time you saw marketing people explain the rationale behind their plans, develop some semblance of what the company can expect in the ways of meaningful metrics, give details and defend the realities behind the timelines, or justify the amount of work it takes to make a concept real and attractive in the marketplace? In short, by figuring how to work with one another, communicate with one another, and then look for ways to help one another, everyone can feel better with what the Marketing Department is doing.
So, do marketers need to talk the language of finance? Or do finance people need to become more fluent in marketing? Or is it somewhere in between? And how do we get there? Well, how does this sound as a starting point. When we marketers talk to our customers and prospects, we’re supposed to speak to them in a language that they understand – one that’s meaningful and beneficial to them. Maybe we should try talking to those Finance People the same way.
####
Rolf Gutknecht is vice president, director of account services for LA ads. To discuss your thoughts with Rolf on this blog or any marketing matters, email via this link, or visit www.LAadsMarketing.com. You can also connect with Rolf on LinkedIn.
by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012
I’m not sure about you, but in the deluge of emails that comes my way each and every day, it’s real easy start deleting them without even thinking about whether there’s content that might make my life and that of my clients easier and better. So, I stopped doing that about 
6 months ago and now take the time to open each one and at the very least scan for interesting info. Maybe I’ll see something about trends, or research data, facts, or a tidbit about helpful hints. Without doing so, I’d miss out on stuff I should know about and, respectfully said, that’s probably the case with you as well.
Well, with your indulgence, I wanted to share with you 10 pieces of information that you may not be aware of which in turn will help you grow your business by seizing on untapped revenue-producing opportunities. So, here goes:
As I said, it’s easy to delete a bunch of good information that comes your way because of time constraints, being short staffed or being overwhelmed with email after email. But this is all good information that I received and looked over before I hit the delete key. If you’ve read this far, you’ve made the same thoughtful decision as well.
In my day-to-day work, I speak and meet with a number of companies that are really good at what they do. In fact, some are just outstanding at their specialty or niche. The problem is that too few people know about them. You practically need to trip over them to know that they exist.
Almost invariably, the VPs of Sales & Marketing for these companies voice their frustrations over the fact that while the company is good at doing what they do, they’ve not grown sales, nor increased their customer bases or product volumes, nor enhanced their brand visibility as their executive management team would have liked. In many ways, their companies end up becoming their respective industries’ dreaded “best kept secrets.” If this sounds painfully familiar, let me offer up a reason why this has happened and how to avoid this trap.
First, one needs to remember that there are two different sides to your business. One is what I call “inside reality” and the other is “outside perception.” The “inside reality” are all the things your business does that makes it valuable to customers and gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It’s all your skills, people, expertise, service, commitment to excellence, passion, and the way you conduct your business.
I’m sure that if you asked your customers why they bought from you, they could tell you something quantifiable, specific, and instantly obvious. They might point to specific benefits for doing business with you and say, “That’s why I do business with you, that’s why I refer my friends to come here, that’s why I’m a loyal customer, that’s why I don’t mind paying a bit more for your products, that’s why I keep coming back.”
The problem then isn’t your “inside reality” but the “outside perception,” which is how prospects PERCEIVE your company, if they perceive it at all. Very commonly, there’s a fundamental disconnect between your inside reality and outside perception.
See, regardless of how good you are, or how good your “inside reality” is, your prospect isn’t going to be able to figure it out based on marketing that doesn’t address their outside perception. Take, for example, a bank that offers personal service. Their inside reality is they greet every customer by name, open the doors as each customer enters and leaves, and offer individual financial advice based on the customers’ specific banking needs. We’ll also assume their current customers are genuinely impressed. But the outside perception of non-customer prospects is that all banks are pretty much the same and all talk about personal service while most don’t deliver on the promise – and it’s not really that important to them anyway. Once a bank starts from that outside perception as the basis of their marketing, the solutions become entirely different. And so do the results. But the bank that continues to market based on such inside realities, especially in a non-creative or expected manner, will remain invisible to prospects because they’ve seen it all before.
You have to start by seeing your marketing through the eyes of a jaded, disinterested prospect who thinks they know all there is to know about you, or at least about the business you’re in.
So while “best kept secrets” might be seen as good for restaurants, traffic shortcuts and travel destinations, they’re NOT great for business. Don’t get lost in the noise. Whether it’s online, offline or thru social media channels, wave your ‘marketing arms’ and let people know you’re there. Because being in business and not promoting your value as you should is like winking at a cute girl (or guy) in the dark. You may know what you’re doing but she or he sure doesn’t.
by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012
The GPS is a wonderful invention for anyone who’s had to get somewhere they’ve not been before. Whether you get directions from your SmartPhone, Mapquest, Google Maps, dedicated GPS device or even the old paper map, there are only two pieces of data to plot your route: where you are now and where you want to go. Sounds pretty simple, right? Yet how many companies, maybe even yours, have launched into a marketing campaign without really considering these things! Unfortunately, not having a clear picture of where you are now and where you want to go leads to not getting anywhere because one critical factor is missing: a overall marketing strategy.
Time and time again in speaking with CMO/VP/Directors of Marketing for companies large and small, they tell me that they need to execute marketing programs, but then tell me they “don’t have time to develop a full strategy.” I’m not kidding. It’s actually easy to understand, given all the exciting marketing tools available today, including social media, email marketing, location-based apps, etc. It’s easy to confuse these tactics with strategies. Too often I see people focused on the newest and sexiest marketing tactic du jour without any appreciation for how it fits in an overall marketing strategy. I’ve also seen entire marketing plans that consist of nothing but a series of tactics strung together one after the next without an over-arching marketing strategy.
So, what’s the difference between strategy and tactic? A strategy is the broad roadmap that defines where you are now, where you want to go and how you’ll get there – taking into account your product or service, what the competition is doing, which direction the market is heading, and what you’ll need to do and say that gives your company the competitive edge. It’s the big picture. Tactics, by contrast, are the specific tools you use to do this: Write a blog. Send out a newsletter. Develop an app. Run an ad. Be more visible at tradeshows. Etc.
It’s easy to start with the “how” but if you haven’t identified the “what”, you may find yourself spending a lot of time executing tactics that don’t take you where you want to go and in so doing, you’ll be wasting time, resources and losing out on sales-producing opportunities.
The confusion compounds when I hear some marketing folks talk about their organization’s “online marketing strategies” given all the attention to social media, online and mobile tools. You shouldn’t have an “online” or internet marketing strategy any more than an you should have an “offline” strategy. What you do need is one, single integrated strategy that looks across all delivery platforms whether online or offline, print, broadcast, or mobile. Your customers don’t have an online self and offline self and neither should you. Think holistically about all your marketing initiatives. Otherwise you’ll drive your customers and your own team crazy.
So at the end of the day, executing marketing tactics without having a well-developed integrated strategy is like leaving your roadmap tools at home and taking off on the drive without concerning if you’ve chosen the right road, highway or turnoff. You wouldn’t haphazardly set off on an important trip in your personal life so why let it happen with regard to your company’s marketing activities. You’ll never make it to the right place taking the wrong roads.