What makes the difference between marketing strategy that’s useless and marketing strategy that’s effective? I recently asked Alicia Wiedemann partner, head of client strategy at Summer Friday to share her thoughts.
Paul Talbot: As marketers, we can’t seem to refrain from weighing in on the joys of strategy. From your perspective, what should strategy do?
Alicia Wiedemann: At its heart, a strategy should uncover a simple human truth, one that brands can lean into and expand upon over time.
Talbot: How can we make sure strategy is designed and executed to get the right job done?
Wiedemann: It’s all about where you begin. Too many marketers today start with the assignment and try to build a strategy out from there.
The most powerful strategies, however, start outside the brand. They dissect what consumer needs are, what cultural shifts are happening and only then reflect back on how best to align it with corporate strategy.
Talbot: How should the effectiveness of marketing strategy be measured?
Wiedemann: We could go into pages of detail here on this answer, but at the highest level, marketing strategies need to balance short-term metrics with long term corporate objectives.
In a data-driven, performance-marketing-led world, too many people prioritize clicks and purchases, forgetting the longer-term impact of brand impressions, engagement and perception. The best marketers know there is a time and place for both and you can’t sacrifice long-term branding for short-term gains.
Talbot: How do we align business strategy, brand strategy and campaign strategy?
Wiedemann: How do you not? I get it, everyone has more than a full-time job just getting their own workload done, but you shouldn't build a brand strategy that doesn’t ladder up to a business strategy or a campaign strategy that doesn’t ladder up to the brand strategy.
Just because most corporations have a departmental, structured hierarchy, doesn’t mean the individual plans shouldn’t be aligned. That’s on each team to ensure they have the higher-level strategy as a foundation for when they build their department strategy, and it's on the bosses to ensure any campaign level strategies they approve align with broader brand and corporate strategies.
Hierarchy should establish a level of checks and balances for strategic alignment, not a division of objectives.
Talbot: Any other thoughts on how marketers design and execute strategy you’d like to share?
Wiedemann: I’ll share a few tips I always have for my team and creative partners at Summer Friday:
- Stop and listen. The best strategists can be a mirror of insights, reflecting the world around them. But if they don’t shut-up and listen first, they’ll never hear more than their own thoughts and opinions.
- Earn your attention. Marketing is no longer a medium where you have a forced, owned audience. Build a strategy that focuses on earning attention and execute on it in a way that is worthy of that attention.
- Don’t forget about the longer-term corporate vision. Too many times campaigns are built off a single objective, oftentimes one that is so myopic it's disconnected from broader corporate goals. Always check against the longer-term corporate vision, even for the smallest of assignments; it's only then that you start thinking bigger.
- Stay Fun & Fearless. This is our motto at Summer Friday. If we aren’t enjoying our job, if we aren’t pushing the boundaries and trying new things, how do we expect anyone else to want to engage with the work we create?
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Marketing Strategy 101 - Forbes
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