Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Tell your boss that the strategy is like a road map.

Not having one means you drive in any direction without knowing where you're going, or why you're heading in that direction.

My boss is the owner of the company. Clearly, not a marketing person. He has a psychology background and more than 20 years experience. I was hoping at least the psych would be advantageous but not yet. I feel like the experience is almost working against me, because he feels like he knows what they are doing. They've had print collateral in the past.

There was a former marketing director, but he never wrote a strategy sooooo...

I am charged with writing the strategy, and it has been expressed that the strategy will automatically include revamping the print collateral. They aren't really measuring anything but the bottom line, so I want to bring some of that in, and I'd like to conduct some surveys.

I had the thought that I could rush the strategy, but that has it's own flaws.

Why don't you start with looking at previous print collaterals, and finding out what problems there were. That'll start you off in a new direction. Instead of creating a monolithic strategy first (which sounds like it'll be resisted), pick the next measurable target and learn while doing, developing the strategy based on results, rather than plans. If you can't find out problems about the past, then interview some key clients & management for information. You'll have to do this research anyway for a strategy doc, and it'll inform your next steps well.

It's a common mistake for a new marketing hire to come in and try to spend the first few months developing a strategy (strategizing), while not doing anything to help sales - they frequently don't last very long because the sales team has more influence with the boss than the fresh face from marketing.

So you've got to show you can deliver the operational part of marketing while establishing your credentials as a strategist. As Jay said, take some existing materials to clients and find out how they can be improved and get the implementation done - test and learn iteratively and incrementally all the while keeping an eye on the bigger picture. After you've shown you can deliver, you'll get to have much more influence on the strategy.

here's an approach to consider. Once I needed to create a brochure for a small company. I spent some time (on the weekend) , making a list of competitors, and printing out information about each company such as their capabilities and offers and products and services.

I entered the information into an Excel spreadsheet, with one column for each competing company. Each piece of information about a competitor easily became a question for my client. For example, if I had noted that a competitor had 10 years of experience, I could ask my quiet the question, "how long have you been in business?"

After a solid weekend of work, I had a comprehensive spreadsheet of the company's market and competitors, and I was prepared to ask detailed and specific and educated questions of my client. I had more than enough information to write the brochure. But I also had taken a big step towards gathering information about my competitors and market.

I hope this helps, if you (or anyone reading this) wants more detailed information or ask questions of the process, please feel free to send me an e-mail.

Good luck.

Once again, Gary's response puts a lot in a very short amount of words. That road map example might be very effective.

Keep in mind the cost/benefit of each side and timing of each side. if the marketing strategy can be put together in a short enough time that what collateral you have would be fine, then do that.

But this seems like it would be a pretty big project, so it may also be the right move to do some new collateral in the interim as the full strategy is being set. Product/services need to keep being sold as the strategy is set. But of course, you would want to limited/targeted interim collateral to prevent from spending too much money that may get thrown away if that collateral doesn't meet the new strategy.