Should you develop your marketing strategy on the fly?

We teach and coach to the 10×10 marketing strategy approach. This means you should always aim to have at least 10 marketing strategies running for your business. In theory each strategy should deliver 10% of the leads giving you 100% of the leads that you require to build your business. That is the theory but in practice one or two of the strategies might perform exceptionally well and deliver 40 % or 50% of the leads whilst other strategies deliver negligible results.

When considering the 10 marketing strategies to be employed in your business it is important to distinguish between short, medium and long term strategies. For example social media is often considered a short term strategy but in reality is a medium to long term strategy. An optimal marketing strategy should be balanced between short, medium and long term strategies. The question is how much flexibility and agility should there be in the marketing strategy to respond to changes in the world, business environment and local markets?

For example during the recent Covid-19 crises it was certainly necessary to drastically and rapidly change marketing strategies to adapt. It would be hard to imagine that the original marketing campaigns would have been effective. Rapid change is a constant and it feels like the rate of change keeps accelerating. In this environment one can rightly question the effectiveness of drawing up marketing strategies and marketing plans 12 month in advance? The reality is that with all the conflicting demands placed on business owners, it is very hard to design and implement the marketing strategy on the fly.

The 10 core strategies should be identified and practical activities plotted into a 12 month marketing plan. That means the thinking and planning gets done once in advance and then the execution of the plan can be systemised or delegated, effectively putting it on auto pilot. The very important caveat to this statement is that the business owner should constantly be monitoring the target market and environment and then tweak the marketing messaging i.e. the offer and copy. Having the marketing plan locked and loaded for every month provides certainty and structure.

In summary, don’t try and devise your marketing strategies on the fly but be sensitive to business environment changes and tweak the messaging where required.

By Hein KRUGER
Certified Business Coach
ActionCOACH