Build the Marketing Foundation First

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October 2005

Build the Marketing Foundation First
By Linda Popky, L2M Associates, Inc.

In today's business environment, budgets are tight, resources are limited, and organizations are forced to cut corners. The directive is to economize in order to increase profitability or just to remain competitive. Some organizations are also reacting to a previous over-reliance on high-priced strategy consultants—many of whom did not provide clear value or return on investment—by decreasing the amount of time and resources they put into strategy or strategic processes. Unfortunately, the failure to build a solid strategic foundation first is counter-productive, generating the risk of costly mistakes for marketing and the entire organization, later on.

Today, strategy is out, execution is in. Witness the popularity of the book by Larry Bossidy (former CEO of Allied Signal) entitled Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done. It's now ranked #194 on the Amazon.com best-seller list.

This emphasis on execution is on the rise in marketing organizations as well. Many executives question the value of spending money for marketing strategy, especially if they have already defined an overall business objective. They want the marketing team to simply go out and execute a marketing plan.

Too often the success of a marketing plan is judged by the tangible marketing deliverables the team produces. This can be a series of events, press releases, marketing collateral, websites, etc. Since these deliverables draw attention inside and outside the organization, considerable effort is put into making sure these deliverables look good, whether they are hardcopy or web-based.

Packaging, or look and feel, is a key part of deploying a marketing strategy. Many important and on-target messages have been lost because they were delivered in plain vanilla, or worse yet, hard-to-read, distracting or downright ugly packages. However, attractive packaging, when combined with content that is not well-thought out (or more importantly, not on target strategically), will fall flat on its pretty little face.

Because a "pretty face" will only go so far, it's extremely important to spend the upfront time to be sure your marketing programs are built on a solid foundation, that you have nailed down the key elements of your marketing strategy, and that your team can clearly articulate them—before going off to create those highly visible (and often highly expensive) marketing deliverables.

Before executing a big picture strategy, such as "We want to enter XYZ market next quarter with ABC product line," take the time to understand what is required to really make a key marketing initiative successful:

Be sure you really know and understand your target customers, including what motivates them, what causes them pain and why they would be interested in even considering your solution or offering.
Have a solid understanding of the current market situation. Know the competition, where they are successful and where they are struggling. (Remember that the status quo can be your biggest competition!)
Play devil's advocate. Ask what could go wrong, what counter-moves you can expect from competitors, what obstacles you can proactively plan around. Be honest. The time to consider possible pitfalls is before you begin the project, not once you are stumbling into them.

Once you have done this analysis in a logical and well-thought out fashion, clearly define your value proposition or unique differentiation. Your positioning should be captured in a neat, organized, succinct manner and communicated throughout the organization. This way you can be sure everyone involved in the initiative, including key vendors and suppliers, will understand the same messaging and can use it appropriately in their marketing activities.

What happens if you don't take the time to do this? The answer is quite simple. If you don't understand exactly what you're executing, you may find yourself way down the wrong path fairly quickly. You might be executing a plan effectively—even impeccably—but against the wrong set of objectives. When it comes to marketing, this can quickly become quite costly, not only in terms of dollars, but in lost time to market, limited market share and damage to the corporate reputation.

As an analogy, your organization can spend a great deal of time and money getting your team suited up with terrific mountain climbing gear, instructing them how to use it, and motivating them to go climb one specific mountain…only to find out that you are on the wrong mountain top. Or, worse yet, that you really should not have been climbing mountains in the first place, but deep sea diving instead.

Take the time to ensure you have a well-thought-out, fully developed marketing strategy. This may require more work upfront, but it will pay off in the long run. After all, about the only thing worse than not knowing where you're going, is starting out for your destination, only to find out that it's not really where you want to go anyway.

Linda Popky is the president of L2M Associates, a strategic marketing company that helps organizations improve the return they get on their marketing programs, processes and people. For more information about other ways to improve marketing leverage, contact her at www.L2Massociates.com or 650-281-4854.