The Jordan Rules

Marketers have more than just marketing on their minds. They worry about lots of things from cost of production, to quality of customer service; from brand perception to communication planning. The key to a successful marketing strategy is recognizing all the work that has to be done prior to creating a marketing strategy, ensuring it  gets done properly & communication between business units are maintained.

The Strategic Framework

Most marketers (especially national & multinational marketers) have strategic frameworks or strategic webs that govern different business units  in various levels of granularity.

Here’s an example:

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In this example the business strategy governs certain elements. Typically, large amounts of research & analysis are done to support these strategic decisions. Much of this research proves very useful down the road at defining more granular strategies.

Visual Strategic Roadmapping to Identify Strategic Gaps

If marketers don’t distribute resources according to how deliverables will be consumed, they’ll continually be recognized as ‘following’ the heard. Consider how valuable a strategic roadmap is for keeping multiple agencies and vested interests on track.

In this example you can see how business strategies support & get supported through the process of defining more granular strategies.

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Solid Strategic Footing is Required

Many marketers face organizational problems regarding the definition of business strategies prior to defining more granular strategies.

I’ve recently gotten the opportunity to work with two major multinational marketers; one who has a strong set of strategic frameworks, and one who’s struggling with online strategy due to a lack of strategic frameworks.Developing online strategies for the company who has a set of defined strategic frameworks is pretty easy, and pretty fun. It allows the digital strategist to find key user insights that can fuel a good digital strategy & support overall business goals. Without the initial market & business strategy research, it would take a lot longer to identify insights.

In fact, the marketer who doesn’t have a set of strategic frameworks governing the more granular strategies spends at least 4 times more money on ad-hoc research studies. They generally have access to a lot less experience analysts to sift through the research they do get.

Sheep Stacking

Let me introduce you to a sheep:

This sheep represents all the documentation, research & data that is collected through the process of defining overall business strategies. If created properly, this sheep will be robust enough to support other sheep.

But, what happens if a new area is identified? What happens if every other sheep-pile is using this new area to support its sheep?

It’s a dilemma. “Can I just stand in that new area?”; “Do I need to tell the sheep I’m standing on first?”; what to do?

This is a common situation. I’ve seen it happen over-and-over this past few years with social media. Many digital marketers recognized the value of social media & began establishing a presence prior to allowing the business to adapt its overarching strategy to accommodate for social media.

This caused many marketers to fail because the organization wasn’t structured in a way to support social media initiatives (among other reasons). Many marketers fell into the trap of having Facebook fan pages with thousands of fans, but no plan suggesting what to do with the fans once they have them. In fact, I’ve seen several marketers abandon social media activities because they didn’t know how to show its value to the rest of the organization.

Conclusion

If an opportunity presents itself that would allow you to explore a new strategy; make sure it aligns with higher level strategies. I’ve seen evidence that creating a complete strategic roadmap helps enable each business unit to find synergies & build more effective integrated strategies.

Thoughts? Leave a comment, or ask me a question on Twitter @thejordanrules.

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