I grew up in a business environment that was entirely strategy driven.
What is the value you create and/or want to create for your target market?
Who can use what you create and/or is willing to buy it?
How do we reach these people?
Which specifically means that we had a pretty well lined up direction for our marketing and advertising efforts.
We weren’t driven by the whims of tactics: the new tools or opportunities that always pop up. We were, instead, driven by an objective that we were always pointed towards.
That’s missing in today’s business environment.
In too many cases and places, we find that all or most of our decisions are driven by external factors and/or due to the newest buzz or latest fad.
That’s amazing.
Recently, I got a copy of the new strategy book: Blue Ocean Shift . This book talks about the way that we need to create opportunities in spaces where your competitors aren’t pounding down on customers, creating an environment where you are likely being pushed on price or on things that are outside of your control.
Which is what I was talking about above when I talked about leading with strategy.
See in the nightclub industry, where I started out: at the time, cities and urban areas were where it was at. But in the early and mid-90s, suburbs were thriving places for younger adults that maybe were starting families or about to and still wanted to go out, have fun, and not be all the way downtown to do it.
So we positioned an entire nightclub chain based on the concept that just because you were in the suburbs, it didn’t mean that you didn’t get to have fun.
It worked. It worked tremendously.
The same idea of leading with strategy also came into play when I worked in museums and had to figure out a way to drive the business community into a building that started out as a tourist attraction.
Moving onto tickets, I had to find ways to reach premium buyers in the most effective way possible and have them become repeat customers.
On and on and on.
The concept of strategy first is often lost today.
We have brands and advertisers rushing from one new platform to another.
One day its Pinterest. The next day it is Snapchat.
One day its Facebook Live. The next day its YouTube, again.
The challenges here are many:
- Without a strategy, you are always reacting. Strategy enables you to be proactive.
- By allowing platforms to drive your engagement, you are at the mercy of the platforms. Remember when Facebook changed their algorithm?
- Tactics are great, but how can you really tell if they are working if you don’t have any kind of understanding of where you need them to take you?
The ultimate point is that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. I think Alice In Wonderland was onto something there.