Hey There!
Did everyone have a nice New Year celebration? Or, were you like me, asleep around 11:15?
Spurs did do a good job of pulling out a New Year’s Day victory with a late Davidson Sanchez header and Alabama took care of business against the University of Cincinatti. So my sports ball watching went pretty well.
I wrote this on Friday about where my attention is going to go in 2022 and I think it might be helpful to y’all as well:
- The importance of strategy and the utter lack of it in too many organizations.
- Pricing as marketing’s MVP moment.
- The importance of branding and the role your brand plays in your success or failure.
- The challenge of driving demand in a changed environment.
- Fighting commodification and tactification in our organizations.
I’ll expand quickly and get you back to your days, but let me run through each of them quickly.
The importance of strategy and the lack of it in too many organizations: When it comes to strategy, my go-to resource is Roger Martin, maybe the best strategy professor in the world.
He pointed out that in too many organizations, strategy doesn’t get the attention it deserves because in too many cases the vendors, partners, and consultants make much more money selling tactics.
Heading into 2022, I’m going to focus on helping y’all walk the three steps to strategic success:
- Diagnosis
- Formulation
- Execution
Pricing as marketing’s MVP moment: Pricing is one of those areas where I take an absolute stance.
Why?
Well, I’m not delusional enough to think that as a marketer I’m going to get all of the ability to make the pricing decision, just like I know that I can never get to a point of never having to offer a discount.
What I know I can do is fight for more power in these decisions.
And, I know from experience that starting from a point of exactly what I want or going all the way allows me to get more of the power in the pricing decisions. Because in too many cases, marketing is being squeezed out of the decisions totally.
Branding’s importance: Branding has a bad name because there are a lot of numpties out in the world giving the idea a bad name.
They throw around BS concepts with no context like purpose, meaning, and brand DNA.
Here is what you need to know, your brand is the accumulation of all of the good and bad interactions your market has with you over time. The good stuff adds up slowly. And, the bad can do damage very quickly.
You need to know what a brand is, how to manage it, and what will help you get results.
Driving demand in a changed environment: Guess what?! The world has changed and we are heading into the third year of the pandemic. Its junior year!
This likely means that the way people buy and sell has changed, a lot.
Okay, I’m playing naive right now because it is obvious that the environment we live in is different.
Good or bad, the way that we approach things is going to need to keep up.
Focus on impact over commodification and tactification: Tactics have taken over the world of strategy and marketing.
Why?
Bad press coverage.
“Thought Leaders” that profit from saying something like, “The new thing is going to be the biggest thing ever”.
And, more.
Commodification has also taken over because in too many cases, we have poorly trained marketers, sales driven organizations, and a love of discounts have all added to the proliferation of commodification that takes hold in too many places.
You can fight these things and that is what we will do this year.
Let me know what y’all are going to focus on or what you are thinking on…I’m here for y’all.
Happy New Year!
Dave