What comes first?

Put first things first. You've probably read this in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

What comes first in your marketing planning? Think through this. Otherwise, you get seduced by the sexy, silky advertising and marketing communications bit without looking at what should be first.

Most people confuse advertising, marketing, branding and marketing communications. Just because they overlap each other doesn’t mean they are one and the same.

First things first.

Where did you start?

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What happens in the long term?

Don’t be too focused on one thing, whether it is media or distribution channels.

Eventually when you want to expand your reach and sustain your momentum, you will need to be open to other means of communication. For example, if you are too focused on social media to get your brand awareness up, eventually you will need other media.

Even if you are a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand; which is the sexy bit now and I suspect for a while to come, eventually you will need more “traditional” forms of distribution when you want to expand your reach and sustain your momentum.

Eventually, what is in your arsenal?

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Why are you struggling?

Somewhere along the line you didn’t do well. Perhaps some basic foundations that needed to be set in place weren’t. So now you are paying the price of those mis-steps. All you can afford to do now are tactical executions to bring in the sales. You can never find time nor the money to do the bigger more strategic bits that can solve your problem. Survival is an issue. Someone once told me “strategy is the advantage of the rich.” Possibly true. But possibly they had the wisdom to focus on strategy early on too.

You have every opportunity to look into strategy early on and at every step of your business growth. If you don’t know how to do a strategy, learn how. (By the way, most people who talk strategy can’t even begin to explain to you what strategy is, so be aware of that.) Then apply the tactics.

Are you surviving?

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Did you put in the salt?

I fear people who say they are the “big picture” person. Almost always, almost; not always people who say that are trying to get away with attending to the details. Every master knows the big picture of their art and the minute details to get the execution to perfection. Be the big picture person that you say you are, but that should not give you permission to miss out on the little details.

What did you master?

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What are you looking for?

Once you are on a journey to your destination, you absorb every risk and every reward that comes with it. Some rewards come at the end; others come along the way. What constitute rewards and risks, only you can answer them. No one can lead the life for you, no one knows under what context do you measure success. All journeys worth taking will demand your youth, your blood, your sweat, your tears. That’s what makes it a worthwhile journey. Otherwise, when you look back there isn’t much sacrifice to show for and hence the rewards are nothing to be proud of. All journeys worth taking swallows your youth, then spits it out in your later years. You pick those up and you talk about them because they are what people call battle scars.

Did you sacrifice your youth?

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Who’s circling up there?

Speedy results for a long-term problem cannot happen. When you fall into a negative spiral, there are no super sonic saviours for you. Those that circle above your soon to be corporate carcass are the charlatan vultures aiming for what little flesh you have on your corporate body as your grasp for salvation. They will offer you all sorts of short-term solutions that works for a while then it will stop working. They will take what little money you have left and you will be left with grasping for other saviours.

Why are they crowding around you?

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Is money blocking your view?

In our experience of observing clients, willful blindness can come from being too cash rich or financially strong. Money can blind management to the issues that arise. The common excuse is to explain away all the bad news, the negative signals and the internal wrong decisions. After all, the profit is there. The company is strong financially. What can be so wrong about what is being done?

This lack of self-reflection and purposeful denial lessens and discourages disciplined action, strong thinking and radical candour. Whoever that dares to bring up negativity when the numbers are good is obviously a contrarian. Whether an internal staff or an external consultant like us is seen as a negative thinker. A party pooper. Precisely the kind of news and information management needs is now silenced.

Is cash blocking your ears?

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Should you have less?

After some success, it’s common for companies to want more. After all growth means more, right? More products, more product ranges, more SKUs, more distribution, more everything and more. But growth can come from culling too. Growth can come from doing less because strategy isn’t just about where you want to do business. It’s also where you choose NOT to do business.

Learn from both the evergreen and deciduous trees. They shed their leaves so they can grow bigger and better. Some totally according to the season, some gradually in the case of the evergreen. But they grow by shedding their leaves and in accordance to what the tree can sustain and grow. Imagine the tree growing more and more leaves every year without shedding any leaves.

Do you want more?

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Is your success making you fail?

The success that you enjoy now can blind you to the seeds of failure. It usually begins when you attribute the success to the way you do things. That you know and can pinpoint the patterns rather than the understanding of why you did them. When you understand the why of you doing them, it also allows you to understand why and when they won’t work.

Are the seeds sprouting yet?

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How do you move forward sometimes?

In life as in business, we must balance positive actions and pessimistic thoughts. One leads us to hubris, the other leads us to a mental hell. Somewhere in between what Jim Collins would call Positive Paranoia allows us to be mindful of what can knock us off-track and knowing that; put in place positive actions. He called it Disciplined Action. While his research is in companies, the thinking doesn’t differ when we manage our life as well.

What can hold you back?

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How is your spine?

The backbone of your strategy is your segmentation, your target and your positioning. Know who are the segments in your market, decide who you want to target and know how you will occupy their mind with the story about your brand that you want to tell versus your competitors.

Then put these together to form your marketing objectives. Now ask, what tactics can I implement to deliver on these objectives. Those tactics are your 4Ps. Do you create a new product? Do you need to revise your pricing? Perhaps your distribution needs improvement? What about your integrated marketing communications? These are the tactics.

Don’t use tactics to fix your strategy. Your tactical gears are there to help speed you to your objectives. If you keep playing with your gears without having a map and a destination you want to go, you are just wasting fuel and creating a gearbox problem for the future.

Are you getting there yet?

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How much paracetamol have you taken?

When your business is in dire straits, it is difficult to get you to look into your strategy. You are looking for symptomatic relief. No one can blame you. But you need to have the wisdom and awareness to know when these symptomatic relief tactics need to stop.

Sure, that sales funnel strategist (I want to say “tactician” but they like to be known as “strategist”, so “strategist” it is) can bring you the sales for a while. It will create the hubris for a while and you will think all is fine. Then the sales dwindle again. Then the email marketing strategist (yes, they too want to be known as “strategist”) will come and your sales will be boosted again. Then slide again.

Your fundamental issue is a strategy issue. Not a tactical one. Going on to fix your tactical issues isn’t going to fix your problem. Contrary to what you think, it isn’t buying you time. It is wasting your time.

You are better off biting the bullet. Face the pain and fix the real problem. Diagnose with certainty. Strategize with clarity. Then implement with conviction.

Are you looking for symptomatic relief?

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Where should you retreat?

Whenever you find that your plans are not working, go back to your strategy. It’s usually not the tactical parts that are at fault. Something is wrong with the strategy somewhere. Always diagnosis first, strategy second and tactics last. So don’t go fixing your product or pricing or ads when you haven’t diagnosed it.

Where did your problem arise? How did it arise? Why so? Then do some research about it. Now look at the consumer segments and the target and your position. Are all these aligned? Only when you know all these should you ‘fix’ the tactical parts of your 4Ps.

Retreat to your strategy. See the bigger picture then execute.

How far ahead can you go?

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What will be next?

Chase your dreams but face the facts.

In the face of a crisis, be bold enough to face the brutal facts. It may mean you have to let some people go, shrink the business, cut some product lines and even more painful decisions. Facts allow you to make sound decisions. Without facts, your reality may be blurred.

Chase the dream still. Dreams give you hope.

Take the facts, make some decisions, chase that dream. Then stick to the path and believe in your plan.

How will you take the next step?

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What should you work on?

I would suggest since you are reading this blog, to master marketing. I mean truly understand marketing. Know the difference between, marketing, advertising, communications and branding. Dive into the art and science of marketing. I find it crazy that people talk about a subset of marketing communications like social media as if it is marketing. Well, it is a subset of a bigger picture but it is not marketing. Unless you understand the bigger picture, you will always be playing in a very small field and thinking that the little skills you have in a small promotion “P” is marketing. Philip Kotler calls people like you “the one P marketer.”

What do you know?

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What should you stop?

The slowdown in business now allows you to take time off to rethink and get strategic clarity on your next steps. You probably already know this; but worth reminding. You don’t need to wait till the end of your financial year to start thinking. Any time is a good time to start.

Think through, what about your marketing plan do you need to revise? I would start with some form of market orientation as this takes time. Do some research on your market, your consumers, revisit your consumer segmentation. Do this if you have not done consumer segmentation for the longest time. Now as yourself, are there new and interesting targets within this segment that presents new opportunities? Are there targets that you should drop? Perhaps a better target has emerged that gives you opportunities for growth?

Looking into new market data, revisit my consumer segmentation and re-evaluating my target choices would be things I would start with during this lull.

What should you start?

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How affected are you?

You are only disrupted when you aren’t prepared. To be prepared, you can learn from past lessons. You can build reserves. Reserves in financial form, in human resource, in time and in energy. Reserves that can help you buffer for any form of disruption. Asking “what if?” in good times helps prepare you for disruptions. Having a siege mentality helps. Be a little paranoid but do not be paralyzed by it. Turn that fear into action and disruption can be mitigated.

How stable can you be?

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Where do you start?

Diagnosis before strategy. Strategy before tactics. Everything builds itself on a foundation. The foundation of your tactics goes right back to the diagnosis.

A lawyer can’t fight your case without understanding the background and everything about the case you brought to her. A doctor can’t prescribe the best treatment for you without first diagnosing your illness and your well-being.

Understand the game. Then decide how you will play the game. Then execute the game plan.

What will the result be?

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Where is the bottleneck?

Chances are either not enough number of people know about your brand or not enough people can get to your product.

Why aren’t your sales growing?

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How will you be threatened?

Simple. Get some of your best people into a room. Tell them they now will get to start a start-up that will do exactly what your company is doing and beat you at it. What will they do? Perhaps you need a few days of away day weekend to do this. This exercise will not only reveal your vulnerabilities but also projects you could be pursuing.

Where are you most vulnerable?

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Do you have a work from home culture?

Funny, people don’t talk much about company culture now that most people tend to want to work from home. To me a team that doesn’t work physically together for a sustained period of time will create misalignment. The turnaround to check an idea that you have, ask for a fact, an opinion. Grabbing lunch together, a beer or a teh-tarik; these are the things that forge a company culture.

Face to face meets allow for reading gestures and intention. It helps us release oxytocin; yes, the same hormones released when you cuddle your love ones. It helps build trust. The hormone your company needs to build a strong company culture.

Do you have a family culture?

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