Your Strategy (or Lack Thereof) Makes a Statement: Employees Need a Clear Strategy Statement to Follow

The other day, a colleague and I were discussing a formerly family-owned manufacturing company that was recently sold to a private equity firm. With such a big change, there was a real challenge for the new leadership to come in and smooth out the transition with employees. The key? First, articulate a strategy for success in 35 words or less.

That’s one of the top jobs of a company leader. And yet, many CEOs can’t readily identify their strategy, according to an excellent piece in the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review, “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?” (you’ll need to agree to the terms and conditions to read it).

If the chief can’t say what the strategy is, then how likely is it that anyone else down the line will understand it, either? And how will they be able to work in ways that support it?

This represents a major missed opportunity in internal communications. But the HBR article details a few strong examples of companies with unique strategies that are well defined and well followed. Consider, for example, Edward Jones, and its successful against-the-grain approach of one very hands-on financial advisor per office—often in a rural location overlooked by other firms.

So how can you embark on a similarly successful path? The HBR piece also offers a good primer on the basic tool of marketing communications that starts it all: a powerful, succinct strategy statement.

A note on that strategy: It should be based not on what your competitors are doing (that tired “me, too” philosophy), but on what’s best for your company to do. The HBR calls it your “sweet spot,” the intersection of your company’s capabilities with your customers’ needs. At Scheibel Halaska, we usually refer to this approach as being a “hedgehog”—as in the ancient Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” For the uninitiated, this term was popularized by Jim Collins in his best-selling book, “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t.”

If you’re a CEO or in any other leadership position, the HBR article (and Collins’ book, while you’re at it) should be required reading. Hope the leader of that manufacturing company we were talking about gets a chance to read it, too.

Advertising and the Internet: Time to Rethink the Relationship?

As a follow-up to our two recent posts on the obsession with ROI and the way information moves on the Internet, a new Advertising Age column dovetails nicely: Matthew Creamer’s “Think Different: Maybe the Web's Not a Place to Stick Your Ads” (subscription needed).

For marketers and agencies, says Creamer, big changes are happening in the way we do business—or at least they should be happening. He quotes Trevor Kaufman, CEO of Schematic, the interactive agency recently purchased by WPP Group:

"It's easy for clients and agencies to think about banners and email because buying banners is like buying outdoor and email is like direct. That is very different than nurturing the community of your customers, providing great content or executing transactions."

Lessons to mull over:

• We can’t simply jump into the digital game with a traditional-media approach that isn’t suited for the social dynamics of the digital environment. Banners can work well on niche websites, but don’t overlook the countless other opportunities to connect with customers in new ways.
• We shouldn’t obsess over tactical metrics like click-through rates that track how many people we’re reaching instead of how well we’re getting through to them.

The biggest lesson, however, is that we have many lessons to learn. The digital media landscape is rapidly maturing, and there’s a real need for serious reflection on what we’re doing there.

Meanwhile, many marketers and advertisers haven’t even gotten past the “brochureware” stage of Internet content—literature conceived for print, converted to digital. So it seems that we’ve got a lot of thinking to do …

Why ROI isn’t everything (but it still matters a lot)

In an interesting take on the current obsession with ROI in marketing, blogger Justin Cooper laments that the phrase “ROI” was the top marketing buzz phrase of 2007:

For a marketing executive to say "This sounds great, but what's the ROI?" demonstrates that they are missing the point. The person that asks this question is caught up in the evaluation of their tactics and not thinking about the content of their customer's experience. It's like focusing on the buttons of the phone, rather than the conversation.

Now, for us marketers, this is a hairy argument—especially in B2B, and especially especially in uncertain economic times. Clients pay for our services, so we need ways we can demonstrate the impact of what we do. We even recommended using ROI-measurable tactics in a recent post.

But true marketing ROI can’t be determined by the handy numbers you can claim from an assortment of tactics. It’s got to be part of a larger strategy aimed at meeting big-picture goals like entering new markets, gaining market share, etc.

As Cooper points out, customers must be involved in shaping that strategy. They’re the ones whose interests will make or break your company’s success. So ask yourself: Are your customers full collaborators in your marketing conversation? If not, you’re just talking at them, not with them. And they probably aren’t listening much.

That’s why, absent a marketing strategy based on what customers actually want, reader impressions or basic response levels don’t count for much. But integrated with a comprehensive strategy to advance business goals, ROI-measurable tactics can still help you understand how well you’re supporting the cause.

Favre retirement frenzy highlights the new-media era

Hey, did you know Brett Favre retired?

Of course you did. I’d link to a story, but I wouldn’t know which of the hundreds of thousands of articles and blogs to choose. Besides, the news is so three days ago.

Few events could have better demonstrated how the media cycle has accelerated, and the landscape changed, than Tuesday’s leak of the “Favre-gone conclusion,” if you will. And B2B marketers need to adapt.

Some of us in this office first learned of the Favre bombshell via a Blackberry news alert from the Small Business Times, just minutes after the story broke (on FOXSports.com). The SBT isn’t the source you’d think of first for breaking sports stories; rather, it’s a relatively new, niche publication that covers—you guessed it—small business.

But this is Wisconsin; most news outlets would have bumped the moon landing for No. 4’s farewell. That’s partly why it made sense that the SBT was out in front on this story.

It also made sense because of how news spreads today. The cycle is dramatically different from the way stories moved in the heyday of big-city papers and other MSM. Today’s media landscape is populated more by the likes of smaller, nimbler organizations built from scratch to communicate through electronic means—email, Internet, text.

Of course, in B2B, we don’t often have a story with the earth-shattering magnitude of the Favre announcement. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the changes in the media dynamic. There’s now an online community for every niche interest imaginable, including whatever widget business you’re in. These communities seize upon relevant stories with great zeal, albeit on a much smaller scale.

That’s why, as B2B marketers, we also must embrace new media. It’s a great challenge and, as the Favre saga showed, also a great opportunity to spread messages to more people more quickly than ever before.

Better Latte than Never: Starbucks Strives to Reclaim the Old Brand Magic

So, Starbucks shut its doors for three hours on Tuesday. Oh, the tragedy for its loyal customers!

What loyal customers, you say? Well, that’s the problem for Starbucks. The gourmet coffee giant has lost customers over the last several years, with an overextended brand that’s taken the company too far away from its roots. Which, ostensibly, is why Starbucks shut down across the land Tuesday afternoon: to give its “baristas” a refresher course on how to do justice to the Mermaid brand.

CEO Howard Schultz has been leading a back-to-gourmet-basics effort since he returned to Starbucks last year. For one, he 86ed the hot breakfasts, whose watery, eggy aromas were stifling the more valuable scent of Starbucks’ daily roasts. More boldly, Schultz also closed hundreds of stores—we’re guessing in those areas where Starbuckses (?) were literally across the street from each other.

How much can the baristas really have learned in Tuesday’s three-hour, one-off training session? That’s not really the point. Now, it may have instilled a little extra pride in employees’ work. And doing it during normal work hours couldn’t have hurt. But the biggest victories in the Starbucks shutdown lie in all the related publicity and the underlying message about refocusing on its coffee and its core customers.

Of course, competitors like Dunkin Donuts took advantage of the opportunity to spin the story their way. Touché!

But if Starbucks is successful in reclaiming the differentiating brand that caffeinated its original success, the company should be able to fend off Dunkin just fine. B2B companies tend to emulate what B2C companies do right. In this case, however, we should learn from what Starbucks did wrong. Stay committed to what sets you apart, and you’ll maintain your competitive edge.

The AMA’s New Definition of Marketing Misses the Mark

What is marketing?

Now, there’s a can of worms. And here comes the American Marketing Association to further confuse the issue with its new definition:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.

Sounds more like the definition of overkill. Around the office, we had to pass this around and read it 20 times before it made any sense to anyone. First off, isn’t an “offering” something you do at church? …

OK, so maybe this is an academic definition. But really, that’s no excuse. Marketing is a professional service, paid for by clients. We have to be able to explain ourselves in a way that makes sense to “customers, clients, partners and society.” In an era of tight budgets and fierce international competition, clients demand—and deserve—to know exactly what’s in it for them.

Instead, we get the AMA’s new spew of verbiage, and it’s just the sort of toothless, garbled communication-by-committee we warn clients against all the time.

As a BtoB Magazine story points out, we aren’t alone in furrowing our brows. Marketing blogger Mike Smock has been one of the most vocal critics of the new definition. Here’s his version: Marketing is ideas and actions that generate increasingly profitable market share.

Not sure if Smock’s new take is perfect, but it’s got a lot going for it. It’s clear, it’s concise and it takes a stand—like today’s best marketing communications writing. And it also emphasizes an indispensable element of marketing that gets lost in the AMA definition: business results.

When the dust clears on this debate, whatever way we end up defining the activities and audiences of marketing, the focus must be on helping clients achieve their business goals.

The Next President Won’t Make You More Competitive

This isn’t a political blog. But with Wisconsin’s presidential primary coming up Feb. 19, plenty of people—b2b types included—are paying some attention to the issues. And the candidates are, for once, paying some attention to us.

So what’s the top issue from the B2B perspective? This editorial from Saturday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a decent overview of major concerns from across the state, and it just so happens that “Manufacturing and Trade” gets the first nod. “The jobs have been bleeding away for a while, jobs that pay an average annual wage of $46,000, with benefits. The culprit, depending on whom you're talking to, is global economics, new trade deals and our own inflexibility. The solution is to become more competitive. So how will you help us do that?”

Never mind the passage’s pessimistic tone about the state of manufacturing (that’s fodder for another post). Instead, let’s home in on those last two sentences. We agree that the solution to challenges in the manufacturing sector is to become more competitive. But you’d better not wait to find out how the next president is going to assist you.

Instead, you’ve got to look in the mirror. And look closely. What sets your company apart? A market specialization? Advanced engineering? Strong supply chain partnerships? Now more than ever, you’ve got to identify your competitive advantage and communicate it throughout your target markets. By doing so, you’ll exploit your competitive edge for all it’s worth. And it’s worth a lot—certainly more than any presidential candidate can promise, let alone deliver.