Strategy Spotlight

Ben: 00:07

Hi. It is Ben from My Digital CMO. We help marketing leaders define and deliver great marketing strategies. In the recent, podcasts, I've been talking about trying to put ourselves in our clients' shoes, and, you know, I've been reminded in the last couple of weeks of the huge opportunity there is for excellent strategy practitioners to take advantage of some areas where businesses struggle to get good service. And I've seen a couple of patents that I'm just gonna talk to, and, hopefully, you get something out of this insight.

Ben: 00:44

Let us know in the comments and, subscribe for more. So in my, travels around, week to week, I often talk to business owners, And within that, swapping stories around digital marketing, digital marketing strategy, what's happening out there even though there are some fascinating things happening with AI, or new services. Again and again, the the patterns I see are really not related to technology as much as communication and understanding. While I think they're from a lot of business owners, business, operators, there's a really good understanding of why, we need marketing professionals. They just do not have the time to learn those services.

Ben: 01:39

They just don't have the time to go in and become an SEO expert even though they know it's there. I I fairly frequently come across smaller businesses that are really great at, Facebook ads that might be really great at elements. But often, businesses don't have the time to do that or that's not their background. And by becoming great at one of those things, it costs some time elsewhere in the business. So generally speaking, I find that, anecdotally, when I'm speaking to business owners, they really, really value marketing services, but that goes hand in hand with having experienced quite a few, service providers that aren't really delivering to expectations.

Ben: 02:21

I think it comes down to a few just a few, areas. So, one that I've seen fairly frequently is is that small business owner, let's use Facebook as an example, really great at Facebook ads, really gets, good response rates, really knows what they're doing, but to get that have to live in Facebook, monitor multiple campaigns at a time, really work that, you know, process. Then might try and seek an agency to take over, someone that can provide a, a quicker turnaround or or take take that burden away from the business. And often I've heard about that leading to frustration because they're not doing as good a job as the business owner themselves. So they wanna step away from doing a marketing marketing, activity that's soaking up their time, but they can't move away because the service provider isn't able to do it as well as them.

Ben: 03:22

And so even though there's some sort of onboarding and clients, you know, understanding questionnaire, whatever it is, I always shudder when I hear there's a Google spreadsheet with lots of questions, and then within a month or two, you know, frustration is they're not getting good result, they're not doing the ads that, would have been made by the the original activity and so on. So for me, that that's a signal that that the the customer, the client, is not being taken through in a way that they understand how to onboard and transfer some of that IP around what they've been doing. And so being able to hold that conversation is critical, and, you know, it's always disappointing to hear that that business retracts, takes on that work themselves, and then are struggling to to scale. I've got a good contact who's in, a, e commerce business, really rely on Facebook ads, but is struggling to, get the same response rate as years before as ads become less effective and more expensive, but also hasn't got the time to expand other channels, because the trust had has been undermined by that experience. So, you know, they need need a new approach to strategy and some a new, hand holding maybe or just, need to, find some a provider that's gonna talk about strategy first, understand where customers are, understand how that approach fits in, and when those things are squared away.

Ben: 05:02

Maybe that's a time to talk about strategy. But, the the second area I see really having a strong impact on services is in in a similar way, businesses engaging, point solutions. Maybe it's SEO, might be Google Ads, and expecting them to deliver over and over again. Might have a plan for that. They might have a schedule, but it leaves open a really interesting area where, the plan is not good enough.

Ben: 05:33

So without a strategy, your plan is always going to be underwhelming. You might be spending all your money. You might, you know, the service may actually be great value for money. But if you haven't got the context of the strategy, the context of, what the environment's like, where that business is headed, it's actually really hard to prove to that customer that they're getting a great result. So again, I've I I keep meeting business owners who have engaged multiple services, but end up not understanding why they need to be there.

Ben: 06:09

Was the website development worth it? Am I struggling with Shopify? Why am I, having a problem with Google Ads and so forth? And often, a ten minute conversation in strategy really helps them identify what is happening and why those services are there and how to link them together. So I think there's a tendency for business owners who have some marketing now to think that they can go and do this themselves, and then learn the hard way that it's actually really difficult.

Ben: 06:47

There's also, you know, innovative, people out there who will go into Upwork or Fiverr, get a resource, not really know how how to sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and, you know, have over time an experience with four or five providers, and they're really not happy with any of them and end up under under marketing because they're not certain about what the right direction is. So again, being able to wind back that discussion to what's the business purpose, where are you operating, how are you positioned, is a is a really rewarding conversation to have, and it's not hard to quickly ramp up and align strategic position with a with a a smart business operator, that really opens up a lot of opportunities for, refined and targeted marketing, that that gets gets results in context of all the other things that are going on in the business strategy. One of the reasons I think that there's a huge opportunity out there is because, it's very common for me to talk to people and their marketing seems to be a series of executed plans that aren't that well integrated. And even in my own experience, I remember, looking at a campaign, became responsible for quite a large campaign and we had to do an office clean out.

Ben: 08:21

And with low and behold, I looked and the campaigns were the same every single year, every single year for the last ten years. And we're expecting change, better results. But what was happening is the marketing leadership was changing. They didn't understand deep marketing strategy. They didn't understand omnichannel concepts.

Ben: 08:44

So when it came to executing channels, those channels are all being executed, the same as previous. There was, management change over, you know, every two to three years. So I think a couple of things are happening. Marketing industry and marketing tools, marketing initiatives are moving quickly. Actually, moving so quickly that often people responsible for marketing are spending so much time trying to keep up with technology or trying to keep up with channels or managing the brand.

Ben: 09:13

They're not really thinking about, some strategic elements. So, in that scenario where we're repeating what's worked before, that that's a plan, not a strategy. Plan worked before, we're gonna do it again. If you get some churn and some, some cycling of staff or whatever it is, really likely to repeat what's happened in the past even if it's becoming less and less effective. So one of the great conversations to have is what success looks like and how we win.

Ben: 09:46

And if we can, manage that in early stages of talking to, our marketing delivery partners, it's gonna make such a huge difference. And I know that, when I've been trying to move the needle and try new strategies, you know, the strategy around, what success looks like and how we win and who we're contacting that's got a blend of, you know, traditional CRM, traditional customer contact, maybe some, excitement building, content, you know, all those things come together as a unique strategy. You don't even need to be, building all of those as a marketing provider, but as long as the channels and strategy are shared and understood, you actually can really have a huge impact. One of the activities I really used to love was the, combined strategy review. You have stakeholders, delivery partners, team members all in the same room, all for the same discussion.

Ben: 10:55

So that collaboration around strategy, used to just be a great foundation for kicking off a campaign. That doesn't happen as much these days. I think with, the ability to, work remote, the fragmentation of teams, maybe even fragmentation of services, it's easy to forget about those elements. But the flip side is there are now more tools than ever to collaborate online. So it the the actual marketing fundamental structure is still the same.

Ben: 11:26

It's just the communication channels are different. Maybe there's tools like AI that cuts some corners, but going back to those core marketing principles is still really, really important. And the advantage is that really only seasoned marketers know what the channels and strategic hooks are. There's so many people who think they know a lot about marketing, but it's quite easy to have an insightful discussion around strategy because they know a lot about elements of marketing. They've seen a lot of tactics.

Ben: 11:59

So drawing that string together, sometimes, can can be a really practical way forward, and can be done very quickly and coherently. From my own perspective, I've always enjoyed understanding, you know, what the value of each channel can bring, how that omnichannel world can be created even if, they're from different services. Maybe the services aren't linked, but there's, messaging that can tie those things together even if they're handled differently or disparately, by the marketing team in the back end. You know, building those patterns within the business, to facilitate great communication, you know, great advertising, great service to customers, is all really, really important. Building that strategic framework where, you know, stakeholders understand, it's understood at a high level, it's understood at a granular tactical level, and there's a line of sight from an idea of strategy and idea of how we can be successful to what the execution path looks like.

Ben: 13:11

Really, ultimately, builds a foundation that can go into the future and can last many, many years and also, creates a big, also creates a strong network of trust with providers And having those conversations around it, having the framework there to work to, you know, can be really rewarding and, a fantastic way to move forwards. And it is a competitive environment, and starting with strategy is the way to get through it.