Jennifer,

Excellent post and right on target. However, I wonder if avoiding strategic thinking in marketing is new. I have seldom run into businesses that plan strategically. Most seem more interested in the doing than the planning.

I sometimes do an exercise when I guest lecture senior marketing courses. I give them a low down on strategic marketing, it's importance, and then we do a mock budgeting process.

It's amazing that even after the lecture, the students rush in to spending; how much and where and drop the strategic marketing like a bowling ball on the foot.

It takes discipline to think and act strategically.

Lewis and Paul: Thanks for your thoughts. So would you say it is not worse than it ever was?

I too am always amazed at how little strategic thinking goes into marketing, but it really seems like companies are even more tactical now.

Paul, your exercise is helpful data,and especially coming from students who would seemingly be more willing and eager to please, and do it the "right way"...

I hear from companies today that they just "want results" and they think the planning and strategic thinking takes too long.

Any counsel on how to better get companies to think strategically--to "make" them do it?

We live in an immediate gratification, "want it right now" culture. This translates to marketing results as well. Changing that mindset? That's going to be a hard nut to crack.

Successful leaders will want results NOW, but also will be wise enough to know you must plan for success. Those that don't get this concept, generally won't get the results they're ultimately seeking.

Good discussion. It's hard to balance the needs for instant "boss" gratification and the time it takes to strategize. I often paraphrase Lewis Carroll's quote in my presentations: If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there.

Marketers and business people need to know what they're trying to achieve first, then plan and do the tactics, otherwise, they could be spinning their wheels and wastng money.

Perhaps people see less value in strategic marketing since so much of what we can do with modern communications, web, and social networking tools can be done so rapidly and so cheaply. Perhaps it's easier to have the attitude "let's throw it against the wall and see if it sticks" than it is to do serious strategic planning.

"What is striking to me today, is that it seems many companies are not practicing strategic marketing."

Good post. Can you give us some examples of these "many companies"? It would help me to understand what you're seeing...are you talking about a lot of companies trying social media tools sans strategy?

Many times companies, in an effort to keep up, will start from the tactical side and fail. That's nothing new (look at all the brochureware of 8-10 years ago with Web 1.0)--but again, I'm not sure of what you mean here without some examples...and then I'll try to give my two cents ;-).

Hi all: Thanks for everyone's comments.I love the Lewis Carroll quote...i will start using that in presentations as well. As for the types of companies I am referring to, they range from product companies who are small but not startups to those companies who are using social media marketing tools like blogs, podcasts etc. to more staid professional services firms like investment banks to F-500 technology companies who have many people in marketing...so that is why it struck me as so widespread just from my perspective. Maybe I am also just getting more impatient as i get older with the lack of planning and forethought, as I know that without planning and forethought, things DON'T happen well and then people get frustrated. Therefore, one more reason why the Lewis Carroll quote is so relevant. I always try to make the people I work with focus on the business goals, the reason why they are thinking marketing can help them get there. I also think people are always rushed and feel like they have to have it done tomorrow.

Strategic thinking in marketing is considered a "nice-to-have" to some companies. A very scary thought as the alternative is a line up of knee jerk reactions. I can picture the marketing team behind a two-way mirror looking at past promotions and campaigns standing in front of a success measurement wall. Not one of them reaching the "success" target.

Understanding where you want to end up (your vision), and then creating a road map (your strategy), provides a bit of light ahead of you as you travel on the path to success.

I am currently injecting the marketing team with a dose of strategic thinking as we start to plan for the next few years. They seem receptive, but question the time that must be invested into the process. When one is accustomed to REactive, it is quite difficult to attempt PROactive.

Oh how I long for the day when I can make the business decision to turn away clients that choose to implement without a plan. As an independent consultant, I'm not quite to the point to be able to afford to do that, but on the other hand, if the marketing dollars that are placed are not as effective as they could have been, then I'm seen as ineffective. Perhaps I cannot afford to not to make a strategic plan a deal breaker.

This trend of wanting to see results now, is not new. Having received my BS in Marketing then moving on to a large telecommunications company I was excited to be able to put my knowledge to use. Unfortunately, as our competitors came up with the next "big idea", we seemed to abandon our strategic plan and jump on the next "big idea" band wagon. (I might add that if you take a look at the telecommunications industry you will see what I mean.)

I always thought that when I owned my own company I would do the marketing right. I also have a masters in project management, and so I just knew that this was going to be a piece of cake. It's not. When you are the President of a company, large or small, there is so much responsibility and the urgency of daily crisis's becomes the only view. I think your comment about keeping your business goals in front of all the employees is the right way to go. Accountability towards those goals should be everyones responsibility.

For most of us small business owners that have survived our start-up, the only real problem with our P&L is the top line is not big enough. While there is clearly a need to think strategically for the reasons Jennifer has stated, it seems to me the marketing guys need to quantify how much revenue the company can expect from their strategic plan. So just how much more revenue will we get for building a better identity, or by building better relationships or by broadening our market reach? Otherwise those of us who are last to get paid when revenue is down, are left with this notion that while strategic planning seems to feel good, no one whats to raise their hand and commit a dollar amount. Any thoughts?

Hi Jennifer

My career is also focused around strategic marketing but i did not set out for it to do so. Due to this, i have seen many companies, varying in both size and nature of business, approach their marketing in many weird and 'wonderful' ways. I cannot provide the reason it appears that strategic marketing does not have the same presence as it did but can offer some suggestions.

There has been an exponential growth of marketing tools, marketing companies and the subsequent number of professionals the industry now attracts (Marketing now accounts for 4.5% of our workforce in the UK) and it can be seen that a majority of these professionals end up specialising in a specific marketing function as opposed to getting involved in and learning the strategy planning process.

I also believe it has become a lot harder for marketing decision makers to make strategic plans due to them not having received the relevant education - more of an overview at best in most cases. And, certainly within the markets i operate, there is an increased high pressure focus on quick, measurable RoMI which often does not allow the Marketer to plan too far forward.

One further point is that maybe, due the size of the industry, it makes it a lot easier for professionals to job-hop to better offers after a relatively short amount of time, providing no time for a proper strategy to be implemented. Then they are replaced and, rarely do successors continue with an existing plan so, a new plan is developed. And so the cycle continues.

I recently left an industry leading manufacturer. This definately is happening there! After a significant change in top management, the mood has gone from that of planning (although I'll admit we never had real long-term plans) to a reactionary system with no stategic planning.

It is tragic and several management personnel have left. It is still a great company and will prosper, but not to the level it could with proper planning.

Right on the dot Kelly! It's always the "next better promotion" at many companies.

But here is another possibility. Most managers are promoted from the ranks (as per good HR practices) and if they do not wean themselves out of the "execution" mentality and start to learn how to plan strategically, you get a management that cannot see beyond the next big program.

Plus, it is easier to say "Give me my bonus, here's the results this year." than to talk about how your strategic plan will make the company #1 in 5 years.

I'm a big believer in strategic marketing, but it requires discipline and hard work...and a lot of leadership. When leadership is constantly focused on putting out fires, it's impossible to get the rest of the team to slow down and do the hard work of strategic thinking. I liken it to a shipwreck...we're treading water and we're in sight of the life raft, but since no one is drowning at this particular moment, no one wants to swim to the life raft and expend the effort required to climb aboard. Life would be easier in the raft, but we all just tread water instead.

Another reason for forgoing strategy in marketing is "fear." Strategic marketing results in making hard choices; distillation of messaging, prioritization of action and narrowing the targets. Many business leaders are afraid that if they make these choices, they may miss business growth opportunities that could have potentially resulted in more revenue from other markets or actions. So the solution is in the proof of success from those fast-growing companies who have demonstrated that strategy-first works.

Sad but unfortunately all so true. And then how many comapanies align their communications strategies with their business objectives?
Randy

I think that there are so many business startups that are copying what others are doing without an understanding of strategic planning.

Ralph: You are absolutely right. Gone are the days that marketers can avoid providing ROI metrics. I have found that it is imperative that I provide my clients with realistic ROI expectations, as well as an education on the harsh realities of reach, frequency and duration.

If you're a marketing practitioner at a company that isn't aligning its communications strategy with its business objectives, you're at a company that doesn't understand or value marketing, or that has the wrong person at the top. It's the role of the senior marketing leader to align and direct the marketing department to help meet the organization's objectives, and to develop, communicate and execute the strategy to do so.

I like the comments from Cindy Lieberman, but this is definitely easier said than done. Case in point, in my current organization we have a very hands-on CEO who doesn't believe in strategic business planning. It is pretty impossible to market strategically...if their isn't a corporate roadmap to tie into. These things can't happen inside of a marketing department vacuum, since the rest of the organization from operations, to sales to customer service needs to be on the same page. The most essential thing for any organization is to make sure that ALL employees from entry level to senior buy into the corporate vision and goals, and all activities tie into driving bottom line growth and the overall strategy.

Jaded has a very good point, in my opinion. Having a CEO who does not believe in strategic planning is a killer for strategic marketing. I don't believe strategic marketing can be done in a vacuum without strategy at the CEO level. Paul Barsch and I were having an email exchange offline earlier this week discussing how many businesses are not strategic today. I also think it is very hard to get a CEO to be strategic and plan IF that CEO is not a visionary and has never been strategic. I see many CEOs in technology who are not strategic business thinkers but engineers by training and all about marketing the technology, and the product and can never think strategically.

On another point, Ralph asked earlier about brand building and how to "establish" what revenue can be associated to brand building. I direct you Ralph to a current article in Business Week's August 6, 2007 issue where there is a special report on the Best Global Brands and Interbrand's report. I don't have a link to it. Maybe others can provide it, but it answers some of your questions.

Here's the link to the BizWeek article on assessing brand value: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_32/b4045421.htm
As you'll read, the methodology is fairly subjective. It's important to note that other branding agencies have their own, proprietary methods. Interbrand's just done a better job of marketing theirs!

As far as getting a hands-on CEO to think and plan strategically...what I'd do is ask the right questions (why are we doing this? what do you want to have happen? where do you see the company in five years? etc.) and draft the strategy yourself. Then at least there's a working document your CEO and other execs can react to. It will be much better than having nothing at all....

Thanks, Cindy, and those are good questions to get started. You are right, much better than nothing at all.
Also thanks for the link, and you are right on Interbrand..they are good at marketing themselves, but the article is also recent and fairly straightforward I thought.

Yes, I've experienced the push for operational and execution execellence. Plan, do, measure with only the briefest of strategic directions to start. Luckily, my current MD is now asking for senior management to start putting anecdotal to one side and to employ more research and science behind their directional thinking and strategies. He's asking 'why' and 'what if' more and it is beginning to perculate down into other conversations. So I'm now leading a team that is hearing strategic issues more often, as well as dealing with programme execution. Hope it lasts.

My company regularly provides clients with tactical marketing pieces. In 2006 we began to notice a trend in which clients wanted the strategic marketing component as a value-add to their pieces (read: free). We began adding strategic consulting and planning to our capabilities, but have found it difficult over the past year to achieve success in selling these services.

I agree Jennifer, when clients are questioned about their strategic goals for growth, most of them don't know the answer. Many of them are concerned about the task at hand and its ROI.

There are so many great comments to this entry, I'm glad this discussion is taking place among marketing professionals.

From my humble perspective, those marketers who focus on tactics and don't have a strategy are like doctors who operate first, then figure out if you have a medical problem. I was on the faculty at Stanford years ago when I watched the faculty at a retreat focus on tactics and Jim Collins (Built to Last, etc.) who was a colleague of mine at the time, stood up to say that we were letting tactics drive strategy, not the other way around. I guess this is a common occurence in companies, as well, but I'm sure glad my doctor doesn't act that way.

It's difficult to develop strategic marketing if you are unaware of the strategic direction of your company. In my experience (mostly B2B), marketers are left out of strategic discussions by CEOs who consider marketing to be "fluff." B2B CEOs, who seldom have a marketing background, are also unaware of the power of strategic marketing. Hence a disconnect that is fatal to good, strategic marketing. Alas, this is nothing new...but I think the situation is slowly improving as the C-suite and marketers put more emphasis on accountability.

Merry, as I thought about your comment in that many B2B marketers are left out of strategic discussions by CEOs, i reflected on my experience as a marketer and realized that I do think MOST of my more challenging historical marketing experiences when I was kept out of strategic marketing discussions were in the B2B space. However, I also agree with you that it is changing and slowly getting better. Laura, as it relates to your point about selling strategic services, I have always found that if you can lead the clients from the strategy to the tactics, in that you create the marketing plan for them from the strategy that it is a heck of a lot easier to sell strategy. The plan is what they are buying despite the fact that one could never get to a plan without the strategy.

A problem I have seen with strategic marketing planning is failure adapt to new tactical opportunities. By nature, tactics can race ahead of strategy. The pace of new tactical opportunities is accelerating very quickly. A great example is all the new variations of social marketing. It can take on a life of its own that quickly moves beyond strategic boundaries. One solution is to create a more nimble strategy that's not framed by convention.