Your Marketing Strategy and Marketing Tools are Different, but Intertwined and Dependent
When asking people what their marketing strategy involves, sometimes you get an answer back that consists of “We use social media” or “We send out email campaigns via ________ email company”. Those are great things to utilize, but with the understanding that those things are tools to execute your strategy, not in fact the strategy itself.
Utilizing a marketing tool with no strategy in place is the equivalent to a construction worker blindly putting up walls wherever they feel like without following the predetermined building plans. A strategy encompasses the message your brand sends to customers, the organization of the products and services you represent, the audience you’re wanting to reach, your goals of growth and business development, the content you’re releasing and how those go towards your goals, AND last but not least – which arsenal of tools you are going to utilize to carry out your strategy. Having a well-formed plan means every one of your efforts is calculated with a purpose. This cuts down on the possibility of wasted time and money.
Example Time:
Let’s walk through a brief, simplified strategy plan and then identify which elements are marketing tools to execute the strategy.
Background:
Company XYZ is an adventure sports retail company and is gearing up for the summer rush. The company has three things they want to focus on outside of their normal day-to-day marketing strategy. They plan on partnering with a few other local companies to put on an event promoting the outdoors in their area to generate interest and pull new people into the world of outdoor sports. Item two is a big summer sale for a holiday weekend. Number three is raising the level of engagement with their customers on social media.
Campaign:
Company XYZ decides to run a summer campaign that incorporates all three of these main goals. The campaign is focused around a new line of mountain bikes set to launch for the 2018 summer season. They plan on centering their holiday sale around these bicycles, as well. Company XYZ will utilize a campaign slogan of “pedal your backyard,” and will be the theme that ties marketing elements together.
For the event they secured the part of the event that focuses on mountain biking and will set up a table at the start of a single-track path. They will have the bikes there for people to take them for a test run and more information about their store, everything else they carry, and their upcoming sale on the bikes they just tested. Their social posts will feature imagery of the line of bikes being ridden out in the wild accompanied with a #pedalyourbackyard tag. The other companies and sponsors involved will also share these posts to get a wider audience. Company XYZ will ask people to also take pictures of them mountain biking, tag the company, and also use the hashtag #pedalyourbackyard. The company will choose two pictures a week posted under these guidelines, and share them over the Company XYZ social accounts for their following to see (with photo credits). Print elements around the town and shop, media advertisements via local television news, newspaper, and radio are placed, email campaigns sent out through their database, and social media posts about the event are posted and sponsored to a local radius.
For the sale, they make all of their advertising focused around this line of mountain bikes, some specs on the bikes, and finishing by tying in the campaign slogan about being able to pedal your backyard. They send out the word via email campaign, social media posts, call out on their website (to visit in store for the sale), and an ad in the local weekly newspaper with store ads. They are still featuring #pedalyourbackyard customer photos via their social media throughout the entirety of their campaign twice a week.
Strategy and Tools to Execute Strategy:
Okay, so lets break these two events down. The goals of their strategy are boosting engagement from their social media following, selling a new line of mountain bikes, and generating interest from new crowds to get them involved in outdoor sports.
What were the tools they used to accomplish these goals?
Tool |
Tool’s Role in the Strategy |
|---|---|
| Email Campaign | Alerted current contacts of event and sale |
| Social Media | By engaging with their customers and sharing pictures of the customers riding their bikes, they boosted engagement of the customers interacting with them.
They alerted current and new customers of event to test the bikes and the sale. Heightened the interest in mountain biking and the campaign around it by keeping the posts focused. |
| Independent Print Elements | Posters around town and postcards on the counter in the shop subtly reminded people of the event coming up.
Ads in local newspaper promoted event and sale |
| Event | Raised awareness of the shop, brand, services/products, and upcoming sale.
Invited new people from the community to participate in new sports with guidance. Allowed current mountain bikers and new mountain bikers to test out the product to raise the level of interest in the line. |
| Voice Ad | Placed on radio to invite community to event
Interview with local news about upcoming event |
| Voice Ad w/ Imagery | Placed ad on television to invite community to event |
| Sale in Store | Limited time price reduction drove immediate sales on new line of mountain bikes
Increased foot traffic at the store. |
| Website | Lets customers find info on products, services, and how to get to store.
Call out on homepage raised awareness of sale event happening at the store. |
You might be surprised that I didn’t call out the #pedalyourbackyard hashtag elements as a tool. This could be fairly debatable whether or not it is technically a tool under the social media tool (and hashtags only work effectively on certain platforms), or a strategy on how you utilize the social media tool. Instead of drilling down into subcategories, I just gave a high level breakdown showing the difference between strategy and tool. I like to think of it in a “cause and effect” manner. If you want to do this, what tool(s) do you pull out of your tool bag to execute it? This doesn’t necessarily address how you utilize the tool, and that’s arguably another level of strategy that you’re applying to the tool. You can make campaigns as complicated and simple as you need, but it’s important to not lose sight of your goals and what tools you’ll use and why. Once you get that figured out, you can continue to drill deeper and connect the elements to get more bang for your buck.
Need Help Figuring Out a Campaign with Strategy and Tools?
With our tailored targeted campaign workshop, we’ll come on-site for two days to help walk you through the process of identifying the market you’re targeting and the guidance you’ll need to build an in-depth campaign that works for you. View Details
Subscribe to our blog:
