A 60 Second Guide to Marketing Strategy

Very few people understand strategy, most confuse it with goals or tactics so let's take a quick example to clarify.

Taking the correct strategic position in your market will naturally draw people to you as it should also naturally repel those not in your core market.

Defining a good strategy is more about exclusion than inclusion!

The less committed you are to do, too many things, the more committed you can be to doing the right things. The things that will make a huge difference to your bottom line!

For example:

You can apply this concept to any business but let me use golf as an example. I once did a consulting visit at a very difficult, 7,600 yard, Pete Dye golf club that felt sure that they were missing out on the women’s market, and wanted to include them in their marketing plan. This made no sense since the course was hard, the forced carries long, and the bunkers so deep most had steps. 

I suggested a marketing campaign slogan of, “Women, seniors, and sissies need not apply!” 

Not politically correct I know, but right on target anyway. There are simply some courses suited to women, beginners, and seniors and some that are not. All the PGA or USGA programs in the world aimed at inclusion are not going to change that.

Despite the fact, that the only real market the club had for repeat business, was better male, players, they simply refused to believe it. They went on to squander tens of thousands of dollars trying to attract people who should not have been playing there at all.

When they occasionally did attract some of these other groups they held up the entire course and hated the playing experience!

Your strategy must be congruent with your product and the service you can commit to providing to back it up.  

The narrower the market you aim to gain the easier it will be to point all of your forces, in that specific direction at the exclusion of all others. 

This is the essence of strategy: 

To focus your limited resources on providing more value than your competitor’s to a very specific market. Competitive strategy is about being different from your competition. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities, what you will do and what you will not do to deliver a unique mix of value to your customers!

This is the best definition I have ever read on strategy.

"Strategy is the necessary response to the inescapable reality of limited resources. No entity, regardless of size, has unlimited resources. Strategy, therefore, is about making choices on how we will concentrate our limited resources to achieve competitive advantage. All else follows from there." Carl Von Clausewitz

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