Key strategies for senior marketing professionals

These key points are repeated again and again in new jargon from one writer to the next. New trends come and go. New markets and new products define how we live and old ones disappear without us even noticing. It's logical therefore, that business strategy becomes, more and more, nothing more than common sense.

Common principles

So what are these common principles that span all markets? Well, these are simple and can be grouped into a few core areas. These areas include:

• know your market,
  
• know your consumer,
  
• know your competitors,
  
• know your customer,
  
• know your resources,
  
• know your suppliers,
  
• know your business partners, and
  
• mostly, know your brands and your people.

Know them not for the last six months but for the last six years to extract the best strategic utility from them. This also implies that good strategies have good results but good strategies applied consistently over time have spectacular results.

If this is true and so simple, then why do so few get it right? The answer is that we are a world focused on instant gratification. We want results now, not in 10 years time. When we invest in a brand as shareholders we don't want to see profits trickle in after three years. We want spectacular results real quick.

This can happen but when it does, it is a windfall, not the norm. For the most part, building businesses is about the long-term process of building brand equity. It is not quick, nor easy, as it needs to be done in an ever-changing landscape that we call the marketplace.

Five critical areas

So, then, let us discuss how these strategic foundations for success are laid. There are five critical areas of foundation building amongst many to ensure a successful platform for marketing strategies:

1. People

The appropriate people are required to be working at all levels of the organisation. These people must be encouraged, supported and nurtured at all times. They must be recognised for their innovation and forgiven for their failures. In this manner, their collective experience is retained within the organisation.

The most successful marketing departments always appear to have one thing in common. Staff turnover is low and people from other companies desire to work for the organisation. The most successful marketing department I was ever in had an average tenure of service of eight years. This is how brand continuity is ensured.

It takes time to truly understand a market and the brands. It takes time to gain the experience of what can and won't work. When we make mistakes, we must analyse them not bury them. The culture of the organisation must support this for people to develop, grow and ultimately add incremental value to the organization at a later time.

2. Brands

A close second because people do leave. Your brands will always be there to depend upon if you take care of them. Brands under the guidance of research and experience need to continue to innovate and develop, just like people to remain relevant, and contemporary, whilst remaining true to their personalities and promises.

If this is done well, then over the long term brands can become icons of societies like Black Cat Peanut Butter, Panado, or Bakers Biscuits. These icons can withstand hard times when advertising budgets are small and flourish again later.

3. Relationships

With the right business relationships, our organisations thrive. Put a poor relationship person in a key position looking after an important supplier or customer and the whole business could suffer. Relationship building is also only truly leveraged when people remain with the organisation for longer periods of time.

4. Risk

It is fair to say that the biggest risk in business is to take no risk at all. As mentioned about people above, risk taking that is researched and calculated is critical to the future growth of business. People in the organisation must be encouraged and rewarded for innovation and not punished if it fails. I am a marketer who has made mistakes and can say, in all honesty, that my failures taught me more than my successes.

5. Strong leadership

The final piece of the foundation. When people are grouped together, all striving to achieve their organisational goals, they need decisive leadership to avoid conflict.

Leadership is required to make strategic choices that will affect all staff. A poor leadership decision can end the organisation, but even a good decision requires leadership to get staff to rally around the leader to ensure an effective implementation.

Once the strategic decision-making process has been done the effective leader becomes the chief energiser of that organisation. Seeing this in action is one of the most inspiring things I have ever experienced. It breeds success and success itself becomes a multiplier of further success. A true leader cannot be measured in the short term. Any leader can look good in good times. A true business cycle that can take as long as ten years will demonstrate the true leaders from the riders of luck and timing.

With these basics of business strategy in place, the organisation is now uniquely positioned to create impactful and relevant marketing strategies. Strategies of success for its brands in its unique and changing marketplace. But mostly, strategies that will ensure the long-term sustainability of the organization and its stakeholders.