Posted by Frances Laing on Monday 8 June 2009
The importance of strategy
As we all continue to come under pressure for margins, budget, sales and results, it is hard to remember what your overall aim was going to be.
However at this time, perhaps more than ever, it is important to remain focussed on your strategy, understanding the long term goals as well as coping with the constant changes to your short term activities.
The key for a successful strategy is ensuring that there is still a degree of flexibility to allow for a changing environment. Think of it as planning your car journey - you set off with good intentions, maps, flasks of hot drinks, and a view as to where you want to make a pit stop. Then you hit a traffic jam on the roundabout that is the M25, and all your plans have to change. You still know where you want to be, and you have every intention of getting there, but your plans along the way may well have to change. The pit stop you had planned once you left the motorway may now need to be brought forward because you need a comfort break sooner rather than later. The original route you had planned could perhaps change to avoid some of the traffic jam. The important thing is that your end result is still the same.
For me, that is exactly how marketing should fit into a business strategy, rather than being a last minute plan. If you have corporate goals and aims, and your plans at the beginning of the year all show how beautifully they can be achieved when every wheel in the cog is well-oiled and the budgets all seem rosy, then you should maintain the same balance of holisticity (does such a word exist??) when things start to change. Marketing plans can be adapted, re-organised, re-costed, scaled down - but the goals that were there originally should remain. Short-sightedness in terms of on-going desires will give you short-sighted activity. It can be limiting, and even potentially damaging to your longer term aims.
It is tough to keep putting your head above the parapet in such tough trading conditions, but it is important still to allow yourself the luxury of a little thinking time every now and again, to ensure that your longer terms goals are still being considered and nurtured, whilst supporting the short term environment.
If you need some help with your strategic thinking, or have lost sight of your longer term goals, then give us a call, or read our website pages on strategy, to find out a little more.
In next week's blog, I'll be talking about measuring your strategy, and auditing what you have set out to do. Let me know if there is anything specific you'd like me to cover, and I'll try to help out!