Today I was scrolling through my social media feed and I saw somebody post something that made me stop for a second.
This person was talking about the difference between planning and strategy, and it kind of threw me a little bit because I’ve always thought of planning as a strategic activity. Many of the organizations that I have been part of required that it be strategic (engineers are funny that way) so I don’t break them into two different things, but I can see that some people might.
The post called out a difference between strategy and planning. Planning being a list of things to do and strategy as how to get something done.
I have to admit there are companies I’ve come across who aren’t being strategic with their marketing and it’s easy to discern that a to-do list was used but not a strategy on how to get to wherever they want to go.
I’ve referenced this in past blog and social media posts as the difference in being tactical vs. strategic. It’s essentially a different way of saying the same thing this social media post is saying.
You have a list of things to do, the tactics, but there needs to be a strategy driving them. If tactics aren’t tied to a strategy, it’s a problem because you don’t want to do marketing things for the sake of doing marketing things. That’s not a good use of your time and money.
It so happens we are in the part of the year that most companies are doing strategic planning for their marketing for 2025. I hope you are too – or at least you have scheduled a time to do your strategic marketing planning.
But there are some things that you need to know before you plan.
One of those things is:
What are you trying to accomplish?
This was what I felt was missed in the before-mentioned social media. Yes, you need to have a strategy but what are you trying to get done?
You’re doing marketing and public relations, what I like to call marketing communication, to help the business – not to make your marketing or communications team look good. The business that you work for or with has goals that they want to achieve.
It’s important to point out that not all those goals can be accomplished through marketing and communication.
If the business wants to build a factory, marketing and communication won’t help you do that.
If the business wants to create a new product, marketing and communication won’t help you do this either.
They’re not going to contact you or your team and ask, “What do you think about this? What do you think is the best way to build our widget?”
However, the marketing communication team can help sell the product and it can help recruit employees to work at the factory.
So, you need to know the goals of the business/organization you’re working with. Then you have to be able to connect your marketing and communication to those goals to help the company reach them.
The business wants to sell 10,000 widgets. What’s marketing s place in this because marketing does have a place in bringing awareness, interest, and creating trust to help the company do this.
Before you plan you need to know the why of the marketing, which are the goals of the company.
Second is that strategy piece. How are you going to help marketing-wise? What are you going to do help the company get to those goals?
If you don’t know these two things, you’re marketing, but there is no why or how involved in your marketing which means, you guessed it, you’re just doing marketing stuff for the sake of doing marketing stuff.
Everything you’re doing, every social media post, every blog post, every podcast, every video, and ad your team creates, should be helping the company meet a goal.
There are concrete reasons why you’re doing all these marketing tactics and you need to know those reasons.
If you don’t know you shouldn’t be doing any marketing.
As you go into your strategic planning for 2025, keep in mind why you’re marketing and how you’re going to help the business get to its goals.
That’s it for October 2024. Have a safe Halloween and I will see you again next month when I talk about using inputs to get better marketing outputs.
Special thanks to Corrie Oberdin for being my editor this month. 👊
* This is from my October 2024 newsletter. Enjoy it? Subscribe here.
- Stop Planning and Start Strategizing - October 24, 2024
- The Importance of Creating a Connection With Your Marketing - June 6, 2024
- Reach vs Visibility: Which is Right for Your Marketing? - February 13, 2024
