Welcome to Marketing Chronicles. A newsletter where marketers come for expert industry commentary at the intersection of strategy and creativity — every Wednesday sent before daybreak. If you like what you see, join us for free.

In this edition:

• Column: What Marketing Strategy Is and Isn’t

• Inspiration: Globant Argentina B2B Ads

Column: What Marketing Strategy Is and Isn’t

Marketing strategy is an obscure word that most people outside of marketing (and quite a few within the industry) don’t quite understand what it means.

But for someone who makes a living doing marketing strategy, this is a topic of particular fervor for me.

So, let’s start with the biggest mistake that I see 9 times out of 10 being committed by marketers, which has led me to want to begin writing more about it:

Marketers have a stubborn habit of thinking tactically about their marketing strategy.

You heard that right.

Tactics Are Not Strategy

Sounds obvious, right?

But no, this is the biggest misstep in most marketing strategies I see around.

A marketing manager joins the team and is assigned to think strategically about the future of their brand. So, they begin planning by doing research (as they should).

But after research is where typically the wrong turn takes place.

Marketers get too excited about what they SEE in the market, and attempt to translate that into their marketing strategy.

“We should run search ads, film a YouTube commercial, and place some billboards around town!”

But the thing is — advertising is only the tip of the spear.

Mark Ritson has run some calculations around this, and estimates that only about 8% of marketing is communications.

This might blow some people’s minds given that the advertising industry has grown to become one of the most exciting places to work in, where top marketers get to wine and dine in the beaches of Cannes with celebrities and receive awards for their amazing creative work.

Yes — all of that: less than 10% of marketing.

Strategy Is What Enables Everything To Follow

So, what exactly is strategy, then?

To put it simply, marketing strategy is a series of decisions of what you will NOT do (leading you to a shortlist of things that you, then, MUST do) to drive the growth for your brand.

There are 3 key questions a marketer must answer in their plan:

1. What are we trying to achieve (objectives)

2. Who are we targeting (audience)

3. How are we showing up (positioning)

4. BONUS: How much it will cost us

Sounds over-simplistic, but you’d be amazed with how many marketing plans I see around that are not clear on:

• What they’re attempting to accomplish (no, “brand awareness” or “leads” aren’t pursuable objectives);

• Don’t understand who they’re talking to (no, Millennials isn’t a proper target audience);

• Haven’t claimed a position in the market (no, “we care for our customers” isn’t a distinct position), and;

• Most importantly, have no clue of how much they will need to spend to achieve said unclear objectives (no, carving out a small percentage of your yearly revenues is not how you build a marketing budget).

When we take a step back from our 200-slide decks and realize that we haven’t clearly answered the above, then what exactly have we spent talking about for the past hour in front of our CEO and CFO?

Don’t Trust Self-Proclaimed “Marketing Gurus”

I know, this might sound a little harsh, but I don’t intend it to come across that way.

I am deeply invested in the success of the marketing profession, so when I see these errors occurring over and over again everywhere I look, I take it to heart. We can have such great impact in our organizations!

But we’re coming up short in part because of a terrible culture in our industry of online marketing gurus that pretend to understand marketing by oversimplifying things.

With that, over the next few weeks I’ll write more deeply about this very topic. And not because I’m a marketing guru myself (please don’t ever call me that) — but because we’ve been fed way too much bullshit for way too damn long.

Bullshit that, quite frankly, has been costing the credibility of our line of work.

I want all of us to be able to drive value for our businesses not because of bad competition, but because our marketing strategies continue to raise the bar.

So, where should we start?

Start Here

As I mentioned earlier, there are 3 to 4 key questions we need to answer in our marketing plans. I’ve cheekily pinpointed what each of them are NOT. So, here’s what a clear objective might look like:

“Grow revenues from $2M to $2.2M by January 30th of 2025.”

That’s right: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound. SMART.

• S: Grow revenues

• M: from $2M to $2.2M

• A: a 10% jump in revenues

• R: revenues, not leads

• T: by January 30th of 2025

From there, then, as we begin to learn more through our qualitative and quantitative research, we might begin unpacking this commercial objective into behavioural and/or attitudinal objectives that ladder up to it:

• If I uncover that my brand isn’t clearly associated with my target audience’s challenges, under-indexing my the industry’s average by -10 points, then I could say that we need to “Improve brand relevance within the [target category] from 90 index to 105 index by December 31st of 2024.”

Yes, going deep and specific like this is scary. We’re putting stakes in the sand that we will get measured against.

But nothing puts a bigger smile on a CEO’s face than a marketer that goes for it, comes up short, understands what went wrong, course corrects, and confidently diagnoses the situation.

This is called yearly planning. Coming up with a plan, executing it, post-gaming, and course correcting for the following year. Run these cycles enough times, and the results start compounding (because chances are that your competitors aren’t doing it).

So, stay tuned for more. Over the next few weeks and months I’ll dissect each element of a marketing plan in deeper detail — not only to share best practices, but also to consolidate some of my learnings over the years.

I’ll be covering things like audience segmentation, positioning, budget planning, calendar planning, comms planning, and more.

📢 Community Shout Out

Interested in more marketing and advertising content or have unanswered questions? All you have to do is the following:

• Share this week’s newsletter on LinkedIn.

• Write something nice about it and add a question.

• Tag me on LinkedIn so I can see it.

I’ll answer it in the post comments and pick someone to give a shout out in my next column!

Inspiration: Globant Argentina B2B Ads

B2B marketing doesn’t have to be boring.

This is a brilliant series of ads that tap into what everyone is thinking about consulting… but doesn’t want to say it.

More of PPA:

• 🤝 Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn and/or X

• 🍻 Come by the WJ office for a brew

• 💌 In case you missed it:

  • Why Strategists Should Read Philosophy

  • The Strategist’s Paradox

  • How To Create Billboards That Drive Results

PPA