Due to the dynamic trends, time will come at a point in the organization when the marketing strategy has to be changed. Usually, this is brought about by some internal or external pressure, change, or disturbance. Change can be good – and often needed. However, the wrong change can put you in an undesirable path and lead to your downfall.
Well, in this article, I’ll briefly describe the three pillars that should affect your approach to change. These are the most critical factors for your success in adjusting your marketing strategy.
Data Gathering
When change is needed, something puts pressure on the status quo. Hence, the data or the market (these are not synonyms) are changing, and therefore you need to adjust your strategy to achieve your goals. The data can reflect a radical change in your marketing initiatives’ outcome to date, or you may be observing a shift in the market that requires a difference in your strategy. On the other hand, your current efforts will not continue and sustainable to support your pursuing goals.
The first step as a marketer is to get a good idea of data and identify what is going on in the market. Do you have traffic problems? Are you having difficulty converting? Is the market sensitive to a lack of demand? Are there any geopolitical concerns? Thus, some of these parameters are very strict, and others are more blurry. Either way, you can understand the world around you through the data that is available to you as a marketer. It would be unwise to make changes to your strategy without a perfect understanding and research of the data and the trends driving this change.
When you can build an excellent data collection (and understand it, too), you’ll gain confidence and clarity as you rehearse the next marketing strategy you plan.
Open Thinking
The second pillar of a change in strategy is both planning and allowing room for improvisation. I’ve called this section ‘Open Thinking’, but the word ‘open’ is misused in many contexts, so I prefer the phrase ‘think and execute quickly’ to clearly describe this approach. In the marketing aspect, we need to quickly think and execute tactics, making adjustments as we pursue the goal. This is the very essence of an “open” marketing effort.
Your confidence in your intuition is positively correlated with your ability to change your marketing strategy as you go along.
In general, we recommend not having a strategy that attempts to plan for more than 6-9 months. The reason is simple: change happens. And, as humans, we’re not good at understanding and dealing with potential changes. So we must create a process that will enable us to change – a plan that embraces change when necessary to pursue an objective effectively. When adjusting your strategy, think short term with long term outcomes and application. Consequently, there is an art to this approach, and there are tools that help define effective tactics and implementations of those tactics.
Strategical Execution
You may be wondering why execution is also mentioned in a strategic article at all. This is because an idea is only responsible for 1% of its success. In other words, talking is cheap, and most strategy is just talking.
Getting something moving is where a strategy comes to life. So, when considering adjusting your plan, you should have a keen sense of your ability to execute that strategy. There is no point in adapting your approach to tactics that require skills that you and your team do not have. You can gather or hire new staff for the new strategy. But for most businesses, I would say that your plan should consider the available resources.
In short, you need to consider the ROI before you make a change. If money wasn’t an issue, you could adapt to any marketing strategy you would like to. But this is not the reality. You have budgets, and you have limits, you have limitations. The strategy will be more vital, and probably more effective if you compare it to the costs of the resources required.
These three strategies will help you effectively adapt your strategy to market and data demand. Disregard any of these pillars for your death. Embrace them, and you will reduce risks and costs, while significantly increasing the chances of your marketing strategy succeeding.
