10 rules to a better marketing strategy

Let’s get one thing straight – creating strategy isn’t easy. Or to be more accurate, creating good strategy isn’t easy. By good I mean the kind of strategy that gives you a tangible advantage over your competitors.

It seems curious then that so many marketers and their agencies make the process so much more difficult (and ineffectual) by ignoring the simple rules that underpin good strategic thinking – the rules followed by top strategic thinkers the world over.

The following represents 10 rules that I believe every marketer should consider before they get anywhere near a whiteboard marker or a PowerPoint deck. This is an abridged version of a longer paper I've put up for download in the new FREE STUFF area – you can download the PDF here.

1: Purpose

Before you plan, you must know as precisely as possible what you want to achieve. What does success look like? Check your assumptions. What is not the problem? This sounds obvious but is probably the one thing companies get wrong most often.

2: Initiative

You should act rather than react. Defend only until you can regain the initiative. Do everything you can to avoid becoming hostage to your competitors' activity.

3: Flexibility

Things always turn out different than you expect. No one can predict the future. Plan for contingencies. Hold fast to your overall aims and objectives but be ultimately flexible about how you achieve them.

4: Time

Time. Is it on your side? How does it affect your strategy? What would it take to act so fast that no competitor could successfully counter? Or can you play a waiting game if you have to?

5: Concentration

No one has endless time and budget. You should focus your resources. Seek to achieve superiority by concentrating on ever more finite goals. Only fight battles you can win.

6: Surprise

Refuse to be predictable. Keep your competitors off guard. Keep your customers guessing (Apple is the master of this approach). Be audacious. Look at how you can disrupt market conventions. What can you do to distract attention away from your competitors? Be sneaky.

7: Simplicity

As they used to say in aircraft design, “Keep it simple stupid.” A complex strategy is usually a poor strategy. It is best to work on the premise that whatever can go wrong probably will. With a complex, multipart strategy, there is simply more scope for things to go wrong.

8: Unity

Good strategies die in committees. Have a limited number of people making the decisions. Make sure those people are qualified to do so. But also ensure you have a diverse set of opinions so that you avoid the perils of group-think.

9: Morale

Simply, you must believe you can win. This means that you have to sell in your strategy to the wider organisation (especially sales). They need to believe in the approach so that they can get behind it. Too many strategies fail at the implementation stage because their creators forget this.

10: Asymmetry

Asymmetric strategies are those for which there is no credible response. They defeat the competitors’ strategic imaginations. They can best be summed up in a quote from the late Anita Roddick, “Do what others can’t or won’t.”

Download the full PDF here.