The Strategy of Strategic Thinking
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This document discusses the importance of strategic thinking for marketing campaigns. It outlines that the first steps are to understand the real client needs, understand the consumer, and understand the available tools. Content should then be created to achieve awareness, understanding, and meaning for the consumer. Potential issues should be planned for before launch. Ongoing attention is also needed as the market changes. The overall message is that good intentions require strategic planning to connect intentions with successful outcomes.
The Strategy of Strategic Thinking
- 1. everything with purpose If you don’t know how it works, why are you doing it?
- 2. everything with purpose THE STRATEGY OF STRATEGIC THINKING Presented By Chris Gostling, Momentum Visual
- 3. everything with purpose “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” - Proverb Good intentions. Great thinking creates good intentions. We plan strategically to connect intentions and outcomes, and not have them be random.
- 4. everything with purpose “Look before you leap.” - Chris likes proverbs I like proverbs. I like when someone takes a concept and expresses it in the most efficient way possible.
- 5. everything with purpose I want you to take away 3 things from this presentation There we go. Something more measurable. This is my good intention for you.
- 6. everything with purpose Understand Strategies Go beyond what to do and own “why we do this” Knowing what strategy to use is not enough. Understanding why and how to use a strategy will create a powerful plan.
- 7. everything with purpose Understand Strategies Go beyond what to do and own “why we do this” Understand Value Developing a strategy costs time. And money. And energy. Not having one costs more. If we know that doing something one way will cost us way more time and money in the long run, we often will regroup and plan things out better. Having a bad experience with a client and their social media identity can be like fighting with your synchronized swimming partner.
- 8. everything with purpose Understand Strategies Go beyond what to do and own “why we do this” Understand Value Developing a strategy costs time. And money. And energy. Not having one costs more. Understand Yourself Know what you’re good at. And what you’re not good at. And when to get assistance. We are not born being great at anything. Some things take time, others take hiring someone else. We are going work through a scenario today that hopefully will shine some light on how you each approach strategic thinking and social media.
- 9. everything with purpose Do Marketing Campaigns Dream? I have no idea if they do, but the people who create marketing campaigns do when they eventually get sleep. Producers of marketing campaigns, social media strategies, and brand identities want the best for the ideas and the executions of these ideas. What they dream about I like to call the ‘abilities
- 10. everything with purpose The Abilities Stability Sustainability Scaleability These are the abilities that we all want to see from our ideas. Stability, Sustainability and Scaleability.
- 11. everything with purpose The Abilities Stability - will it work Sustainability Scaleability Is your idea actually going to fly? Is it interesting? Do people get it? Will people care?
- 12. everything with purpose The Abilities Stability - will it work Sustainability - will it last Scaleability Everything has a shelf life. Brands can last for decades, campaigns for years sometimes, and fame for at least 15 minutes if we’re lucky. Is your idea going to last as long as you want it to?
- 13. everything with purpose The Abilities Stability - will it work Sustainability - will it last Scaleability - will it grow Some can argue that if something isn’t growing, it’s dying. By nature, marketing campaigns don’t tend to last. They either get forgotten, or they gain market share. A campaign that can expand and evolve is extremely valuable.
- 14. everything with purpose At Momentum we make the abilities a reality by breathing the same mantra into everything we do. To make things as clear as possible for both our clients, and our internal work at Momentum, we defined a clear mantra to work by.
- 15. everything with purpose Awareness Understanding Meaning Awareness, Understanding, & Meaning. This is our mantra.
- 16. everything with purpose Establish Awareness Understanding Meaning This is what most marketing campaigns strive to do. Make consumers pay attention. But this can be really challenging, depending on how many distractions stand between your message and the person you’re trying to reach.
- 17. everything with purpose Awareness Create Understanding Meaning A good marketer makes information make sense to everyone they’re trying to reach. A good marketer makes content as clear as possible for the lowest common denominator, without insulting their more astute audience. Understanding both the average comprehension level of your consumers as well as the most effective tonality for your message is extremely important.
- 18. everything with purpose Awareness Understanding Nurture Meaning This is the hardest one to make happen. Making something meaningful to someone else is more often than not, a selfless act. For a brand it means letting go of the reason they love their own product or service and inspire people to be proud of the reasons THEY love it. This comes from understanding the consumer, their behaviour, and the overall climate of the market you’re in. This is the tone that you set for your messaging.
- 19. everything with purpose Awareness Understanding Meaning When a marketing campaign can achieve all of these, success comes naturally. When one or more is missing, ideas fall short. Campaigns flop. The target audience hates It. Or worse, they don’t even notice it.
- 20. everything with purpose Ok, so where do we start? We’ve covered what you can get out of this. The goals of stategy, the abilities and an approach to strategy, Awareness, Understanding, & Meaning. Now lets explore the client.
- 21. everything with purpose LOVE ME- Perceived Client Need This is what our clients want to say to their potential clients. This is not strategy. This is creepy.
- 22. everything with purpose ENGAGE WITH OUR BRAND BUY OUR STUFF TELL YOUR FRIEND- Actual Client Need Now this is tangible. This is realistic. We can actually succeed or fail at these goals. Identifying the actual client need is the first step to developing a strategy.
- 23. everything with purpose Understanding The Consumer To reach the consumer you need to understand how they process the content they are exposed to.
- 24. everything with purpose Understanding The Consumer Filters We either let information in or we don’t. This is from a combination of interest, comprehension, and overall loudness of the information in question.
- 25. everything with purpose Understanding The Consumer Filters Distractions Assuming we are focused on the consumer who has filtered the content in, the next consideration is distractions. These are the things that can take the attention of the consumer you are trying to connect with. These are in the form of other marketing efforts, personal relationships, and the noise level of society.
- 26. everything with purpose Understanding The Consumer Filters Distractions Engagement Threshold Even a connected consumer has a breaking point. The engagement threshold of the consumer is very important to be aware of in any strategic plan. Too little or too much content will disengage the consumer. The challenging thing is the threshold range changes and figuring it out is trial and error most of the time. This is why watching how consumers respond to content is valuable.
- 27. everything with purpose Understanding The Tools Once we have a solid understanding of how consumers think and act, we get into the arsenal of tools we get to use to reach and connect with them.
- 28. everything with purpose “Take this hammer and make me a pie.” - Your Client Every person in this room has received a variation of this. You have the wrong tool for the task at hand.
- 29. everything with purpose The biggest challenge with social media marketing and strategy is that the tools all sort of look the same.
- 30. everything with purpose The creators of these tools tell us all of these numbers matter. And the client goals have become driven by how these tools work and less by the goals they would have if they were in a room with these people and not distracted by the digital.
- 31. everything with purpose Plan for disaster, then dress for dinner. We throw parties and we hope for 75% of the invitees to show up. We send direct mail and hope 3% of it gets open. We create banner campaigns and high five our media companies when we receive a 6.5% click through rate. How about if no one comes, or if someone writes a scathing letter about your environmentally irresponsible DM campaign?
- 32. everything with purpose I don’t have all day. - You Applying methodology to content creation and management takes time, and effort. It may seem daunting, but I assure you nothing takes more time and effort than cleaning up a failed social presence. Besides, as with anything, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
- 33. everything with purpose Establish Awareness Create Understanding Nurture Meaning Take a moment and think about a current project you’re on. Do all of its various elements, ideas and actions achieve this trifecta? Whatever the industry, whoever the consumer – if you want a project to succeed, you need these three elements present. Every single time.
- 34. everything with purpose Let’s do this. I have handed out cards that represent the stages of a well strategically thought through campaign. Let’s work together to find the order that they need to go in to work.
- 35. everything with purpose Client Profile Local restaurant. Great menu Live music weekly Cool atmosphere. On a street that is one block away in three directions from their desired consumers. Here is the client profile. At this point we can start the process. You all have the tools to get this going. What is the first step? ** Confirm Real Client Need**
- 36. everything with purpose Confirm The Real Client Need Refresh the tired brand identity Become a destination restaurant Become top of mind for locals Sell more food/drinks Must not cost a fortune Once we pass the “love me love me” stage, we get down to some tangible goals we can actually work towards. Now where do we go from here? ** Understand The Consumer**
- 37. everything with purpose Understand The Consumer Seek genuine & local experiences Will pay for quality Aspire to be cool & original Regular contact is positively received Identifying the filters, distractions, and engagement threshold of this consumer will give a clear picture of how to approach them. Now what? **Understand The Tools**
- 38. everything with purpose Understand The Tools Facebook Vimeo Menu Website Street Postering Campaign A strategy starts coming together once we have pulled these pieces together. At this point we would start actually generating content. This could be design, copywriting, storyboards, or a promotional strategy.
- 39. everything with purpose Don’t lose the forest for thetrees Once you have established a solid strategy, and it’s time to create content, our biggest challenge is staying organized so our planning is executed to match our intentions. Having to compromise because we didn’t plan thoroughly is frustrating.
- 40. everything with purpose Awareness Understanding Meaning As you are creating this content we are needing to constantly think about the trifecta
- 41. everything with purpose Establish Awareness You’re not going to talk to your audience on Pinterest if they’re not actually on there. If establishing awareness is important, what question should we be asking? **Will the consumers take notice?**
- 42. everything with purpose Establish Awareness Create Understanding If your message isn’t clear, your audience won’t know what to do with it. What question do you have to ask? **Does the content make sense to your audience?**
- 43. everything with purpose Establish Awareness Create Understanding Nurture Meaning I know “meaning” is a little conceptual. You can picture the philosophers staring at Facebook screaming WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? This is not what I am thinking here. Anyone see a question we would actually want to ask to confirm we are nurturing meaning? **Does the content matter to this consumer?**
- 44. everything with purpose Ok, so now I have this epic content made for tools that our customers love more than butter. Now what? This is a great place to be. You’ve got a calendar full of engaging content that establishes and supports all brand goals. Mission accomplished? Not quite yet. **Establish plan for worst case scenarios before launching**
- 45. everything with purpose Disaster Planning (whatifs) Bad Press Consumer Complaints Supply Challenges Human Error Poor Response If you don’t have even a glimmer of answer for any of these things, you have not thought things through enough. A lot of factors can threaten a campaign, and it’s your job to research and discuss up front with your client what those threats might be.
- 46. everything with purpose Then pay attention. Social media changes as fast as we can push it around. Consumer interest changes, more interesting and pressing things come up, other brands get noisy.
- 47. everything with purpose “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” - Proverb We create these magnificent intentions for our ideas. We are not always correct. We mean well. Our clients pay us because they have faith in our ability to succeed and help grow their business. We simply need to be mindful that intentions without planning is just dreaming. Strategic thinking is the best way to see an intention or idea become a successful reality.
- 48. everything with purpose “Thank You.” - Chris