Look at your media strategy after you think about your business strategy

A client contacted me this week for ‘some quick advice’ on his media strategy (BTW I have no problem with anyone asking me for ‘some quick advice’)

“Hey, Phil, you know about LinkedIn, we want to advertise on there….”

Woahhh, just a minute, hang on. What? You’ve gone straight in like that? Your media choice has already been decided? And, why do you believe that you want to use LinkedIn?

After a few simple questions, it was quite obvious that
a) no real media strategy had been formulated
b) no real (focussed) target audience had been identified (“oh, any business” – once queried this wasn’t the case either)
c) no targets had been set
d) and of course no budget had been set

I offered a few suggestions off the top of my head in the discussion, that almost certainly fitted better what he was trying to do; local business press PR, local press PR, Search Engine PPC, online groups, existing database marketing…… and that was without any real structured thinking.

I’ve also recently heard the statement ‘we must be on social media’….. well you may well indeed need to be, but not just because you believe you ‘should be’. Again, no thought on any type of fit with a strategic plan. Many years ago, when I worked in an Advertising Agency, rather than ‘social medua’ it was ‘TV’; clients always came in saying ‘we want to be on TV’.

This way of picking the media before the strategy is simply looking down the telescope from the wrong end. Classic ‘horse before the cart’. But before you beat yourself up about it, it’s very common.

The better way to approach it is to think about your strategy (products/aims/targets/audiences etc) FIRST. Then when you have a strategy in place you can identify how your marketing can deliver on that strategy. And ONLY THEN can you identify the best marketing mix to deliver on that strategy. The answer may well include ‘social media’, but now you know why you are using it and what it can deliver and how it can contribute to your business strategy.

And whenever you are discussing media (social or otherwise) the very first thing you need to look at is your target audience, because that’s why you use any type of media; to get in front of a target audience. As an old client of mine recently said ‘Without knowing your target audience, any marketing spend is simply like throwing darts at a dartboard in the dark, and after someone has spun you around a few times’.

However, building a clear and concise business strategy takes time, and as your business grows, sometimes ‘running the business’ gets in the way of doing so. You need to set aside the time to do it (and want to do it!)

What Next?

If you’d like to discuss any of the issues mentioned above or would like to discuss how I could help with your business strategy, or you simply feel that you need a chat with a Business Sounding Board, then please give me a call. or if you’d prefer you can WhatsApp me, drop me an email or connect with me on LinkedIn. Details are below.