Marketing Strategy Aligns Your Marketing to Your Business Goals

When people talk about marketing, a lot of the time they’re talking about marketing tactics. Social media, trade shows, websites, paid advertising, PR, and other marketing tools are critical for getting the word out about your business and your products, creating relationships with your customers, and ultimately driving sales.

But there’s another dimension to marketing that’s equally important, that sometimes gets overlooked in the busyness of executing all those tactics and the day-to-day work of running a company. While marketing tactics serve your business at a functional level, your marketing strategy helps you understand your marketplace, what value you bring to the table, and the internal capabilities of your company to improve long-term organizational performance.

Both these aspects are necessary to create marketing initiatives that successfully differentiate your brand and products, connect with your customer, and drive meaningful results for your business.

Activity without direction doesn't get you anywhere

In 2023 the Project Management Institute reported that a lack of clear goals is the most common factor for project failure. Even if your marketing team is working hard to plan and implement different marketing tactics, and even if those tactics are successful according to their own specific metrics, if the results of those activities don’t support the higher level needs of the organization then all of that work and effort and resources goes to waste.

You need a clear understanding of your operational environment, your organizational capabilities, how you deliver value to your clients, and what you’re trying to achieve to determine whether your marketing is providing value to your business.

A goal without a plan is just a dream

While it’s easy to pursue marketing tactics without knowing what you’re trying to achieve, it’s also easy to set high-level goals that are never accomplished. Research by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that 61% of corporate leaders failed to transform their strategic vision into reality.

It’s possible to understand what you need to do at a strategic level and put forward goals for your organization, but not put the pieces in place to really make it happen. The day-to-day of making your dreams a reality requires a detailed understanding of the different actions and processes needed and how those pieces are going to fit together.

You need to think about who needs to be involved, what activities they need to undertake, what resources will be required, and how it will all be managed to move from goals to success.

Marketing strategy aligns your activity to your goals

By developing a clear marketing strategy that connects your understanding of the marketplace, customer, and what your company needs to achieve with the details of tactical planning and execution, you put all the pieces in place to connect your marketing activities with your business objectives.

A marketing planning process that begins with your business goals and builds out specific objectives and success metrics for your marketing efforts allows you to develop specific plans for your marketing activities that ladder up to your overall goals.

It also provides you the clarity to determine which marketing tactics are a fit for your organization and assess the performance of your different marketing initiatives, so that you can focus your efforts on what matters for your business and improve your results over time.

How a fractional CMO can help

Don't know where to start? A fractional chief marketing officer like me can help. 

I work with my clients to develop marketing strategies that align their marketing activities to their business goals. From developing a brand strategy to position your company in the marketplace and connect with your customers, to marketing communications planning that designs marketing tactics to deliver against your business outcomes, to marketing management that ensures effective delivery of your marketing projects, I make sure your marketing efforts support the success of your organization.

I also provide planning and consulting services on a project basis to give you and your team clear strategic direction for your marketing activities. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more!

Make your marketing dreams come true

Aligning your marketing activities to your business objectives is critical to the success of your organization. By focusing on both marketing strategy and tactics, you can develop marketing initiatives that differentiate your brand, connect with your target audience, and drive meaningful business results.

With a well-defined marketing strategy, you can ensure your marketing efforts support the long-term success of your organization and make your business goals a reality.