How to implement marketing and advertising strategies?

There was once an ultimate question popular in the advertising circle: What is strategy? What is insight?

This seemingly simple question has stumped many senior marketers and advertisers, mainly because it is difficult to summarize this highly abstract concept in just one or two sentences.

What are the differences in the scope of responsibilities between strategy and execution in the field of marketing and advertising ? How do the competency requirements differ? Which is more important? What is the connection between them? How to define them precisely? And why don’t strategists do execution?

1. Insight is the underlying operating system of strategy

In the workplace, strategy has become an overused word. When reporting a plan, the boss will ask, "Please show us your strategy." When business is not going well, the boss will ask, "What is the strategy to improve performance?" When encountering a problem, the boss will ask, "What are some good solutions?" When setting goals, the boss will ask, "What are the strategies to achieve the goal?"...

From this we can see that there are many actual scenarios for the application of strategies, but directly asking others "What is your strategy" will often leave the other party confused; and if you can add a distinguishing word during the application, the other party will clearly know the nature of the strategy you are asking for: Is it a product strategy? Pricing strategy? Communication strategy? Advertising strategy? Media strategy? Channel strategy? Activity strategy? Interaction strategy? etc.

Since the concept of strategy is so inclusive and covers so many scenarios, in order to give a refined definition, we need to dig deeper into the first principles behind this word.

As mentioned earlier, we need to come up with strategies when we want to achieve goals, encounter problems, or improve our business. This means that strategies can provide the direction and thinking model for marketing development and are a top-level thinking system.

Therefore, Lao Pao’s definition of strategy is: clarify the direction and problems, and propose a thinking model to achieve the goals.

Strategy and insight are often mentioned together because insight is the underlying operating system of strategy, and a good strategy cannot be separated from accurate insight. Let me also answer the ultimate question in the advertising industry: “What is insight?” Insight can be succinctly summarized as: discovering the causes and reasons behind things.

In the field of marketing and advertising, marketing strategy, brand strategy, communication strategy, social operation strategy, etc. are strategic concepts that must be clarified:

Marketing strategy: solve strategic and competitiveness issues; including the marketing 4P combination, product strategy, price strategy, channel strategy, promotion strategy,

Brand strategy: enhance corporate influence and recognition; mainly includes several sections, brand positioning, brand image and personality, brand core values, brand user relationship, etc.

Communication strategy: enhance the breadth and depth of information transmission; including communication content (advertising strategy), communication means (media strategy, event strategy, public relations strategy), communication audience (interaction strategy)

Social operation strategy: deepen the connection between enterprises and users; mainly includes brand operation, user operation, content operation and commercial operation.

(Common strategic concepts in marketing advertising)

2. Jack Ma: Third-rate ideas plus first-rate execution

Jack Ma and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son once discussed the issue of strategy and execution: Which is more important, first-rate ideas with third-rate execution or third-rate ideas with first-rate execution? As a result, the two of them came to the same answer: third-rate ideas plus first-rate execution.

Execution is the specific implementation behavior after the strategy is formulated. Compared with the abstract concept of strategy, execution is easier to understand as "turning ideas into results through action."

Strategy is equivalent to the role of a military advisor in a war, while execution is played by the general. An excellent executor must be one who has accumulated battlefield experience through actual combat on the front lines, and has strengthened his comprehensive abilities in multiple dimensions, such as communication and coordination, resource integration, problem solving, adaptability, and sensitivity and attentiveness. At the same time, in the process of execution, he needs to stick to the big goals and directions, and implement the contents of the plan efficiently and with high quality.

Many people would think that execution is hard work that requires no brainwork, right? NO! This is a huge misunderstanding and disrespect to the executor. Execution tests a person's comprehensive qualities of mental, heart and physical strength.

For example, you are holding a trade fair in a square, and you have arranged small games and product introduction sessions on site. At this time, a rock band happens to be performing on the other side of the square. The unusual noise affects the development of the trade fair, and all the people in the square are attracted to the rock band.

Faced with such an emergency, what would you do if you were the executive person in charge of the trade fair? Would you postpone the trade fair? Take out the loudspeaker and give away free gifts to attract people? Negotiate with a rock band to turn down the volume? Or organize a joint event with a rock band to achieve the effect of 1+1>2?

(The band's activities interfered with the trade fair, but after negotiation and cooperation, we achieved the effect of 1+1>2)

What to do when encountering such uncontrollable situations is a great test of the executive person's comprehensive abilities in quick thinking, adaptability, communication and coordination, and event experience. If there is no long-term practical experience, facing such situations, one will often be helpless.

3. Strategists cannot execute

Going back to the title of this article , "Strategists should not do execution", it does not mean that it is a waste of time and has no value for strategists to do execution, but it means that most strategists are not capable of execution at all.

First, there is often a large gap between strategy and execution;

There are three main steps to completing a project: setting goals and strategies - planning detailed plans - and implementing them. The strategy outputs only the general direction and thinking model, which is then followed by the planning output system's implementation plan, and finally implemented by the executors. Between the pure strategists and executors, there also needs to be planners who can form systematic execution plans based on the strategies.

However, as the workplace increasingly values ​​the comprehensive abilities of employees, strategy and planning work are now often completed by the same person or organization.

Secondly, the capabilities required for strategy and execution are also very different;

Strategies require rich theoretical professional knowledge to support them, strong research, analysis and thinking skills, deep life experience, high vision and overall perspective.

Execution places more emphasis on overall planning, communication and coordination, resource integration, problem solving, adaptability, sharpness and carefulness, hard work and other comprehensive qualities that include mental, mental and physical strength.

4. How do strategists execute?

Strategists who go into execution often face frustration: Why can’t good ideas be implemented? Why can't simple problems be solved quickly? Why were emergencies not anticipated? Why is there such a big gap between the execution effect and the target? Why is communication and cooperation between people so difficult? etc.

right! These are the problems that strategists often encounter when they go about executing.

So how can strategists gain nourishment and enhance their physical sense during execution? How to execute the project better and more smoothly? Lao Pao has some experience to share, and I hope it will be inspiring to those strategists who are used to floating upstream.

Strategists, please bring your thinking model with you when you execute.

There are usually two ways to build your own knowledge system:

1. Learning methodology - deliberate practice - timely feedback - improving the knowledge system: learn and choose a set of methodology, guide practice based on the methodology, continuously improve and perfect the methodology in practice, and finally form a set of knowledge system of your own.

This method can enable you to improve yourself quickly and efficiently, and avoid detours in practice. It is more suitable for fields with more mature business models.

2. Form a prototype of ideas - actual test - sedimentation and innovation - build a knowledge system: form a variety of prototypes of ideas based on goals, first cognition and experience, conduct certification tests one by one in practice, sediment good ideas and methods, as well as new sparks generated in practice, and finally build a knowledge system.

The disadvantage of this approach is that there is a lack of clear direction in the early stages, which sometimes leads to half the result with twice the effort. It is more suitable for areas where the business model is relatively new.

The ultimate goal of doing anything is to gain knowledge and grow, so that our output per unit time becomes more valuable; if we have a clear thinking model in the process, we will often get the growth effect of one year being equivalent to 10 years of experience of others.

Strategists are responsible for execution, please calm down and solve the details

Strategists are accustomed to thinking about strategic and general direction issues, but in the process of project implementation, they may encounter more situations where many trivial matters emerge, many details need personal attention, and many personnel issues need to be arranged and communicated.

What you need to do at this time is to put away the arrogant heart of a strategist, prepare enough patience to do every little thing well, and solve every small problem in an orderly manner.

Strategists are responsible for execution. Please accept imperfections in practice.

Strategic planning is more about sorting out many exciting big ideas through powerful logic to form a systematic plan. It is in a very idealized state.

However, in actual implementation, it will be affected by many objective factors, resulting in some big ideas not being implemented as perfectly as planned.

This is actually a very common phenomenon. You must not develop negative emotions or self-denial just because a certain link is not executed perfectly. All we can do is to achieve the best result within our ability.

After the strategist has finished the execution, please come out of the execution and give feedback in time

It has been mentioned many times before that execution is a job that tests mental, mental and physical strength. For strategists who sit in front of the computer all year round to code PPTs, they often feel physically drained after completing the execution.

If you can strike while the iron is hot and go one step further than others, and promptly summarize and review the experiences, feelings, and shortcomings during execution, this is equivalent to completing a self-improvement closed loop from thinking model - deliberate practice - timely feedback.

Author: Lao Pao

Source: Laopao