♟️Your Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategies
Ready for sustainable success? My recipe with 3 steps for successful (green) marketing strategies. The perfect introduction as a practical guide.
Hi 👋 I’m Florian Schleicher. This is the FutureStrategies newsletter of FUTURES. Thank you so much for reading along 💚 If you want to learn strategic marketing from me, then my Simple & Sustainable Marketing Academy is the perfect fit for you.
Marketing without a strategy is like cooking without a recipe.
It can go well.
Can go very wrong.
What makes the difference?
Experience.
Or luck.
This article is for all those who prefer to rely on experience.
Here I describe my ultimate guide:
1️⃣ Why successful marketing needs a strategy
2️⃣ What 3 steps a marketing strategy consists of
3️⃣ How we can ensure that marketing is sustainable
And at the end of this article, there is a gift on how I help you improve your strategy. But I only have 3 places this time.
One more note before we start:
This article consists of my learnings and experiences from over 15 years of marketing strategies, hundreds of marketing projects, and a lot of reading and conversations. So this is a lot of knowledge that I have acquired myself. It wasn't easy for me to say "Okay, I'll share this with everyone now." So I'm happy if you keep that in mind when you read this article and use the learnings for yourself. ❤️
1️⃣ Why does successful marketing need a strategy?
The core task of marketing is to identify unfulfilled needs and desires.
And to create value (products and services) with which long-term profit can be achieved in the target market.
If marketing does not fulfill this, then it is not marketing.
An Instagram account that has no impact on sales ≠ Marketing.
A press release that doesn't generate any downloads ≠ Marketing.
A newsletter that doesn't convert readers into customers ≠ Marketing.
78% of a group of 1,200 CEOs think that marketeers often lose sight of what their actual job is. I felt the same way at times in my role at McDonald's, Greenpeace and Too Good To Go.
And that is precisely why successful marketing needs a strategy. One that constantly reminds us of what we are actually doing and how and why we are doing it.
If marketing has the task of selling, then simply put, strategies have the task of getting us from A to B.
And in the most effective way.
Without a strategy, the goal, the vision, or the reason why we are taking action fades into the background. Actions are taken, but they are not stringent and do not contribute to the bigger picture. There may be a vision, but no goals derived from it. Goals are set, but only sometimes achieved.
The "strategy" I hear most often is "growth".
But growth is a direction. And not a way of dealing with a challenge. Many companies think goals are a strategy. But unless a "strategy" consists of "A" and "B" and then addresses how we bridge that gap, it's not a real strategy.
If you're thinking: "Oh wow, my company doesn't have that either!" - Don't worry, many companies do.
Richard Rumelt, strategist and author of "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" writes:
“The first natural advantage of good strategy arises because other organizations often don’t have one. And because they don’t expect you to have one, either. Instead, they have multiple goals and initiatives that symbolize progress, but no coherent approach to accomplishing that progress other than ‘spend more and try harder.”
I've been working with large corporations and small start-ups for many years now and many of them don't have a real strategy. Or as an acquaintance who works in a large company once told me:
“Wir sind groß genug, dass wir uns nicht wirklich eine Strategie überlegen müssen.”
Shocking, right?
2️⃣ What 3 steps does a marketing strategy consist of?
A strategy is nothing more than a way of dealing with a problem. A strategy always consists of 3 steps and begins with the analysis of a problem - the challenge that we want to solve.
For us and our customers.
There are hundreds of models, but I particularly like working with Richard Rumelt's model because it is simple, expandable, and can be adapted to all companies.
A strategy consists of three steps:
A diagnosis - the WHY
guidelines - the HOW
and coherent actions - the WHAT
🔎 Diagnosis - the question of WHY...
The first step is a clear understanding of our "A". The place, the situation, the challenge - in other words, where we are right now.
Many people like to jump straight to the future or the actions. But without a razor-sharp diagnosis, we could completely miss the actual goal.
To return to the cooking allegory: If we don't know who and how many guests are coming to dinner, we can't decide what and how much to cook.
“You can‘t understand the future unless you understand the pattern that got us here.“
Rita J. King, Futurist & Business Developer
How do we do that?
In strategy processes, I like to work with a diagnostic model that combines macro, micro, supply, and demand levels:
I'm a big fan of stories from ancient Greece. There was the Oracle of Delphi, which people went to when they were looking for answers to all kinds of questions in their lives.
"Gnothi seauton!"
“Erkenne dich selbst!”
Not as a question, but as a basic requirement.
Before we can find answers, we need to know who we are. Who our company is. What products we manufacture. What trends are affecting our market.
“To run successful business, you have to know what’s going on: In your company, on the market, in society, politics, on planet Earth, in the universe.”
Christopher Quarch, Philosoph
In my opinion, the most important step - and often the most underestimated one - is the analysis of the customer.
9 out of 10 start-ups fail because they don't have a product-market fit. I have written a detailed article about this here - if you haven't read it yet, I recommend you continue there before reading on here.
Simply summarized - without understanding the target group, we can end up like Oscar Wilde:
“The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.”
So we always have to ask ourselves what problem our target group has before we can understand how we can solve this problem for them. My recommendation here is to always tend towards the smallest possible niche and then grow from there. This was also part of our success when we created the Too Good To Go marketing strategy: Start small and expand from a core.
Do you think your strategy needs an overhaul or repositioning?
That's exactly what I specialize in with my marketing studio FutureS.
Simply contact me or arrange a free introductory meeting.
Why is it so important to start with the target group?
I have taken the liberty of adapting the quote from design expert Ken Haemer:
“Designing a Strategy without an Audience in mind is like writing a love letter and addressing it ‘to whom it may concern’.”
Nothing happens without a reason and usually not without a need. Only when people have a reason to act they do act.
We have to find this reason.
I have already described how this works here:
🎯 Guiding principles - the question of HOW...
The guidelines give us an approach for overcoming the obstacles mentioned in the diagnosis.
They are like a signpost.
Give us a direction.
But not the details of our journey.
In my projects, these guidelines always consist of two components:
A vision and/or mission that guides us.
Goals that help us turn this desirable image into reality.
Visions as the key to good marketing strategies
I have already written in detail here about the importance of visions, some examples, and how they can be written:
A very simple model in four steps to write a vision is for example:
We (the brand)
(make, enable, create)...
so that (people, customers, the world)
... (what problem our products and services solve)
What time horizon am I talking about?
Here's a little story I read the other day in Dorie Clark's book, The Long Game:
“My friend Martin Lindstrom is a top branding consultant and advises one of the world's royal families. The monarch pulled him aside during one visit: ‘Mr. Lindstrom,’ he said, ‘don't be short-sighted. I want you to think in the long term.’ ‘How long?’ ‘We're not interested in the next couple of months,’ the ruler told Martin. ‘We don't make quarterly earnings announcements. We don't even operate with a midterm horizon of five or ten years. We operate with a lifelong horizon, one generation at a time. In your strategic branding work for my family, if one generation does well, you've accomplished your job.’”
This perspective has become very rare nowadays.
But this is exactly how brands are created.
The second component of guidelines is objectives.
Most marketing managers have no problem defining goals. Models such as SMART (Simple, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed) are well known. Many are also familiar with the approach of defining three levels: How much? Which direction? Which methods?
In my projects, however, I go one step further.
I recommend defining only 2-3 marketing goals for the next 6 months.
Why only 2-3 goals?
Quite simply illustrated - if we define 12 goals, we will make progress in all areas and distribute our attention evenly.
However, if we define 2-3 goals as part of our marketing strategy, we will make great progress in these areas and feel the effects.
6 months is also a time horizon that is more tangible and allows us to adjust our focus after 26 weeks at the latest.
If there is a secret recipe in marketing and marketing strategies, it is the focus.
I like to work first with questions and then with the formulation of goals:
Our vision is "We want to achieve X for Y".
Now we ask ourselves, "How could we achieve X for Y?", "What steps will bring us closer to this vision?", "How would we know that we are creating added value for our customers?".
And then we formulate concrete goals from this.
How we measure our success will determine who we are as a company.
It's not for nothing that the saying goes:
“What you measure matters.”
🤹 Actions - the question of WHAT & WITH WHAT
Now we've done it, we can think about how to bring our marketing strategy to life.
“Coherent actions are feasible coordinated policies, resource commitments, and actions designed to carry out the guiding policy.”
Richard Rumelt
The most important thing is that this step follows the first two and does not start with the search for actions.
We only start cooking when we know who and what we want to cook for.
Here we can then give free rein to our creativity based on the springboard of diagnosis and guidelines.
I like to work with strategic frameworks based on which channels can then be selected. Strategic frameworks are psychological models that help us to define the meta-categories of our actions.
These include methods such as:
isolation
reciprocity
or social proof
So once we have determined what we want to trigger in our target group, we can finally decide which tool and which channel we want to use to do this best. From a content strategy for social media to public relations, out-of-home activities, TV and radio spots, landing pages, SEO, influencer marketing, and all other possibilities - this is where we decide what we will do specifically to successfully implement our marketing strategy.
And that's it - we have a ready-made marketing strategy that can be implemented.
I always develop such strategies together with my customers in workshops and feedback loops.
But one question remains unanswered:
3️⃣ How do we make our marketing sustainable?
In 2021, only 25% of all companies said they were proud to talk about their sustainability efforts in marketing.
Why is that?
Because most marketing strategies are designed for profit.
“Growth in and of itself is natural and justifiable in terms of helping a business stay sustainable. But when a corporation feels the pressure to make their fiscal numbers grow exponentially, this is where humans and the planet lose by always being deprioritized.”
John C. Havens, Director IEEE Planet Positive 2023
We therefore need to align our strategies with sustainability and thus position ourselves in the middle between profit, people and planet:
This means integrating sustainability as an essential component in all three steps (diagnosis, guidelines, and actions).
In the diagnosis, we therefore add another row to our matrix in which we add the influence we have on our consumers and the market and the resources we consume:
We ask ourselves questions like: What is our company's biggest footprint? What measures can we take to make the world a better place? What values do we stand for?
In the guidelines, we integrate at least one goal that contributes to the SDGs (UN Sustainable Development Goals). This can be a direct reduction in our carbon footprint, a reduction in the raw materials we consume, or influencing consumer behavior toward sustainable purchasing behavior.
I have already written here about behavioral changes in marketing, why they are so difficult, and how we can influence them sustainably.
Here are a few inspirations from B2B and B2C companies around sustainability goals:
In the campaigns, we consider dedicated measures that can sustainably change behavior outside of our core business.
In Too Good To Go's marketing strategy, for example, we shared zero food waste recipes on Instagram - something that had no direct impact on our sales and app usage but contributed to our vision of achieving a planet without food waste. Our multi-award-winning Often-good-after campaign was also designed with this in mind.
The result is genuine green marketing. With strategy.
I have analyzed a few more examples and the recipes for success here.
🎁 Conclusion and gift
Marketing strategies are like cooking.
That's what I started this post with.
And if you want to rely on experience instead of luck, then you need a recipe for your green marketing strategies. That's exactly what this post is about.
The correct sequence is: Diagnosis > Guidelines > Actions.
This is my guide to your marketing success.
I have put together these instructions over the course of hundreds of projects in the last 15 years. It is based on project experience and a lot of specialist literature.
And it works.
So save this post for your next strategy project.
Or send it to someone who will find it helpful.
Oh, and I promised gifts!
➡️ I am giving away 3 free consultations for marketing strategies.
45 minutes for your project, your company, your start-up.
Write me an email about your challenge and among everyone who takes part until September 13th 3 of you will receive an invitation from me 💌
In case you're late or looking for more inspiration:
In any strategic process, it's crucial to ask the right questions.
That's why I've listed 31 strategic questions about green marketing here, which may help you to work out your strategy.
A marketing strategy is the basis for every success.
Or as Aaron Orendorff, Editor in Chief of Shopify says:
“The greatest gift you’ll ever give your marketing is to say:
‘Stop. Let’s get the foundations right first, especially all the parts no one will ever see: positioning, guidelines, and infrastructure.’
Go slow to go fast.”
Thanks for reading,
PS: You can also read this posting in German.