Stop the Drift

INSIGHT - HELEN BLAKE

It’s been a strange few months. For many companies, H1 seemed rather stalled, no doubt linked with the twists and turns of economic and business conditions.  It’s challenging for any business, for any leadership team, to keep fully aligned and focused in this fragmenting, reshaping world. 

With H2 under way, I do now see some elements re-emerging. One area that particularly concerns me though is that under the pressure of external factors, many businesses are leaping straight into communications. In other words, reaching for tactical answers to strategic challenges.

Resist the temptation

The temptation to jump straight to communications tactics can be hard to resist.  Inside out-led social media campaigns, content marketing and website redesigns can certainly be done quickly if the outside-in critical thinking work isn’t also done.  The trouble is, the need for speed really can come at a cost. 

This ‘inside out’ thinking - taking short-cuts to customer value proposition creation - leads to:

• Generic messaging based on ‘what we do and how we do it’

• Inconsistent communications

• Higher customer acquisition costs, and

• Sales teams unable to clearly articulate differentiation

It's not just about the wasted effort. Longer term, this ‘strategic drift’ in the business due to hasty communications, effectively trains the market and target audiences to see, perceive and mentally position the business incorrectly. The longer this goes on, the harder it is to correct the drift.

I strongly encourage resisting the short-term pressure for:

• Activity for the sake of it: the desire for seeing something quickly in order to feel better, because developing market strategy feels slow and intangible

• Confusing market positioning with brand and corporate identity:  a new tag line or a better way of describing ‘what you do and how you do it’ will not deliver correct positioning in your market. Potential customers want to know what difference you are going to make to them.

• Applying easy-to-use marketing tools: quickly launching campaigns without the rigour of checking if the communication is saying the right thing and is aimed at the right people

• Decision-making avoidance: being clear about ‘who you are’ and ‘who you are not’ can be uncomfortable. But, trust me, hedging your bets with bland, vague messaging won’t engage anyone.

Essentially, what I’m saying is that the real risk of jumping straight to communication tactics is spending months communicating the wrong thing to the wrong people down the wrong channels.

Don’t misunderstand me, of course it’s not wrong to want to communicate, and I totally get the pressure for urgency, but I urge resisting trading off doing critical thinking just to get a few messages out there.

We have created a download that sets out how you can ‘Correct the Drift’ based on our 23 years of helping hundreds of clients re-energise their go-to-market approaches.