This post takes you through how to apply modern marketing and project management frameworks to help you to write a better marketing strategy, get it signed off faster, and have a happier boss or client.

What’s Wrong With The Traditional Way?

Writing a marketing strategy – whether for your manager or for your clients – is an essential part of the content marketing process. It’s a big task with a lot of challenges – and you need to get sign-off on your strategy before you can actually proceed with the work it contains. If you've ever been presented with a 20-page, single spaced document, think about how long it took you to read it all and whether you actually paid attention or skipped most of it to find the important parts.

If you've ever

• Read a document like that
• Had a document like that ignored
• Had a document like that signed off then the person who signed it off come back a month later and ask why you are doing what you’re doing because it’s something they would never agree to
• Had an argument after 12 months of implementing a strategy about whether or not it has been successful

Then it will be clear that the normal way of writing a marketing strategy can have problems.

Fortunately, modern methods such as guerrilla marketing, Agile project management, and Lean can help you to overcome all of these issues. They’re not perfect – and to be honest my methodology for writing strategies is evolving all the time – but I find they help an awful lot.

Example: Throughout this post I'm going to talk about a marketing strategy I recently wrote for the owner of a software consultancy. They've been around for a few years but they've never really thought strategically about marketing. Now that they're expanding the range of areas they consult on and expanding from the UK out to the Middle East. To enable that expansion to start and then continue they needed a strategy, and what we put together for them is a great example of how the three new methodologies can combine to produce something valuable.

Be Agile: Learn What Success Means Before You Start

When most people start thinking about marketing strategies, they start thinking about the tactics and media that will be used over a certain period of time. But as marketers we know that’s thinking about the client, not the customer, so we start with target audiences, which makes our thinking all about the customer. However, what is really important for us as marketers is making our client happy; after all that’s what means our relationship with the client will continue for a long time.

So, rather than by starting with target audiences, positioning, or anything to do with marketing we should really start where Agile project management starts: finding out what the client means by “success”. Find that out, gear all of your efforts toward that, and you should be on your way to a long, loving relationship.

Example: There were really two projects here that needed to succeed: the implementation of the strategy, and the writing of the strategy. First we found out what the client wanted from the strategy document: something that was clear enough that he could work with his consultants to implement it, as he didn't employ a full-time marketing team. Then we got onto what he expected the results of the strategy to be. As is often the case this was something of a time of self-discovery, as he hadn't really put numbers to this beyond a revenue projection. So we went through his Google Analytics, his business plan, and his pricing, and decided that to meet his goals he needed his new marketing strategy to bring in a certain number of consulting jobs each and a certain number of hours of delegate training. Not only did we come up with a set of SMART goals for the strategy to hit, we both came away with a better understanding of the business.

Go Guerrilla: Build Your Strategy Around Seven Sentences

Guerrilla marketing is built on the principles you would expect from that phrase. It’s all about beating established, large, cumbersome brands by being fast, inventive, and innovative. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have rules, they’re just slightly different from the rules that large companies play by.

Perhaps one of the best rules is that if you can’t express your marketing strategy in seven sentences, you’re stuffed. Anything more than this will contain waffle, and if you have to waffle to get your strategy across then you don’t have a tight marketing strategy. Those seven sentences are:

• The purpose of the marketing efforts
• Target audience
• Intended niche
• Benefits, USPs, and competitive advantage
• Identity and positioning
• Tactics and media to be employed
• Budget, KPIs, and success criteria

To me, this looks like a great way to express your marketing strategy: even if nothing else gets read, this summary will tell everybody what they need to know. But I also find that it works really well as a structure for that strategy. It lets you tell a story of why you’re writing the strategy, who it’s going to target, how the company is going to appeal to them, and what your methods will be, all rounded off by a clear definition of success.

Of course if your client wants to hear a slightly different story – so that they know the budgets, KPIs, and success criteria before reading about positioning, say - then that’s fine. But the story will still be there.

Example: Here is (a slightly edited version of) the strategy we ended up putting together. It's a long seven sentences, but pretty comprehensive.

"The primary aim of [Client]'s proposed marketing strategy is to make [Client] the consultancy partnership that consultants want to work for (Purpose). We will achieve this by building the personal brand of [Owner] and senior consultants, promoting them as thought leaders in Agile software project implementation (Niche). The target market is project team members and C-level executives at enterprise-level organisations,both in the UK and in [Other markets] (Audience). To establish [Client] with these people we will position [Client] as the primary source of long-term pain relief for their overrunning and over-budget projects, who can turn that pain into success (Benefits, competitive advantage).

To do this we recommend using a range of marketing tools and media, with a particular focus on inbound marketing and on lead retention, which will include:

• Business cards, printable case studies, white papers, and presentation leave-behinds
• The [Client] website and blog
• Social media, especially Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+; SEO; online outreach
• A marketing list built up from engagement with the Storm website and with existing clients
• Webinars
• Speaking engagements, breakfast clubs, and networking meetings
• Existing Agile communities (tactics, media)

The identity we recommend building is that of a company which:

• Is transparent
• Has great expertise in Agile implementation
• Will work with a team to add value not just to a project, but to that team (Identity)

Our positioning and communication will be considered successful if [Client] gains a turnover of [X] between May 2013 and May 2014, the period that this document covers, and our spend is [X] or less. (Budget, success criteria)"

Stay Lean: Create Your Minimum Viable Product

One thing that the Lean movement pushes is the idea of creating a rapid prototype. Sketch out your ideas, put it together by sticking a smartphone to a pair of goggles or by making it out of cardboard boxes, then see whether it works. If it does then scale: if it doesn't then try something else.

I like to use that seven sentence summary as a minimum viable product; it takes into account the client’s definition of success and our brainstorming, but it doesn't take a huge amount of effort for us to write or for the client to read. A client or boss can sign off those seven sentences easily – especially if you’ve already agreed KPIs and success criteria – and it will give you a very good idea of what will and what won’t work.

Example: When we initially handed the client his strategy summary there was general agreement about the approach, niche, and success. But some of the media suggested were not what the client had expected, so they were revised or removed. Had we waited until final hand-over to discuss our ideas on which media to target we would have wasted time and effort.

Go Guerrilla: For Every Marketing Medium, Write A Three Sentence Creative Strategy

I find that I get really absorbed in working out which of the hundreds of possible media and tactics I could use for a client. The problem is that I then get sucked into tactical implementation which, while fun, is not the point of the exercise.

In his original book Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson says that

"Here, in the simplest terms possible, is a typical three-sentence Guerrilla Creative Strategy: the purpose of the creative message, the benefits to be stressed to accomplish the purpose, and the personality of the brand"

I find this works really well for each medium; you can flesh out this overview - I usually include any personas we are aiming ourselves at and any budget and resources to be allocated to the work - but if your reader is skim reading (which they inevitably will be) it can be a real help to them.

Example: "Existing Agile communities offer an excellent opportunity for [Client] to engage with fellow thought-leaders and to demonstrate transparency and thought leadership to potential clients (purpose). Although the benefits of [Client]'s business cannot normally be stressed in the main post content, the footer provides an area to mention that [Client] aim to take away the pain of in-house project managers (benefit) . All of the facets of the brand's personality may be expressed in different posts, but it is most important to convey transparency and subject expertise (personality)."

Be Agile: Keep the Client Up to Date

In a traditional project framework you write your marketing strategy in a linear way with the client seeing everything presented at the end. There are three big problems with this:

1. A lack of communication between the start and end of the writing phase can make it feel like you're saying “I know you've not heard from me for a month so here’s a 20-page document as a present”
2. The client or your boss has probably been distracted by a different project so it will take him a week to get back to you with the inevitable changes
3. Those changes will inevitably be to the early sections of the document on which all of your tactics are based, meaning that you will now need to go back and rewrite half the document before going back for sign-off, which will take another week

I’m not saying that this happens all the time, but even if it only happens to you once a year then if you’re anything like me will be a big drain on your enthusiasm.

In Agile software development you work in an iterative way, presenting a working, tested part of the whole piece of software at the end of a short agreed period, or sprint. The project lasts a certain number of sprints and the final thing you present and the end of the last sprint is the completed piece of software. This gives the client something the client can see, that works, and that achieves something at the end of every sprint. I've found in both project management and writing strategies that this makes them happy – they can see real progress – and means that any changes they make to the early stages of the project can be dealt with early in the project.

In the case of creating a marketing strategy this means that every time you complete a section of your strategy, get sign-off for it in the same way you did for your summary. That way the client gets regular updates on how things are coming along, and you know whether your assumptions, your understanding of positioning, and other fundamental components for the strategy are right before you proceed to the next stage of the strategy (which will inevitably rely on those fundamental components). It also means that you chunk up the client’s workload in signing the strategy off, hopefully meaning that you spend less time waiting around.

Example: As noted above the deliverable for our first iteration, which lasted a week, was a fully agreed-upon strategy summary. This allowed time for revisions, and meant the client knew a great deal of what was to come. Another important sprint involved us delivering our positioning strategy, as positioning was something the client hadn't thought about in great detail. Once he had seen the positioning section, though, he realised the importance of brand identity, perception, and positioning, and they became a key part of his thinking in all areas.

Be Useful: Tell Them What To Do Next

Although this is really more common sense more than any new-fangled technique, I have found myself getting into more and more detail at this stage. As a result I find myself getting more and more done when the early stages of the strategy are being implemented. You should include a plan at the end of the document, or perhaps beginning depending on your client, for at least the next three months detailing:

• Each step of what is to be done
• Who will do it
• When it will be done by

At worst this gives the client a clear heads-up about what they need to provide you and when for. At best it gives a comprehensive plan and sets expectations all round.

Hopefully this posts provides some ideas for you to experiment with, perhaps a new framework to base your next marketing strategy on, or some ways to improve your clients' happiness. As I said at the top I’m always looking to learn and I’m sure others are too. Do you have a particular approach to writing marketing strategies? Does it vary a lot depending on clients, or are you constrained by an internal format? Share your ideas in the comments below.