2023… You set out the year with a great plan in hand. You’ve invested quality time into your Marketing Strategy and crafted a strong Marketing Plan lining up with your Product Roadmap that is set to deliver those ambitious targets. Then, as you start off the year, there are some major technological changes in your industry, or high-stakes regulatory changes, or just simply an aggressive and audacious move from your competitor. And just like that, it’s ‘Game on’ – back in the chaos you thrive on. A normal day at the office for the seasoned marketer, right?
But let’s be honest, while it is the reality that many of us thrive on, pursuing hyper-responsiveness to competitors and market changes often costs us dearly in terms of strategic and operational clarity. This, in turn, affects our overall effectiveness, curtailing our ability to achieve those ambitious targets.
In the face of the inherent fluidity in our business landscapes, it becomes imperative to strike a balance between tactical responsiveness and strategic clarity. This is where a Strategic Marketing Review emerges as a vital tool in your toolkit.
With a Strategic Marketing Review, you essentially peel back the layers of your marketing efforts, examining the effectiveness from all angles, and confirming the alignment with your broader ambitions. Think of it as a health check for your marketing strategy, where you invest the time to diagnose, prescribe, and rejuvenate.
Ready to get real about the direction of your marketing? Let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of what a Strategic Marketing Review really entails, and how it can be the game-changer your business needs.
What is a Strategic Marketing Review
A Strategic Marketing Review is a comprehensive assessment of a business’s marketing strategy and its alignment with the overall business objectives. It involves evaluating the company’s current market position, competitive landscape, and customer needs and it identifies new opportunities for growth.
These reviews allow businesses to assess the effectiveness of their marketing strategies, realign them with overall business objectives, and make informed decisions based on a clear understanding of market dynamics and consumer behavior.
If done right, it builds in the opportunity for regular evaluation, offering a platform to adjust marketing strategies based on changes in any of the core environments. This in turn ensures that actions are always aligned with the core objectives in a clear and purposeful manner.
But before we go on, let us take a moment to confirm the difference between a Marketing Strategy, a Strategic Marketing Plan, a Strategic Marketing Review, and a Marketing Audit.
Marketing Strategy:
Your marketing strategy is a high-level, overarching game plan for how a business will reach prospective consumers and turn them into customers of their products or services. It is deeply rooted in the business’s understanding of its target market, competition, and unique selling propositions.
The focus is on the long-term vision and goals of the business. It’s more about understanding ‘why’ certain actions will be taken, based on a set of customers, market conditions, and a specific commercial opportunity for your business within these conditions.
Strategic Marketing Plan:
This is a detailed, actionable plan that outlines the specific marketing tactics, channels, and activities that will be used to implement the marketing strategy. It’s more about the ‘how’ of reaching the strategic goals.
It includes marketing campaigns, content strategies, timelines, budgets, specific marketing channels (like digital, print, events, etc.), and metrics for measuring success.
Typically, your marketing strategy is set at the start of your business or product launch (why). This is then typically complemented with a Strategic Marketing Plan, outlining the activities you will take to achieve your objectives (how).
Strategic Marketing Review
The Strategic Marketing Review fills in the space in between – after some of the activities have been executed. It undertakes to do a thorough assessment of the execution and performance of the Strategic Marketing Plan against the objectives and core assumptions of the Marketing Strategy. It then outlines the way forward based on a gap analysis and identified interventions that will address the gaps.
Marketing Audit
A Marketing Audit is a detailed evaluation of a company’s existing marketing practices, focusing primarily on operational efficiency and tactical effectiveness. This typically has a narrower focus than a Strategic Marketing Review which assesses the overall alignment and effectiveness of marketing strategies within the broader context of long-term business goals.
The Benefits of a Strategic Marketing Review
Based on my experience, here are the top 5 benefits of a Strategic Marketing Review:
- Alignment with Business Objectives: It ensures that marketing strategies are closely aligned with the overall business goals, driving focused and effective efforts.
- Insight into Market Dynamics: Provides critical and current insights into customer needs, competitive landscape, and industry trends, essential for informed decision-making.
- Evaluation and Optimization of Performance: It facilitates the assessment of current marketing strategies and tactics, identifying areas for improvement, and optimizing resource allocation.
- Agility and Responsiveness: It enhances the business’s ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions and customer preferences, maintaining relevance and competitiveness.
- Risk Identification and Mitigation: It helps in recognizing potential market risks and challenges, enabling proactive development of strategies to mitigate them.
How to Conduct a Strategic Marketing Review:
Professionals may provide different views on the exact sequencing of the steps, but in my experience, the following sequence of steps is effective in gathering environmental information before proceeding to internal performance review and revising strategic ambitions.
Step 1: Situational Analysis
This first step is an evaluation of the core departure point of the original marketing strategy, which includes a review of:
- Macro-Economic factors,
- Industry dynamics,
- Competition,
- Target market.
This review should be done considering all dimensions of your marketing mix, and will ultimately reveal an updated version of your SWOT analysis.
Step 2: Performance Review
This step seeks to review the business’s performance on main Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). It should consider performance within specific customer segments, product or service lines, and distribution channels. While monthly operational reviews of these KPIs would be more in-depth, it seeks to highlight specific insights that provide a clarity on the effectiveness of the Strategic Marketing Plan. The objective is to unearth specific insights that may warrant a change in the way forward.
Step 3: Review Strategic Goals
With the backdrop provided by the Situational Analysis and the Performance Review, the next step is to revisit your business goals, as defined in the original Marketing Strategy. This step is critical to ensure that it is still aligned with any changes in the external environment, relative business performance, or changes in overall ambition. Once affirmed, or adjusted, the strategic marketing goals will be updated accordingly.
Step 4: Gap Analysis
Now that you know what the market is looking like, how you performed in the previous period, and where you want to go in the next period, it is time to do a Gap Analysis. You will identify the gaps between your current performance and your intended performance. The focus will be on which areas of the marketing mix require interventions in lieu of the revised strategic goals. This would not only consider previous marketing campaigns but also pricing, packaging, channel or distribution decisions as well as product and promotional strategy decisions.
Step 5: Identify Specific Interventions.
With the gaps identified, it is now time to identify the specific interventions that will be required in your Strategic Marketing Plan to address the gaps. In line with your Strategic Marketing Plan format, this will highlight specific initiatives, including timelines, budgets, and KPIs that will be used to measure the impact.
Step 6: Implement and Monitor.
The final step is the implementation of your revised plan. The strength of this process however lies in continuous monitoring of the effectiveness of your implementation. Your Strategic Marketing Review provides you with a framework to regularly assess whether there are any changes in your core environments that may affect your performance and make sound decisions that are aligned with your broader strategic context.
Strategic Marketing Review Best Practices
Whether your business is small or big, I believe a Strategic Marketing Review will improve clarity, agility, and effectiveness, and therefore ultimately business performance.
During my career in business and marketing, Strategic Marketing Reviews have always been built in as part of the organisational processes. Yet, this did not guarantee that I leveraged it to its fullest potential.
Here are a few suggestions on how to make sure that the time that you invest in conducting a Strategic Marketing Review pays off:
Invest the time to do it properly.
Embarking on this process usually comes on top of daily operational tasks, deliverables, and pressures. The temptation is to skim through the process and just ‘tick a box’. But trust me, if you invest the time upfront to think deeply about your realities, it will save you time and make you more effective through the course of the year.
Be very clear on your measure of success.
How will you measure the success of your strategic goals? Firstly, it is important to identify the KPIs you will track, as well as the drivers of those KPIs. This will save you time to deconstruct performance, whether it is good or not so good, making sure that you stay on track. Establishing processes and daily disciplines really goes a long way in establishing habits that become second nature.
For more on being data-driven, read my blog Ignite your Growth with a Data-Driven Strategy.
Don’t get too fancy but make sure that you get very real and very clear.
It is not about producing a polished 50-page slide deck or lengthy Word documents or Excel spreadsheets with reams of performance graphs. What is important, is that the facts included in the Strategic Marketing Review are based on the cold hard reality, rather than a PR-packaged version of the truth that may sound good but that is a few degrees removed from reality. In addition, what is important is that the facts are not just presented but distilled into the ‘So What?’ level of interpretation. Again, this makes it more time-consuming, but it brings you so much closer to the real nuggets that will unlock your performance.
Define your review cycles upfront and be diligent.
Setting predetermined intervals for conducting marketing reviews is a best practice that fosters consistency and continuous improvement. Whether it’s quarterly, bi-annually, or annually, these cycles should be defined upfront and adhered to diligently. This will ensure alignment of strategies with evolving marketing conditions. It also provides an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives and make timely adjustments.
When things change, adapt quickly without losing focus on the real measure of success.
Flexibility and adaptability are undeniably critical. When market conditions, consumer preferences, or competitive dynamics shift, your marketing strategies should adapt swiftly. However, it’s important to maintain focus on your primary measures of success during these adaptations. Quick adaptations should not mean a complete overhaul of your strategy, but rather an agile response that aligns with your long-term goals. Balancing adaptability with a steady eye on your success metrics ensures that your marketing remains relevant and effective, even in the face of change.
In conclusion
As we are heading into 2024, the value of a Strategic Marketing Review is more than just a routine check-up; it’s a critical pivot point for any business aiming to stay competitive and effective.
As the business world evolves with technological advancements and changing consumer behaviors, a Strategic Marketing Review becomes an indispensable tool. It allows businesses to not only recalibrate their marketing strategies in alignment with these changes but also to maintain a clear, focused trajectory toward their long-term objectives.
Ultimately, a well-conducted Strategic Marketing Review transcends mere adjustment of tactics; it becomes a catalyst for sustained business success, ensuring that every marketing effort contributes meaningfully to the overarching business vision.
Learn more about my approach to a Strategic Marketing Review. If you need the help of an experienced Business and Marketing Strategist to guide you on this journey, I’d love to connect.