Business Builders Podcast

Strategic vs Tactical Marketing

April 14, 2023 Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian Season 3 Episode 41
Business Builders Podcast
Strategic vs Tactical Marketing
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

It's no secret that effective marketing can work wonders for a business, particularly when your marketing efforts align with the goals and objectives of your business. So today, we're diving into the world of strategic marketing and tactical marketing and how they can work together to make sure your marketing is in sync with your business strategy.

The topics covered in this episode are: 

  • Most businesses are stuck in the tactical marketing space
  • Strategic marketing starts with understanding who your serving
  • What's the difference between strategic and tactical marketing?
  • When times are tough, strategic marketing becomes more critical
  • Understanding the value of strategic marketing


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Brenton Gowland:

Hey there Business Builders. It's no secret that effective marketing can work wonders for a business, particularly when your marketing efforts align with the goals and objectives of your business. So today we're diving into the world of strategic marketing and tactical marketing, and how they can work together to make sure your marketing is in sync with your business strategy. Well welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And I'm pretty excited this week, Ron. So we've moved on from where we were last week, we've started talking about building marketing capability. And we're moving into this week talking about strategic versus tactical marketing, and I believe this is a real passion point of yours, isn't it?

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

Why is that?

Ron Tomlian:

Because what I've seen in organisations in the past is when they talk about building marketing capability, and I'm 100% behind it, they they're thinking about the tactical marketing capability, how do we get organisations to do stuff? Or how do we get us to do more stuff in the marketing area? The problem is, once you start doing stuff, you start to realise those things I can do, and there's things maybe I shouldn't be doing, or the things that build more value for the organisation. So you have to start deciding which stuff to do.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's gets into the strategic side of the marketing.

Brenton Gowland:

So last episode, we were speaking about building marketing capability. And we talked about finding two or three things to do. Those things were things we wanted to make sure were noticed by the board. So I guess the strategy there was to start to raise the level of marketing. Okay. So why is this a good next step to what we were talking about last week?

Ron Tomlian:

Because it's in, I think it's important to be able to define the stuff that you do in terms of marketing versus why you're doing it. Yeah, the objectives. And what I've seen in organisations, when they start to get into marketing, it's all about let's, let's start seeing activity. Let's say it's seeing things happening, instead of deciding on what are we trying to achieve in the first place? Yeah. And until you can answer those, you can still do things. But oftentimes, you're not looking at measuring those. And you're looking at measuring them against what am I trying to achieve? So it high expect very much to here's what we talked about in strategic planning. First, you've got to decide what you want to achieve. Before you decide how am I going to do that? Same is true in the marketing field as well. But there is a preponderance of activity. And there's plenty of things you can do an oil fun, there's no question that the tactical side of things is a lot more fun.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, yeah, on that point of just with a new client on the weekend, and we went to a motorsport Festival, and in the past, have just gone there and handed out flyers. And so we did start to think about what if we want to go with this, we want to build a database, we want to do all these things. And we were like, what, how do we do that? Well, we got to start getting people interacting with us. And they, they basically fixed how damaged cars and cars that need paintless dent repair. So we thought why not? Let's get some panels from some cars and bonnets in this particular case, and give people a go at denting them. And we'll fix them on the spot. They worked a treat, we had really big crowds, and, and all these other really cool places, and they had some great vehicles, we check them out. But they didn't have many people and this particular business had crowds of people swarming out the front, while everyone's trying to dent these panels, and then they're on the mic, showing them how to fix it. And we got a lot of a lot of engagement, a lot of people signing up to their newsletter to I think it was get 25% off a first service, etc. And that was fun. There was a little bit of strategy behind it. But that was like one of those things you were talking about a tactical example of marketing done, right.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm glad to hear it was done for a strategic reason to build understanding and build a database. But the truth of the matter is, that's where things happen is that the coalface where you doing activities out in the market, with your customers and potential customers? And that's the fun part. That's the bit where you can see stuff happening. Sitting behind that is the strategy, why are you doing it? What am I trying to achieve? And in my experience, that's what people don't spend the time enough thinking about a year. And as a result, they tend to waste a lot of their money in terms of their marketing, in terms of the stuff they're doing, because it's not focused or directed.

Brenton Gowland:

So based on what we've been talking about in the past, taking this conversation a little bit further, I'd say most of the marketers out there just tactical marketers with a little bit of strategy. So we had a little bit of strategy on the weekend with our event. I know there's an underlying strategy because I know that you've been working with this client as well to build a strategic plan and whatnot, but Would you say most of the businesses you come across are just stuck in that tactical space?

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. And, and the marketing people in particular, are not responsible for thinking about the bigger picture stuff. And that that's simply because of a lack of understanding of what marketing is about, and when we talked about in our first podcast on the subject, but somebody has to be doing that. And if it's not the marketing people, and sometimes those people are outsourced. If it's not the marketing people, then somebody has to take the bull by the horns, and understand and be able to answer the fundamental questions are associated with business? Who are our customers? Hmm, what are we doing for them? You know, what value are we adding? What value are they looking for? What are their needs and wants? Who are we competing against? And how are we competing? What, what are our suppliers doing?

Brenton Gowland:

So that's the foundational kind of questions to get to the strategy. Yeah?

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. But but here's the thing, unless you can start to think about the environment that you're operating in all the questions we asked about previously associated with strategy, you know, and strategic planning, all of that has to be applied to the marketing area. And look, quite frankly, there's a difference for organisations that have multiple lines of business, right. And unless we're talking about conglomerates, who maybe have a hotel chain, a mine, a food processing plant, and a car accessory production.

Brenton Gowland:

In those particular cases, you'd have several lines of strategy.

Ron Tomlian:

You'd have several lines of business. And the strategy at the corporate level is simply what do I invest in, which is the best business that I have in my portfolio to invest it? It's only at the level where you're talking about an individual line of business that you can talk about what will what market do they serve? So marketing doesn't come in?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, I wonder about that. Because you know, that top line, like you said, has to find? Who am I going to invest in? If they're buying new pieces of the portfolio? Who am I going to sell to? So they're marketing at a different level.

Ron Tomlian:

Their marketing in a different way? They're thinking about marketing in a different way. But I'm talking about for the lines of business, you can't really talk about for the corporation, what market am I serving? Yes. Until you understand those lines of business lines of business, at the line of business level, you know, let's say the hotel level, then you can stay talking about what customer what market am I serving? Yeah. And then you can talk about the marketing for that area. Yeah. So for that organisation, the marketing, strategic marketing only comes in at the line of business level. Okay. Okay. Now, for most SMEs, they have one line of business. And under those circumstances of their strategy, in their strategic marketing are basically the same. Yeah. Okay. So when we're talking about all the same things we talked about in the strategy, planning area, right? You, you have to know what market am I? Am I serving? What are their needs? And wants? Who are they? Yeah, and it gets into those areas of things like segmentation, targeting and positioning. Now, you have to be able to answer those questions. Before you can do anything, you should be able to answer those questions before you do anything for those markets. But oftentimes, people make assumptions about those. And that's fair enough, where we sort of we'd know, our, we know our market, we don't have to do any thinking in that area. And it's when you start to apply Well, could we be serving a different market or an adjacent market or an adjacent segment, and you start putting together the framework? This is strategic marketing is about building a framework for decision making.

Brenton Gowland:

And I think that's right. That's the point that I was looking for. Strategic Marketing is about building that framework. But then it's also about making the decisions about as per that framework, what are we going to focus on? Where do we need to be, et cetera, et cetera?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I mean, just looking at the whole idea of segmentation. And I know it's a marketing jargon term, and but you can serve everyone. And and the truth of matter is probably your product or service isn't appropriate for everyone.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, you don't actually want to serve everyone.

Ron Tomlian:

Well.

Brenton Gowland:

Generally.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. I mean, if you look at large car companies, they want to sell a car to everyone. Okay? And so, do they do the they sell an SUV to everyone now, the SUV is developed for people who want something a little bit more rugged and utilitarian. They also sell sports cars, right? Right to people who want a faster, sleeker looking sexier car. And so we should, I don't want to get into the jargon of it. But it's thinking about who do I want to serve? And thinking about the people who have a need for or want for the type of thing that I'm doing I think at higher levels of VISTA sophistication, you start thinking about, what are we good at? And what are the needs and wants of my customers that I can develop products based on their needs and wants instead of intuitively, I think stuff people want this stuff, and I'm gonna, I'm good at building it. So I'll, I'll just do that. So again, it's about the maturity of the organisation.

Brenton Gowland:

So the size of the organisation, right? Because what you're talking about, a lot of SMEs wouldn't be in that position, like a car company where a car company you're saying wants to serve everyone, but the way they do that is they have a different product type for everyone. A lot of businesses have a product, type that specific to one audience back to you're coming up with your individual lines of business. So the whole hotel might be a premium hotel or a motel at a different price range. There might be different groups in the portfolio. But whoever their business is, they're going to advertise to a different group.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, I mean, let's, let's go run with that. Let's think about a tourism operator, a hotel of some sort, or a, a, an accommodation provider of some sort. Let's suppose they are out in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Yes. And they are in a world heritage area. Now. Does that appeal to everyone? No, absolutely not. So who is there? There's a lot of people who want accommodation. But one, you're thinking about people who want a combination in a World Heritage Area, you then thinking about what sort of people want their combination and world hair and Jerry, they're probably interested in ecological, environmental tourism, they probably don't mind a little bit of roughing it, you can start to make assumptions. That one of the one of the big traps i that really gets my goat is what's called a demographic segmentation trap. Okay. Okay. So when we're talking about segmentation as a strategic marketing concept, one of the things that people almost invariably do and when I talk to people about segmentation, I know who I'm targeting, I'm targeting 18 to 25 year olds with an income level of such and such. Yeah, no, you're not, you might profile, you're the target that you are talking about at the moment. But if you get a group of just randomly take 18 to 25 year olds off the street, get a group of 100 of them. Would you say they're a homogenous group? Absolutely. No, absolutely. Are their needs and wants different? Absolutely, yeah. So why are we talking about saying everyone in this group is going to want what I want? Because that's my target audience.

Brenton Gowland:

Because you're lazy.

Ron Tomlian:

It's nonsense.

Brenton Gowland:

No, I take that back. It's not because you're lazy. It's because you know that that's one of the demographics, that is purchasing from you. But that's all that you've bothered to find out as an age. So demographics are defined by a number of different things. Age education, what they're doing.

Ron Tomlian:

It is lazy. Because what the reason people do it is it's easy to find out that information. And it's easy to say well do the people are buying from us tend to be 18 to 25 year olds with a higher income. Okay, that's a tendency, but what what percentage, and are there other groups who have the same needs and wants.

Brenton Gowland:

Well here's an interesting thing, right? I have a client who thought that they had a really good understanding of their purchasing group, and the the age group was, I think, 65 plus, right. That's a pretty interesting group, because I hate saying this. But that's a group that has dwindling numbers over time. But anyway, they have a tendency of dying off, that they are going to another place at some point in their journey, you tell them being really careful about this career. Anyway, the reason they thought that is because the most sales were coming from that group. But when we delved into it, we interviewed these people. And then we found there was a couple of other really key age groups, and I think was 45 to 55 and 35 to 45. And what we found was happening with this product, is that people were buying it back when they were 35 to 45, or 45 to 55. I loved it so much that they then when they got older, started buying it as presents for other people, and that's why that group was buying, but they weren't the key group, the key group was actually I think, 45 to 55. And then there was spill, but it was by doing the research. We found that out and that took a few months and interviewing a few people but it was it was a really interesting light bulb moment because I interviewed their staff and their staff told me this is our key demographic 65 Plus, they buy multiple products. We don't understand why they buy multiple products, but they seem to love it so much. And then the story started to unfold. Well they actually get introduced to it in their 30 You know 35 To 40 Five, then they're using it and loving it. And they're 45 to 50 fives, they're then buying it in vast quantities in their 65 age group. And that's where they're actually also introducing it to the 25 to 35 year old age group. And it's interesting,

Ron Tomlian:

It is fascinating, because then you're getting into another strategic marketing areas. How do our customers buy? Yeah, what's the buying process? Who's involved?

Brenton Gowland:

Will it changed how we marketed the thing completely.

Ron Tomlian:

Because oftentimes in household purchases, even individual purchases, purchases, people are, they would roll split, you know, you can be a buyer, you can be a user, or you can be a payer. Good example, I do the shopping in my household

Brenton Gowland:

Well, you look like the kind of guy who knows your way around supermarket.

Ron Tomlian:

A supermarket. I hate it. But I still do it. Oftentimes, I'm the buyer, right? I got do the purchasing, I would like to say that my wife is the payer. And because it's her paycheck, and my paycheck together that pays for it, and what's on the story. And when we had kids at home, they were very much the usual. Yeah, I did get to see after the food that was being purchased now. So understanding that oftentimes, we I will, as buyer and pair was buying stuff for other people to consume, yeah, makes the relationship to who you're trying to influence. Very different.

Brenton Gowland:

Exactly. And the point that I see here is that makes an incredible difference to how we market the more we understand about the purchasing behaviour, who's purchasing why they're purchasing, we're better able to create pipelines and do the tactical things we were talking about earlier.

Ron Tomlian:

Decision making for marketing. And that gets into research as well, which is a strategic marketing activity.

Brenton Gowland:

So we've been talking about this for a while. And I know this seems like we're taking a step back. But we really should define strategic marketing and tactical marketing and what the difference is. So you got any definitions for us?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, to me, the best definition of strategic marketing is creating a framework for decision making in the organisation, I really liked that. And it's based on an understanding of what you're trying to achieve.

Brenton Gowland:

The reason I like this so much is because I actually think all tactical marketing exercises are based on a strategy of sorts, like, with the client I was talking about the other day, we had a strategy for that tactical event, if people run an event, there's some sort of strategy going on in their mind. But it might not be one that aligns with the business strategy, or whatever it is, most marketers have some idea that they want to get some sort of result. So they have a strategy in mind, but it hasn't necessarily had the framework put in place, and it hasn't necessarily had the thinking aligned with the direction of the business. That's where the problem is.

Ron Tomlian:

And if you've got the nub of the matter, if there is an alignment between what we're trying to achieve, and what we're actually doing to achieve that, you've got the potential for waste.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. And to be fair to marketers, yes, a lot of marketers are just doing tactical stuff. But most marketers, I know, try to get some sort of plan together try to, to the best of their knowledge and the information that's available to them create a plan or a strategy, it just might it depends on how willing the business is to have marketing get into that position of being able to affect the business to how much, you know, relevant information the marketer might get

Ron Tomlian:

If the marketers are kept in the dark.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

And not operating.

Brenton Gowland:

And they're just fulfilling a service or a function.

Ron Tomlian:

And not operating with an understanding of the objectives of the business, then anything they can they do is going to be right or wrong, depending on how you look at it. Because there's no alignment.

Brenton Gowland:

And that's also why we have a hierarchy of marketing roles. So you've got chief marketing officer who should be sitting at board level somewhere, and you've got a marketing manager, then you've got a marketing assistant, then you've got a marketing coordinator, and so forth.

Ron Tomlian:

And this is in larger organisations. And sometimes sometimes, the chief marketing officer is the CEO. That's right, for SMEs, as long as they recognise that that's their role.

Brenton Gowland:

When marketing starts to get sophisticated, or I've seen a lot of businesses who get to this point where they've got a marketing manager and a marketing coordinator and maybe a graphic designer. So your department becomes three people. And that's kind of moving in the right direction. And that's actually a good opportunity for the marketing manager, because those marketing managers should really be studying what it is to be a CMO. And they should be trying to act like a CMO when they're in a marketing manager role. I don't know how many try that. I would say it's only a few because people try to fulfil the roller in but if it was me, I'd be going, how do I get marketing operating at this level?

Ron Tomlian:

And as I say, the mechanism for that is understanding that There's a difference between tactical marketing, which is implementing the strategy, as opposed to developing the strategy. at the strategic level, which is about objectives. It is about understanding who your target audiences are, what markets we operate in, it is understanding what is our positioning in this market. It is understanding things like organisational objectives, it is understanding who our competitors are customer needs, what value we're offering, all those things that are fundamental to a marketing concept, but inform and provide a decision framework for the tactical marketing that's done, which is implementing that.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's really good. And I guess, again, the thing that I like the most that's come out of this is the fact that you know, all tactical marketing has some sort of strategy behind it, it's just generally not a very good one if it's not aligned with the business. So that really speaks to what we were talking about the other week. In fact, the last two episodes is that marketing has to be speaking the same language as the rest of the business. And it has to be in both directions. Really, really, if you want to look at a company starting to really mature in the marketing stakes, the rest of the business also has to start to learn the language of marketing and why it's important.

Ron Tomlian:

And and that goes into understanding the customer is central to our organisation that goes to an understanding of, we're here to serve the customer. And if we're not directly serving them, we're serving somebody who is all those things that people have tried to get across with platitudes or truisms. But they're fundamental to everyone in the organisation, understanding that they have a role to play in delivering value to the customer.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Which is marketing?

Brenton Gowland:

Yes. Yeah. 100%. And if you think about it, what we talked about in the last two episodes was getting marketing noticed. This is, you know, after marketing's got noticed, and started to be a driver in the business, the marketers need to be actually educating everyone about what they're doing.

Ron Tomlian:

I have to admit, we're in two of the organisations to allow larger organisations I worked with the role was very much one of implementation, and two of education, because you don't get the opportunity to implement your strategy, unless people are on board with why we're doing this in the first place. Right. I remember working for a nameless organisation, I won't mention their name. And they say that a lot, you know, we changed. I was working as the marketing director, the CEO changed new CEO came on board. And the first question she said to me is, why do we ever make any person here anyway? The CEO, yeah, so and that, to be feared, that wasn't a position that was often in that style of organisation. But to ask the question, why do we have marketing? What I think this person really meant was? Why is it been elevated to the executive level? It's a function that should be further down the organisation?

Brenton Gowland:

Was it you who is responsible for getting it to the executive level?

Ron Tomlian:

Ah no, I was recruited into that position, and by a previous CEO, who wanted to elevate it to the executive level.

Brenton Gowland:

So the previous CEO had an understanding of it, but the new CEO came along, and.

Ron Tomlian:

And after I left, put it down to three levels within the organisation.

Brenton Gowland:

That's a bit sad, really, isn't it?

Ron Tomlian:

it's sad, but it's not unusual. It's not unusual. So you know, your organization's mature, but they can also regress.

Brenton Gowland:

So one of my favourite little stories in it comes back to COVID. And all the big companies were cutting their marketing completely, I'm talking hundreds of 1000s of dollars, boom, gone, because no one knew what was going to happen. But there were all these little guys, and one of them is bar in the city, I know that this is a smaller story. But they, during COVID, did everything they could to shout, make noise, engage with people run online events, and a lot of the other bars around them didn't require or waiting, these guys, after the doors opened up back again, and people went out. We're full constantly from day one. A lot of these other bars that I'm thinking of either shut down or struggled or whatever, but keeping their voice of life pushing that whole marketing agenda, just in those that small environment in the bar world, not in the big business world, is really, I think a good example of how when times get tough marketing really needs to actually ramp up rather than be turned off.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think for my observations, we in Australia, we went through the recession we had to have back in the 90s.

Brenton Gowland:

That's a while ago.

Ron Tomlian:

That's a while ago.

Brenton Gowland:

I do remember that.

Ron Tomlian:

And people did exactly what you were talking about, they turned off their marketing 10 It was funny because they also turned off their training, tap and, and just got into a business that was all about training. Under those circumstances, a lot of businesses went to the wall, because people weren't buying from them that they were, again, they were trying to cut down on their costs. And what happened was a lot of businesses that survived learned the lesson that, okay, when times get tough, the last thing I want to do is turn off the marketing tab. Now, that doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money, it means you have to invest time rather than money. And things are tied in being able to be more focused about what you're providing the value that you're providing. That is a really interesting point of the marketing effort doesn't decrease, maybe the marketing expenditure decreases.

Brenton Gowland:

Decreases, I actually think that is spot on, because the guys I was talking about, they did a little bit of that stuff in the past, but it became everything they did. Now in a bigger business. And I saw this happen as well, is that owners or management level or whatever started to really ramp up and go out and talk to people have fun hearing, we had the Zoom meetings, all that kind of stuff, if we're talking about that particular area. But you said a few weeks ago that the execs need to learn how marketing works and how to go about that. And that then says to me that those people actually can get involved in those efforts should they need to, it just means people need to change hats. So almost like you need to pivot when these kinds of events happen to really start to make sure that you're being heard and noticed and you're not fading into oblivion?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, what I've noticed is that when times are tough, it could be economic times, it could be industry time, it could be a market, that's that's going through a difficult time. That's when people start to recognise that I'm being lazy in terms of spending money on tactics, yeah, that aren't giving me the returns that I want. Yeah, getting me the results that I want. That's when strategic marketing becomes more critical, because I want to focus my efforts on not spending so much. But I want it to make more difference than what I was doing before. And that's when asking the questions that are associated with a strategic marketing perspective. Who are my customers? What value am I offering? How could offer more value? What's my positioning? What are my competitors doing? What what is the market telling me? What is the industry telling me what's happening with my supply chain, all those sorts of things become much more critical, because then I can spend my money, when I want to talk to customers, or when I want to get out to my market, or when a model make my offering different. That's when the strategic marketing approach becomes a way of saving money, rather than spending more.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, this strategic marketing approach really is making sure that we know where we're going in the future, right. So we've got what I really liked, that we talked about was getting that decision making framework in place and then aligning with the assumption was we aligned with the business strategy, this is where the business is going. So based on our decision making framework that we've established through strategic marketing objectives, these are the decisions we need to make to be able to get there. Right. So going on from the last episode, we were looking at building marketing capability, the strategic thinking there really was how do we get the marketing function noticed within the business, so the business starts to see the value of it, so we can start to grow it. So how does the strategic marketing approach then keep that capability growing?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, this is this is about understanding, what are the problems for the organisation? And what can it do to solve some of those problems for the organisation, you've got to understand what the organisational problems are. Now, strategic marketing helps organise to my way of thinking, strategic marketing helps organisations more effectively operate in the marketplace, because it's able to focus its efforts and get a better return, which is, of course, a business objective for the organisation. And sometimes that can be an end should be a longer term approach. Good example, I suppose is the area that we might talk about later on in this series about marketing is branding. Absolutely. People love to think of branding as a logo. And leave it at that. And sometimes look at the competitors and say, How can we can compete against them. They have such a strong brand. Well, yeah, absolutely. You can't compare them against them because they've been working on developing a reputation, a brand and the mag Good place. That's taken years. And if you want to compete against those people, you have to invest the time and effort to do just that. So you know that that has happened years ago, and you're only seeing the results of it now. So being able to say, okay, understand this is what we want a more sustainable organisation. We want to be more resilient in our marketplace. How will a brand help with that?

Brenton Gowland:

I understand all that, I think that's a really important in that shows us where strategic marketing can take us. But remember, we're convincing a business that it's important that strategic marketing is something that's valuable to invest in, I remember you told me a story, while we were discussing the show that you were working for a company that was going to end up as a company, you were talking earlier, I think you said you had a $6 million budget for marketing. And if you wanted to increase a campaign to from 100,000 to 120, no trouble. But then what happened when you asked about doing research? Please tell that story.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, I mean, it when you're talking about budgets like that, when you want to move money from one activity to another, when it's, I'm going to spend money on promotion, and where you're gonna see more stuff, no problems, when when you want to increase the size of a campaign, which is a tactical implementation of a strategy. Fantastic, I'm going to see more ads on television, I can see where my money's going. But if I want to change some of the what we were doing, and spend more money on understanding the market more effectively, understanding our customer base, what they were thinking, same amount of money $20,000, to do a research project. Now, I'm not going to I'm not going to condone that, because I want see the money today, I won't see more ads on television.

Brenton Gowland:

You know what that tells me, that tells me that even though marketing was given a big budget and was in the business, they didn't understand marketing back to what we were talking about the other week, absolutely. So trying to get a business to understand the value of strategic marketing, as a marketer or whoever else. If we're talking to business builders, and you run a business. This episode is all about the fact that that's what you want to be thinking about, you want to be making a framework to make really good decisions about your marketing.

Ron Tomlian:

So I suppose what I'm saying is, don't focus only on the activities that you can see, look at my understanding the fundamental understanding I have of my marketplace and my customers, and how I interact with them. That's a longer term investment that will pay higher dividends, than just seeing activity, especially if you're not taking the time. And this is a strategic marketing activity in itself. You're not taking the time to measure what you're doing and the effects that what you're doing is having.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, that's the convincing part, isn't it? When you measure, and this is what we did with this event on the weekend, the strategy behind the hail repair event that we did at the motorsport festival, was we wanted to create a database. So we implemented a CRM, we captured everyone's details, we then created vouchers that are going to be against those names for the next however long, we don't know how long it's gonna take for people to come in and use it 25%, it might take three months, six months, a year, whatever the we will be able to now track that we've got budget sheets set up. So we can go here's what the event cost. Here's what we actually generated this many signups to our newsletter, whatever it was, he is how much these people have spent in the last year. Therefore the event ROI is x positive, negative, whatever we will know now. So then we can make strategic decisions about what events we get involved in, or at least we've got some data to go on. But I think where I was thinking about going with this is the fact that the strategic marketing outcomes or direction or framework needs to be influenced by the business strategy. And that's where this starts to marry up with making marketing a pillar in the organisation. Strategic Marketing has to in fact deliver the strategy.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, Strategic Marketing is about setting the framework for delivery at the tactical level. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. When you think about what, what's what, what an organisation is, is often interested in Yeah, it's about for the shareholders achieving a certain revenue and profitability target. How are you going to do that? Well, is by by performance in the marketplace. Yes. That's the only way we're going to do it, and our internal capability to be able to do that in a profitable way. Yeah. Okay. So there's there's an internal component to it, capability, but there's the the only way you get money in is by sales and revenue from the marketplace. So you have to be interested And the only reason people will buy from you is if you're providing value. So you have to be interested in what what's going on in the marketplace, what your customers are thinking what their needs and wants are. And therefore you have to be interested in how we influence whether they come to us, or whether they go to competitors, all strategic, all strategic questions.

Brenton Gowland:

And I think I'm battling on behalf of those businesses that don't quite understand marketing. So how do we get them to understand, but it's, I think it's exactly what you're saying. It's the performance, it's being able to show the performance.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And and unless, you know, it's interesting. I reconnected recently with David Carr Condell, professor of marketing at UTSA. And when he was in charge of the marketing component of the MBA course at UTSA, he decided to change the title of the course, from marketing. Yes, yes, by acting, to creative and accountable by marketing. Ooh, that's interesting. The reason for that is acknowledging that people think marketing is a creative activity, but putting in there or superimposing on that the fact that marketing needs to be accountable. And quite frankly, to that point, we're talking about the mid 2000s. To that point, a lot of people had acknowledged and emphasised the creative component of marketing, but had de emphasised or ignored the fact that marketing needs to be accountable. And the only way and this was his opinion, I agree 100% with it, the only way that marketing was going to get credibility at the organisational level, is if it were accountable, and I have to admit, as a marketing director, in a previous organisation, give me more money, I'll do more stuff. Don't ask me what's happening with it, or what the results are, just give me more money, and I'll do more stuff. And that's because then I can rally around with the advertising agency and have fun. And we can do stuff and you can see it on there. Fantastic. Everybody's good. And if you want more of that just give me more money. Not really being worried about because that wasn't my role, as far as the organisation was concerned is, is this having an effect. And you know, before in the days of avid, there were all sorts of mechanisms that people tried to implement, to make marketing more accountable. Now with the internet and SEO, and yeah, you can see the accountability almost instantaneously. And that's fantastic. And it has made marketing more and accountable part of the organisation. But it needs to be something that marketing managers and marketing directors or CMOS, are interested in and the board and the executive should be insisting upon. That was a new concept back then. Now, it's, I think it's should be par for the course,

Brenton Gowland:

I see that you're passionate about this. So in this episode, what we've discussed is the difference between strategic and tactical marketing. And really, we've talked about the fact that strategic marketing is based upon creating a strategic decision making framework for the marketing decisions that we make, that the strategy should be aligning with delivering the business strategy, and that the tactical marketing, the putting it into practice really needs to have a symbiotic relationship with the strategy to be able to actually be effective. Yes?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, absolutely. Look at He's a lovely quote, from Sun Tzu.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay.

Ron Tomlian:

You know back 2,500 years ago.

Brenton Gowland:

The Art of War.

Ron Tomlian:

The Art of War. strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory tactics without strategy, or the noise before defeat. Interesting. So yeah, you'd need both. What's the relationship with the two, they both are reliant on the other? You can't have one without the other, but it's not going to get you where you want to be as quickly as you want?

Brenton Gowland:

Yes. And I guess in finishing, I would say that if you are a marketer, so we've been talking to business builders, that really you need to be finding ways to get that strategic marketing, really working within your business to have a strategic approach. But if you've had to be a marketer, and you've had to push up hill from the bottom up, Last episode, we were talking about getting marketing noticed, you really need to then educate the board the exact management about how the strategy can actually help deliver the business objectives in the business strategy, because then you get noticed, would you agree?

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. And there's one word that sums up how strategy helps tactics and that's focus.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, yeah. Where the marketing is going to be focused within the organisation. If you can get marketing to be seen as a delivery tool for the business strategy. I think you're ahead. I think that's where or the business will really start to invest in making sure that marketing is driving forward

Ron Tomlian:

And in the marketplace, in the delivery to customers, it is the only mechanism that's available service, part of marketing and delivery part of Marketing, distribution part of marketing.

Brenton Gowland:

Price part of marketing. We had a big old discussion about that earlier today.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. So, next time.

Brenton Gowland:

Next time. Next time, we're actually we spoke last episode about the brand that I was involved in helping launch called Peggs, that's P-E-G-G-S, Peggs, peggs.com.au and interviewing the owner of Peggs. So we're going to be doing that in the next episode and looking at his marketing journey. How he's gone from buying what was called Mrs Peggs, and then transforming that into Peggs, which is a completely new brand that really reflects now the quality of the products that he sells, and we want to hear how he's learned, how he sees marketing and how he's continuing to educate himself and continuing to see marketing become a focus within the organisation to see them achieve their goals. So that'll be next episode.

Ron Tomlian:

Looking forward to it.

Brenton Gowland:

Absolutely. And if you've been listening, we say goodbye for now.

Ron Tomlian:

Goodbye.

Brenton Gowland:

We'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Ron Tomlian:

Bye

Brenton Gowland:

Bye.

Introduction
Most businesses are stuck in the tactical marketing space
Strategic marketing starts by working to understand who your serving and what value your adding for them
What demographics are buying from you?
What's the difference between strategic and tactical marketing?
When times are tough, strategic marketing becomes more critical
Understanding the value of strategic marketing
Recap and next episode