There's one strategic thinking question that will make you a better marketer?
Yes there is ONE strategic thinking question you can ask (and, of course, answer) that all by itself will make you a better marketer.
Let me share with you how it works.
I was presenting a workshop on branding and social media with a new client. Before we wrapped up, one participant asked what I thought about paying to include something from their business in a welcome gift going to new residents in a community the business serves.
She probably wanted a simple thumbs up or thumbs down. That wasn't what she needed, though. I gave her a suggestion and a strategic thinking question.
The suggestion was to look at any type of marketing investment as a sponsorship. You're investing a specific amount of money to associate your brand with something - whether it's a sports team, a direct marketing piece, an advertisement, or even social media content. Thinking about it from a sponsorship marketing perspectives helps you see how your marketing investments need to display comparable characteristics, even if they are non-traditional sponsorships.
The One Strategic Thinking Question to Ask and Answer
Once you start looking at all your marketing investments through a sponsorship marketing model, you have to ask a fundamental sponsorship marketing question:
What are we going to do and how much are we going to invest to market this sponsorship?
Asking that one question will automatically make you a stronger strategic marketer.
It's vital with any sponsorship to do the strategic thinking about how much you invest to link your brand in an effective and business-building way to the sponsorship asset you're renting from the organization that owns it.
Answering that question from a strategic perspective makes you consider:
- How do we integrate this marketing activity with other things we do?
- What can we do to make sure this supports our most important objectives?
- What other things can we do to get more advantage from our investment?
- What's the right ratio to invest in marketing the sponsorship to get the greatest value from it?
- How would we measure whether this works or not?
By looking at your marketing investments from a sponsorship marketing perspective and asking one strategic thinking question, you're forced to address integrated marketing, metrics, ROI, and making sure you have tactics to support all of these.
In the case of the welcome packet, we covered, within a few short minutes, what would make this make sense for a non-primary market, A/B testing, negotiating contact information on who receives the packets, creating an offer for those receiving the information, and providing a landing page specific to this offer to track whether people take action on it.
See what I mean about being a stronger strategic marketer.
There you have it.
Be sure to add this strategic thinking question to your repertoire: "What are we going to do and how much are we going to invest to market this sponsorship?" - Mike Brown
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