Pick Your Tactics Wisely

Doing more with less requires a different mindset, to be sure. It begins with a focus on quality. It requires generating actionable insight, and crafting consistent, strategically aligned messages. It demands tracking, and an ongoing systematic way of knowing how well your work is generating results.

But what’s often overlooked, at least at the outset, is the dramatic improvement in the quality of tactical planning and priority setting that organizations can achieve when they focus on doing more with less.

From the chaos and confusion of the typical marketing department comes clarity, purpose, and a firm set of marching orders – if we take advantage of a simple set of ideas. This clarity allows us to be able to take a big picture snapshot of where we are, make sound assessments and diagnose what’s really needed to get higher quality creative, better results, and consistency. With that clarity, writing the right prescriptions become much easier, and we can first focus our attention on “fixing what’s broken.”

Similarly, holes in our contact points or media strategy become much easier to spot, and provide us with an opportunity to reduce wasteful spending in lieu of more effective, more trackable allocations. Everything gets a lot more focused, and effective, when you put things in the right order. In a world of infinite media options (ever fragmenting TV audiences and proliferation of programming options, new media platforms online, etc.), we need a way of making good decisions about what to do next, and why. Often, when we hear “we’re all over the place,” what we actually see is a marketing department working without a good tactical plan.

In Summary

Budgets are tight, and the battle for new business is as hard as ever. But that can’t stop us from delivering smart, strategic marketing efforts that help move people through the turnstile and put heads in beds. If we look at our current situation as an opportunity to shore up our fundamentals, think about quality and focus our efforts, we’ll be rewarded with marketing communications that deliver results – and really do more with less.