Is your marketing strategy guided, or is it just guesswork?

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As any small business owner would agree, growth it's the name of the game. All too often, however, these new businesses end up in the “Grand Tactics Race.” In my years of working with and advising entrepreneurs and marketers, I've heard them talk about “amazing” ways to market their company time and time again, such as paid search ads, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing and more. Tactics are often seen as shiny new objects that create hype and promise impressive results.

However, when well-intentioned people eagerly embrace these tactics, they tend to jump right in with both feet. Many of them sink large funds building a fancy websitehiring a social media consultant and creating lots of Google ads. While these tactics certainly have the potential to bring in business and increase brand awareness, it's essential to first address some key questions:

Is this really the best choice of tactics to meet my business goals?
Are your potential customers really on this “legacy” social media site that has millions of users and has been around for years, or that other one that just launched but is making a lot of noise?
Or is social media marketing the right tactic for you?

It is like embarking on a long ocean voyage without a destination or means of guidance. How will you know when you've arrived, or if you ever will?

The real mistake: asking “how” before “what”

Embracing tactics before finalizing a strategy is the real mistake. It's understandable, of course. Business owners and managers are naturally excited to get started and make money, and they believe—not entirely without reason—that the latest tactics will get them there. Marketing consultants basic introductory questions are often asked, such as “How do we get started with Google Ads?” or “How can we grow our TikTok account?”

These are not bad questions, per se. Those are just not the questions you want to start with.

The first question should be, “What strategy should we adopt to achieve our stated goals?” Another way to derive the same information is to understand what the business needs to achieve and what conditions or actions will help you achieve those goals and support your growth. If a business's goal is to increase sales by 25%, for example, then these actions should include gaining a deeper understanding of the target market – where they live and shop, what their economic and educational backgrounds are, where they spend time online. , which sources of information influence them, etc.

Then, with that information in hand, the business can make intelligent choices about which tactics best support their goal. Starting with “what” helps clarify purpose and context. If you focus on the “how” first, you may end up pouring limited funds and resources into channels that are unlikely to help you achieve your goal.

A real world example

To illustrate this more clearly, let's start with a hypothetical company hungry for growth. Let's say you decide to invest heavily in Google Ads, spending $5,000 a month right away, in the hopes that the ads will quickly drive a steady stream of ready-to-buy customers right in the door.

There's just one problem: No one at the company knows for sure whether their target audience actually uses Google to search for the product the company sells.

So if this company's product is niche enough, it may not drive enough search volume to warrant such a high budget. The company will lose money and also lose the opportunity to engage in a more appropriate and potentially successful tactic. With a little advanced researchthe company could have learned that their target audience supported the advertising budget of about $2,000 – meaning they're basically losing $3,000 every month, since those ads are only reaching people who won't convert.

The problem is not so much tactics. It is the lack of a basic strategy. The company failed to outline the bigger picture by researching where its customers look for information on its products. This would determine whether a Google ad campaign was the right platform to accomplish its goals.

The best approach

The most productive approach to marketing your small business is to start by exploring strategies informed by your goals. Starting with a strategy helps you create a winning roadmap for all future marketing choices.

The key is to have specific, measurable goals. If the goal is to increase sales with 15% in the next quarter, for example, you should start by researching the most effective ways to reach that target audience and convert them into paying customers. Identify the types of content that help motivate and persuade those target prospects and which platforms they engage with most often.

Once you've identified the right channels, you can then build effective tactical plans around those channels. Taken in this order, tactics serve your strategy, rather than a delivery approach that may or may not hit the target.

How to fix this very common mistake with a solid marketing strategy

Let's break it down step by step, to help you avoid the pitfalls of tactical thinking. Here's how you can make sure your business is building the right foundation through it marketing efforts:

Step 1: Define clear growth objectives

Set specific growth goals that make sense for your business model and company values. Make sure the goals are specific and measurable – for example, increase revenue by 25% over the next two quarters.

Step 2: Identify channels where growth is possible

Once you've established your business goals, turn your attention to finding the channels that best match those goals. If your goal is to expand your customer base and these targeted prospects are new, you will have more success on TikTok than on Facebook or with paid search ads.

Step 3: Test strategic assumptions before execution

Don't rush in creating TikTok videos just yet. Instead, test your assumptions first by exploring different potential channels on a smaller scale and with lower stakes. Maybe you want to try adding a video to your social media rotation to measure engagement or run a short survey to confirm that your target audience is where you think they are.

Step 4: Finally, optimize tactics and measure results

Now you are ready to commit your resources to tactics and optimize their use in your marketing plan. You can choose to change your ad copy, run more split tests, expand your social media posts, or create a static website design to improve conversions. And of course, you'll continue to measure and document your results to make sure you keep moving toward your goals.

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