Marketing Strategy: what it is, and how you can use it, to get more clients into your small business without cold calling or working harder or longer.

Marketing Strategy is a beautiful thing ... when you do it well you will have highly qualified, ideal clients, coming into your business ready to hand over money before they know exactly what it is you are selling. And you won't have to cold call or even try and sell anything to anyone.

So what is "Marketing Strategy" and how can you make sure your business benefits from it?

Sometimes it's easiest to get clear on what a thing is by making distinctions between that thing and something that it's often confused for...

For example "strategy" is often mixed up with "tactics" and "marketing" is often mixed up with "selling".

Let's kick off with the difference between strategy and tactics and then next month we can examine marketing versus selling.

Strategy versus Tactics

The concept of strategy is best known in the context of war.

At the risk of over-simplifying and having Churchill, Hitler and Alexandra The Great all taking a collective and well-synchronized roll in their graves, strategy has to do with concentration of as much power as possible on an area of an enemy's greatest weakness.

If you want an entertaining book that illustrates the use of strategy then read Bills Fawcett's book "How To Lose A Battle" (click on the book's image to order from Amazon). B.T.W. - the book could equally be titled "How To Win A Battle. Brilliant Plans and Great Military Triumphs" - for every loser in battle there is a winner.

For example, during World War 2 Hitler spent the two years, from 1941 to 1943, preparing for an invasion from the Allies by heavily fortifying every port along the coast that faced Britain.

It was the German General Rommel who pointed out to Hitler "der Blutungen offensichtlich" (the bleeding obvious!), that the Allies could simply land on any one of the many completely undefended beaches and then take the ports from inland.

Which of course, is exactly what they did: Hitler had given Rommel command of fortifying the beaches and whilst the ensuing invasion was fiercely contested, the fortifications were unfinished at the time of 'Operation Overlord' (the codename for the allied invasion of Europe).

In another example, this time of POOR strategy from WW2, another German General, Von Manstein insisted that Hitler abandon his strategy of static warfare in Russia and instead be prepared to retreat in an attempt to make the Soviet army either stretch out too thinly or to make them advance too fast - either way the Germans would then be able to attack on the flanks with the goal of encircling them.

Von Manstein got fired for expressing his views so vigorously to Hitler (he got off lightly I suspect) and as we all know whilst Hitler had the rank to win the argument, he went on to lose the war.

(There is a lesson in there for every small business leader: listen, listen, listen to the people at the front line).

There's a strategic parallel to this story in business:

If you want to either create a new market OR attack the market share of a larger player, then concentrate your efforts where competitors are either absent or weak.

At www.8020center.com we call that "finding the SUN" - meaning "Specific Unmet Need".

Domino's found the SUN when the two brothers set up their first pizza parlour on the edge of a large university campus.

They were straight across the road from thousands of hungry students whose appetites, one suspects, were artificially stimulated by what they were smoking: (I think it's called "the munchies") and Domino's were consequently invaded every night by ravenous, hormone-raging, pimple-popping teenagers.

In a market saturated not only by fat, but also by home delivery pizza franchises and independent operators, Domino's observed the bleeding obvious: customers were disappointed and frustrated when the pizzas were consistently delivered both late and cold.

Domino's hit the nail on the SUN head when they said "If we don't deliver your pizza hot within 30 minutes, you don't pay".

Closer to home, one of my clients exploited a gap in the market when he created and built a country-specific on-line tourist internet site. A simple concept that at the time met a SUN in the market and was later sold for many millions of dollars.

I could tell you more about how my clients are chipping away at larger companies' market share, but then I'd have to kill you ... or at least my clients would want to kill me.

There's a lot more to the subject of strategy, but this is where it starts: What will you do in the market place that either meets a Specific Unmet Need...either one that is pre-existing or one that you create? ... but that's another story.

So that's kind of like an introduction to "Strategy 101".

Tactics is what happens AFTER the strategy has been figured out.

Strategy requires imagination whereas tactics, whilst not always easy, depends on a more rational, logical, linear thinking style.

Whereas strategy is about the big idea, tactics is about the detail: What series of actions are required to execute the strategy, who will do it, when, where, how much will it cost?

My big beef with most management consultants and most business coaches is that they are devoid of imagination and consequently deliver what is in effect, tactical advice. It's the cart before the horse. It all sounds logical, which it is, but it keeps the business owner stuck on the "work harder, work longer" treadmill.

The enemy of great strategy is the good (tactical) idea.

If you want to learn more about Marketing Strategy then I invite you to join my 80-20 Killer Marketing Club ... you can check it out at www.8020Center.com/Club/