Category: Opinions

When I run my marketing coaching workshops & seminars, one of the key areas of focus is ‘Strategy’. Which makes sense. Naturally everyone is interested in how to develop a killer strategy for their growth business. The first thing we talk about is; ‘What is Strategy’? Which on the face of it seems simple to answer, surely? It’s all that stuff around doing audits, developing cool stuff like SWOTs and competitor analysis and making plans, etc.

But it’s fascinating to see how easy it is to mix up and confuse the key elements of Strategy & Planning. Often people struggle to hold on to the differences and distinctions between Objectives, Strategy and Tactics.

As a real time example of this, it’s instructive to watch how the UK government has repeatedly fallen into the same trap with their Covid strategy. With the result that it’s often difficult to unpick what the approach really is!

Let’s take a quick journey through Covid strategy in the last few turbulent months;

At the start of Covid in February & March, we had Tactics, pure & simple. The message was ‘Wash Your Hands While Singing Happy Birthday’.
Then we moved on to ‘Protect the NHS’. Essentially an Objective, though rather lacking in detail.
We had the ‘Rule of Six’. Purely Tactical.
And currently, the rather more grave ‘Tiered Lockdown’. Which feels pretty Strategic, yes? Well, maybe!

Covid is an interesting lesson in how Objectives, Strategy and Tactics can be confused and confusing! Look at the Prime Minister’s Commons statement on 12^th October;

Objectives were outlined as; ‘…saving lives, protecting the NHS, while keeping our children in school and our economy running and protecting jobs and livelihoods’.

Are these really proper ‘Objectives’? What these ‘Objectives’ lack is specificity. How many lives? What level of hospital occupancy? Are we aiming to keep ALL children in school at all times? What level of unemployment is acceptable and in which sectors? These so called ‘Objectives’ are more like a high level vision or wish list. This is a crucial learning for your own strategy development and is so often the Achilles heel of ‘Strategy’.

If there are no really detailed objectives, how do we know if our strategy is working?

What was clearer however, were the ‘strategy’ options outlined by Boris. I’d argue that this was the first time in the Covid story that a UK politician had crisply and clearly outlined opposing strategic options and then explained the path chosen. Boris gave the argument for a ‘Let nature take her course’ strategy and the opposing approach of ‘Go back to full national lockdown of infinite duration’. Then he explained how he’d decided on a compromise strategy – the ‘Tiered Lockdown’ approach.

So we may agree or disagree, but at least we can see that the strategy is (finally, a bit) clearer. My only problem is the aforementioned lack of specific objectives, which means we won’t really know when the strategy has actually succeeded!

Finally, let’s look at Tactics. This is the collection of smaller, interlinked measures that add up to deliver our chosen strategy. Let’s be clear – having an app is not a strategy – it’s a tactic. Closing venues at 10pm is a tactic. So is wearing facemasks, washing hands and not mixing households indoors.

I hope the picture is becoming clear. Whether you’re a government or a SME Upscaler business, it’s vital to understand the distinctions between objectives, strategy & tactics. Start with super – clear objectives and make them as measurable as possible. Then (and only then) can you begin to look at your strategic options, develop propositions and make strategic plans. Finally, your tactics can drop into place. Do it this way round and remember – doing an app is not a strategy!!

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Our first one – day Upscaler Marketing Workshop was delivered by Mick Stoves & Sophie Taylor on Wednesday 4th December. Great to be at the fabulous venue of Nottingham’s Royal Centre!

M4G has been appointed by D2N2 and Nottingham Trent University’s Business School to deliver a series of three Upscaler Marketing Workshops. The theme is Strategic Marketing for high – growth businesses. More about the Upscaler Forum programme here.

Joining the Upscaler Marketing Workshop were 29 business leaders from 20 of the high – growth businesses on D2N’s Growth Hub Upscaler Programme. Businesses on the programme all demonstrate a track record of high growth. M4G’s Marketing Workshop is one in a series, designed to support these Scale Up businesses in their journey through transformation and growth.

M4G’s Marketing Workshop covered a lot of ground in one day! We looked at topics such as;

• Marketing Strategy for Scale Up Businesses
• Customer Focus
• Customer Journey
• Customer Acquisition, Retention & CRM
• Customer Personas
• Value Propositions
• Communications Channel Planning & Content Marketing
• Marketing Intelligence
• Marketing’s Impact on Bottom Line
• Value-Based Pricing
• Sustainability, Ethics, Culture and ‘Purpose’

Also appearing at the workshop was our guest speaker Geoff Love, ex CEO of Nottingham tech business Commify. Geoff led the workshop through the journey to growth he’s taken with Commify and previously with Homeserve.

It was super day, with lots of great delegate feedback and interaction. Delegates came from diverse business sectors like Confectionery, Security, Recruitment, Creative Businesses, Environmental, Manufacturing and more. At M4G we’re really looking forward to the next Strategic Marketing Workshop which will be in 2020.

‘Enterprise value is now composed of marketing-driven “intangibles’. Intangible assets such as brand value, customer equity and perceptions of innovation now make up over 80% of shareholder value and increasingly drive stock price.’
Forbes CMO Marketing Accountability Report 2017

Clearly strong Value Propositions and powerful Brands drive business value; in certain situations nowadays to levels well beyond ‘normal’. Brands like Uber (valued at around $80bn before it had made any profit yet) are living proof. It’s plain that in a world where customer experience is king, the contribution of marketing to business value needs to be better understood and, where possible, quantified – in order to aid investor decision making.

In 2017, Forbes CMO produced a report; ‘Forbes Marketing Accountability’ which codified the areas where marketing makes a contribution to ‘Enterprise Value’. The stronger and more tangible the following six areas are, the higher the Value contribution;

1. Having a Brand with ‘Strong Brand Value’
2. Creating ‘Customer Equity’ via great customer experiences and deeper customer relationships
3. Strong Organisational Competence – successful linkages & collaboration between Marketing and other business functions
4. Initiatives in Modern Marketing Methods & Techniques, particularly Marketing Measurement & ROI
5. Use of appropriate Digital Platforms & Tools
6. Innovation in Marketing

So how should Investors approach Marketing Performance Evaluation? The challenge is to approach evaluation of the Marketing function & performance of a business in two scenarios;

1. In prospective ‘Buy Mode’. When you’re considering an Investment in a business. When you are in the Due Diligence process and as part of that wish to assess & consider how a prospect business’s marketing performs.
2. In prospective ‘Sale Mode’. When a business in which you are invested is being readied for Sale and needs to ensure its marketing function is positioned as fit for purpose to prospective buyers.

The benefit of assessing marketing performance is to deliver as objective a view as possible in an area of business that is harder to quantify than some. At M4G we aim provide clear guidance to support other traditional Due Diligence and Pre Sale activities, adding to the insight available to decision makers.

What is ‘Sustainable Competitive Advantage’? Why is it important? Clearly many Growth or Scale Up Businesses are looking forward to an eventual sale. A time when the owners & investors realise the value of their business and walk away smiling!

We look at lots of articles about the factors affecting company valuation. American VC firm MCM Capital identify seven key areas. EBITDA Size, Revenue Trends, Profit Margins, Customer Concentration, Industry Concentration, Strength & Depth of Management Team and finally, Sustainable Competitive Advantage.

So some are financial, operational or ‘macro’. Not areas where marketers like M4G operate. But the final one, ‘Sustainable Competitive Advantage’ is where M4G can help.

‘Sustainable Competitive Advantage’ is clearly a good thing! The more of this you can demonstrate, the higher your valuation. We help Scale Up businesses build their very own Sustainable Competitive Advantage.

How do we create Sustainable Competitive Advantage? By building what Warren Buffet calls an ‘Economic Moat’. Here’s what he says;

‘We think in terms of that moat and the ability to keep its width and its impossibility of being crossed as the primary criterion of a great business. And we tell our managers we want the moat widened every year. That doesn’t necessarily mean the profit will be more this year than it was last year because it won’t be sometimes. However, if the moat is widened every year, the business will do very well. When we see a moat that’s tenuous in any way — it’s just too risky. We don’t know how to evaluate that. And, therefore, we leave it alone.’

Very simply, if you have a moat that’s wide and sustainable, there’s the potential to command high margins. Which clearly adds to the value of your business. And boosts your ability to sell for a higher valuation.

In Moat Building, Cost Advantage, Scale Advantage and High Customer Switching Costs are all at play. At M4G our focus is what the article calls ‘Intangibles’. In other words, the strength (or weakness) of your brand.

At M4G, our process is to Identify, Create & Sustain your very own ‘Moat’. So you look & feel unique (even if you’re not). In that way, your brand contributes fully to a high business valuation.

Photo by Alex Paganelli, Unsplash

If you’re a growth business, it’s time to think carefully about your brand. Has your brand just sort of ‘evolved’ over time? Is it less of a brand and really just a set of Corporate Identity guidelines? If you had to explain your brand in an elevator pitch, could you? To sum up, is your brand fit and ready to support your transformational growth? And finally (this is really important for growth business marketing) is your brand flexible?

What do we mean by flexible branding? Why is it important to growth business marketing? Let’s look at what flexible branding is not.

Firstly, it’s not ‘corporate identity’. Some businesses fixate fetishistically on the ‘look and style’ element of brand. The logo, colourways, design and so on. Of course, consistency is important. But not at the expense of rigidity or refusal to engage with the changing needs of a growth business. And not least its audiences. At M4G, we’ve met ‘brand police’ (often one individual!) whose role is to ‘guard’ all things brand. They can be a dangerous obstacle to necessary change.

Secondly, flexible branding is not just a single brand story or theme. Growth businesses are invariably undergoing transformation. There will be changes to products, services, systems, culture, customer interaction and more. Is your growth business brand ‘stuck’ with one fixed voice? If it is, the business struggles to communicate the new and dynamic changes it is undergoing. Failure here can be catastrophic. When customers or staff misunderstand the business’s transformation, evidence suggests they leave. Is the transformation you’re making intended to deliver better value to customers? Then never forget that brand is your story to explain how transformation is good for them, not disruptive. Read more about the dangers of customer alienation in a blog from consultants BTD, here.

Finally, a practical point about growth business marketing and flexible branding. Think hard about the needs of content and social marketing. Insisting on a slavish adherence to a ‘one brand, one story’ approach is suicidal. A growth business brand needs flexibility to cope with the multi-layered demands of social and content. Read more about how to do this in our blog here.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

For businesses in growth or Scale Up mode, transformation is a constant. The need to change, reinvent and reorganise. This is typically in key areas like operations, integration, structures and systems. But Marketing Transformation? Sometimes this is the piece of the jigsaw that’s missing.

A partner of M4G (and CEO of a Scale Up) explained the process to us like this. ‘In overcoming barriers to growth there’s an overwhelming list of transformational items on your plate’. ‘This is where external consultants come in. They can support in those transformational areas where the leadership team don’t have the skills or the time’.

Once the consultants have left, what then? The transformation required to reshape the business has been delivered. But what about the storytelling? Selling the business in its new guise is THE story. This is the piece we usually find missing. To sum up; you may be on the road to business transformation, but what about Marketing Transformation?

If you can’t capture your transformation in ways that are meaningful to your staff and customers then you’re actually risking losing more than you gain. Confusion, rumour, mis-information, misunderstanding. Furthermore, there are horrible practical consequences too – staff leave, customers start to look elsewhere. Of course, you know there’s a bright future to come – why won’t your staff and customers understand that?

This is where true Marketing Transformation come in. What do we mean by that? True Marketing Transformation is fully and systematically capturing all the changes you’re making to the business. All packaged into a coherent set of stories that your key stakeholders will understand and embrace. And we mean the tough and challenging ones, not just the easy, positive ones.

To sum up, Marketing Transformation should be an essential part of any business transformation. At M4G we believe it’s crucial for the this to happen as a single, seamless process, not as two disconnected parts.

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

Content Marketing for Scale Ups is vital right? Everyone knows that a twenty first century communications strategy that doesn’t take account of Content Marketing is a non starter. All true. But at M4G we believe that you really shouldn’t start until you find what we call your Scale Up Voice.

So what do we mean? Content Marketing is seductive. It’s really not so difficult to set up a few Social Channels and start firing away with whatever Content comes to hand. You have lots of Content don’t you? Press releases, product news, client wins, event activity and so on.

However, that’s not true Content Marketing. Think of it as trying to become a rock star. You could buy your instruments. You could learn to play. You could hire the O2 Arena. You could even bus in an audience for your first ever concert. But if you don’t have good songs (ie great Content), you’d be wasting your time!

You need to create your song. To do that you have to make some wise choices around what material you’re going to use, that your audience will actually engage with! Check out songwriter Ralph Covert’s TedX Talk to see what we mean!

So when it comes to Content Marketing for Scale Ups, here at M4G our big tip is – first find your ‘Voice’. What we call your ‘Scale Up Voice’ is the main strategic theme (or themes) that your Content Marketing will cover.

This ‘Voice’ is certainly not just more of the aforementioned product or PR ‘stuff’. Your Scale Up Voice needs to be based on two things.

Firstly, a clear understanding of the interests, problems and issues that your key target personas are concerned with. And secondly, a way of connecting your business’s individual and differentiating offers and solutions to those concerns in a ‘stand out’ way. At M4G we work closely with our clients’ leadership, marketing, sales and product teams to develop their ‘Scale Up Voice’.

A strong Voice allows you to create and deliver Content that does three things.

Firstly it engages Customers and Prospects on the issues that they actually find engaging. Secondly it encourages consistency. In that you have a way of working out which Content your colleagues create should be used and which should be shelved . And thirdly, a clear Scale Up Voice has a good chance of making you the industry or market expert on your chosen subjects.

Which, as the Content experts will tell you, is when Content ‘stuff’ becomes true Content Marketing.

Photo by Erin Biafore on Unsplash

Let’s talk about Scale Up differentiation! As every entrepreneur knows, starting a business is hard. And so is sustaining that business as it grows. Every account, every sale, every new opportunity for income counts. We turn down nothing. Because every single pound of revenue is vital. As one business founder said to us about their early days; ‘We did everything for everyone’.

However, as a business enters Scale Up mode, the dynamic changes. Investors need to see a business that is worthy of a strong multiple. That means looking at quality of earnings, not just quantity.

A company that is doing vanilla, low-margin business for easy-come, easy-go clients is in a weak position. The founder mindset has to change. To move away from an ‘everything for everybody’ mindset. Instead, move towards one of ‘Scale Up Differentiation’. A Scale Up business with a truly differentiated offer is able to properly articulate its Value Proposition. Such that it separates from the rest of the competitive herd towards a position of strength.

Delivering Scale Up Differentiation needs a mindset change. By this we mean a flip from Founder Mindset to Investor Mindset. Firstly, this is a recognition that the future value of the business will be driven by the nature of its client base. A differentiated Scale Up has a client base characterised by high-margin customers. Ones who are paying for solutions. Not for easily substituted ‘stuff’.

Secondly, the differentiated Scale Up business will be pricing more confidently. Because it can clearly demonstrate its true value-add, it can better defend its price in any negotiations with Purchasing professionals.

Let’s sum up. For a business in Scale Up mode, a sharp and differentiated Value Proposition is vital. This isn’t about fluffy marketing. Its about having a stand out business that can demonstrate value* and so protect its competitive position. And also attract the sort of multiple its investors dream of.

*PS, for more on ‘Value’ try Tim Williams’ blog here

photo by Geran De Klerk/Unsplash