The Ultimate Guide to Integrated Marketing Strategy: The Pyramid Framework

John Jantsch (00:00): I think that this definition, this pyramid, this graphic, offers a much more comprehensive view of how integrated marketing or strategy needs to be. It’s not just a one-time thing that we do. It never ends. You’re always refining and making it stronger based on these three elements.

(00:25): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and no guest today. I’m actually just going to chat solo today and I want to address a burning, burning question or one of those things out there that I think just has gone unanswered for too long, and that is what is marketing strategy. Now, don’t click off or next or set it at three times speed or whatever it is that you do to fast forward through things because you think you’ve heard this before. I think that I am going to present, or at least that’s my attempt today to present to you an idea about marketing strategy to show you once and for all what I believe is the way that we need to look at it. Now, there’s a lot of confusion on this. I know that if I poll 10 people, that I’m going to get 10 different answers on what marketing strategy is, and I’m going to suggest eight of them would be wrong or maybe just have one piece of it and certainly you turn to the Google and ask and you’re going to get presented a whole bunch of tactics.

(01:34): Marketing strategy is really the through line for how you’re going to compete. So if I were going to give it a kind of an emotional definition, it’s the place or the way you’re going to place the flag in the sand to say, here’s how we’re going to compete, or better yet, here’s how we’re going to dominate. But that’s probably not very helpful in terms of, okay, how do you do it or what do you do or how do you explain it? So I want to today to present to you something I call the marketing strategy pyramid to show you that there are components to this and that they all actually need to be integrated and working together. There is no one magic marketing strategy or marketing tactic. It’s really more about the integration, and that’s really what we do for when we work with clients, something we call strategy first.

(02:23): It’s what we also teach to other agencies to do, and it really is built on this pyramid, or at least I think this is the way we all need to start thinking about the comprehensive nature of marketing strategy. So I’m going to use this fancy tool here, stream deck to show you a slide at the same time I disappear into the corner of the slide. So if you’re just listening to this, you’re not seeing the graphic, but if you watch the video, or you certainly will have the graphic at Duct Tape Marketing, and when you go consume or if you go consume the actual post, imagine if you will, or those of you looking at it, can see it that there is a pyramid that has five layers to it, and the middle three layers are really the marketing strategy component. But even those, quite frankly, need to rest on the overarching business strategy.

(03:17): When we come in to work with somebody, and we are there primarily, or at least initially to create a marketing strategy, we don’t do it based on what we think they ought to do or what we think. There’s certainly of our experience we bring to it. But the main thing we are doing, the main thing, that marketing strategy and then the list of tactics to employ that strategy are there to do is support the overarching business objectives. So if growth is a business objective, if dominance in a market is a business objective, if retention say of clients is a business objective, then the marketing strategy is built around that and only that to begin with. So the very first thing we do in working with a client is try to understand where they’re going, try to understand the profit that they want to make in this business, try to understand the market share that they want to enjoy before we ever start really suggesting anything.

(04:14): And unfortunately, very few marketers actually take that approach. Very few business owners actually take that approach. They want to hire a marketer to generate some leads, and frankly, I think that leads them often to doing a whole bunch of things they shouldn’t do, let alone maybe not focusing on the things that are actually going to allow them to meet their marketing objectives. So that’s step number one. That’s job number one. Before we can even start going. But then what I want to suggest is that, or what we do is we then break marketing strategy into three distinct parts, brand strategy, growth strategy, and customer strategy. And the reason is that I believe that this is how somebody effectively moves through a business. This really reflects the marketing journey inside of marketing strategy. A lot of times people end marketing strategy with a clever tagline and colors and logos and call it a day.

(05:12): And what I want to suggest is a marketing strategy actually runs through the entire customer journey, the entire momentum that you’re trying to build inside of a journey. Now we use something called the marketing hourglass. I know many of you have heard me talk about that. That’s another tool that we use to reinforce this idea of the customer journey. But the three components, brand, strategy, growth strategy, customer strategy, brand strategy is where we will actually help identify who makes an ideal customer, narrow the focus to who makes an ideal customer, quite frankly, and really define the products and services that customer is looking for. We also are going to focus a great deal of attention on messaging. Are we promising to solve that ideal customer’s biggest problem as opposed to here’s what we sell, so nobody cares what we sell, they want their problem solved.

(06:03): So we’re going to focus the brand strategy on that. Then obviously things like personality, how do we want to be perceived? Are we fun? Are we very serious? Are we analytical? I mean, those are all things that come into the overarching decision about how we want to then produce things like content. And then lastly, and frankly, a lot of people put this first, when you say the word brand, we want to make sure that the names and colors and graphics and logos and things all support the message and the brand promise that we are trying to put out there. So that’s the first part of marketing strategy. The second then is probably the part that most people spend a lot of time on, and that’s the growth strategy. What are the actual tactics we’re going to use to attract, to build trust, to actually get people to try in some cases and then buy from us?

(06:55): So it’s all the sales things, it’s all of the communication. It’s a great deal of content that moves people through that stage. Certainly it’s advertising, it’s all the things that create awareness. And then the last piece of this is the customer strategy. Okay, what happens after somebody says yes? Do we have a marketing strategy or is part of our marketing strategy making sure that we have an amazing experience to onboard people, to really wow them in the first 90 days to communicate, to upsell and resell them, to retain them, to actually generate referrals? Those are all the components that go then into the customer strategy component of the marketing strategy pyramid. So everything is built on this base foundation of the business strategy. Those three layers of brand strategy, growth strategy, customer strategy, really allow us to intentionally focus on creating an amazing customer journey and attracting the right clients who expect to pay a premium.

(07:57): In fact, we’ll pay a premium now because we’ve focused on building trust, create a great buying experience, create a great customer experience. Those three things all get mapped together as we build a marketing strategy. And again, I think that this definition, this pyramid, this graphic offers a much more comprehensive view of how integrated marketing or strategy needs to be. It’s not just a one-time thing that we do. It never ends. You’re always refining and making it stronger based on these three elements. Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t add the fifth, the point of the pyramid, if you will, and that’s team strategy now. And quite often the business objectives, the brand strategy, the growth strategy, the customer strategy, are delivered by people in your organization, delivered by your team. Certainly as you grow, in many cases, you start having frontline people who are interacting with prospects and customers, and leadership is really not in tune with that.

(09:01): So you have to actually then understand how your business strategy, how your brand strategy, growth strategy, customer strategy, is both communicated and set into really a process that can be delivered by the team in the way that holds the brand promise, in the way that build allows you to build revenue and grow as your business strategy has suggested and certainly allows people to have a great experience anytime they’re interacting with anyone in your organization. So their overarching business really builds on this business strategy, has marketing strategy in the middle, and it’s really the cherry on top is then the team strategy that is going to deliver on all this. So you have to build it first, you have to then communicate it, and then you have to execute on it. But taking this, what I believe is a much more comprehensive view of marketing strategy is how you do it. So that’s it for today. If you would love to hear more about how we build that marketing strategy, certainly reach out John at Duct Tape Marketing and love to talk to you about building a marketing strategy for your organization that takes this comprehensive approach. You can also get some free resources at DTM world slash growth. Alright, till next time, take care.

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