Translating Insights into Action

1. Marketing Strategy Translating Insights Into Action
Keith Flint, Strategy, Sudden Impact Marketing, Inc.
A sound marketing strategy equips you with the greatest advantage in a competitive market. Armed with a thorough
understanding of your customers’ needs, informed by a full appreciation of your customers’ perceptions, and confident in
your assessment of the competitive landscape, you can more effectively market your products and services.
In a crowded marketplace populated with viable options, subtle differences in product offerings—and how they are presented—drive customer
choice and selection. Those decision-altering differences are not achieved serendipitously. They are carefully planned and strategically guided.
Like so many other aspects of contemporary marketing, strategy development is a process-oriented undertaking.
At a macroscopic level, the strategy development process is composed of six essential elements:
• Goal setting
Establish clear, attainable goals and delineate measurable objectives. Identify the necessary steps required to effectively establish a presence
and maintain awareness of your brand, product, or service within its market.
• Market Analysis
Evaluate the environment in which you compete. Thoroughly survey the landscape of your market and use that intelligence to help plan your
strategy. One key fact to establish is whether your market is broadly generalized or highly segmented. You must also be keenly aware of current
and future competitive threats, and their potential impact on market conditions.
• Customer Insight
Listen carefully to consumer perspectives and perceptions. Understand end-user needs and the motivations behind them. Learn the most
desirable benefits of the products or services they prefer—even if this does not align with the features of your company’s offering. Whether you
conduct a formal needs assessment, poll your sales team, or gain insights through direct dialog with everyday users, you have to know what the
customer wants. You need to know why they make their purchase decisions. And you need to understand the barriers to adoption.
• Strategy Formulation
Devise a strategy informed by customer insights. Gain an appreciation of customer needs. Informed by their perspectives, you can establish
your eligible market, apply your newly gained understanding of decision drivers, and carefully craft actionable strategies to achieve your
designated goals.
• Implementation
Implement your strategy effectively and completely. Strategy must serve as the foundation for your tactical plan. Each tactic identified must be
linked to a specific strategic imperative. Given the constraints imposed on most marketing budgets, you simply cannot afford tactical
executions that are not strategically driven. This guidance should be applied to all aspects of program development, project management, and
creative campaign development and execution. It is absolutely critical to include a thorough roll-out of each tactic to the sales organization.
• Critical Evaluation
Assess the effectiveness of your strategic guidance and implementation at a time appropriate to your product’s life cycle, and within the time
frame relevant to your promotional project or marketing campaign. Evaluate these efforts against your primary goals and objectives. Be
prepared to adapt your approach and adjust your execution in accordance with your outcomes analysis. Too often, the assessment phase of the
strategy process is de-emphasized or ignored completely—often with dire consequences.
At Sudden Impact, our greatest client successes have been achieved when the SI team collaborated from the outset of the project with active
participation during the strategy formulation stage. Our best tactical development and creative executions have been the result of a common
understanding and shared vision with our client partners.
Needless to say, we attain the most desirable outcomes for our clients with common objectives, shared insights, and a unified vision.
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