The importance of strategic anticipation and how it can transform marketing success
As a marketer, you are always faced with the responsibility and pressure to manage your day to day work and deliver the business targets in your immediate environment. By focusing in on what is in front of you the challenge is you naturally lose the vision and ability to anticipate major disruptions which maybe encroaching on your sector.
As technology changes at an increasing speed a vital component of smart marketing strategy in the future is recognising the impact of significant changes and pivoting strategically to make the most of these emerging opportunities. This is not easy to do and often requires a major cultural shift in an organisation’s marketing department.
So how can we create a marketing function which recognises and anticipates major disruptions? Below are six tips for structuring your marketing function around strategic anticipation:
- Monitor what is happening around the fringes of your business. Keep an internal record of other industries, new research and data, observing presentations at key industry events and emerging business models data that might be significant to your sector.
- Observe closely game changing shifts in current marketing technology. While the Google Panda ranking update in 2011 seemed like a regular Google algorithm update a deeper analysis revealed a seismic shift in how content would now be valued for in Google. Since the Panda update, company websites now have to manage SEO around content planning.
- Create an internal culture where mavericks are encouraged in your company to say what they really think. Everyone should have confidence to make suggestions so your company need to create a culture of contribution where anyone can speak up.
- Allocate a proportion of budget to testing and learn. This is vital and we really want to evaluate the potential of new. Marketers commonly measure the performance of each of their marketing activities in isolation as if they work independently of one another. This may result in significant over- or under attribution of advertising revenues because ads in one medium can exert a powerful influence on, or assist, those in another.
- Create a collaborative working environment. The boundaries between PR and marketing, online and offline are increasingly blurring. This creates a great opportunity for a more coordinated and multi-disciplinary approach internally to predicting significant changes and coordinating a fast response when disruptions emerge.
- Embrace a collaborative approach to start-ups in your sector. Collaborating with startups can often reveal where your sector is headed and can inspire faster ways of working. In 2011 British Gas had partnered with a small start up to launch the remote heating control product, the precursor to Hive. British Gas realised they’d hit on a great product, one that not only had the potential to help customers save £150 per year on the average energy bill but could also improve customer engagement.
Not anticipating change can be fatal. In 2010 a little know upstart called Netflix visited the head office of Blockbuster suggest they run their digital streaming business. They were laughed out of the room. By 2010 Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and Netflix laid the foundations of revolutionary streaming product to emerge as a $28bn business.
David Reilly is digital marketing strategist, digital skills trainer for Lets Learn Digital and delivers workshops on digital transformation, B2B marketing and LinkedIn.