Why You Need an Agnostic Marketing Strategy

So much of the global marketing conversation is driven by the latest technology, the hottest trends, and the deepest insights. This is because the marketing industry has a bias towards what is new, rather than what works. The latest capabilities without an underlying strategy can you lead you in the wrong direction fast. An agnostic marketing strategy can help prevent this from happening.

To develop a marketing strategy that is agnostic towards specific channels and individual tactics one must first take a step back – way back, to a time before new channels were introduced faster than they can be proven effective. In reality, good marketing hasn’t changed at all in the last 100 years. Today, as then, customers need to travel an imaginary funnel from awareness to action. In this post I will illustrate what I mean.

I have a problem.

Before an individual or organization can become a customer, they must first determine that they have a problem. In many cases a potential customer may not realize they have a problem. This is the first stage of the sales funnel. In a B2B environment, an organization may not realize that there is a better way of working. Let’s say your service or widget helps organizations cut down on the time it takes to file quarterly reports. They might be preparing reports today and feeling quite confident that they are doing everything right – until they learn there is a better way!

Before we can introduce our product or solution, we must first understand the potential customer at the state in which they cross over from not realizing they have a problem towards realizing they have a problem. As a great first exercise for developing an agnostic marketing strategy, ask yourself to write down everything you know about your customer when they are at this stage. This will help you define your target group and begin thinking about how you will reach them.

Remember, your potential customers don’t think of themselves as “someone who likes clicking on search ads” or “a person who hears ads on the radio.” If this is how you are defining your target population, you are getting ahead of yourself in a big way. Breathe, take a step back.

Who is your customer? Make it agnostic to your marketing channels. Heck, make it agnostic to your products! Truly ask yourself who your customer is. What do you know about them? Let the process of defining these characteristics happen without jumping to tactics regarding how you will reach them. This way, when you get to that stage you will not have already biased yourselves towards assumptions about which tactics will work and which won’t.

Solutions that Solve My Problem

Once a potential customer knows they have a problem, they will start looking for solutions. If it was your campaign that helped them realize they have a problem – congratulations, you are on the right track! At this stage there may be a variety of potential solutions the customer is imagining will solve their problem.

Once again, ask yourself: who is my customer now? If we’re talking about a B2B problem that must be solved, the customer is probably considering how disruptive it will be to change the workflow around that area of their business. Every business has one thing in common: they are run by individuals who generally want to be better at their jobs.

By once again going through the exercise of what we know about our customer at this stage of the awareness-to-action process, we will be able to tailor our efforts around our customer. At this point they are narrowing their understanding of the problem and exploring different options for solving it.

Rather than considering your solution to be a natural front-runner, consider your type of solution to be one of many types they are considering. They may also be considering changing their staffing to solve the problem, or doubling down on the incumbent solution to try and make it work with what they have.

Your job here is to take what you know about your customer at this stage and help them zero in on your type of solution. Educate them without being presumptuous that they’re already at the bottom of the sales funnel and ready to buy. If this is a B2B campaign, or even if it’s B2C, consider the customer to be on a journey towards your solution – but not there yet. With you a their guide, consider the opportunity to educate someone who now knows they have a problem but has not yet arrived at a solution.

Solution: Found

If your campaign thus far has educated the potential customer, led them down each stage of the sales funnel, then you are in good shape. Remember, the customer know they are in a sales funnel. For them this is a problem solving journey.

Consider a customer who is aware of their problem and has already arrived at your type of solution. Maybe they have made up their mind about needing software to solve their problem rather than a staffing change. What do we know about a person at this stage of the buying cycle?

At this stage you can begin to narrow your focus on why your product is the best. Based on what we know about the customer you can zero in on the types of unique value propositions which would have not been appropriate for the the top of the sales funnel. Do you have the lowest price? The highest level of service? The best reputation?

Tying it Together

Up until this point we have developed a marketing funnel that is agnostic to specific platforms and tactics. The reason this is so powerful is because it creates a framework upon which we can build out a campaign with specific tactics that are tailored to each stage of the buying cycle and most importantly tailored to our individual customer.

Although very simple, another reason this method is so powerful is that it facilitates the type of creative thinking that is emblematic of the most successful teams. The communication that this type of thinking requires will ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page, and that insights are being shared across disciplines. Product managers should be part of this process. Sales reps should be part of this process. Customer service specialists should be part of this process. By removing all mention of different channels or tactics we remove much of the jargon that holds marketers back and hinders communication across teams.

Everyone wants to be better at their jobs, including me and you. By elevating our thinking through an agnostic strategy process we are forced to re-center our focus on the customer, and to listen to each other as we develop campaigns that are data-driven and segmented to the buying cycle.

Great marketers are able to rise above the tactics of the day. This doesn’t mean they don’t use the latest technology – you should absolutely take advantage of all the tools the marketing industry has to offer. To become truly great you must free yourself from biases towards one tactic and developing an agnostic marketing strategy is one incredibly effective way of making achieving just that.

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