What is it costing you to not have a viable strategy?

Transcript

Hi there! It’s Peter Winick. I’m the Founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And today, I wanted to share with you some highlights, if you will. Or maybe they’re not exactly highlights of a couple of conversations I’ve had over the last couple weeks that kind of surprised me.

So in all of the instances, there were two or three. I was speaking to folks about the importance of developing a viable strategy that would enable them to better leverage, scale, monetize their work. Right. That’s kind of the core of what we do.

And one conversation led to to the person saying, “Yeah. You know, I know I need to work on the strategy. But I’m just going to invest in marketing.” And it kind of took me back. And I said, Okay. Well, what are you marketing and to whom? What’s the underlying strategy?” And I got blank stares. So, okay. Good luck. Be well with that one.

Second conversation I had was with someone, similar conversation, “Hey doesn’t look like things are moving as quickly and easily as they could be for you. The work is really good but getting it to market’s a bit of a struggle. Again strategy issue, need a little bit of strategy, focus, effort, work, et cetera. They said, “Yeah, no. I know I’ve talked about this a lot with friends and colleagues etc. And I definitely need a strategy but you know, right now, for the next six months I’m going to invest in PR.”

Well, that one shocked me even more than the marketing because I just asked a couple of questions like, “Okay well what does success look like for a good PR campaign? Who are you trying to influence? What is the, What are the outcomes? What do you, what’s the conversation you’d like to have at the end of this program, end of this process to realize strategically you hit the objectives that you wanted to?” And again nothing. It was, it was sort of the blank stares of being enamored with PR.

So again, you know there’s lots of things that we can do, there’s lots of tactics that we can deploy, and things that look slick and sexy etc. But without the foundational underlines of a solid and viable strategy, I would question the impact that they’re going to have. And more importantly the return on your investment.

Great to talk to you. Thanks.