Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
What is strategic thinking?
Strategic thinking is a process you can use to view, weigh up and create the future for yourself and others. It is an extremely effective and valuable skill. When used correctly, it can help you make good decisions related to work or to your personal life.
In order to understand strategic thinking, you first need to understand strategy. Now, there are many ways to define strategy, so let’s settle on just one! Consider how you can bridge the gap between policy and tactics. What tactics can you use to implement the policy? This is your strategy. You can also think of strategy in terms of means and ends. You have an end in mind. What means can you use to reach that end? This again is the realm of strategy. We have resources available to us to get us to our end. Then how we deploy or arrange those resources is our strategy, and how we actually execute the actions are our tactics.
The classic 1987 Harvard Business Review article, “Crafting Strategy” by Henry Mintzberg, presents the idea of ‘emergent strategy’. An emergent strategy is one that was not initially planned. Instead, it was formed through consistent actions that formed a pattern over time or through solving an unexpected issue that emerged. Rather than being planned for, it emerged naturally.
Strategic thinking in action
An in-house printing department printed a monthly sales list for the company’s freight shipping agency. This was printed on the company’s standard letter-headed paper. The company was successful, and its list of containers for hire was growing. This made it necessary to print on both sides of the paper. The headed paper was tearing in the printing machines when it was turned over.
The print department supervisor, using strategic thinking, proposed turning the sales list into a simple, folded page printed on plain paper with illustrations in one color on the front. The use of color in this context was unheard of. The trial run of the first leaflet produced a sensation in the London Baltic Exchange, multiplying the company’s sales, as well as solving the printing problem. The result was, because of the publicity, the company won the largest container agency contract in the world at that time. Every other company was still printing its list on standard headed paper.
Back to TopClark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
Bill Phillips
Bill is an international facilitator, trainer, and team coach. He has successfully coached CEOs, board members, directors, executive teams, and team leaders in public and private companies, NGOs, and UN organizations in 15 countries across four continents. He is also the creator of Future-basing®, a highly potent process for building strategy, vision, and cooperation.
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Critically analyse target audiences and objectives to recommend digital channels
- Synthesise information to develop an action plan and digital marketing strategy
- Evaluate the process of planning and formulating a digital strategy
