The Kitchen Sink Method Is NOT Marketing Strategy

Overview

Many marketers think that in order for their business to gain all the benefits that marketing has to offer, they need to include everything possible in every marketing campaign, plan or activity. That viewpoint is incorrect and this article will help you understand why.

The Uniqueness of Marketing

Marketing is a unique profession. It is also critical to business success. When done properly, marketing has the ability to drive awareness, drive new leads and prospects, as well as drive new business. However, when done poorly it can have the opposite effect.

Depending on what business goal needs to be accomplished, marketing may combine elements from numerous areas including communications, PR, advertising, broadcasting, trade shows, writing and content creation, training, sales enablement, graphics creation, audio, video and much, much more. Because of this, the marketing professional has the flexibility to choose from a huge palette of potential tools that can be used to drive a desired outcome.

However, that same flexibility is also one of the main problems with the marketing profession.

Why?

Because too many marketers use what I call the “kitchen sink method”. This “method” tries to include as many different activities/channels/tools as possible into each and every marketing program or campaign, whether or not they make sense or will actually help accomplish what needs to be done. Oftentimes this is done because the marketer does not understand their customer, their market, their competitive situation, or worse, the business goal that needs to be accomplished.

Let’s face it, many marketers today have become so obsessed with the latest new “thing” that they forget the basics. Instead of taking time for the necessary due diligence, they focus on the latest marketing buzzword to the exclusion of everything else. Buzzwords like “gamification”, “influencer marketing”, “mobile marketing” and “social selling” have become the go-to marketing approaches for too many marketers.

But in reality, those are tactics – they were never intended to be used solely as standalone marketing tools in place of a marketing strategy. They’re intended to be used as actions that support an overall marketing strategy.

And therein lies the problem.

The Kitchen Sink Is Not a Strategy

This “kitchen sink” mentality has become so pervasive because many marketers don’t know how to develop a marketing strategy that understands what the goal of marketing is. They don’t know how to determine what the proper actions, channels and tools are to reach those goals. They don’t understand that prior to beginning the development of any marketing activity, research must be done based on the business goal that needs to be accomplished, followed by the development of a marketing strategy that provides clarity and direction to guide the development of the marketing tactics. Instead, the assumption is made that by just including everything in their campaigns and programs, a strategy is not necessary and their marketing will be successful by default and have positive results.

If only it were that simple.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the marketing profession provides the opportunity to become involved in numerous different specialty areas. It allows marketers to be exposed to and work with many different creative areas that professionals in other roles will never see. And one of the biggest differentiators between marketing and other professions is that marketing not only allows out of the box thinking, it actively encourages it.

This level of flexibility is why so many people think that marketing is easy to do. However, they don’t understand that flexibility must be paired with an understanding of the business, coupled with the knowledge of appropriate tactics and the discipline to choose the right one(s) in order to drive business success. In other words, strategy.

Marketing Strategy vs. The Kitchen Sink

Developing the marketing strategy is and always should be the first step in the creation of any marketing activity. The reason is that unless a marketing strategy is developed, putting marketing activities in place is simply tactics; it’s nothing more than a collection of tactical actions. There is no plan to coordinate or manage them, no way to effectively track or measure them, no way to judge their effectiveness, and no way to determine if they drive the business towards a desired outcome.

In other words, marketing without strategy is the kitchen sink method in action.

Developing a marketing strategy requires attention to detail that borders on the obsessive; it’s not just something you can create in a few minutes. Once you understand what the goals are, then you must determine how your marketing will accomplish them. This is the basis for creating your marketing strategy.

Having a marketing strategy means taking the necessary time to understand what the business goals and objectives are prior to developing marketing tactics. It means understanding how marketing can support those goals and objectives and help accomplish them. It means taking time to do the due diligence necessary to understand who the target customers are, what the best way to reach them is, and what the competitive situation is. All of these steps are required to be able to develop a marketing strategy that works.

Creating a marketing strategy means determining what the right channels are, what the interplay between channels will be (if any), what marketing tools and techniques will be used, and most importantly, what the KPIs and metrics are developed to track and measure the effectiveness of the marketing. Without metrics you can’t prove whether your tactics worked or not or whether your goals and objectives have been accomplished.

Once the marketing strategy has been created, then and only then do you develop the tactical plan of action that supports the strategy. It is only at this point that you begin to determine what actions need to be taken and how they support the strategy.

Compare this prescriptive approach to the kitchen sink approach.

Summary

By applying a more structured approach to developing a marketing strategy first instead of taking the kitchen sink approach, your marketing will be more effective and you will be able to accomplish the goals that you’ve set.

© 2019 – Richard Hatheway, Catalyst Strategic Marketing

All rights reserved.