Strategic selling see the world differently

What Makes Strategic Selling Successful

by Richard Gourlaycompetitive advantage, Selling skills, Strategy 18/10/202429/08/2025No Comments

Strategic Selling

A good business is based upon a clearly defined business strategy. Strategy is the central or macro plan for any business. It the fundamental overarching plan which everyone inside the business is pulling towards. A business with a clear strategy in place knows where it is aiming for in its market sector. That clarity and purpose enables it to build a culture to support that. A key element of a successfully designed business strategy is that it translates into a clear sales strategy. That is the definition of successful strategic selling.

Sales Strategy What is it?

A sales strategy sets out clearly what the business intends to achieve and how. Rather than just setting out a simple cold and unexplained turnover goal, a raw number, it defines the market you are in. A coherent sales strategy combines a set of strategic metrics which build to a complete set of outcomes. A sales strategy is a clear direction to take for all business activities. It identifies: –

The structure and make-up of the market you want to succeed within.
Key major market drivers – what’s driving market’s existence and development.
Market dynamics – what’s setting the pace of change and evolution of a market
The profile of the major market players and their position in that market.
And ultimately the optimum customer profile for your target audiences.

Strategic selling is a sales framework that firstly identifies the market structure that you are operating within. While that sounds obvious, it provides that clarity of purpose that involves everybody within the entire company Ensuring that everyone is pulling in the same direction at the same time, a clear sales strategy unites a company behind the strategy. A sales strategy is not just for the sales team, it is for every department to be aligned with. It enables a sales team to build companywide cross-department relationships with multiple-decision makers in a potential customer’s organisation. It creates a buyer-orientated approach that focuses on the value the entire solution provides to the whole customer. This contrasts to transactional selling which focuses on just the product itself.

Strategic Selling in B2B Environments

Strategic selling it is particularly effective in B2B sales environments. This is where there are often multiple decision-makers coming from different departments that engage with the company. It moves selling from a salesperson’s role to a company wide responsibility.

Strategic selling aligns the company towards the entire customer’s needs and expectations. An average customer decision typically involves seven people, all from different parts of a business. Each potential customer comes with a set of unique specific needs, budgets, and decision-makers all in the mix. That’s why a well-defined sales strategy is essential to target and support winning over all the decision makers within target company.

Long-term Success

Strategic selling is focused on creating long-term, mutually beneficial relations with target customers. It breaks down complex sales processes into simple actionable steps which evolve as the partnership with each client develops. While traditional selling focuses on the narrow and immediate benefits of the product, strategic selling’s emphasis is on the complete value it provides to the customer over a long period.

Strategic selling is mainly applicable in B2B organisations where there is a high value stream relationship. Often there are multiple decision-makers and an evolving relationship or partnership between the two companies. Selling strategically is therefore a business culture tailoring the product and or service that gives the optimum solution to all these problems.

Strategic Selling Approach

A strategic selling approach requires a good understanding of the market and who the key players. That knowledge also identifies who will resonate most and align with your brand best. This market alignment is fundamental to strategic success. Prioritising and focusing resources on target customers and their value streams. Where a company can add value is where they might positively respond and engage with you. It is an essential to understand behaviour traits, and as identified above, what is driving their sector within a market. This is where customer competitor assessments identifies opportunities for possible company entry. Even if it is no clear opening or immediate need for your product entry.

A company market entry strategy is an approach that focuses on building alignment rather than peddling product. We align with and understand the target client landscape and strategic challenges they are facing before trying to sell. Learning how we can work with them to resolve them, putting us in the driving seat in their solution search.

By developing a tailored and even joint solution, we skew or even actively remove the competition from the equation. The most obvious point is where a target customer wants to move into a new venture, or market area. That opens an opportunity to develop an entry strategy with a partner. This can be undertaken either as a joint venture or as their preferred partner. This locking in is the most obvious model. For strategic selling it can at any level of development of the target customers business evolution. Whether that be scaling up, service evolution, cost reduction, adding new value; the opportunity is there if a strategic selling culture exists.

Classic Drivers Customer Change

Growth: The target customer is essentially aware of the desire to grow within a market or segment. Where their existing model is not suitable or competitive enough, so they will look at alternative models to get growth within their market.

Problem Solving: The target customer has an issue, or an underperformance with their existing model. This is where they maybe open to new ideas and solutions. This is where they are researching how do something different to remove know pain points.

Passive Observation: Here the target customer does not see a performance gap between what they desire and the reality, but they are aware that change is happening and potential for their position to become eroded opens doors for possible exploration of new approaches.

Key Elements of Strategic Selling

The key elements of strategic selling start with developing a strategic mindset by the leadership team. That clarity of purpose and position within a market, typically a developed or mature market, where there is a structured market with major players either in place or emerging. Without that foundation stone strategic selling is unlikely to be achievable.

Win / Win / Win Culture

Strategic selling identifies the triple win culture (Win / Win / Win), the customer wins, you win and the relationship between the two companies win. This triple bottom line is at the heart of strategic selling. It builds multi-level relationships across the target customer, a collaborative sales process involving identifying and removing the customer’s pain points with them and finally uncovering the real value of the relationship of the partnership with them.

Decision Making Unit and Process

The second key element of strategic selling is that it involves working throughout the entire decision-making unit (DMU). This shift moves selling from a 121 narrow transactional engagement, the traditional selling model, to one where the entire DMU are identified and actively engaged throughout the sales process. That really means not just for the sales period but as part of developing a long-term relationship with them.

Understanding that while other stakeholders may not be actively engaged in buying but are in the decision-making process of whom the business works with, and what criteria buying decisions are made upon is vital for successful strategic selling.

The second element here is for any target customer to know their Decision-Making Process (DMP) how do they buy? No two companies have the same process, in steps, time and people engagement.

If strategic selling is going to be successful then it’s not just about the people but the process they go though, step-by-step and language they use which you need to know inside out. How do they score and decide? Who has what influence over whom and when?

In simple transactional selling the decided decides but in complex B2b sales there are multiple voices and different levels of power and influence which the decider must engage with and respond to. If many cases the decided is there to sign-off on a decision rather and make it.

Customer Centric Approach

This then leads to the third key element of strategic selling, implementing a customer centric approach. Meeting the unique needs of that customer, tailoring existing processes and sales approaching aligned with the customer priorities and needs to enable them to achieve their goals. The final part of this element is an on-going relationship. Not just a engage when selling approach which is the definition of transactional selling. Strategic selling continually engages and aligns with the customer. This is why it works most effectively with emerging and maturing markets and large players within it.

The Personalised Sales Strategy for each Target Customer

Strategic selling’s key output is the personalised solution which is presented over time to the target customer. It highlights firstly good alignment between the two companies and the measurable impact it will make to the target customer enabling them to achieve their short and long-term goals.

The win/win/win mentality should be at the heart to the solution, identifying how your USP’s could with your approach will solve and add value throughout the target customers’ business.

Strategic Selling Solution

Strategic selling solution focus’s a whole company approach tailored to the target customers’ needs, addressing all stakeholder concerns and how you will support the customer throughout the relationship. In complex B2B markets an effective solution highlights the key must have elements that the target customer has identified to you. While also focusing on the ongoing relationship and the next stage development of the relationship.

That move from a transactional relationship to strategic selling involves the whole team engagement and long-term often multiple project and product development. This creates a strategic alignment between the two companies develops within a market segment. An effective solution highlights these elements and draws in the entire strategy not just the immediate product or service in question.

Strategic Selling Summary

Strategic selling is a clear business strategy. It relies upon developing a culture of long-term relationship building with large complex companies in maturing markets. Targeted customers ideally need to be in the early adopter or early majority element of the market where the value-added elements can be easily identified.

Engaging with target customers must be undertaken throughout the company. Not just at the buyer selling point but from top down and throughout the decision-making unit. Identifying not just immediate needs, but longer-term strategic goals and target customer development plans, identifying stakeholder needs and value requirements in the partnership.

Once this is undertaken the presentation back to the target customer must reflect strategic goals as well as immediate quick wins. This is most effectively when seen as a multiple step or phase building programme, often by finding the door opener and trust builder before trying to move into the longer and more significant purchasing phases. Always focus on the value-added in the joint relationship and lifetime value which will out compete any transactional relationship that transactional competitors can offer.

Like to know more then get in touch with Richard Gourlay here.

How to Create A Successful SaaS Strategy & Pricing Model

by Richard Gourlaycontent strategy marketing, opportunity, Selling skills, start-up advice, Strategy 27/08/202115/05/2026No Comments

SaaS Strategy: Where are we now?

Back in 2012, I wrote an article (on this blog) about the potential future of business in the internet age, called The Internet Tsunami. Back in 2012 as we emerged from the infancy of the internet I stated that the internet would become a major business channel for all business sectors not just music and insurance. It was no longer a passing fad. Back in late 1990’s we saw the internet emerge from having been a research tool to something which people could experience through to the dot.com boom of the early 2000’s when money flooded in to this emerging market but the infrastructure and customer engagement platforms were not ready preventing online becoming more than a side show for businesses. So here is how to create a successful SaaS strategy and pricing model for your SaaS business in 2021.

After the financial crisis of 2007/8 as the economic bounce-back accelerated change in the economy opening the door to the internet age and it began to take shape. My article in March 2012 suggested that what we were seeing the beginnings of the permanent change across all sectors and markets, it was not just Amazon replacing CD music shopping, but that the world was going to change. So lets look at how to create a successful SaaS strategy and pricing model

The SaaS Tipping Point

Now that the technology tipping point has occurred and it has become the dominant global force in driving consumer behaviour. This paradigm shift is when markets move in response to macro factor drivers. For companies going too early with any trend can lead them to commit in concrete to a technology which leaves them left behind as the internet evolves for example Friends Reunited: provided no interaction and on-going relationship creation, as Facebook found is what makes a successful online social media platform.

Go too late, and you miss the market shift and find you have been left behind with disastrous consequences. Comet sold electrical white goods and collapsed with over 20% of the UK market share through its 200 stores, but refused to see the move online for these goods by younger consumers, while Amazon at the time had already achieved 8% of the white goods market with no physical shops.

If you can see a trend you have already missed it. Once the tipping point in a sector then you are playing catch-up. So over the last 9 years the internet has not just become another channel to market for many goods, it has become the dominant channel for many sectors most noticeably in retail, but is now almost ubiquitous, impacting upon every market.

The ability to take products and services online is now in full force with organisations inventing themselves, reinventing themselves as online (SaaS) business models. For many this is a result of a number of key factors, not least is about keeping up with your customers and the competition. But, other key factors such as the reduction in cost of developing online services, as well as the ability to upgrade services quickly in response to rapidly changing or evolving customer demands are other positive drivers of moving online.

Shifting to a SaaS Business Model

Making the shift to go to a SaaS solution is a strategic one, it should be based upon a clear strategic assessment of the market and customer needs and carefully planned out in a detailed business plan. SaaS is not just moving your products online, going digital. That is an important step but moving to a SaaS solution model it is completely new way of thinking about you deliver, to whom and how.

SaaS solutions start by working out what the future will look like and if you can do more online than as you are today. From that strategic assessment if SaaS solution is the way of delivering real underlying value to your future (and current) customers then you need to develop your Minimum Product Viability model to move your business into the SaaS world. Click here to learn more about how to set up a Minimum Product Viability (MPV) by clicking this link here.

Software As A Service – SaaS Solution

Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are now common across all sectors replacing manually made service offerings. For many businesses replacing, upgrading and being able to compete within their sector requires companies to move to SaaS offerings. Either bespoke designed SaaS from scratch using in-house or outsourced technicians or tailored from white label sector providers. Offering a SaaS solution to a market is not just a shift change in what an organisation offers but a whole new way of thinking.

First: Create A Successful SaaS Strategy

SaaS though is more than just simple a move online. It requires a different way of thinking from traditional models. The changing nature of customer engagement, moves from the physical meeting to the online engagement, that requires companies to think and act differently. The nature of the service also changes as it becomes totally arms length customer centric. Customers choose when and what they want to use of the service (for example over 2,700 UK people did their tax returns on Christmas day in 2019, with over 30,000 doing them over the Christmas holiday period in 2019), this requires companies to resource supporting users when they need it not when you are open.

Business to consumer SaaS models need to support consumers with planned engagement and support channels as well as developing SaaS loyalty strategies in place to retain and develop customer segments. For B2B SaaS models working across partner channels puts a set of different requirements in place in accessing target audiences through integrated service offerings through integrated software .

SaaS behaviours also require business to measure very different metrics to be successful, many of which are new to companies not used to SaaS solutions, but if you do not measure them SaaS will fail to deliver the results you expect. Here are some of the key areas for SaaS businesses to monitor and drive decision making from.

SaaS Solutions: Being a Disrupter

Disrupting any market requires your SaaS offering to target and penetrate precise target segments and disrupt the existing market. Focus on measuring the disruption your new offering is causing. Are you reaching your core target audience with your new offering and taking customers from the competition, or protecting your vulnerable customers with you new offering. Disruption is about changing people’s perception and behaviour patterns. So it is important to measure the existing behaviours and their new behaviours using the SaaS solution.

Just shifting your existing customers online maybe a strong defensive strategy if your are the last to move into SaaS, but that is not a disrupter. To disrupt a market you have to do something which changes the game. Changes the structure, the dynamics and the value proposition within the target audience.

SaaS solutions MUST do MORE than just Match Your Off line Offering

SaaS solution need to offer more to customers within their sector. Providing a genuine value-added solution must be designed and built into the SaaS solution. Either at the start or as a planned upgrading rollout plan. If your Minimum Product Viability (MPV) assessment provides compelling evidence of the potential to move online, just migrating offline to online business activities will not succeed. SaaS businesses must find, connect and engage with customers in a completely different way than their offline equivalents, even if they are the same customer base being migrated across by the company. That customer experience must reflect the culture and value which the audiences has and wants to experience for it to be successful. SO SaaS businesses must actively drive engagement, create direct and indirect communities, offer advice and support and actively monitor audience segments value experiences to enable SaaS to add real value to target segments.

Building more into a SaaS solution can be undertaken at low (or no cost) if planned in at the design stage. `Good forward thinking strategically thought out SaaS solutions can design in actual and anticipated customer needs at low or no cost. Building into the SaaS platform forward evolution so that they can evolve in response to customer evolving and emerging demand, overcome competition short-term and long-term responses and to life-time evolution needs.

Being able to add in and evolve a SaaS solution to a complete solution is essential so it offers a complete long-term solution, not just a quick fix. That requires several micro launches, (evolutions) to meet theses needs and to enable the SaaS solution to add more value (value proposition).

Measuring why, where and who is using the site for what as well as forums and associated features will tell you the full value you could, should and must offer. Often support functions such as help desks, brochures, technical information, upgrading options and associated activities are always areas where doing more can be seen, but only if you measure them! What about training and certification of users and channel partners, and the whole range of other activities which these intranet offerings can also provide?

SaaS Success: Target the Right Segments.

Moving to SaaS is not a straight line. Build it and then just sit back and watch customers come onboard, is how SaaS is sold to CEO’s in shifting their business to a SaaS solution. But that is not how SaaS adoption works. Adoption curves matter. So identifying who, why and when segments will move over to a SaaS offering is vital for success. Being able to anticipate and plan around customer acquisition by customer target segment must be planned out and executed in dissectible phases.

One major challenge is that the key drivers of a SaaS solution within an organisation may well come from specific user segment(s) within an organisation. Identifying the pain points within a target audience is therefore vital. Who will adopt your technology when is an important element in designing your market entry strategy.

Saas Adoption Curve Modelling

Who are the core target segments that SaaS solution should be targeted at? This central question is often lost in the generic answer everyone! But it is not. SaaS solutions must add value to everyone, but they must be focused on converting target businesses strategic target audience. That focus must be at the heart of the SaaS solution design and implementation, if you win more great but your focus is to move the brand’s customer base.

For success SaaS solution moves the brand’s position, its profitability and its performance by acquiring new higher value customers. Higher value customers in both B2B and B2C environments for mainstream players are usually found higher up the adoption stream. So laggards find growth in volume and value in the late majority (see below for market adoption curve and total market size modelling). Late majority players can already win downstream laggards but need to expand by either growing with their sector or by moving into early majority customer segments, and likewise early majority customers look at high value (but smaller total volume) early adopters.

Adoption Curve and Total Market Volume by Segment for SaaS Solution Development — Adoption Curve and Total Market Segmentation

The key measurements here are to identify the precise target segments you intend to win, and measure that as your metrics of success. Do not just measure total customers as this can inflate your SaaS success. While measuring total numbers always looks good. It may not be profitable growth and can often lead to SaaS platforms being pulled into chasing total numbers not focusing on developing profitable long-term customers. This is typically seen when a new SaaS platform has to buy its customer growth, so people see the growth as success, but it can be burning through their cash reserves as they have focused on the wrong metrics.

Profitable target customers support growth of a SaaS solution. This must be measured to see if the strategic goal is being achieved.

SaaS Strategic Pricing Models

For a SaaS business to succeed it needs to get its pricing right, there is no bigger strategic decision to take. There are several ways to price your SaaS solution which we can break down into 6 key models and a couple of common variants. Choosing your pricing model will reflect the market you are in, your strategic business objective, the nature of the solution you’re providing and the designed rollout of your SaaS value proposition solution you are offering.

1. SaaS Flat Rate Pricing

The most common and simple, often replacing a previous non-SaaS solution. It is simple and effective, easy to use price to incentives by allowing target audiences to compare the value proposition. The difficulty in this model is that it is difficult to add value to target audiences, such as high-use or high-value customers.

Some SaaS pricing models then try to add premium models to this, by adding a second solution to enable extra features and pricing to the offering, but this often creates technical challenges and is difficult to migrate customers across to.

2. SaaS Usage Based Pricing

Usage based pricing is popular and provides an ideal way to price your SaaS solution. It enables pricing scaling, the more your company use, the more you value you consume, the more you pay. It allows low cost acquisition and then scale-up in pricing towards target audiences. Ideal for B2B solutions, usage based pricing works well as disrupter within a business service sector.

This also enables additional levels to be added and funded through growth as usage drives demand. Usage based pricing also reduces and often removes barrier to entry as the SaaS platform accounts for a wide-range of customer segments, from new entrants through to high demand heavy user groups.

Usage based pricing does have some limitations. The moving up levels (and down) can be challenging for customers to see what they get for the price they pay. The key area of concern for a SaaS Solution using this model is that monthly revenue, a key metric will vary and is therefore not popular within the sector as predictable revenue is often a core demand for investors.

3. SaaS Multiple Tiered Pricing Models

One of the most effective models as it allows the SaaS platform to be priced to target audiences using tiered pricing. Tailoring different packages around target audiences enables the SaaS platform you can appeal to multiple audiences. This has a key secondary advantage in revenue generation as you maximise revenue across all channels to market. It also allows simple clear and honest upselling opportunities as well as add-on pricing with new features/levels being added in response to changing demands.

Key factors to be be aware of here is having too many pricing levels. Just because you can does not mean you should. 3 is optimum and 5 is often seen as maximum, the more you add the higher the abandonment rates and the lower the effective of marketing campaigns.

The idea of dynamic pricing, too many tiers leads towards a platform that looks like usage pricing which dilutes and degrades the tiered pricing focus on key target segments, vital for strategic success of a SaaS solution. The other downsides of too many packages is that trying to over target segments damages the focus on the tiered model, confusing customers through too many choices and damaging price effectiveness by not reflecting tiered pricing to deal with heavy use customer groups.

4a. SaaS User Pricing

The fourth pricing model moves away form company wide pricing to the end user. This model is ideal for many sectors where simple pricing wins customers over. Wether that is a fixed annual or monthly fee, its simplicity and logic engages with SaaS platforms whose offering of a direct pricing model allows customers to sign-up as individuals.

User pricing is popular as it is predictable in income and scales easily with numbers. This predictability makes it popular but needs to be internally measured by usage by individuals to see what value they generate from the platform.

While simplicity makes it popular it is also its major limitation as a pricing model. Per user charges means that there is little opportunity to get group buy-in as one person can use the platform and share the results. The inability to signup whole teams as one limits routes to market through channel partners. It also means that churn becomes a major factor as it is harder to control churn as people relate use to value as an individual.

4b. SaaS Active User Pricing

Is a variant of of user pricing but works by charging for people actually using the SaaS platform. It is seen as excellent value for money as it removes risk for purchasers as sign-up does not cost. This drives engagement and adoption as it is only usage which is charged. People can sign-up but do not pay until they actually use the platform, it is ideal for enterprise business models.

The downside of active user pricing is that it is difficult to grow outside specialist enterprise areas. Often premium priced as a live service it is difficult to encourage widespread adoption with teams or across sectors. For example accounting software is great in the finance department but off limited value elsewhere in a business.

5. SaaS Per Feature Pricing

A more recently developed and currently popular variation on the user based pricing model theme is called per feature pricing. Customers of businesses pay a subscription fee, a base fee with limited functionality which achieves MPV and adds real value and then differing premium priced add-on features which either replace the need for multiple upgrade options or allow a SaaS solution to adapt with its own specialist feature cost model expansion.

This model encourages customers to upgrade to unlock additional functionality which allows segment specialisation and directly relates those functions to direct costs. Think about gaming models where users buy the core game but then trade up by buying additional features. This per feature pricing model allows sites to know their operating cost models and revenues of the base model, and enables cost scaling for bespoke areas that may take significant resources to develop. Sub-segmentation by feature is popular as it allows cost to value to be direct and then reverse rolled back into the SaaS site as it evolves as a cost-free upgrade.

The key challenges of cost per feature pricing is that SaaS solutions can be pulled by small segments away from their core model to meet these minority groups. The other challenge of per feature pricing is that of customer frustration as key features are at a premium.

6. SaaS Freemium Pricing

Saving one of the most popular and misunderstood to last is the freemium model. This model allows customers limited functionality the SaaS solution platform for free. This enables mass adoption through any market of the SaaS platform with a clear level of functionality which buys users in. It is ideal for large volume platforms such as social media channels as the model removes the key hurdle to volume customer acquisition.

Freemium gets customers bought in for nothing as there are no barriers to entry and this supports rapid expansion through and across channels, but it does limit value adding at the freemium level. Encouraging customers to trade up and use the additional chargeable features is teh real challenge

Predicated revenue planning is the real looser here for companies. This makes it less popular with funding parties (and accounts departments) as conversion to revenue is undefined within this model. To fund freemium SaaS models multiple funding systems are often adopted, such as smart algorithm advertising which is an ideal way to fund expansion.

With freemium sites high churn rates and low loyalty rates are major drain factors to this model, both of which make traction and the ability to encourage customers to upgrade difficult. Funding to support the core functionality is often under pressure to keep it developing and engaging with the volume of its core customer base.

Summary: Successful SaaS Strategy Business Looks Like Today

SaaS solutions are now mainstream to nearly all business and customer segments. Being mainstream though does not mean that the risks have disappeared, in many ways they have increased as expectations have accelerated as audiences demands have risen.

Whichever SaaS pricing model you adopt understand that they all come with risks which need to be understood and actively managed within your planning.

SaaS solutions must be part of a strategic process for leaders to understand and deal with. One area that many leaders do not fully appreciate is that building an experienced SaaS team around them is a prerequisite for success.

Learn more read further blogs or get in touch to see how I can assist you.

Learn more at www.richardgourlay.com

Content Strategy: The future of marketing

by Richard Gourlaycompetitive advantage, content strategy marketing, Marketing, Selling skills, Uncategorized 20/03/201504/02/2026Comments are Disabled

The future of marketing is all about inbound marketing: Content strategy

If you can see a trend you have missed it!

In a world of continual change seeing what is happening is often difficult to understand until the paradigm shift has occurred. Many companies are struggling to stay ahead or even in the game of online marketing. Many companies are moving towards online marketing content strategy or as marketing people call it inbound marketing. This major shift in culture and one needs to be fully understood.

I have just had an old-fashioned marketing communication from a well-known brand, asking me to make an immediate purchase offering me a FREE upgrade for a new phone, my automatic response is not to be interested, at all because they have not demonstrated that they understand my specific needs. That made me thinks and write this article to explain why in today’s online world that old marketing technique is now as un-effective as a double glazing salesman offering me 50% off!

It’s a complete shift not just an add-on

In a world where everyone is online all the time, the amount of information is drowning people, from Linkedin to Facebook and Twitter the rise of smart phone connectivity has promised much change to marketing but until recently only early adopters, high value and niche players could see what it meant to the marketing process.

Like many changes, it is not until the change becomes tangible does its impact become visual to many marketing departments that enables them to successfully influence a company’s marketing policy. This is considerably harder to convey when there is no tangible evidence of marketing results attributable to hard to track invisible marketing shift. Unlike the shift to direct marketing where direct connectivity between outcome and result can be seen through a transparent return on investment, online inbound marketing is struggling to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Pace is outstripping understanding

Currently content marketing relies heavily upon invisible and poorly understood online activities. Simply put, the rate of change is outstripping the knowledge base of the marketing industry, creating a gap between the understandings of marketing by decision makers. The routes causes of this is that not only are customers sourcing information in newer ways but the platform they are using, the Internet indexing is also changing ever faster, Goggle will make over 600 changes to way it scores content. Rapidly changing customer preferences, coupled with changing technologies and an ever changing platform results in the lack of certainty of what is working and why. By the time you’ve worked out what works it has already changed.

That speed is creating problems for social media to be able to convert this rate of change to make money. This continual change, both step and continual upgrading, makes it difficult for the industry to understand how to build sustainable pipelines of business.

Content Strategy also creates confusion.

Content strategy marketing process, one that now focuses on creating online and open platform engagement, online PULL; rather than internally controlled PUSH marketing methods, traditional marketers often struggle to understand the process let alone feel uncomfortable with the concept. This is not unreasonable, given the history of marketing in the last 50 years has always focused on the traditional pipeline of generating and then controlling customer decision-making, content marketing turns that on its head. People investing in inbound marketing are asked to spend money on losing control of the potential customer by letting them make an open decision about how and when they engage with your brand.

In the mid 1990’s I remember designing a website to support a brand. No one was interested until it was live and people could see something online. A director then said, “That’s great let’s print it off and send it to all our customers”

Dialogue NOT monologue

The inbound marketing process is about generating an open dialogue, rather than a structured marketing process. It lets potentials, prospects and suspects move in and out of your control while they select you, rather than being controlled by you.

The Content Strategy Process

Listening – Online is now the first port of call for 78% of web users.
Creating – Great content that answers need and demonstrates expertise.
Engaging – Is about being talked about and developing a dialogue with audiences
Transforming – Is about continual engagement, moving them from suspects to purchasers
Growing – Requires creating perpetual momentum developing new and developing loyalty

Source: www.tomorrow-people.com

Traditional marketing models of developing engagement such as AIDA are still highly valid but instead of just focusing on a immediate winning proposition through a grabbing hook, attach a liner and sink them in a simple linear model for winning customers. Content strategy marketing demands multiple engagement tools which include cross referencing other parties creating competitive collaborative working to generate awareness, giving away FREE content in white papers coupled with fast and slow acquisition tools in decision making.

The strategy needs to be explained better

Moving to a content strategy is about moving from PUSH to PULL, not about the Internet platform, it is about understanding the importance of open unrestricted dialogue rather than material generation and in reality it is not just about the Internet although this is where its impact is being seen today, but equally will encompass every marketing platform and process. The growth of mobile technology will further the pace and realisation of content strategy.

Like to learn more? Then see article What is Content Marketing or contact us at RichardGourlay.com or see our website or social media channels for more about Cowden::-

Richard Gourlay Website – Linked in – Twitter – Facebook – Blog

Richard Gourlay services: business planning, strategic planning, business development, strategic marketing, Return on Investment, director development, director mentoring.

Cowden is based in Galloway, Scotland and works with businesses throughout the UK.