The 3 W’s of Strategy

Are you ready to hear something profound? You can’t get anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going. To drive marketing results, you need a uniquely-designed creative approach that ties back to your goals and can demonstrate a measurable return. 

Every project starts somewhere, and it’s that starting point – the foundation – that we believe is the most important part of the project, and one that we are constantly working to perfect. Three important elements make up that foundation: why, what and who. 

Why are you taking on a project? What are you hoping to accomplish? Who are you talking to? While these may seem like basic questions, they carry a lot of weight, and if they’re skimmed over, your results will be on the skim side as well. 

The Why

Sometimes the why is clear. A new business is launching and requires a whole brand identity, or a dated website needs a relaunch. But other times, it requires the kind of digging that you have to put your back into. It is not uncommon that the work required to define the why actually reveals the need for a completely different course of action than originally anticipated.

The What

At the end of the day, what are you hoping to accomplish? The goal of every marketing tactic should directly connect to/support a larger/overall business goal. If you only loosely define the what, it’s impossible to demonstrate value in your actions. Skipping or simply phoning in this crucial step is mostly to blame for skepticism in connecting marketing efforts to any measurable progress. 

The Who

If a tree falls in the woods but no hears it, your marketing has failed. We can shout our message to the masses, but if we’re not speaking it to the right people, it will be immediately forgotten if heard at all. When we know who we are talking to, we can tailor our verbiage to say more in less words. 

Once you have the foundation laid with the three W’s you can move onto the all-important H. How are you going to get there? What goes into the how?

  • Craft your message. If you can’t articulate who you are and what you have to offer the world, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who cares, let alone compelled to act. 
  • Consider your offer. What are you bringing to the table? What makes your service unique or stand out against the multitude of on-demand instant gratification that floods our lives?

To wrap things up, know that this process can be time consuming, especially when you just want to “get to work.” But it will pay off, we promise. If you need help getting started, consult our 5-Minute Marketing Strategy worksheet to kick things off.