This informal CPD article on Why Strategy is Key was provided by NewZapp Email Marketing. As with any communications project, strategy is key if you are to draw up successful plans and ultimately measure their success.
“I believe that people make their own luck by great preparation and good strategy.” Jack Canfield
This whole topic can, we know, be a little daunting and occasionally overwhelming. Sometimes you just don’t know where to start or what to start with, and this can eat into your time and lead to delays in getting started. So in this article we’ll look at how the GROW model can help you as a great process for goal setting, problem solving and staying focussed.
1 – Goal
It may be an obvious one, but it’s probably safe to say a common communications goal is “to achieve higher engagement and participation” from our various audiences/groups/types of recipient. Be it from an organisational, membership, community or a sales point of view. So think about adding definition to this goal to make it measurable. For instance, “In the next six months, our goal is to achieve on average a 10% increase in engagement, whilst maintaining 90% retention and at the same time increase our audience by 20%”.
2 – Reality
How far away are you from this goal right now? Historically, are your past achievements already on a par with your goal (if so then maybe your goal isn’t aiming high enough!) or are any one of the three aspects of our example goal doing to be particularly tough to achieve? Evaluating with honesty will help you identify whether some aspects of your goal are going to need extra resources or a complete change of approach. If plotted on a graph just how steep is the incline going to need to be?
3 – Obstacles and Options
There are going to be obstacles in your way, if there aren’t then you have to ask yourself what’s stopped you reaching the goal before now? These obstacles could be either physical, organisational, or a mix of the two. For example do you have all the data/software/time at your means that make your goal happen? Are there procedures/people that are going to get in your way? Once the obstacles have been identified you can look at the Options available to deal with them. Let’s not talk of being too ruthless here! But no matter how difficult the obstacles may seem at first glance, if you look closely enough there will be options enabling you to either solve them or find a workaround.
4 – Way Forward
This is the stage where your options are evaluated, the best ones chosen, and you convert them into action steps. Don’t worry if you need to work out what action steps would be required on more than one option, it still might not be clear at this stage. Working through this process will help you to identity the best way forward and give you the confidence to know you’ve worked out a strategy that is going to energise your future plans.
We hope this article was helpful, for more information please visit the NewZapp Email Marketing CPD Member Directory page.
