IMODULE 2

CREATE A CUSTOMER: MARKETING STRATEGY

Learning goals:

● Describe customer-centric digital marketing strategy.

● Identify the “characters” in an organization’s story.
● Probe the ethical considerations and implications surrounding customer-centric messaging.

Index

1. What is a Marketing Strategy? PAGE 2

1. Customer Creation
2. Interview with a CMO
3. The Building Blocks of Successful Digital Marketing
4. The Ultimate Marketing Shorthand: POST Planning

2. Target Audience: Who do You Seek to Serve? PAGE 9

1. Listening in Order to be Responsive and Predictive
2. Introduction to Market Research
3. Research Methods
4. Segmentation

3. Core Messaging PAGE 18

1. Demographics and Psychographics
2. Translating Research into Action
3. Messaging and Storytelling
4. Personas/ Customer Avatars
5. Two Sides of the Coin: Customer Journeys and the Marketing Funnel

4. Ethics PAGE 28
1. Messaging Strategy: Speaking to Diverse Populations
2. Ethical Considerations in Digital Storytelling
3. Future-proofing

5. MIRIAM BROSSEAU NOTES PAGE 30

 1. WHAT IS A MARKETING STRATEGY?

Introduction

The era of broadcast is over. The web has gone from connecting content to connecting people,
and our devices continue to get smaller, closer to our bodies, and more embedded in our daily
lives and routines. The digital world is all around us—just as it is all around our customers. Our
job is to take them on a journey, help them to know, like, and trust us, and invite that exchange of
value. That is only possible if we really understand who they are, what their pain points are, and
what messaging is going to resonate with them.

In 1954, Peter Drucker wrote that the purpose of business was to create a customer. That
statement is as true today as it was back then. In this module, we’re going to learn how to define
who that customer could be, so that when we talk, they’re ready to listen.

Marketing is moving toward a customer-centric approach. What strategy looks like in this
changing environment? Looking at the keys to success, or fit, as it pertains to customers, an
industry leader share the keys to ensure reaching the potential consumer through the core basics
of marketing to align your organization with your audience. In terms of strategy, we will:
1. Discuss the processes to learn about and reach a customer, which will in turn create value
for the business.
2. Talk about getting to know your customer through market research and discover the
purpose of this area of digital marketing.
By laying out the general steps, the types of market research that exist, and how to best analyze
the information you extract when getting to know your customers, it will be possible to understand
how this process works.
We will follow this by considering the ethical questions that come into play, once we identify who
our customer is and how to navigate speaking to your audience, in a way that embraces diversity
and leaves no potential consumers out of the equation.

Future possibilities → What are the emerging markets? Where else can we turn the camera?

Learning Objectives
● Describe customer-centric digital marketing strategy
● Identify the “characters” in an organization’s story
● Probe the ethical considerations and implications surrounding customer-centric messaging

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 1. Customer Creation

What is the purpose of business? Customer creation is the purpose of business. Peter Drucker,
considered the father of business consulting, argued that business has only two functions,
marketing and innovation, and that marketing was the distinguishing, unique function.

Business cannot happen without a customer; marketing is the practice that creates a customer.

"There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. It is the customer
who determines what a business is. It is the customer alone whose willingness to pay for a good
or for a service converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. The customer is the
foundation of a business and keeps it in existence.” (Peter Drucker)

2. Interview with a CMO

Michelle Calcagni - career → marketing and marketing strategy. She leads PhoneBox Group,
a company that helps women entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground by providing
the initial foundation they need for success, as their ideas grow.

What role does strategy play in digital marketing?

Because the way I look at it, strategy is the building blocks, it's all those questions that have to be
answered about your offering, your audience, and your messaging so that you can do whatever
you want to do in marketing, so it is going to be successful.

According to Calcagni, the particular challenge that exists in digital marketing is the sheer
amount of possibilities and new ideas which can become disorienting. For this reason, she
mentions that it is especially important to keep sight of the core elements of business and strategy:
(a) Target Audience; (b) Core Messaging; (c) Differentiation

● The reasons why is important getting right these key pieces of the puzzle, when
developing effective marketing strategy:
○ In digital marketing, there are so many new things to try all of the time. They can get really
distracting, so you focus a little bit more on the tools than on some of the basics.
○ Solution: alignment to the basic core elements of the business unit strategy.
■ Who is the target audience?
■ What is the core messaging they need to be hearing from you? So, they're going to
make the purchase decision that matters.
■ How are you going to be sure that you stand out as a differentiated offering compared
to everybody else?
○ If you can get these basic building blocks in place, whether you're using the latest cool,
fun technology, or you're doing something tried and true, it's still going to come across,
but you've got to make sure that you're anchored in those strong core basics. Otherwise,

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 the greatest tools in the world can't sell something without great messaging or great
differentiation. So, keep your eye on the ball, on those basics.

Marketing strategy connects business objectives with marketing tactics.

There is a marketing process we follow to create and capture customer value, which consists of
five major steps.

Strategy is the Tough Part

● It is an integrated set of strategies and actions that together will secure sustainable, unique,
and profitable competitive advantage
● Forces tough trade-off decisions
● Gives permission to say NO to product ideas, customer segments, and tactics

Above All, Strategy Has to Be Customer-Centric

● American Customer Satisfaction Index ® (ACSI) tracks customer satisfaction for a cross-
section of American Companies
● For the Last 18 Years, ACSI has been a great predictor of a company’s success (or failure)
to deliver the desired financial results

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 3. The Building Blocks of Successful Digital Marketing

Value is at the heart of marketing. It will vary from customer to customer. (Personal) Value=
benefits received - cost = Direct and indirect. Not just price—what does it take for me to receive
this value? Creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging are the four main marketing
activities that create value. In order to learn more about the part that each role plays and how
they are connected, click on each of the four activities of marketing below.

VALUE = Creating → Communicating → Delivering → Exchanging → Creating

1. Creating: The process of collaborating with suppliers and customers to create offerings
that have value
2. Communicating: Broadly describing those offerings, as well as learning from customers
3. Delivering: Getting those offerings to the consumer in a way that optimizes value
4. Exchanging: Trading value for those offerings

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“Your strategy should be a hypothesis you constantly adjust” (Amy Edmondson and Paul Verdin
- Professors of Management) (ANNEX 1)

Strategies must be constantly adjusted to incorporate information from operations and the market.
Research on recent dramatic cases of strategic failure in different industries and involving vastly
different business models and strategies shows a common pattern:

What started as small gaps in execution spiraled into business failures when initial strategies were
not altered based on new information provided by experience. These companies’ strategies were
viewed by their top executives as analytically sound; performance gaps were blamed on
execution. An alternative perspective on strategy and execution — one that is more in tune with
the nature of value creation in a world marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity
— conceives of strategy as a hypothesis rather than a plan. Like all hypotheses:

● it starts with situation assessment and analysis — strategy’s classic tools.

● it must be tested through action.

With this lens, encounters with customers provide data that is of ongoing interest to senior
executives — vital inputs to dynamic strategy formulation. The authors call this approach strategy
as learning, which contrasts sharply with the view of strategy as a stable, analytically rigorous
plan for execution in the market. Strategy as learning is an executive activity characterized by
ongoing cycles of testing and adjusting, fueled by data that can only be obtained through
execution.

4. The Ultimate Marketing Shorthand: POST Planning

The mnemonic POST stands for people, objectives, strategy/story, and tools/technology.

POST planning as a tool for developing marketing strategy.

In 2008, Josh Bernoff and Charlene Lee published “Groundswell” a work in which the new digital
era is described and the rise of social media. Also explained the implications for entities who want
to have impact in this internet-driven world. They suggest a strategy for how organizations can
approach their marketing in the digital landscape: POST. This is a process inside the organization
goals.

As a business, you have to know what you want to accomplish. Whether that be the revenue you
hope to bring in or the change you hope to see in the world through a nonprofit mission. With
those bigger pictures in mind, POST helps to put a digital strategy in action.

People: Who is your audience? Try to describe the people you are trying to reach. By describing
them demographically, where they are, their income level, their age, etc. Perhaps more
importantly, it also means knowing their psychographics or what they think, feel and believe. The

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starting point is understanding and perspective taking. Empathize with the audience, in order to
address and solve their pain points and speak to their desires and interests.

Objectives: What are you trying to accomplish with the target audience? How will you know if
you have accomplished it? On the other side of this, it is really important to understand what our
audience goals are for themselves and to unearth the intersection between these two things.
How does what I am offering, help these people meet their own goals for them to become the
kind of people they aspire to be?

Strategy: How exactly are you going to reach those objectives? What are the steps that you are
going to take? What messaging will resonate and what content you will speak to your audience?
What stories will you tell to invite customers to see what you can offer them? What is that going
to look like?

Tools/Tech: What do you need to put your strategy into action to reach those goals? This includes
your digital platforms, the content calendar or scheduled you put together for your campaigns, the
team you need to implement and the budget it will take to make it all happen. Digital strategies
will look different in every organization, depending on its size, industry, culture and many other
factors. But every digital strategy needs these fundamental elements.

The power of POST planning:

1. It forces to begin with PEOPLE. Even in the era of shiny objects, and sophisticated technology
and marketing, it always comes back to people.

2. It separates strategy from technology (which are oftenly mixed in digital marketing, because
we use platforms that carry their own culture. We must not fall in the trap of expecting those
platforms to do the work for us). Facebook or Tiktok are not a strategy.

First → dig into the journey we want to create for the customer.
Second → Deploy the best suited technology, to take them on that journey.

By making this separation, digital marketing is sophisticated and skills future-proof. The digital
landscape is going to keep evolving. Don't let your strategy be stuck to one platform.

POST is the backbone for smart marketing. You can use it to draft ideas or even create
multidimensional plans.

CONSIDER: Use this mnemonic of P-O-S-T as a way to jot out an initial idea of your marketing
strategy; whether it be for the release of a new product, the launch of the new company, or the
beginning of a marketing campaign to bring in volunteers for your nonprofit. This mnemonic is
something that you can keep in your back pocket and continually come back to as the basis for
developing a stronger, more resonant, and fleshed out marketing strategy. It will help ensure your

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strategy really speaks to your customers, puts them at the center, and is delivered in a consistently
compelling and effective way.

Things that are really important about the way that this mnemonic and process is laid
out:

Start with the people

First of all, POST strategy starts with people. It starts with being customer centric and putting
your audience at the center of absolutely everything you do, to deeply understand who they
are and what they are looking for. We must do this in a way that is empathetic, nuanced, and
without stereotyping or projecting your assumptions onto that group. It starts with doing some
deep listening and empathy work to understand what they care about, what they are trying to
do, and what their needs and aspirations are.

Strategy and technology are separate

Secondly, what is really valuable about this particular flow is that strategy and technology are
separate. This can be a very difficult thing to understand in our digital landscape today
because all the amazing tools and technologies that we have access to seem to lend
themselves to particular strategies. They also carry cultural implications with them as they
are spaces for conversation and connection. This makes it difficult to work out strategies from
tools and technology especially when we often conflate them, which means we put them
together in a way that's not really representative of how we want to act as marketers.

POST planning helps us understand: What is your strategy? What is your approach? What is
your messaging?

It is valuable to consider the steps you need to take in order to reach people before you
actually dive into which tools, technology, platforms, or channels are going to help you put
that strategy into action. The reality we face is that tools and technology are going to keep
changing and evolving. It’s part of our work as marketers to continue to keep up to date with
them. We also have to be able to think strategically to get into the minds and hearts of our
audience regardless of what tools and technology we have in front of us.

Putting tools and technology last is really important because ultimately, this changing
landscape has to first be about the people. If we start with tools and technology, we're going
to be chasing algorithms instead of reaching people.

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 2. TARGET AUDIENCE: WHO DO YOU SEEK TO SERVE?

1. Listening in Order to be Responsive and Predictive

Market research is fundamentally about listening to your current and potential audience. We listen
in order to understand our customers’ needs, pain points, interests, and aspirations. We listen in
order to be both responsive and predictive.

Market research helps us:

● Assess market conditions

● Analyze competitive positioning
● Research current and potential customers to uncover needs (articulated and implied)
● Fine-tune targeting and messaging
● Develop and test positioning
● Assess and adjust 4Ps
● Identify new trends

2. Introduction to Market Research

Before we dive into market research, it is essential to understand the role of inquisitiveness as a
digital marketer. As the creative director for a global digital services company, David Ostroff has
a background in graphic design and considers his zone of genius to be in website design and
marketing.

According to Ostroff, one quality that every successful digital marketer should have is being
inquisitive → ask the right questions to get the right answers. Your clients might think they want
something but actually need something else; part of your job is to get that information so that you
can have a successful campaign.

What we need to conduct research:

● Identify Research Needs: Identify research needs based on business questions and
stakeholder input.
● Lock Research Scope: based on budget and resources available.
● Choose Research methods: based on research scoping and standards
● Generate/Obtain data sources: for research for multiple data types
● Analytic Tools: Leverage analytical tools that are optimal to conduct analysis based on
chosen data sources and analytic methods

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 3. Research Methods

Next, we will need to assess needs by asking probing questions from all stakeholders affected by
research outcome.

KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK

● What is the underlying question we want to answer with the research?

● How will the insights be used?
● What changes are we anticipating to make in our processes based on this research?
● Who will be affected by changes in processes?

GET INPUT FROM STAKEHOLDERS

Where might the data for your research come from? There are a two basic possibilities:

1. Primary sources, meaning it is your own data that you have collected, in other words,
self-generated specifically for the purposes of current research. PROS: Relevant, can be
customized and used in their entirety. CONS: Slow - Expensive.

2. Secondary sources, meaning the data was collected by a third party, in other words,
generated by others for a different purpose. PROS: Fast to obtain (ready data source).
Usually cheaper than primary. CONS: Might not be an exact match for needs. Not 100%
sure of data quality

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 Research methods can be quantitative and qualitative.

Focuses … Best use

Obtaining data Based on few unrepresentative inputs develop initial

through open-ended Uncovers less obvious motivations and understanding of
and conversational connections motivations and
Unstructured data collection potential actions
QUANTITATIVE communication
Directional results

obtaining data Based on many representative inputs quantify potential

through closed- Observes behaviors and uncovers obvious outcomes to
ended questions motivations recommend a
QUALITATIVE and statistical Structured data collection course of action
observations Statistically significant results

Examples of each research method

Traditional Qualitative Research Methods

Focus Groups: 6–10 participants and a moderator. Often used to uncover new ideas and test
concepts

One-on-one Interviews: Single participant and interviewer. Often used to uncover deeply
seeded/unarticulated motivations

Ethnographic Research: Varying number of participants. Used to passively observe natural

behaviors and environments

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Digital Qualitative Research Methods

Text Analysis: Varying number of

participants. Uses complex
linguistic analysis to infer
sentiment towards a topic

Image/Video Analysis: Varying

number of participants. Uses
image analysis to
answer research
questions
Neuro-analytics:
Single participant.
Used to measure
nonverbal (emotional,
physical, biological)
responses to stimuli

Quantitative Research Methods

Surveys: Needs a large sample to be statistically significant. Often

used to quantify a hypothesis

Descriptive Analytics: Uses existing data set to reflect what was

happening at a past point in time

Predictive Modeling: Uses existing data set to predict what will

happen in the future using statistical modeling

The best analyses combine multiple research methods and different types of data. Combining
qualitative and quantitative methods facilitates the development of hypotheses as well as
quantifying and prioritizing opportunities.

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REMEMBER: How you share the results of your research matters as much as what they are.

Just sharing the raw results of your research is not enough. Your responsibility is to make sure
your insights are heard and understood, and that means speaking to more than just the rational
side of your listeners’ brains. Marketing experts and authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath proposed
in their 2010 book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, that when presenting
information (like the findings of a market research study), we need to speak to three elements:

● The “rider,” the rational part of our brains

● The “elephant,” the emotional part of our brains, which has much more weight—and therefore
greater control—than the rider
● The "path," naming the where we should go with this information from here, and how to get
there.

The elephant, rider, and path analogy for understanding decision making. How might you
incorporate all three elements into the way you present your research findings?

Psychologists know that there are 2 systems of thought, the rational system and the emotional
system. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt proposed an interesting analogy to illustrate these two
systems: Imagine our brain as a rider on the back of an elephant. The rider represents the rational
system, the part of us that plans, that solves problems. The rider does analysis in order to decide:
Hey, I'd like to go this way! But it is the elephant, which represents the emotional system, that
provides the power for the journey. The rider can try to lead the elephant or to pull the elephant,
but if they don't agree, who would you bet on? The elephant has 6 tons of advantage due to its
weight and it is exactly this power in the balance that makes it difficult to adopt new behaviors. If
we want this duo to take a new direction, we also need to think about the path which represents
the external environment. The duo will be more likely to complete the journey if you can reduce
the distance and remove the obstacles in their way.

This is the baseline. If you want to lead the change, you need to do 3 things. First, give the rider
directions, information so they can get to their destination. Second, you have to motivate the
elephant, i.e. stimulate its emotions. And finally, you have to shape the path to facilitate the
progress. This is how change happens.

To keep in mind:
● There are two systems of thought: the rational system and the emotional system.
● Our brain can be imagined as a rider on the back of an elephant, with the rider representing
the rational system and the elephant representing the emotional system.
● The elephant provides the power for the journey, and if the rider and the elephant don't agree,
the elephant's power can make it difficult to adopt new behaviors.
● To lead the change, you need to give the rider directions, motivate the elephant, and shape
the path to facilitate progress.

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● By reducing the distance and removing obstacles, you can increase the likelihood of success
for the rider and the elephant to complete the journey.
● Understanding the interplay between the rational and emotional systems can help us become
more effective in pursuing our goals and making changes in our lives.

Therefore, sharing your research findings as a story or narrative can have a much greater impact
than simply stating the numerical results. A narrative is a way of ordering events and connecting
thoughts into a coherent sequence that makes them interesting and memorable. Click on each
question to learn more.

Who: Frame your learning as a narrative, with a central character - usually your customer - driving
the action. And, as in your outward-facing marketing, you must also consider the audience with
whom you are sharing your findings. What are their priorities and pain points? How can you
ensure that your findings are delivered in a way that is relevant and tailored to them?
What: It's not enough to share the raw data; you have to interpret it and help others draw meaning
from it as well. Less is often more. Instead of sharing everything you learned, highlight what was
most interesting, important, useful, and urgent. Focus on sharing: (a) Insights and "aha" moments;
(b) Implications for your work; (c) Important next steps based on those findings.

How: How will you be sharing your findings? Make sure your presentation is effective for the
setting. The clearer and more engaging your presentation, the more likely it is that you will be
heard, understood, and gain the buy-in you need to take action. This kind of learning should be
happening all the time, so it's best to have mechanisms in place feedback loops - mechanisms
for continually sharing insights that can be evaluated, tested, and help you and your organization
continually improve.

4. Segmentation

We conduct market research in order to understand the different possible groups—usually called
segments—we could potentially reach with our marketing. Market segments are possible targets
for our digital marketing efforts. There are four basic types of market segmentation:

● Demographic segmentation breaks up people in terms of basic statistical data such as age,
gender, income, or location.
● Psychographic segmentation breaks down the population in terms of their beliefs, attitudes,
or values.
● Behavioral segmentation divides audiences into groups depending on how they act, including
spending habits and brand interactions.
● Geographic segmentation is fairly self-explanatory—dividing people up based on their
location, which may be as specific as a zip code or broader such as urban vs. rural.

Research conducted in the 1990s about dog owners resulted in some important audience
segmentation that helped dog food brands determine, and speak to, their target audiences. The

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researchers identified four possible audience segments, broken up psychographically, based on
the kind of relationship they had with their dog (their values and attitudes towards their dog):

Dog as child: These customers focused on the health, wellbeing, and full lives of their pets. Much
like children, they wanted to see their dogs live up to their full potential.
Dog as grandchild: Customers who treat their dogs as grandchildren were prone to spoiling and
indulging their pets.
Dog as friend: These customers appreciated their dogs for the functional, companionable
relationship they had with them.
Dog as dog: The smallest group of dog owners saw their dogs as nothing more than an animal
that lived with them and had to be cared for.
One more key term to understand as we think about digital marketing strategy is positioning.

What position do you occupy in the customer's mind in relation to your competitors? Determining
where you want to sit, who you want to be considered alongside is the act of positioning.
It is like thinking about a library bookshelf. Pretend that your company/service/product is a book.
What section is it in and what shelf is it on? What other books is it next to it? If you write a book
about the history of French Cuisine, would that book appear alongside other history books, under
a section of France or with cook books? That is a positioning question, and the answer to that
depends on your goals and your broader strategy. Where you sit in your customers minds has
implications for how you market yourself, what messaging will resonate, what price point you can
attach to your offerings, and so much more. So, getting your positioning right and working to
change it when need be is a powerful piece of a bigger marketing strategy.

For example: Krispy Kreme (a donut shop popular in the south of the USA), Starbucks (coffee
chain) and Dunkin Donuts which is a popular Donut company, rebranded as Dunkin. That is why
customers associate it more to krispy Kreme than starbucks. They advertise through traditional
channels with signature lines “time to make the donuts” and “america runs on Dunkin”. Their
coffee was a secondary product, which represents 24% of the US coffee market share, compared
to Starbucks with 30%. But in 2018, the market changed. Dunkin wanted to grow and keep being
profitable, so they updated their position and spoke to younger generations. Americans were
becoming more health conscious, profit margins on donuts are lower than on drinks, and moving
from being a donut-focused to a beverage-focused, would allow for more growth and sustainability
as a company. They just not rebrand but a repositioning, to make their customers see them more
alongside upscale coffee companies (starbucks) rather than alongside donut companies, like
Krispy. They removed the “donut” word from their image. The most important changes were:
offering new menu items, retooling thousands of stores to equip them with espresso machines
and other necessities to update their positioning, and retraining their staff to be able to offer and
talk about Dunkin´s new approach. Dunkin redesigned its stores, introduced a mobile order drive-
thru lane, and added new afternoon drinks such as Cold Nitro Brew Coffee. They communicate
to the target customers that they deliver good quality coffee (as starbucks) but quickly and at
about half the price. All told, the company poured around 100M U$D into this beverage led
strategy. This ended up being an effective and profitable repositioning for Dunkin. After a year,
the company saw its biggest increase in earnings in 6 years, with espresso sales alone showing

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40% increase.
Answer: 2) Where you sit in your customers’ minds in relation to your competitors.

News source: https://propane.agency/lux/dunkin-donuts-successful-rebranding-in-an-evolving-

industry-2/

Where you sit on the library shelf matters. So, choose wisely and reposition with care.

Reasons to rebrand:

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 3. CORE MESSAGING

1. Demographics and Psychographics

1.1. Generations/Demographics/Psychographics

After knowing the customer, you must know your competitors (Who else is vying for the same
people’s attention and trust?)

A competitor analysis is the process of researching and analyzing other companies’ marketing
strategies, and it’s critical in answering this question and succeeding in the digital space. A
competitor analysis will give you an insight into:
● what your competition is up to
● what your potential customers are responding to
● what they might be missing from your competition
● how your messaging and overall approach might resonate

A competitor analysis is not a one-and-done process; this is a process that should be revisited at
least quarterly to keep up with changes in the market and emerging trends.

1.2. Conducting Competitor Analysis

Here are a few useful strategies for approaching competitor analysis in the digital age:

A) Identify your competitors

Who are you really competing with? This is where the importance of positioning comes in. Your
positioning should tell you who your competitors are so you can make the most of your research.
Consider the Dunkin’ case study: do you want your customers to think of you in relation to coffee,
or doughnuts? Who do you want to be associated with? Note, also, that you will have direct
competitors: those who are offering the same product or service as you, and indirect competitors:
those who are in a similar category, or with whom you have something in common. For instance,
a comic book shop may be directly competing with other comic book stores, while competing
indirectly with bigger book stores, board game sellers, or novelty shops. At this stage, you can
also talk to your team and current or potential customers. Who do they consider to be your
competitors? What do they like and dislike about them? What do they look for and expect? What
are they missing that you could offer that your competitors don’t?

B) Conduct an initial review of competitors’ websites, email, and social media channels

Review their websites. What do you notice about the look, feel, and structure of their website?
How about the products or services they’re offering? The language they use? The price points
and perks? The process the customer goes through? What can you learn, and replicate, in your
own work? What do you want to avoid? Sign up for their email newsletters. How frequently are

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they sending emails? What content are they sharing? What calls-to-action do they use? Review
your competitors’ social media channels. Take note of what kind of content they share, their
sharing frequency, the messaging and tone, and the level and type of engagement you notice
from their fans and followers.

C) Go deeper with digital tools

● What platform is your competitor’s website built on? BuiltWith.

● What other technologies are they using on their site? Wappalyzer.
● What keywords (search terms your customers may be using on Google and other search
engines) are working best for your competitors, and where are they missing out? SpyFu.
● Gain important insights into your competitors’ email marketing with OWLetter.
● Who is linking to your competitors’ websites with Neil Patel’s Backlink Checker.
● Get a comprehensive look at your competitors’ performance online using tools like SEMRush.
● Keep track of your competitors’ performance across social media using Brand Mentions and
Board Reader.

D) Map out your challenges and opportunities

Pull all your findings together into a single document or spreadsheet to discuss with your team.
What patterns do you notice? Where are your competitors strong, and where are they lacking?

2. Translating Research into Action

2.1. Research Success Story from Katie Auerbach

As the Vice President of Digital Strategy for Radancy, Katie Auerbach works with clients to
understand their pain points and help them craft a multidimensional solution to give them the edge
over the competition and achieve their goals. Auerbach considers herself a born advocate and
her zone of excellence to be in digital strategy. In her work, she researches and understands the
competitive and data landscape to help her clients build a solution that will help them differentiate
themselves, stand out, and make a statement that is unique to them that achieves their desired
goal.

Her story: One of the biggest successes I've had in my career to date was a comprehensive
content Wiki that I created around Git for a highly technical client. I knew nothing about
programming or development. All I knew was what it took to make great content and how to really
optimize for organic searches, answering the questions candidates wanted. I started by giving
into the internet and really doing a lot of research and seeing what others were doing, then built
a comprehensive, detailed outline on some of the densest subjects I've ever encountered. To be
completely honest, I still don't understand exactly what Git does. But based on these detailed
outlines, really taking the time to see what competitors are doing, how it was working and why,
and building clear recommendations and working with a writer who has the knowledge to back it

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up. We created a completely redone Git Wiki for our client that was so successful, it doubled their
organic search traffic, and had several other departments coming to my main point of contact,
asking for us to do the same thing for them. This was incredibly nerve-wracking because it was
going into an area I knew that I knew nothing about. I understood the fundamental art of marketing
in organic search and how to make it great. Then, having to defend it to experts and Git trying to
ask me why I structured things in this way and having clear and detailed answers. Sort of a
combination of my marketing, legal nerd, data nerd, and research nerd being able to come
together, defend, present, and then have such a success that it led to a lot more work. It also
gave me confidence and it's built in me the love for really diving deep into industries I might not
be familiar with. It helped me understand how critical it is, first and foremost, to understand the
nature of that industry so that you can understand what users really want and give that to them.
Also, to understand what the client wants and create that solution and be willing to defend if there
are doubters, because you have to be confident in what you know, which is the marketing aspect.
That's why they brought you in and this was proof that my gut instincts, research, and knowledge
really delivered the best and strongest solution for my client.

Once you’ve compiled your research, it’s time to translate your learning into an actionable insight.
Identify areas where your digital marketing efforts could have the biggest impact—where are their
needs not being met, or opportunities not being capitalized on? How and where can your strategy
help you rise above the competition to delight your customers?

In order to translate your research into action, you need to look at your insights and hypothesize—
what can you do to capture the attention and earn the trust of your target audience? Try using
sentences like the ones presented below to sketch out the beginnings of your digital strategy:

● Because my audience values {X}, we will {Y}.

● My audience struggles with {X}, which we can help them overcome with {Y}.
● My audience aspires to be {X kind of person}, which we can help them become by {Y}.

3. Messaging and Storytelling

3.1. Who are the characters in your story?

Market research helps you identify your potential customers. Once you have a sense of who they
are, your challenge is to hone in on a few specific audience segments you will focus your efforts
on, and this is called targeting.

But even within a target, we need to get more specific. We need to be able to reach our potential
customers as individuals.

Everytime we share a message with an audience, it is important to remember that it is ultimately

heard by individuals. This is where the argument for creating marketing personas, or customer
avatars stand for. A persona is essentially an imagined example of the type of person you are

20
trying to reach. It often includes a picture, demographic information such as age, location and job,
and personal or psychographic information such as values and interests. The most important
thing about developing personas, though, is that they truly reflect the pain points, needs and
desires of your customer in a way that helps you understand tem and speak more effectively to
them. Your personas should tell you what problem you can solve for your customer and give you
guidance for how to offer that solution in a way that they can hear, understand and appreciate. If
that key element is not included, the persona does little good and does nothing to help you
distinguish your ideal customer from anyone else.

For example: King Charles and Ozzy Obourne, both are males, born in 1948, raised in the UK,
married twice, lives in a castle, and are wealthy and famous.

The personas read precisely the same, but clearly represent entirely different people. Would this
be enough or the right information to help design your marketing strategy?

In a digital world that demands customer centricity, personas are intended to help you humanize
your marketing. They are there to remind you that even when you do not see them, there is a real
living, breathing human being on the other side of your messaging.

As a digital marketer, your job is to keep their needs, interests and aspirations in mind at every
step. By limiting your focus, personas also help you determine who you are not talking to (limit
your focus), which is an important part of its strong strategy. Keep in mind though that personas
and targeted marketing as a whole is inherently discriminatory in the most basic sense of the
word. In some ways that's a very good thing.

In the age of broadcast, there was very little targeting. So, everyone saw everything. Whether it
was relevant to them or not. So, targeting solves the problem of interruptive advertising. Targeted
marketing can cross the line into predatory advertising. For example, targeting teenagers with ads
for vaping pens. Or targeting housing ad by multicultural affinity, in a way that could exclude
certain races. When we translate personas into targeted audiences, theory turns into action, and
those actions have real consequences.

Tech companies have taken steps to mitigate the potential harm done by predatory targeting, but
at least as much of the responsibility is on ourselves as marketers. The most important way to
ensure that your marketing is targeted but not predatory is to put your relationship with the
customer at the center. Is the value you are offering addressing a genuine pain point,
meeting a real need or genuinely improving their life in some way?

Personas at their best will help you approach your marketing as an invitation. A peer relationship
even, that keeps the exchange of value mutually beneficial. Marketing icon Seth Godin coined
the term “minimum viable audience”, which is the smallest possible group of people that could
sustain your work in your business.

21
Paradoxically, it is through this narrowed focus that marketers see the most success. When you
know who you seek to serve and what you have to offer, your audience is more likely to respond,
because it feels tailored to their needs and responsive to their interests.

Consider your own experience online. As you are scrolling through emails, social media, or news,
you’re exposed to an enormous amount of information and messaging. You can’t possibly absorb
all of it. How do you filter through it? The question you are likely asking yourself—and the question
your customers also have in their minds is: what does this have to do with me?

With this constant, internal question, we are looking for relevance and resonance. If your target
is wrong, or poorly defined, and your audience can’t find a compelling answer that tells them
something is helpful, entertaining, or interesting within a few seconds, they will just keep on
scrolling.

DEFINITION of “Spray and pray” marketing: the practice of putting ads or other marketing
pieces in front of as many people as possible (spray) and hoping customers will notice and buy
the product or service (pray).

4. Personas/ Customer Avatars

You need customer avatars: While targeting your audience is critical, do we really need
personas? There are those who argue yes, personas are critical to strong digital marketing
(Wright 2017).

Customer avatars are a waste of time: Some marketers, on the other hand, see personas as a
crutch that ultimately get in the way of effective marketing (Baker 2021).

CONSIDER. Do you think personas or customer avatars are necessary?

4.1. Who is the hero of the story?

Every brand, every organization, every company has and tells a story. Who and what you put at
the center of that story has important implications for how you reach and engage with your
potential customers. When you think of your organization's brand, company culture, and
messaging, ask yourself: who is the hero of the story? Who's at the center, driving the action?

If it's the company itself, you may be working in a profit-first environment. If it's those you serve,
you're likely in a consumer-first environment. Click on the images below to learn more about the
implications of each of these approaches.

Consumer first - Value Creation: The performance of actions that increase the worth of goods,
services, or even a business. Many business operators now focus on value creation in the context
of creating better value for customers purchasing its products and services

22
Profits First - Revenue Extraction: The philosophy of operating a business with the sole goal of
getting money from customers. It’s the exact opposite of value creation.

Subaru’s advertisement positions the customer as the hero by focusing on the customer's
story or memories and making them the focal point of the commercial. The commercial follows
the father as he cleans out his Subaru and reflects on his daughter's memories. It ends with the
father gifting the car to his daughter, emphasizing the value of the car in the customer's life and
subtly promoting the car by saying, "You can pass down a Subaru." They point out his in their
website, by saying "The SUBARU Group strives to put the customer first in all business
activities" (source).

Chevrolet's advertisement, on the other hand, centers the product by focusing on the features
and qualities of the four different Chevrolet models. It does not focus on any customer's story,
but rather on the features of the cars and how they can benefit the customer. Neither does it
make any mention of the customer's story or how the car can make a difference in their life. The
commercial instead focuses on the product itself and its qualities, emphasizing the product as
the center of the story. In the antipodes of Subaru, Chevrolet's website first look shows how
good they are selling cars, by saying that the Chevy S. is the 1# in sales (source).

In conclusion, it could be argued that Subaru, as a company, is focused on creating value for
the consumer. And conversely, Chevrolet, as a company, is most focused on making profits
and revenues rather than creating value.

4.2. You still need to be profitable.

Contributing factors to the difficulty of building customer-centric strategies

● Technological advances make it difficult to keep up with the pace and evolution of customer
needs that have rapidly changing habits.
● Increasing transparency creates roadblocks for companies to reach their audience
● Competitive marketplace makes it challenging to win over consumers
● Complexity of the set of alternatives creates a landscape that is tough to navigate.
● the customer has needs that are not articulated as there are generational differences
between different sets of consumers
● With human beings as the audience, may have different perceptions of value and different
goals and dreams despite being within the same desired group.
*Value creation is the great differentiator.

And in a crowded economy, if you want to stand out, you have to win your customers over with a
ton of value. (Neil Patel). Entrepreneur, Analytics Expert, and Investor

23
Value-centered businesses start with an external focus on the market. Profit extraction models
begin with internal needs.

To be an effective value creation company, you need to have a comprehensive understanding of

the consumer. This includes understanding the customers' goals, attitudes, and behaviors as well
as their needs, wants, and demands.

Goals

a) Understanding consumer goals is imperative to create value.

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Needs, Wants, Demands

Consumer goals and their hierarchy shape needs and wants; resource availability determines
demands: (A) Wants that are backed up by buying power to get products and services with
benefits to provide value and satisfaction. (B) Forms that human needs take as they are
shaped by culture and individual personality. (C) States of deprivation that are felt, including
basic physical needs, social needs, and individual needs

Attitudes: The goal of marketing is to create customers who demand your offering.

Behaviors: We have to find customers who are the most likely to purchase our product or service.
High customer satisfaction drives up the perception of value.

VALUE = BENEFITS - COST

BENEFITS = HIGH CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

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5. Two Sides of the Coin: Customer Journeys and the Marketing Funnel

As you develop a deep sense of who your customer and your hero of the story are, the next piece
is to understand the journey you want to take them on. How does this person go from knowing
nothing about your company, organization, product, or service, to knowing, liking, and trusting
you? How do we introduce them to who you are and what you’re about, and begin that exchange
of value?

This process is called the customer journey. It encompasses all the steps a potential customer
takes to achieve their goal with your company.

Customer journeys can be descriptive, in other words, you can map out the current process your
customers need to take to get from point A to point B. Descriptive journeys can help existing
companies identify roadblocks their customers may be facing and improve their processes
accordingly. Or they can be aspirational, in which case, you would design the process you expect
your customers to take. In either case, a customer journey should be a visual representation of
the process; a map of the experience, from their perspective.

A customer journey, whether descriptive or aspirational, typically takes that person through
several stages, from first becoming aware of your company, to taking whatever step you hope
they take (making a purchase, attending an event, becoming a volunteer, etc.). The key here is
that it is done from the perspective of the customer, and not from the perspective of the company.

Marketing funnels, or sales funnels, are a classic tool for organizations to map out their
processes from the company’s point of view. They typically address several stages of
advancement, from a customer initially becoming aware of a product or service, to considering a
purchase, making that purchase, becoming a loyal customer, and recommending or advocating
for that brand or product.

26
Awareness → consideration → conversion → loyalty → Advocacy

Marketing funnels help businesses focus their efforts and align each stage. For instance, in the
“awareness” stage, companies may focus on outbound marketing tactics such as Facebook
advertising. Once a customer has clicked through and landed on the website, the goal is to move
that person to the next stage of consideration, which may be done by offering a discount or
exclusive offer.

Customer journeys, on the other hand, are about mapping out this process from the perspective
of your audience, which is critical in the customer-centric world of digital marketing. There is
typically no single path customers follow, and journey mapping can help account for the different
iterations of that process.

Customer journeys will also look radically different depending on the industry you’re serving.

In B2C environments, your goal is to move a single potential buyer. Those potential buyers are
typically inundated with messaging, so it’s important to reach them wherever they are, as often
and consistently as possible, and to meet their needs at the moment they are seeking out
solutions.
For B2B environments, the sales process is typically longer, slower, and driven more by
reputation and thought leadership. The journey typically focuses more on ongoing relationship-
building, repeat business, and referrals.
Nonprofit examples: Customer journeys in the nonprofit sector are often quite complicated
because nonprofit organizations typically have a wider range of potential audiences they need to
speak to: beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, or advocates, to name a few. Savvy nonprofits are
adept at juggling the needs and interests of these multiple stakeholders who respond to very
different types of messaging.

A marketing funnel describes the process a customer goes through from initially learning
about your organization or offering to becoming a loyal customer. How is a customer
journey different?

A customer journey is different from a marketing funnel in that it is focused on mapping out the
customer experience from their perspective. It is more descriptive, looking at the individual steps
a customer takes to achieve their goal with your company. It also takes into account the different
paths a customer may take, as well as any obstacles they might face along the way. A customer
journey also looks at the emotional and psychological aspects of the customer experience, such
as how they feel when interacting with your company, which is something a marketing funnel does
not address.

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 4. ETHICS

1. Messaging Strategy: Speaking to Diverse Populations

There is a growing recognition in the world of marketing that our audiences are multifaceted, not
monolithic. Customers want to see themselves represented in the campaigns marketers create.

This concept is powerfully demonstrated in Dove’s wildly successful “Campaign for Real Beauty,”
which has run in various iterations since 2004 (Zed 2019). The challenge for brands interested in
speaking to and representing the diverse populations they seek to serve is to figure out how to do
so in a way that is humanizing, not tokenizing—to show their customers as people, not props.
Global beverage giant Pepsi's attempt failed with their notorious 2017 ad featuring model Kendall
Jenner diffusing a standoff between protestors and police by handing over a can of Pepsi.

Why the Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad Was Such a Glaring Misstep:

• Pepsi's controvert ad in which Kendall Jenner joins a protest and seems to defuse tensions
with police officers by handing Pepsi.
• The ad follows the Coke playbook of using a vaguely defined, outside-of-history sense of
uplift to feel urgent and contemporary
• Criticized the ad for its misstep of turning real moments of high tension into an opportunity
to celebrate commerce and fame
• Recent ads have used easily-understood, vaguely political messaging to transmit the idea
that to buy a given product would make you happier and … virtuous
• Noted that Pepsi's ad fails not solely for its insensitivity but its overextension of faux-wokeness
to sell a product, past the point where it can be reasonably ignored

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 2. Ethical Considerations in Digital Storytelling

The most important rule of thumb in marketing in diverse populations is to ensure the voices of
those you seek to reach are in the room when you are creating your strategy and content. Creator
platform Etsy, for instance, runs an Instagram account called @LifeAtEtsy, which features the
real lives and stories of their employees, in an effort to recruit diverse talent. Etsy has made it
clear that the account is not just for optics; they’ve made an ongoing commitment to becoming
more inclusive, ensuring that the voices they represent in their marketing are authentically
represented inside the company as well (MacLellan 2020).

3. Future-proofing

Who is the hero of the story? When you ask this question, and think of your ideal customer…
what voices might you be missing out on?

Digital marketers interested in staying ahead of the curve will learn to recognize that classically
overlooked and underserved market segments are often hungry for recognition. This
means solving a problem for them and driving revenue for your company.

Take, for example, Old Navy’s recent push into the plus-size market (Thomas 2021).

Identifying and reaching emerging markets means checking your assumptions about your
ideal customers, listening more closely to the real needs and aspirations of the people you serve.
A digital marketer must constantly think about how your offerings can be adapted to speak
to the lived realities of your potential customers.

Put your customer at the center of the story. But be conscious of where else you can turn the
camera, and what other stories there may be to tell.

How Etsy doubled its hiring of black and Latinx employees in one year:

● Etsy experienced a leadership change in 2017 and employees were concerned about the
company's commitment to inclusivity.
● In 2019, Etsy doubled the number of black and Latinx employees hired from the previous year,
representing 15% of US hires.
● Black and Latinx employees still only make up 11% of Etsy's US workforce.
● Elizabeth Spector Louden, head of diversity and inclusion, is proud of the progress that has
been made so far.
● In 2018, Etsy created a Diversity and In clusion team of five employees
● Rebalanced its referral program to increase hiring and employee-referral based hiring in each
group

29
● Rolled out a career development mentorship program and aligned performance evaluation
and hiring rubrics to reflect company's diversity goals
● Provided managers with anti-discrimination and anti-harassment training
● Partnered with programming training schools to attract diverse candidates
● Room for improvement: not enough senior positions held by black or Latinx employees, one
black board member, no black or Latinx executives on leadership team

Old Navy overhauls plus-size fashion line for women to win sales in $32 billion market

● Old Navy will offer more of its women's apparel in extended sizes, as demand for plus-size
apparel rises in the U.S.
● Old Navy, which is owned by Gap, has offered a limited selection of plus-size apparel since
2004.
● Coresight Research estimates the extended-size market for women in the U.S. will grow to
$32.3 billion this year, representing roughly 20.7% of the total women's apparel market.
● Old Navy is looking to seize the opportunity of the growing plus-size apparel market by
offering sizes 0-28 and XS-4X for all of its women's styles in stores and up to size 30 online.
● Old Navy will create a single destination for all women's clothing on its website, and will
feature mannequins in sizes four, 12 and 18 in its stores.
● The value of the extended-size market for women in the U.S. is estimated to be $32.3 billion
this year, representing roughly 20.7% of the total women's apparel market.
● Old Navy has offered a limited selection of plus-size apparel since 2004, but with this
expansion it hopes to reach many more customers.
● Old Navy promises complete pricing parity, so all styles will be the same price no matter the
size.
● Old Navy store employees have also received special training to talk to customers about
body positivity and size inclusivity.

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 5. MIRIAM BROSSEAU NOTES

Inadequacy Marketing: assumes that “something is broken with you (client)” and our product
have the solution.

Empowerment Marketing: Customer as a hero. Assumes they are good enough, the product
helps them become the bet version of themselves. So, the product makes the client “better”.

Customer centricity in Action:

● Use the word “you”. That makes feel you are talking to the customer. Check the you/me
ratio of the text. Focus on benefits over features.
For example → Hootsuite: A pop up of the website shows personality.

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TWO DIFFERENT WAYS OF STRUGGLING WITH A TRAGEDY

32
Customer centricity can lead to different solutions.

Why is customer centricity hard? Obstacles

● Broadcast still determines our mindset and drives many orgs systems.
● Bureaucracy and siloes.
● Data overwhelm
● Assumption …. Complete

Examples of customer centricity:

• Wayfair offers over 8 M products, from furniture to décor to appliances and storage. Uses
predictive analytics and AI to create detailed buyer personas to show the most relevant
products for customers. Uses machine learning technology to work out which products
complement one another and recommend them to customers. Data is used across the
organization, allowing the company to better execute its strategy through improved
personalization.

• Hilton is one of the biggest hotel brands in the world, annually, 178 M guests stay at its
properties. With the free Hilton Honors mobile app, guests can book their stay, select the
exact room they want, order meals, check-in and our, unlock their door and elevators with a
Digital Key, all from their smartphone. The honors program app provides frictionless
experience from booking and pre-stay to on-site. Front desk staff can focus on more valuable
face-to-face interactions.

How to do better:

● Build these habits into your work.

● Experiment
○ Start with one project
○ Prove the value
○ Translate the lessons

Share in the chat! What is one take away you will use to create your unique content?

● POST Planing
● Minimum viable audience
● Empathy, no assumptions
● Inadequacy vs empowerment
● The power of you
● Personalizxation and its limites
● Contextualize and be repsonsibe
● Why this is hard, and how to do this better

33
Customer centricity: the problem is not the attention but the relevance it has for the consumer.
Empathy map Canvas: Our opinion and how it affects the analysis of empathy.
Empower marketing: transfer the responsibility to the customer who knows what he wants.

34
 Glossary

Communicating: A marketing activity focused on broadly describing offerings, as well as learning

from customers.
Creating: A marketing activity focused on the process of collaborating with suppliers and
customers to create offerings that have value.
Delivering: A marketing activity focused on getting offerings to the consumer in a way that
optimizes value.
Descriptive Analytics: A quantitative research method that uses an existing data set to reflect
what was happening at a past point in time.
Ethnographic Research: A traditional qualitative research method that uses a varying number
of participants in order to passively observe natural behaviors and environments.
Exchanging: A marketing activity focused on trading value for offerings.
Focus Group: A traditional qualitative research method that uses participants and a moderator
to uncover new ideas and test concepts.
Image/Video Analysis: A digital qualitative research method with a varying number of
participants that uses image analysis to answer research questions.
Neuro-analytics: A digital qualitative research method with a single participant that is used to
measure nonverbal (emotional, physical, biological) responses to stimuli.
One-on-one Interviews: A traditional qualitative research method with a single participant and
an interviewer used to uncover deeply-seated or unarticulated motivations.
POST planning: A strategy for how organizations can approach their marketing. P-O-S-T where
P is for people, O is for objectives, S is for strategy, and T is for tools and technology. It’s a
powerful way to sketch out an initial plan and make sure all the pieces of your digital marketing
align. POST is a process that lives within your bigger organizational goals.
Predictive Modeling: A quantitative research method that uses an existing data set to predict
what will happen in the future using statistical modeling.
"Spray and Pray" Marketing: The practice of putting ads or other marketing pieces in front of as
many people as possible (spray) and hoping customers will notice and buy the product or service
(pray).
Survey: A quantitative research method that uses large samples of data to quantify a hypothesis.
Text Analysis: A digital qualitative research method with a varying number of participants that
uses complex linguistic analysis to infer sentiment towards a topic.
Value: Value is the benefits received from a product or service, minus the direct and indirect cost
paid to acquire it.

References
● Baker, David C. 2021. "Buyer Personas Can Over-Complicate Your Marketing —
David C. Baker". David C. Baker. URL.
● Bradley Chevrolet of Parker. 2016. “Chevrolet J.D. Power Dependability Awards”.
Video, 1:00. URL.

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 ● Board Reader. 2021. "Boardreader - Forum Search Engine". Boardreader.Com.
Accessed February 16, 2022. URL.
● Brand Mentions. 2021. "Upgrade The Way You Monitor Your Brand & Competitors".
Brandmentions.Com. Accessed April 13, 2022. URL.
● BuiltWith. 2021. "Builtwith Technology Lookup". Builtwith. Accessed April 13, 2022.
URL.
● D'addario, Daniel. 2017. "Why The Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad Was Such A Glaring
Misstep". Time. URL.
● Edmondson, Amy C, and Paul J Verdin. 2017. "Your Strategy Should Be A
Hypothesis You Constantly Adjust". Harvard Business Review. URL.
● Freshpet. 2019. “Booba The 130-Pound Lap Dog | Freshpet Select Commercial :50.”
Video, 0:50. URL.
● Kotler, Philip, Veronica Wong, John Saunders, and Gary Armstrong. 2005. Principles
Of Marketing. 4th ed. Essex, England: Pearson Education. PDF
● Lariviere, Marty. 2010. "A New Twist To Managing Black Friday". The Operations
Room. URL.
● Life at Etsy (@lifeatetsy). 2021. “In honor of National Coming Out Day on October
11th...” Instagram photo, November 2, 2021. URL.
● MacLellan, Lila. 2020. "How Etsy Doubled Its Hiring Of Black And Latinx Employees
In One Year". Quartz. URL.
● Negocios y Empresa. 2021. 10 frases de Peter Drucker | Unas pinceladas de su
legado. Image. URL.
● OWLetter. 2021. "Monitoring Your Competitors' Email Marketing Newsletters".
Owletter. Accessed April 13, 2022. URL.
● Patel, Neil. 2021a. "Backlinks". Neil Patel. Accessed April 13, 2022. URL.
● Patel, Neil. 2021b. "Want More SEO Traffic?". Neil Patel. URL.
● SEMRush. 2021. "Get Measurable Results From Online Marketing". Semrush.
Accessed December 16, 2021. URL.
● Sprout Social. 2021a. "What Is A Marketing Funnel?". Sprout Social. URL.
● Subaru. 2017. “2017 Subaru Forester Subaru Commercial Making Memories
Extended”. Video, 1:00. URL.
● Thomas, Lauren. 2021. "Old Navy Overhauls Plus-Size Fashion Line For Women To
Win Sales In $32 Billion Market". CNBC. URL.
● Wappalyzer. 2021. "Find Out What Websites Are Built With". Wappalyzer. Accessed
April 13, 2022. URL.
● Wright, Amy. 2017. "What Is A 'Buyer Persona' And Why Is It Important?". Social
Media Today. URL.
● Yadav, Yash. 2017. “Full Pepsi Commercial Starring Kendal Jenner”. YouTube
Video, 2:48. URL.
● Zalis, Shelley. 2019. “Inclusive Ads are Affecting Consumer Behavior, According to
New Research.“ Think with Google. URL.

36
 ● Zed, Olivia. 2019. "How Dove's Real Beauty Campaign Won, And Nearly Lost, Its
Audience". Prweek. URL.

Resources
Recommended Reading and Media

● D'addario, Daniel. 2017. "Why The Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad Was Such A Glaring
Misstep". Time. URL.
● Edmondson, Amy C, and Paul J Verdin. 2017. "Your Strategy Should Be A
Hypothesis You Constantly Adjust". Harvard Business Review. URL.
● Los mejores anuncios de siempre y de hoy. 2018. “PEPSI Kendall Jenner So
Controversial Commercial”. Video, 2:40. URL.
● MacLellan, Lila. 2020. "How Etsy Doubled Its Hiring Of Black And Latinx Employees
In One Year". Quartz. URL.
● Propane. 2019. "Dunkin Donuts: Successful Rebranding In An Evolving Industry".
Lux, Propane Agency. Published July 2, 2019. URL.
● Rare. 2015 “The Elephant, The Rider and the Path - A Tale of Behavior Change”.
YouTube Video, 2:02. URL.
● Thomas, Lauren. 2021. "Old Navy Overhauls Plus-Size Fashion Line For Women To
Win Sales In $32 Billion Market". CNBC. URL.
● Zed, Olivia. 2019. "How Dove's Real Beauty Campaign Won, And Nearly Lost, Its
Audience". Prweek. URL.

37
 ANNEX 1

The widely accepted view that strategy and execution are separable activities sets companies up
for failure in a fast-paced world.

One of us (Paul) is a strategy scholar and economist; the other (Amy) studies organizational
behavior and operations management. We came together to consider why strategy so often
breaks down in the execution stage. While conducting research on recent dramatic cases of
strategic failure in different industries, involving vastly different business models and strategies,
we discovered a common pattern: What started as small gaps in execution spiraled into business
failures when initial strategies were not altered based on new information provided by experience.
These companies’ strategies were viewed by their top executives as analytically sound;
performance gaps were blamed on execution.

Take the notable failure at Wells Fargo last year. Executives formulated a distinctive strategy of
cross-selling, which had much to recommend it. Selling additional products to current customers
leverages the costs of establishing those relationships in the first place, and serving more and
more of their financial service needs (to grab a greater “share of wallet”) is appealing, in theory.
Wells Fargo was even good in implementing the strategy — up to a point.

Yet the strategy eventually hit the realities of customers’ finite wallets (their spending power) and
real needs.

Cementing the business failure, salespeople appeared to believe that senior managers would not
tolerate underperformance, and found it easier to fabricate false accounts than to report what they
were learning in the field. The widespread nature of the behavior strongly suggests that the fraud
was not the result of some corrupt salespeople. Rather, it points to a system set up to fail — by
the pernicious combination of a fixed strategy and executives who appeared unwilling to hear bad
news. (From the perspective of the senior management at many companies, missing sales targets
is a failure in the execution of an analytically sound strategy.)

INSIGHT CENTER

The Gap Between Strategy and Execution Aligning the big picture with the day-to-day.
An alternative perspective on strategy and execution — one that we argue is more in tune with
the nature of value creation in a world marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity
(VUCA) — conceives of strategy as a hypothesis rather than a plan. Like all hypotheses, it starts
with situation assessment and analysis — strategy’s classic tools. Also like all hypotheses, it must
be tested through action. With this lens, encounters with customers provide data that is of ongoing
interest to senior executives — vital inputs to dynamic strategy formulation. We call this approach
“strategy as learning,” which contrasts sharply with the view of strategy as a stable, analytically
rigorous plan for execution in the market. Strategy as learning is an executive activity
characterized by ongoing cycles of testing and adjusting, fueled by data that can only be obtained
through execution.

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Imagine if Wells Fargo had adopted a strategy-as-learning perspective. Its top managers would
have taken repeated instances of missed targets or false accounts as data to help them assess
the efficacy of the cross-selling strategy. This learning would then have triggered a much-needed
adjustment of the original hypothesis.

The key indicator of a strategy-as-learning approach lies in how managers interpret early signs of
gaps between results and plans. Are they seen as evidence that people are underperforming? Or
as data that indicates the initial assumptions were flawed, triggering further tests?

Volkswagen’s software that allowed diesel engines in its vehicles to cheat on emissions tests is
another case of a top-down fixed strategy that suffered in implementation. VW’s strategic ambition
to become the largest car company in the world required it to conquer the U.S. market. To help
VW stand out and win in the U.S. market, its executives formulated a strategy of developing so-
called clean-diesel vehicles that leveraged the company’s core competence.

As was the case at Wells Fargo, VW’s culture — specifically, its executives’ lack of tolerance for
pushback from people lower in the organization — seems to have played a major role in its diesel-
emissions fiasco. Bob Lutz, who held leadership roles at General Motors, BMW, Ford, and
Chrysler, describes a “reign of terror” that had long prevailed at VW. This, he says, undoubtedly
contributed to VW’s ignoring evidence that the claim that the diesel technology could comply with
environmental regulations was too good to be true. In this way, VW leaders lost out on the
opportunity to revisit and update the strategy. Meanwhile, engineers had developed software to
fool the regulators — postponing the inevitable.

Cheating and cover-ups are natural byproducts of a top-down culture that does not accept “No”
or “It can’t be done” for an answer. But combining this with the approach that treats strategy and
execution as separable is a sure recipe for failure. At both Wells Fargo and VW, disconfirming
data was available for a surprisingly long time and was not acted on by senior management. Signs
that corners were being cut were ignored. And the illusion that brilliant top-down strategies were
working persisted — for a time.

We are not saying top-down fixed strategies necessarily lead to fraud. Rather, our point is that
these two visible examples of strategic failure illuminate the risks of failing to integrate strategy
and execution through a deliberate and continual executive-learning process.

Strategy as learning requires senior executives to engage in an ongoing dialogue with operations
across all levels and departments. The people who create and deliver products and services for
customers are privy to the most important strategic data the company has available. And the
strategic learning process involves actively seeking deviations that challenge assumptions
underpinning current strategy. Deviations and surprises must be welcomed for their informative
value in adapting the strategy. Executives who adopt a strategy-as-learning framework
understand that pushing harder on execution may only aggravate the problem if shortcomings

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are, in fact, evidence of inadequate market intelligence or flawed assumptions about the business
model.

Companies that fuse strategy and execution, continually making adjustments and periodic
dramatic pivots, demonstrate what strategy as learning can look like in action. Consider the steady
strategic morphing of Amazon from online bookseller to global retail powerhouse. Or take ING
Bank in the Netherlands, which adopted an agile approach to strategy and execution that uses
“squads” as the company’s “nervous system” to sense changes in customer needs and
competitive realities and to give senior executives the data they need to rethink strategy and
respond. These and other cases exemplify a fundamentally different (iterative) approach to
strategy making.

Of course, embracing a learning approach at the top of the organization is not a new idea. What
we suggest has much in common with the notion of execution as learning, introduced in HBR
some years ago. Our ideas are also consistent with current work on organizational agility —
defined as an ability to sense and respond quickly to changes in the environment. (See these
articles by Jeff Gothelf, McKinsey, and the Boston Consulting Group.)

What is new is the idea that closing the gap between strategy and execution may not be about
better execution after all, but rather about better learning — about more dialogue between
strategy and operations, a greater flow of information from customers to executives, and more
experiments. In today’s fast-paced world, strategy as learning must go hand in hand with
execution as learning — bypassing the idea that either a strategy or the execution is flawed — to
recognize that both are necessarily flawed and both are valuable sources of learning,
improvement, and reinvention.

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