Strategy. Strategy. Strategy.

Everyone is talking about strategy. If you work with any marketing firm, they will talk about “being strategic” and “adding strategy” to the marketing plan.

This is all great. This is wonderful. But strategy can also go wrong sometimes,

The thing is, people don’t always use strategy the right way. I worked for a video agency once and they talked about “video strategy.” The issue here was that they didn’t see all that was part of this term.

What is video strategy

If used right, video strategy is this. It’s making the video, then making sure that video is sent to all the different platforms that it can be seen.

We’re talking social media, we’re talking to the press, we’re talking to anyone who it could provide value to.

You make a video on a football team. Great. Now you need to share it across social media. But not just once. Multiple times a week. You need to connect with sports influencers who would find value you in it. You need to connect with training camps and affiliate marketers. You also need to break up this video into small portions, so it’s more digestible to people.

You can’t just make one thing and then put it online and wipe your hands of it and think everyone will just flock to it.

That, to me, is what strategy is it. It means you have a plan for everywhere your thing is going to go and everyone who is going to see it. And you have a plan for how you’re going to see the success of it and then revise or iterate on that.

Where strategy goes wrong

Too many times, people will look at your marketing materials and say it’s “not strategic.” But do they know what they mean when they say this? I think they often do not.

If you make a flyer and you know who it’s for and where it’s going and have a plan for follow-up; that’s strategic.

Strategy was the word du jour in marketing for so long. And too often, managers used it as a way to critique employees for “not being strategic enough.”

The idea of strategy evolves and changes. The TikToker making millions of followers laugh at their videos is just as strategic as the marketer working for the nonprofit.

And even more than that, not every client is looking for strategy at all times. Sometimes, you just want a video made. Sometimes, you just want that flyer made for that one presentation. Let’s not get held up by strategy if we don’t need to.

So all that to say, think about your strategy when you can, but recognize when it works and when it does not. And recognize, too, when you’re told this is not strategic, as this may not actually be the case.

Know your client. Know your goal. And have faith in your strategy.