Peter Winick shares two stories of clients who spent money on marketing and PR without defining who they were targeting or what success looked like. Both admitted they needed strategy first but bought tactics anyway. Winick argues that without a solid strategic foundation, marketing and PR won't deliver real results.
Hi there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and today I wanted to share with you some highlights, if you will, or maybe they're not exactly highlights, of a couple of conversations I've had over the last couple of weeks that kind of surprised me. So in all of the instances, there were 2 or 3, I was speaking to folks about the importance of developing a viable strategy that would enable them to better leverage, scale, monetize their work, right? That's kind of the core of what we do. And one conversation led to the person saying, yeah, you know, I know I need to work on the strategy, but I'm just going to invest in marketing. And it kind of took me aback. And I said, okay, well, what are you marketing and to whom? Like, what's the underlying strategy? And I got blank stares. So, okay, good luck. Be well with that one. Second conversation I had was with someone, similar conversation. Hey, doesn't look like things are moving as quickly and easily as they could be for you. The work is really good, but getting it to market's a bit of a struggle. Again, strategy issue. Need a little bit of strategy, focus, effort, work, et cetera. And they said, yeah, no, I know I've talked about this a lot with friends and colleagues, et cetera, and I definitely need a strategy. But, you know, right now for the next 6 months, I'm going to invest in PR. Well, that one shocked me even more than the marketing because I just asked a couple of questions like, okay, well, what does success look like for a good PR campaign? Who are you trying to influence? What are the outcomes? What's the conversation you'd like to have at the end of this program, end of this process to realize strategically you hit the objectives that you wanted to? And again, nothing. It was sort of the blank stares of being enamored with PR. So again, You know, there's lots of things that we can do. There's lots of tactics that we can deploy and things that look slick and sexy, etc. But without the foundational underlyings of a solid and viable strategy, I would question the impact that they're going to have and more importantly, the return on your investment. Great to talk to you. Thanks.
