Behold! The Marketing Squid!
Turns out, marketing fundamentals and giant squids have a lot in common. Both need a strong core to act as a command center for your tactics and smaller decisions, directing execution in a coordinated and scalable manner. Hang with me! I promise this works. The concept hinges on the principle that the foundation of your marketing, like the head of a squid, needs to be robust and well-defined, before you can effectively extend into diverse marketing tactics…your squid tentacles.
The Squid Head: Your Strategic Marketing Core
The head of the Marketing Squid is where your strategic elements converge and become the foundation where all of your marketing tactics and decisions grow from. You must first know who your customer is, then you can determine what the top benefits are that you can deliver to these customers with your product, and finally you can determine what words are best to communicate these benefits with your messaging.
Customer Definition: Who are you targeting? Understanding your audience is crucial. What is their age, job, location, gender, interests? An ideal customer definition should be concrete enough that you can identify people you have met in your life that match your customer profile. You can either research the customers you have or you can research the customers you want to target. You need data to tell you the insights into the needs, preferences, and pain points of your target audience, allowing you to tailor your marketing efforts effectively. You should also have one primary customer target. Focus is critical. If you have 8 different personas/ICPs/customers you are targeting, you have no focus!
Benefits/Differentiators: What sets your product or service apart from the competition? While many offerings boast a multitude of features, it's crucial to leverage quantitative and qualitative research to help you focus on no more than three benefits. These key benefits will take center stage in your messaging and later in your marketing tactics. This research doesn’t have to cost a lot and you should be very wary of anyone internally saying “we know this already” who is not pointing towards some form of quantitative research. If you have to pick one place to spend research money, this is usually the best spot.
Messaging: How do you communicate your value proposition in a way that resonates with your audience? Testing your messaging using both quantitative and qualitative methods is very helpful to ensure you're effectively communicating the benefits of your product. By iterating and refining your messaging based on data-driven insights, you can communicate your value proposition in a way that resonates deeply with your audience.
These core elements form the strategic backbone of your marketing efforts. Without a clear and strong head, your squid’s tentacles will flail aimlessly.
The Squid Tentacles: Tactics, Briefs & Execution
While a real squid has eight tentacles and two arms, your marketing squid can have infinite tentacles! The point here is not the exact number, but the flexibility to adapt and grow from the same foundation (the head). These 'tentacles' represent specific marketing channels or tactics, each deriving its direction and strength from the clarity of the head. Tentacles can include:
Email Onboarding: Effective email onboarding relies on the clarity of the squid head, ensuring that the messages resonate with the target audience's interests and preferences. Your benefit based messaging should be a punch list for the concepts and subject lines for your email onboarding.
How It Works Video: You can only get 3 or 4 concepts across in a “How it Works” video. The squid head should guide by identifying the most compelling features and benefits to showcase.
Website Messaging: Again, the squid head should create a clear hierarchy for your website messaging. Above the fold? Your #1 benefit message for your target customer. Just below the fold? #2. Etc.
PR Briefs: The squid head tells you who your customers are with enough clarity that you can then determine which publications you want to be in. The head also tells your PR agency what you should try to get writers to talk about in those amazing hits they get.
Influencer Briefs: The head can also tell you who your influencers should be, on what channels they should be strongest and what they should be ideally talking about in their spots!
Channel Selection: The head tells you who your customers are so you know what channels you use to find them.
And more…any marketing tactic/tentacle you might want to deploy can, and should, be heavily informed by your well defined squid head.
Embrace the Squid!
The Marketing Squid offers a structured approach to building a marketing strategy that is both comprehensive and adaptable. Start with the head, your foundation, before extending to the tentacles, the channels and tactics. This approach ensures that every piece of your marketing puzzle is aligned, purpose-driven and consistent. This makes your marketing more effective and ensures you are giving your brand the best chance of breaking through the minds of your target customers with the highest impact messages you have at your disposal.
I hope you find the Marketing Squid helpful when thinking about how you can grow. As always, please reach out to me at rob@growthish.com with any thoughts or other marketing tools.