Your “strategy” isn’t what you think.

It’s not your plan.

On this I happen to agree with Mr. Martin, though we both partly disagree with Mr. Webster.

Webster never ran your business. We’re in Quarter Four, and if you’re like a lot of companies you’ve been making plans: You’re looking over where you’ve been, you’re naming issues and whiteboarding challenges, and you’re setting your priorities for the next 3 months.

You’ll turn priorities into goals with actions, milestones and next steps. You’ll delegate.

If you’re lucky, this means you’ll have better movement in your business.

Movement in what direction?

That’s what strategy is supposed to tell you.

STRATEGIES ARE LIKE DIETS

Everybody has one, but not everybody knows which one they have.

Your diet might be on purpose or by accident. The point might be “find out what’s causing stomach cramps” or it might just be “stay alive.”

Either way, it gets you what you’ve got.

A central premise of my work is that your marketing problems aren’t being caused by marketing, just like stomach cramps aren’t being caused by your stomach.

It’s the strategy, stupid.

But – what does that actually mean?

Your strategy’s not a list of actions. Marketing strategy’s not a list of all the ways you’re going to market. “Radio, conferences and Instagram” might be your plan.

It’s not your strategy.

Here’s what strategy is, what strategy does, and how to make one if you want one.

STRATEGY IS CHOICE IN CONTEXT

Let’s take chess: Perhaps you like to move your pawn first, then your knight and then your bishop. Those are actions. That’s your plan.

Your strategy ties this plan together; it’s a choice about how every move should fit in context with the other moves.

You might want pieces in the center of the board, or you might set up to attack the center from afar. Those are two different strategies – both valid, both coherent.

Or you might move piece by piece, as the mood strikes you, without thinking where your other pieces are. That’s strategy too – just not a good one. Every move seems right by itself, but in the context of the other pieces it’s unhelpful. Rooks aren’t helping knights. The pawns are doing their own thing.

That’s strategy, but it’s incoherent. And it’s going to lose.

Chess players need to pick the strategy they think gives them the best shot at success; they do this by examining their opponent and the pieces currently in front of them. The context.

Your business has a lot more context to consider than a game board does.

That’s why it’s fun! And also why you’re nuts for thinking so.

Making the best strategic choice in chess is hard. In business, it’s downright impossible.

So you want to shorten your odds as much as possible.

POSITION IS THE BIGGEST PIECE

Strategy is choice in context. More specifically, in business: Strategy is several choices, in context of one another.

The biggest choice, the most important piece you play in business strategy, is position. Your position answers two things:

• What space do we move in?

• For what reason will we succeed there?

Two weeks ago I called the answer to these questions your category and your differentiator. They are inseparable choices: What makes you succeed depends on where you are looking for success. And where you look depends on what you’re planning to do.

Taken together, these two answers form your business’s position.

Last week I offered to help you find your position using AI optimization as a starting point. That offer had its own position:

• What space does the offer move in?

  AI visibility audit

• For what reason will the offer succeed there?

  Most AI visibility audits assume you already know your position and just want to tell AI about it. I’m helping you find your position.

If your marketing’s going to have much effect, the positioning of each individual offer needs to tie into the positioning of your business overall. (Mine is “strategy-first marketing agency,” so this offer fits.)

Want to get clearer about your own position?

Start by trying to answer these four questions:

➡️ Who do we sell to?

➡️ What kind of business would that person say we are? (Hint: What budget line do they use to pay you?)

➡️ If they don’t hire us, what alternative do they have?

➡️ Why would they choose us instead of that alternative?

These questions will get you to some version of the “category and differentiator” answers above. They are a first pass at your position.

That’s the heart of your strategy. But there’s more.

THE OTHER PIECES MUST AGREE

In my experience, most messaging exercises at most marketing agencies fail. This is because they try to find position. They have to, because your marketing message comes from your position.

But to actually work, your position has to line up with the other parts of your strategy:

➡️ Vision: What does success look like for your company?

➡️ Strengths: What is your company especially good at?

➡️ Structures: What assets and systems do you have to support your work?

These pieces provide context to the positioning piece: Vision defines success; position tells you how you’re going to achieve that success. Strengths say what it will take to occupy the position you want, and structures make you able to take that position.

Each of these is a choice.

And each choice must be made in context of the other choices.

Having your marketing agency work on message or position without letting them touch the other parts of strategy is like having them move the queen without seeing any other pieces on the chess board. It won’t work. It’s out of context.

Context can help too, though. Not sure what your position should be? Start by looking at your unique strengths and proprietary structures.

Not sure your position will make you successful as you’ve defined it? Pick a different position! Or change your definition of success!

You control all four of these pieces, so your job is to change them until they all work in context. Until you have a coherent strategy.

But not just any coherent strategy.

One that’s going to work.

TO CHOOSE A STRATEGY, MAKE STRATEGIES

At the chessboard, the grandmaster already knows a bunch of strategies that could work. She isn’t making them up for the first time.

You might be. That’s why business is so insane awesome.

But just like the grandmaster, the best way to choose is to have choices.

Work out a vision, position, strengths and structures that all line up. Tell yourself a story about how the position, supported by the strengths, could lead you to success as you’ve defined it.

Then work out another. And another.

Your job in strategy is to choose the story that seems most likely to be true – and, we should add, that you can also live with.

Once you’ve got a few coherent sets of choices, you can test them. You can do the research. You can ask, “how likely is it that this story becomes real?”

Then you can make your choice.

Lining up pieces and helping your team decide between them is my favorite part – so if you need outside insight on that, you know where to find me.