Why your marketing strategy should start with what you're prepared to ignore.

Ask ten business owners if they have a marketing strategy and you'll probably get ten different answers. One might show you a social media plan, another will talk about advertising or content, and someone else will point to a strategy document that hasn't been opened for months. Those things can all form part of marketing, but they're not the strategy itself.

I've come to think we've made strategy far more complicated than it needs to be. We tend to describe it by listing everything we're planning to do, when some of the most important decisions are actually about what we're choosing not to do. That's particularly important now, because finding marketing opportunities isn't difficult. There's always another platform to try, a campaign to run, content to create or a new tool promising better results. The difficult part is deciding which of those things genuinely deserves your time, budget and attention.

I've seen businesses join platforms simply because their competitors are there, invest in advertising before they're completely clear on what they're selling, and keep producing content because stopping feels like losing momentum. None of that comes from a lack of effort. If anything, it's often the opposite.

The problem is that without a clear sense of priority, almost everything can be made to sound like a good idea. That's when marketing starts to become a collection of activities rather than a strategy. The businesses I've seen make consistent progress tend to be much more selective. They don't try to take every opportunity available to them. They decide what matters most to the business and give those things enough time and attention to work.

That doesn't mean ignoring new ideas or refusing to change direction. It means accepting that every decision has a trade-off. Time spent pursuing one opportunity can't also be spent somewhere else. For me, the strongest strategies are rarely the longest or most complicated. They're usually built around a few decisions that people across the business can actually understand; who are we trying to reach, what do we want to be known for, where can we make the biggest difference and, importantly, what aren't we going to prioritise right now?

That last question is the one I think businesses ask least often.

We're very good at judging a strategy by everything it contains. I'd argue that what it leaves out tells you far more. Saying yes is relatively easy. Saying no to a perfectly good opportunity is much harder, particularly when there's always the possibility that it might work. But trying to keep every option open isn't really a strategy. At some point, you have to choose.

That's also why I don't tend to start conversations with clients by asking which marketing channels they want to use. I'd rather understand what the business is trying to achieve, who it wants to reach and where the greatest opportunity actually sits. The channels come later. Social media isn't a strategy. Advertising isn't a strategy. Content isn't a strategy. They're tools, and they're only useful when there's a clear reason for choosing them.

Once those decisions have been made, marketing usually becomes much simpler. There are fewer distractions, fewer competing priorities and a much clearer reason behind the work being done. Perhaps that's the part of strategy we don't talk about enough. It isn't about creating the longest list of things you could do. It's about being clear enough about where you're going that you can confidently decide what doesn't deserve your attention.