Does marketing have a checklist or a strategy?

How does your company market? Are they on the checklist optimization plan or have they developed a buyer-oriented strategy to drive engagement?

Do they use a checklist? By checklist I mean a to-do task list that they work through, marking things off and adding others to the bottom or post-it noting new priorities in at the top.

It might looks something like:

1. Generate content for email #2a
2. Send creative instructions for email development to agency
3. Input leads into database from Big Deal trade show
4. Finalize ad spend on Uber Cool Social Network
5. Briefing about new features of product 507A upgrade
6. Generate recipient list for email send
7. Interview Fortune 500 customer for case study
8. Ask SMB customer for testimonial for website
9. Deliver press release on 507A upgrade to agency
10. Send email and compile results statistics
11. etc.

That's a checklist mock up.

Or does your marketing department leverage a strategy which is [loosely stated] a connected and integrated program to engage potential buyers and increase momentum toward purchase decisions?

A strategy might include:

1. Purpose statement for a program that defines milestones and goals.
2. Customer definition insights from your most prevalent segments/industries.
3. Persona development based on customer definition by segment.
4. Map leads to to target segments based on personas.
5. Develop specific content editorial plan for reaching target segments based on urgency and triggering events as relevant to personas.
6. Feed each new lead into the mapping process, as acquired.
7. Generate nurturing content as related to buyer's process/cycle.
8. Build in response and interaction opportunities along with monitoring plan.
9. Send communications to appropriate leads.
10. etc.

Granted, these are simplified expressions of each, but what I wanted to emphasize is that a strategy gives marketing a merging of the parts, where a checklist just addresses parts without relation of one to the other.

How your marketing plan fits together is going to have a major impact on the integration possibilities for your marketing programs. If you have a defined purpose with milestones and goals and are focused on meshing everything you do to the buying process, then it's likely that your marketing will develop a consistency that not only makes sense to buyers, but gets their extended attention. This is possible because there's a concerted effort to generate and deliver high value information that's useful to them. Not just what you'd like them to know.

Once it makes sense and is labeled high-value by your buyers, you have the opportunity to engage them and help them pull themselves forward in their process.

You will generate credibility.

Credibility leads to trust.

Which leads to a sales-ready opportunity.

It's also easier to measure components that work together and drive results for related activities. Measuring one-off items from a checklist is still measuring, but it's much more difficult to relate the outcome across the board of all those things on a list.