We hear the word ‘strategy’ thrown around a lot – social media strategy, content strategy, brand strategy – but most of the time, what people really mean by ‘strategy’ is having a plan. And that’s where businesses go wrong. Because a strategy isn’t a plan. It’s the foundation that makes a plan effective.
Strategy is not a content calendar, planning to post three times a week or a 5-year projection that says, ‘We’ll grow to £10M’. These are all plans, goals, and tactics.
Just to be clear: we’re not saying that planning doesn’t matter. I’m saying that strategy comes first.
Strategy is the strong foundation that informs the plan and plans help structure the execution, but they don’t define your ‘why’ or your unique value.
So what is true business strategy?
True business strategy starts with your ‘point of difference’, your ‘relevance’, your ‘competitive edge’, your ‘unique value’. We’ve heard all of these ways of describing ‘brand positioning’ with different clients and whatever phrase you choose to coin this vital aspect in your business, strategy starts with this.
Successful businesses know that the process of creating a true business strategy will not only define their unique value in their chosen marketplace, it will also create opportunities, define why they exist, align their team and identify how they’ll win – not just how they will operate.
To create a true business strategy you need to spend time:
- Understanding your market, competitors, and customers
- Defining your differentiated value
- Finding opportunities others miss
- Setting a clear direction for growth
When we meet a new client at the McCrae Partnership, we review their current position. We dig deeply into all of the above, and often the result is that a new or refined brand proposition is needed. It serves as a stronger foundation to build their future business on and align their team in the overall mission. [future link to blog on aligning team here]
Often, their original positioning may have changed or simply isn’t relevant anymore – for example if a new family member inherits a business and wants to make their mark, or if their marketplace has changed significantly, their existing proposition is not relevant to their ideal customer any more or doesn’t have the significant impact in their marketplace to support and implement an entire growth strategy on. Business strategy is key in defining this element.
"A good strategy honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides an approach to overcoming them"
To create a strong strategy, you need deep analysis to ask, and answer, the right questions.
- What’s really going on in the market?
- Why are our margins shrinking?
- If our proposition and values are clear, why isn’t our team aligned?
- Are our existing customers still wanting what they initially wanted from us?
- Can we source new customers elsewhere – where is the opportunity?
- Who are our challenger brands?
Just a few questions we start with, and then a whole lot more depending on the business and what goals they want to achieve. Answering each of these questions creates micro-processes within each one to source the honest answers.
Finding opportunity from the flaws
The brilliant part of this process, which we see every time when we unveil the findings to our clients, is that while we’re digging deep into how a business currently functions to source any flaws, we also identify golden opportunities to flip the situation to our clients’ advantage.
It’s this deep analysis that ensures positive change across the business will lead to growth and ROI.
It’s of vital importance to ensure your strategy for growth matches your brand’s proposition.
Here’s what happens when they aren’t:
When strategy and brand don’t match
When a company’s brand proposition is unclear, or worse, contradicts its actual business strategy, confusion sets in, both internally and externally. Customers feel it. Employees feel it. And the market punishes it. Here’s what happens when a strategy and brand proposition don’t align — and why clarity matters more than bold ideas.
Crumbl Cookies built its brand promise on delivering the best gourmet cookie experience — quality, indulgence, and weekly innovation. But as the company scaled rapidly, its strategy shifted toward speed of expansion, TikTok virality, and constant flavour churn.
The problem? The product experience hasn’t kept up with the marketing. Customers increasingly complained about inconsistent quality, overly sugary flavors, and stores focused more on Instagrammable hype than craftsmanship. Competitors began positioning themselves as the ‘quality-first’ alternative.
The strategy of rapid growth and content-driven hype drifted away from the brand proposition of delivering exceptional cookies. And when strategy and brand slip out of sync, customer trust erodes — even if the marketing machine stays loud.
Compare this to Liquid Death, who promises and delivers on one clear thing: to make water entertaining through relentless, irreverent, punk-energy branding. And every strategic move reinforces that promise — from metal-themed marketing to collaborations with artists and comedians to merch drops that feel more like a streetwear brand than a beverage company.
Customers don’t buy Liquid Death for hydration alone. They buy into the identity, humor, and cultural edge. The product, the packaging, the TikTok content, even the sustainability angle all ladder up to the same brand proposition: ‘murder your thirst’ in the most entertaining way possible while still maintaining quality of product. That’s why the brand feels coherent and why it continues to grow.
Is your strategy focused on solving the wrong problem?
Clients come to us frustrated because their marketing plans feel like they’re throwing mud at the wall and nothing is sticking. With a continued misalignment of the above, that’s how they’re going to feel because they’re trying to grow without a strong strategic foundation to support the growth. They employ teams, working in silos to solve the wrong problem. It’s a recipe for disaster.
"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do"
When everyone’s got ideas for marketing, strategy helps narrow down the ones with the most ROI.
You can’t pursue every opportunity. The analysis process of the business strategy deep dive helps:
- Estimate ROI on different plays
- Understand risks vs. rewards
- Prioritise initiatives
Team alignment also comes from our analysis and is a core part of our McCrae Partnership formula for success.
Aligning a team is key to any strategy working, but the process of achieving this alignment heals the heart of any business – the team. Refining your unique value and making sure that everyone in the business is clear on their role within that, goes miles to align your team for the future implementation. This is a core element of our strategy process and creation before activation. We hone in on people’s strengths, making them feel heard and valued and shows the inner runnings of every part of the business – this is key because growth affects every part of the business.
A huge benefit of having external change and growth strategy partners is that the owners of the business can be far too close to see the wood for the trees. An expert outsider perspective brings clarity when it’s needed the most – plotting a viable way forwards, an unbiased yet focused mind to sound-proof ideas against, and a strategic partner for activation.
Strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be clear
If you’re feeling stuck in plans that aren’t delivering, it’s time to go deeper.