TL;DR — It is not creativity, measurement or media. In a survey of the world's top CMOs run with TikTok for Business Europe, 28% named strategy as the largest skills gap in their marketing function. This article breaks down why that gap exists and walks through a nine-step way to close it: insights, readiness, winning zone, stress-testing, connected choices, brand identity, OKRs, initiatives and a dashboard that reflects reality.
Strategy is the seat at the table. Most marketers gave it away.
Here is a fact worth sitting with. In a survey of the world's top CMOs with TikTok for Business Europe, 28% identified strategy as the largest skills gap across their marketing function. The next closest answers were far behind.
That is not a small gap. That is a structural problem.
You might recognise the symptoms:
- You know what you are doing. You are less certain why.
- Your team is busy. You are not always sure they are working on the right things.
- Leadership asks how marketing drives growth. The answer is harder to give than it should be.
This is not a talent problem. It is a process problem.
Most teams have tools for execution, content, campaigns, reporting and collaboration. What they rarely have is a place to think clearly about strategy first, then connect that thinking to everything that follows.
The result is familiar. Marketing that works hard but cannot prove it is working on the right things. Leaders who question whether the investment is landing. Teams that align on tasks but not on direction. The fix is not more activity. It is better foundations.
A decent strategy makes everything easier
This is not theory. Practitioners and leaders repeatedly point to the same pattern: when strategy is clear and documented, decisions become obvious, teams move faster, budgets work harder and growth is easier to sustain.
When strategy is missing or fragmented, everything costs more. Campaigns need endless iteration. Messaging drifts. Teams second-guess. Leadership loses trust.
As Mark Ritson says, strategy before tactics. The question is not whether strategy matters. It is whether you have a practical way to build one and keep it alive.
How to reclaim strategy, step by step
This is the process baked into the STRAETCH strategy platform. Start from scratch, upload what you have, or share only a website URL — the AI branding assistant will pull what it can and build a first draft.
Step 1: Know your world before you make your moves
Good strategy starts with good inputs. Before you decide where to play or how to win, get clear on three things: who your customer really is, what your competitors or alternatives are doing, and where the market is heading.
- Ideal customer profiles built from real behavioural and attitudinal inputs, not guesses
- Competitor and alternative mapping to see where others play, and where they do not
- Market trend analysis so your strategy fits the world as it is
This is a living reference that informs every decision that follows.
Step 2: Assess where you actually stand
Most teams skip this step and move straight to a plan. A Strategic Readiness Assessment surfaces the gaps between what your strategy will require and where your organisation is today. You will see what is working, what is fragile and what needs to change before you commit resources.
Step 3: Find your winning zone
This is where strategy gets real. The most defensible strategic position sits at the overlap of:
- A real customer need that is underserved
- A space where competitors cannot or do not play
- A capability you can deliver with distinction
Where all three meet, you commit. Where only one or two meet, you adjust.
Step 4: Stress-test it, honestly
Every strategy sounds good to the person who wrote it. A Devil's Advocate pass pressure-tests your choices against the evidence you have gathered. It challenges assumptions, surfaces risks and highlights gaps in logic. No sugar-coating.
Step 5: Make connected strategic choices
Strategy is a set of linked decisions about where to play and how to win. In a choice cascade, each major decision influences the others: customer choices shape channel choices, positioning shapes capability needs, context shapes resource allocation. These decisions should be live, connected and visible to the people who need to act.
Step 6: Build your brand identity around the strategy
Once you know your position, you can build the brand to hold it:
- A positioning statement that defines where you sit and why it matters
- A value proposition that explains what you deliver and for whom
- A strategic narrative that connects your purpose to your customer's world
- Communication pillars that give every brief, message and asset a shared spine
These outputs follow from the strategic work, so they reflect real choices, not wishful language.
Step 7: Define what success looks like
A strategy without metrics is a wish. Translate your strategic choices into measurable objectives and key results, connected directly to the strategy, so there is no gap between intent and measurement.
Step 8: Track your strategic initiatives
Strategy moves through initiatives, not intentions. Log, assign and track the programs of work that move your strategy forward, right alongside your goals.
Step 9: Connect strategy to reality in your dashboard
Most tools stop before this. A connected performance dashboard should reflect how marketing actually works: purchase intervals, longer sales cycles, external headwinds and tailwinds. You should not just see numbers. You should see what those numbers mean in the context of your strategy and the conditions you operate in.
The number that matters
28%. That is the percentage of the world's top CMOs who identified strategy as their biggest skills gap. If the people running the largest budgets feel this gap, it is worth asking what it means for teams with fewer resources and less room for error.
Your strategy will not build itself
The cost of leaving it fragmented is not abstract. It shows up in campaigns that do not connect to a clear position, in budget conversations you cannot defend, and in leadership meetings where marketing's contribution to growth is hard to articulate.
The gap between where you are and where you want to be is rarely an execution problem. It is a strategy problem.
Context in. Impact out.
Start free on the STRAETCH strategy platform — no credit card needed — or book a fifteen-minute walkthrough and we will show you the platform through the lens of your situation.
