Standalone Strategy Test
Separate independent growth engines from tools that merely improve other strategies
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 91%
The Standalone Strategy Test asks whether an initiative independently creates a path to growth or primarily improves the execution of other strategies. A capability such as AI may enhance targeting, outreach, engagement, content creation, and community service while lacking its own coherent route from activity to acquisition or revenue. In that case it should be managed as an enabling tool, not as a separate marketing strategy with its own disconnected plan. The distinction does not diminish the capability's importance. It clarifies where ownership, goals, and resources belong and prevents strategic fragmentation caused by elevating every influential technology into an autonomous pillar.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain when Kip Bodner explained why he would kill AI as a standalone marketing strategy while continuing to use AI tools.
Core principles
- 01A powerful technology is not automatically a standalone strategy
- 02A strategy needs its own path from activity to business growth
- 03Tools can strengthen several strategies without deserving a separate strategic pillar
- 04Standalone labels create unnecessary plans, teams, and budgets
- 05Classify capabilities by the role they actually perform
How to run it
- 1
State the Proposed Outcome
Specify what business growth the candidate strategy is expected to create.
Pro tip Use an outcome such as acquisition, retention, or revenue rather than adoption of the tool itself.
Watch out Tool usage is not evidence of strategic impact.
- 2
Trace an Independent Mechanism
Map how the initiative produces the outcome without relying on another unnamed strategy to supply audience, positioning, or distribution.
Pro tip Write the mechanism as inputs, actions, and measurable outputs.
Watch out If the causal path disappears when another strategy is removed, the initiative may be an enabler.
- 3
Map Enabling Effects
Identify the existing strategies the capability makes faster, cheaper, more personalized, or more scalable.
Pro tip Assign metrics within those strategies rather than creating vanity metrics for the tool.
Watch out Do not confuse broad usefulness with strategic independence.
- 4
Classify and Resource
Treat the initiative as a standalone strategy only when it has an independent growth engine; otherwise fund it as shared infrastructure or tooling.
Pro tip Revisit the classification as the technology and market mature.
Watch out Killing the standalone label should not mean refusing to use the capability.
In the wild
AI improves targeting, outreach, engagement, content creation, and community support. If those benefits operate inside media, community, sales, or advertising strategies rather than creating an independent growth loop, AI is managed as enabling infrastructure instead of a separate marketing strategy.
→ The company adopts AI without fragmenting its strategy into a vague, isolated AI program.
Common mistakes
Equating Importance with Independence
A capability can be essential across the organization without functioning as its own growth strategy.
Killing the Tool with the Label
Rejecting a standalone strategy does not justify ignoring useful technology within other strategic programs.
Creating Strategy by Fashion
Emerging terminology can trigger plans and teams before leaders establish a credible mechanism for growth.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for evaluating emerging technologies, channels, and operational capabilities during strategic planning.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when a technology has already created an independent product, market, audience, and revenue engine for the organization.
From the transcript
“I think it's a tool strategy, not a growth strategy.”
“You will use AI tools to improve any growth strategy that you have.”
“I don't think AI as a standalone marketing strategy is important, Kieran.”
From the episode
Argument Alert!: New Game Double Down, Table Stakes and Kill