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Archive for Strategic Planning – Page 2

The biggest obstacle to business success – and how to fix it

Posted by Ben Bartlett on Saturday, November 12th, 2011 in Goal setting, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Planning

In your business, on an operational level there is one main obstacle that is stopping you from enjoying greater success.  Overcoming this obstacle will help make your business more competitive and will ensure you get and keep customers more easily.

So what's the obstacle?  I'm going to let Kam Wai Yu and Derek Lee Armstrong reveal it to you.  Kam and Derek are the authors of The Persona Principle (published by Simon and Schuster) and the founders of PersonaCorp, one of Canada's leading marketing services firms and creative shops.  Here's what they have to say about this obstacle:

"The biggest obstacle to your success is invisibility.  The best, the most experienced, or the most talented cannot enjoy prosperity until they are visible to their potential market." - Kam Wai Yu and Derek Lee Armstrong.

Quite profound isn't it?  Yet it's so true.  If you're invisible to your potential market – i.e. you have no brand awareness or recognition – you will struggle.

Now before I go on, let me make a small addition to the above quote:

"The biggest obstacle to your success is invisibility or poor visibility."

Truth be told, poor quality brand awareness or visibility is often as useless as no visibility when it comes to building your business and brands.

To reiterate, when we talk about invisibility or poor visibility what we are really talking about is brand awareness. And in the business world getting quality brand awareness is the precursor to business success.  It's what gets you going.

Let me put it this way.  Your ultimate goal in business is to have people buy your stuff and to make a profit as a result. But how can they buy if your brand visibility is poor or non existent? It just ain't going to happen my friend.

Here is the reality. On an operational level, your business cannot and will not make a profit if you firstly have no visibility…or if your visibility is very poor. It is not scientifically possible.  This is illustrated below.

Here is the reality. On an operational level, your business cannot and will not make a profit if you firstly have poor brand visibility. It is not scientifically possible.  This is illustrated below.

 

If you haven't seen the visual above before, it's something I've created called the Revenue and Profit Drivers Statement.  And what it does is show the sequence of activities a business goes through to generate profit.

Now as shown on the statement, the whole profit sequence begins with brand awareness.  And when you have no brand awareness, you will not get customers, you will not earn revenue and you won't make a profit.  What you will have though are big fat zeros all over the place.

So ultimately, when it comes to the day-to-day running of your business, your first and foremost priority is making yourself visible. You just gotta get some brand awareness.

In the Revenue and Profit Drivers Statement I've used the term High Value Brand Awareness to specifically define what you need to get your business out of first gear.  So how do you develop and generate more high value brand awareness?  In a nutshell High Value Brand Awareness has these components:

1. You firstly need, to coin a phrase from Warren Buffett, a beautiful castle and moat.  This is your overall business concept, which is also the foundational component of your business/competitive strategy.

2.  You need a powerfully positioned strategic brand.  This is the way you differentiate your business from your competitors and it incorporates your brand values, identity and personality.

3. You need a clearly defined and captive audience/market/ideal customer.  To elaborate, you need to have a clear demographic and psychographic understanding of what your ideal customer looks like.  Understanding your ideal customer profile is also part of your strategy.

4.  You need to know where your target market/ideal customers are most likely to be found.

5. You need multiple, cost-effective media channels to get your messages to your target audience.

6. You need powerful, compelling sales messages.  These need to be crafted by talented writers, designers and producers.

7.  You need to get these messages out to your target audience.

If any of these are missing from your brand-building efforts your marketing will not be as successful and you won't create the effective visibility you need.

To reiterate, your biggest obstacle to business success is poor brand visibility.  And, when you have poor brand visibility you will not hit your financial targets.  That is a given.

To reiterate, your biggest obstacle to business success is no visibility or poor visibility.  You overcome this by following the seven key points I've outlined above.

A crucial factor in determining your strategy

Posted by Ben Bartlett on Thursday, October 13th, 2011 in Strategic Planning

There is one crucial factor you need to look at when determining your business strategy.  What is it? Your competitive landscape. 

Bottom line is that you must know the overall competitive environment in which you operate, together with an understanding of how you should best position yourself and then compete in that environment.

One tool I use with clients to help them figure out their strategy is my Competitive Landscape Visual, shown here:

With my clients I help them to first get a handle on where their product/service offering is located on the market growth curve.  Location is determined by such factors as:

  • How well your product/service is differentiated (or unique) when compared to your competitors
  • How empty or crowded your market is
  • Intensity of competition and who your competitors are.

Once a client has a clear understanding of where they are located on the curve they can then start to formulate their strategy. And, in terms of strategy the three broad choices are:

1. Monopoly/Early Mover

2. Leader/Follower

3. Head-to-Head

The best position to be in is where a market/market category has proven itself and where you own the market (monopoly) or are a market leader.

The absolute worst position to be in is to compete head-to-head.  This is where competitive intensity is very high and price-driven competition reigns supreme.  You only compete here if you have scale and deep pockets.

Not surprisingly, most businesses compete head-to-head.  In other words, they compete in crowded markets, there is little to differentiate them from their competitors, and they are subject to price sensitivities.

So if you don't have the scale or the deep pockets, how do you avoid head-to-head competition?  Let me show you one way.

Note on the visual the Opportunity Window, which is the stage in the market growth curve where a business has an opportunity to create new/improved products or product categories to cater to differing customer tastes within a market.  Essentially, when introducing new categories you are creating a new market, and therefore starting a new market curve.

Here's an example.  Just the other day I purchased a new pair of running shoes.  But, instead of getting another pair of New Balance shoes, which is the brand I've run in for more than six years, I bought a pair of Innov8 Zero Drop shoes, pictured below. 

Oh and yes, despite the pink color, these are men's running shoes.  Heck, if professional rugby players can run around in purple or pink rugby boots, I can own a pair of pink running shoes.

If you're into health and fitness you may notice that these shoes are substantially different to traditional running shoes.  How? There is no built up padding on the heel end of the shoe.  Hence the term Zero Drop.  Anyway, the theory behind the zero-drop category is that these shoes encourage the runner to run on his or her forefeet as opposed to the heels, leading to a more natural and economical running style. 

I also learned in my research that zero-drop shoes can help reduce injuries, which is something I was looking for in an effort to reduce some of the injuries I have been struggling with recently.

Interestingly, New Balance have recently entered the zero-drop category, but their shoes are not yet available in New Zealand. Innov8 on the other hand are a market leader in the zero-drop category.

So let's get back to my earlier proposition about creating or entering new category.  In my running shoes example,  zero-drop is a new category…so essentially this has started a new market growth curve.  Market pioneers such as Innov8 have taken a risk by being early movers in this category, but at the moment the category looks like it will become mainstream.

Some key lessons?

  1. Identify where you are located on the market growth curve
  2. Don't compete head to head – unless you have scale and deep pockets to squeeze out smaller competitors
  3. Compete in markets you can own or dominate
  4. One way to dominate a category is to invent or become an early mover in a new category, such as with the zero-drop shoes.
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Ben M. Bartlett is a leading expert on strategy, strategic planning and in helping growth-focused companies to strategically improve business, branding and marketing performance. Click here for full introduction.

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