5 Keys to Setting Your Strategy On the Road to Success

Hey!

A few weeks back, I wrote about looking at strategy at 3 levels:

• Corporate level

• Brand level

• Marketing level

Then, I wrote up 5 reasons that many strategies fail.

Today, I want to expand on that by sharing with you a few ideas for making certain that your strategies are more likely to see success.

Choosing a destination:

When I do ‘The Whiteboard Workshop’ or any kind of strategy work with folks, we talk about what success looks like as a starting point for any project.

To jump-start your strategy work and set your organization up for success, you ned to begin with a definition of success.

We call that your ambition.

How will you know when you’ve been successful?

This is the fluffy stuff like “redesigning your experience”, “creating a world-class fan experience” or something else.

Begin there though. You need this to guide your decision-making process.

Know your target market:

Targeting is the foundation of a good strategy.

You can’t be everything to everyone.

You need to pick a certain area of the market that you can focus on. You can go two ways here by going wider or deeper.

Thinking about a wide market: you are looking at a process like marketing.

Thinking about a deep market: you take one section of the market and go deep on their challenges. Maybe you are in marketing for computers and you tailor everything to that one market.

There are strengths and weaknesses for both.

You go too wide and folks may miss why you are valuable. You go too deep and you become only able to work in one specific area.

Why you?

What makes you different in your market?

If you don’t know why someone will pick you over the competition, your strategy isn’t likely to work.

You may get some traction. In other words, luck. But long term, nada.

Do you have the resources you need to be successful?

People. Places. Ideas. Things.

Do you have what you need to be successful in persuing the market you want to hit?

Keep an eye on this because it will change over time as well.

Maybe the most important thing: do you know what action you will take first or next?

You need to turn your ideas into action.

There’s more of these ideas that I will explore in the coming weeks, but this is a good jumping off point.

Let me know what you focus on or think.

Dave