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Some people seem to be always in the right place and the right time, don’t you wish it was you?.
One right decision now can save a lot of problems and costs down the road, don’t be tempted to take short cuts.
A strategy helps you avoid dead-ends and expensive mistakes by playing to your strengths and respecting your environment and your customer’s opinions.
- Review and understand what your strengths and weaknesses are.
- Understand the impacts your operating environment such as economy and technology will have on your potential.
- See how you compare to your competitors in the eyes of the customers you will be competing for.
- Define clearly what would make those customers come to you.
- Define a proposition to increase your share of the market profitably.
- Set achievable goals and choose meaningful KPIs.
- Outline a plan to cascade this strategy down across all your digital activity and engage everyone you need to make it reality.
- Begin with a free report that used to take eight man days to prepare before we automated it.
Classic mistakes everyone has made at some time with strategy.
- Trying to strategize when too close and too involved.
Yes, you need to be heavily involved in strategy in your own business or department and no, you shouldn’t abdicate responsibility, however good your adviser might be, but being very close ad having natural human bias, there is a real danger that you will sympathise when you shouldn’t and hang on too long, or you will give up because of teething pains and never know what might have been. The safest approach is to work with an experienced outsider and have the best of both worlds. - Under, or over estimating risks and opportunities.
Some people really struggle with rule of thumb estimating and high level decisions. They are often a unique territory of product managers and professional consultants. If you struggle with it then give yourself a break and let an external person help you out. - Failing to put your situation into perspective of the market opportunity and the competition.
It’s hard to get a clear view of how you compete unless you are continuously doing it and have the right tools, but without that you will never be able to make good decisions. - Developing a plan instead of a Strategy.
This is by far the most common error. A strategy is the thing you turn to when your plan is running into trouble. It needs to be higher level and with more options. - Missing out on the way different elements work together or not and focusing too much on one area.
Few really understand the impact each aspect of digital strategy has on other aspects and how they work together to maximise results. For example the way Social activity and PPC influence SEO and how SEO can influence PPC costs.
Examples of the free research you can tap into.
Start with a comprehensive view of how you are performing across Social, SEO, Website, Advertising and more. Compare your performance to the competition.