You’ve chosen to do it because you know where you want to position your business in relation to others. To mix my marketing models you might choose to be ‘stuck in the middle’, so sitting alongside your competitors quite contentedly and maintain your income, or scaling for growth, or to be so differentiated in what you offer and how you do it , you leave the competition behind, or something else entirely.
This is the strategic bit. It isn’t just a series of activities you’ll do (they come later). The strategy is the intention. It’s the why and what.
Choosing a strategy
Your instincts are usually right. You know where you sit in the market. You know your competitors. You know if what you offer really is different to others. You know if it’s more than the people you have that makes you different. Even when you know all of this, what do you do with that information? It depends what you are aiming for… Growth? Keep your head above water? Pare back and divest? Prepare to sell and exit? Prepare to sell and start again?
Choosing the strategy proactively - rather than being forced into it by the market - is a great place to start. However, being aware of market conditions can actually be the catalyst for choosing a strategic direction.
So, there are a lot of things you might do. Understanding your positioning - aspirational or real - is key to understanding how you implement that strategy.
The strategic options for growth
Most strategic decisions involve growth in one area or another (even if it involves paring back) and can be distilled into four main routes.
1. Sell more of the same to the same market
2. Sell what you are selling to a different market
You might go via intermediaries to receive your work so maybe you need to find more referrers of that work and in a different ‘pond’. Maybe out of area? Maybe a different type of intermediary? (Market development)
3. Introduce new services to your existing market
You expand what you offer to meet additional needs of your current client base. This goes beyond cross-selling/upselling, this creates something new for your client base for your business. (Service development.)
4. Introduce new services to a new market
This new service might still relate to the core part of your business but it is a new service for you and you need to find a new market to sell it to. (Diversification)
Each of these options increases the risk associated with it. If it’s more of the same to the same people, you might have to compete a little harder to get it but the core business stays the same. If you look at diversification, setting up the structures and processes in an area unfamiliar to you will naturally be riskier.
Implementing the strategy
Sometimes your business hasn’t changed but the market has. People are still buying the thing you sell but want to buy it in a different way. The competition might behave differently. The tools to reach your audiences might have changed. So even if the strategy is the same, the way you let people know you exist might be entirely different.
Don’t panic, you (probably) do have a strategy
Be clear on your positioning, your market, and what growth actually looks like for you. Then choose your route deliberately.
The activity follows. The marketing follows. The delivery follows.
But without that clarity of intent, it’s easy to stay busy without making real progress.
So before deciding what to do next, take a step back and ask: what have you actually chosen to do and just as importantly, what have you chosen not to do?
