To Boldly Go Where Marketing Has Never Gone Before – Part 1
The best and worst thing about marketing today is that nobody has ever done what you are trying to do. But, zillions of people have done something VERY similar.
With that tension, marketers today need to both be incredible listeners and spectacular innovators. That is truly the only way to develop a sound strategy.
The Power of Listening
Beyond listening to customers, modern marketers and entrepreneurs need to be listening to competitors, market conditions, marketing trends, front line employees and advisors. This combines to become a body of knowledge that paints a picture of the existing threats and opportunities facing the organization.
The Connective’s proprietary Ideation Session has a comprehensive nine step process designed to gather, synthesize and report the knowledge required so clients move forward with confidence. Contact us for more insight into our process.
The Importance of Innovation
Once we know where we are through our information gathering efforts, we now need to dream where we can be! This is the benefit of the creative mind: to imagine what’s never been done and to develop the path to accomplish it.
This requires a unique mindset that not everyone has. We’ve had to shut down meetings because the dreamers kept getting squashed by the pragmatists. We need both in order to run a successful company, but they don’t always need to be in every meeting!
The mental agility required to imagine new channels, new prospects, new partnerships and even new products requires permission. Permission to dream wildly knowing that the vast majority of the ideas will be thrown away. But take heart! This is where opportunity truly lies.
Turning Knowledge and Ideas into Objectives and Key Results
Once we know where we are and we’ve imagined where we want to go, we need to articulate that into a series of objectives and then into strategy.
A seminal article on strategy from Freek Vermeulen of the Harvard Business Review states “A real strategy involves a clear set of choices that define what the firm is going to do and what it’s not going to do... Many so-called strategies are in fact goals. ‘We want to be the number one or number two in all the markets in which we operate’ is one of those.”
The right objectives create the true north for everyone in the organization to follow. The OKR framework is a powerful way to zero in on Objectives and their Key Results.
In a knowledge economy, knowing and stating what we are not doing makes executing what we actually are doing possible. The potential for action is limitless especially as we keep learning and dreaming.
The Connective’s specializes in business growth strategies that complement the strengths of our clients. These strategies focus relentlessly on execution and boldly going where no one has gone before.
Contact us to set up a conversation about how we can help you grow your business.