Begin forming your strategy with an honest and rigorous look at what your failings are. Being able to see what you are best at is often much easier than coming to terms with your failures. You can derive a good honest look in the mirror by asking for a little help from your customers. Do a little market research on your current customers. Form an honest model of their opinions and take a good long look.
Examples of strengths could include:
- Personalized services
- Account management is handled by dedicated account managers and not automated
- Lower or no wait time when troubleshooting
- Unique services that are not offered anywhere else
- Low cost of services compared to competition
Weaknesses could include:
- Lack of established reputation
- Budget limitations for advertisements
- Small footprint on social network sites
- Bigger more established competitors in the marketplace
Afterwards, analyze your situation and judge for yourself what the potential effects are to your strategy. For example, if you have a great reputation and offer products that are equal or superior to your competition for a lower price such as above but you are struggling to grow due to a lack of visibility, your focus should be on increasing your visible footprint and getting the word out that your services are top-notch and low-priced. Maybe try to implement a more aggressive outbound marketing campaign or if a more personal approach seems to vibe with your customer base then look into cheaper inbound marketing approaches to both build a rapport and create content that will more gracefully suggest your products or services.
What now? How do I make this into a strategy?
Now that you have a better understanding of your business and a more accurate understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to develop a strategy that plays on our strengths and even try to minimize our weaknesses. Start by creating a detailed plan. This plan needs to put your strategies to work and specify the actions you will choose to implement.
Follow us and be sure to check back soon for the third and final part in this series What should you include while devising your marketing plan?
