Key things to consider when resetting your strategy post COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruptions for a range of industries and business that will influence the ways in which companies operate in the future. 

As businesses shift from response to recovery phase, they need to build resilience, and we believe the key things to consider when resetting your strategy are:

• Be nimble – foster an agile approach to strategy setting

• Digital transformation

• Data and Analytics – enabling smarter, data-driven decisions

• Rebalancing of activities

BE NIMBLE

Agile decision making and strategy setting during a highly disruptive environment will result in greater performance and create a lead over the competition. Companies should consider making a deliberate effort to look beyond the immediate challenges and issues that have arisen as a result of the pandemic and not only plan for the recovery period but also to renew their long-term plan for the “new normal”. There are three key phases to resetting your strategy during a disruptive environment.

Respond. During the initial phase of disruption focus immediate actions on keeping essential business functions operating.

Recover. Move focus to stabilising operations in a more organised and coordinated effort by creating a plan to restore to a scalable state and identifying capabilities that are required to strengthen, refactor, reopen, rehire, rebudget and resupply.

Renew. Shift focus to longer term strategy and durable execution by learning to conduct operations processes and workflows in new, repeatable, scalable ways and then take the learnings and patterns from prior phases to establish the new strategic plan.

Businesses should (if they haven’t already) create a minimum viable strategy and use adaptive tools and techniques to iterate as the new normal emerges. Leaders need to act now because the acceleration of trends are already underway, and businesses need to be faster, bolder, and more agile than ever before to succeed. Strategic planning should become a continual activity so businesses can respond quickly to unavoidable changes.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Prior to COVID-19 digitisation was an area of interest for a lot of companies, but the impact of the pandemic has forced companies to adopt sooner - accelerating digitisation. All industries are impacted by the evolution of technology in some way and to avoid being left behind, companies must consider digital transformation when resetting their strategic plan. Consumers and customers have begun to alter their buying patterns and shift to digital channels, products, and services. In this context, businesses need to rethink their business model and how digitisation can enhance their customer experiences, value propositions, go-to-market strategies, and operations.

The benefits of digital transformation include:  

• Simplification of business processes

• Reduce operating costs

• Business growth

• Enhance digital innovations

• Accelerate speed to market

• Enhance productivity

DATA AND ANALYTICS

The use of data and analytics should be considered when resetting your strategy, as it will become an essential navigation tool, enabling smarter, data-driven decisions in a timely manner. Those who embed artificial intelligence and analytics across the company will be in a superior position to divulge the value waiting to be unlocked. The use of data and analytics will need to be recalibrated to reflect the post-COVID-19 reality, this will involve validating models, creating new data sets, and enhancing modelling techniques.

REBALANCING OF ACTIVITIES

As part of resetting your strategy, you should also consider the rebalancing of activities between those that are performed in-house and those that are outsourced, with a focus on capitalising productivity and preventing any potential disruptions to supply chain.

Looking to build your own post-Covid strategy?

Let us help. To learn more about how to build your recovery strategy in this new landscape, contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au

Ready, Set, Go... To Market

So your product department has designed a new product and you’re in charge of simply taking the product to market….. now what?

Here’s a simple cheat sheet of some critical milestones that you must be clear about before you launch the new product.

Who is your target market what are your unique customer personas?

A great product doesn’t fit perfectly in every market so being clear about who your ideal target market is will be crucial. It’s difficult to target every market as it will impact your ability to make money hence you want to be sure that you are targeting the markets you can win in and the markets that your research has identified have a strong connection to your product.

You must understand who your customers are, how they behave, and what they want to experience when they engage your product. The more you know about your customer the better you will be able to execute your go- to-market strategy.

What is your products story and what makes your product unique?

Being able to simply tell the story of why your product exists and being able to position it for your customers is critical as a product never just sells itself.

Now that you can explain why your product exists you need to be able to spell out some key features and benefits that your product will deliver to your target audience. It’s so important that these resonate for your customers from the perspective of what problems it’s solving for them and the benefits your product is creating for their lives.

What channels are you going to use to take your product to market?

Picking channels isn’t hard, the challenge in this step is ensuring that the channels you chose are all as integrated and connected with each other as possible. It is critically important that customer experience is aligned regardless of how your customer choses to engage your product.

What’s your budget?

We are now clear on who we are selling to and what channels we are going to use so it’s now time to build your budget. Establishing your product pricing has been your focus right up until you’ve tested it with potential customers so this step needs to ensure that you incorporate and estimate all the costs associated with your go-to-market strategy.

How are you going to market your product?

You are ready to go and all that’s left is to determine what marketing activities you will leverage to take your product to market. You will need to develop a unique marketing approach for each target market you’ve identified in the first stage of this process.

Leveraging your product story, the goal of your marketing approach is to create a unique voice for your product in each market that gives your product the competitive advantage it needs.

Now you’re ready, it’s time to go…………….to market!

Looking to build your own Go To Market strategy?

Let us help. To learn more about how to build a go-to-market strategy for your customers, contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au

Go To Who?

Recently a good friend approached me and shared this amazing idea they had to take a new product to market. They had built the concept, tested it and literally perfected the product to a point that it was time to go and share it with the masses. Easy right? Wrong…

I see this often, and whilst not wanting to dampen their enthusiasm because their product truly is remarkable my first question was, what’s your go to market strategy? Their response was reflective of something I’ve witnessed and heard so many times throughout my career, ‘Go to who?’

I have seen great products and ideas that are truly brilliant that only lack one small ingredient, a go to market plan.

Here’s a simple approach and more importantly thoughts and questions I would typically ask at the moment you are ready to go-to-market.

What is a go to market plan?

A go to market plan is a more of an immediate delivery plan. It’s a short term roadmap that is focused on taking the product, service or idea to the target audience in the most effective way.  

Why do I need a go to market Plan when I have a marketing plan?

A marketing plan typically has more of a long term focus compared to a go to market plan which is very short term orientated. So much success in any business in the long term is driven by the foundations and the approach to the very first steps hence it goes without saying that this part of the planning process is one of the most critical.

Typically creating something new generates so much excitement and enthusiasm and this positive energy can often lead us to miss some of the important elements and requirements that are needed when we think we are ready to go.  This is the point of the go to market plan; it  helps you create a short term check-list that will drive execution and delivery and give you a guide on what step comes next for your launch.  

The framework that a go to market plan creates will ensure you have specific goals and milestones that you can track in the early days to ensure you are on track and more importantly will help you to understand and address issues and challenges as they arise early in the journey before they set in and create challenges for the business down the line. 

A go to market strategy is as important to a start-up business as what it is to a mature seasoned company as the principles and pitfalls of delivery are exactly the same for whatever the maturity of the company.

How do I build a go to market plan? 

The process of building a go to market plan does not need to be complex and needs to be simple enough so that you can alter it as you learn more as you start learning and delivery.

Assemble the Data you need.

A great starting point for any go to market plan is to assemble as much data as is practical so as you can use this to validate the idea, service, product etc. with the appropriate facts.  This data can be obtained by research, industry reports, talking to experts in the appropriate area you are working in, competitors and by generally asking as many questions as possible prior to writing your go to market plan.

By using data to answer questions you will eliminate the temptation of answering all the questions yourself and this can be a risk as your ability to remain objective may be challenged because of your emotional attachment.

Assess the feasibility.

It’s imperative to establish as early as possible whether your initiative is feasible and is something that will create enough value in market to potential customers as well as delivering the commercial outcomes you require commercially.

Doing this will give you confidence that has been validated by fact (data) and more importantly will start to give you a broader perspective on some of the key success factors your plan will require. 

Asking questions throughout this phase are critical as they will help you to start validating the ‘value’ that is going to underpin the idea you are putting forward, this will continue to build confidence for you, your organisation and very importantly your investors.

Questions could be clustered by categories or themes:

What is the problem my idea/product is solving?

• What problem does the idea/product solve?

• Why is this problem so important to solve?

• What impact would solving this problem have?

• How does my idea/product help solve this product?

• How does solving the problem help the community more broadly?

Who specifically is your target audience?

• Who are you targeting, specifically?

• What are the characteristics of these targets? Are there similarities?

• Who will make the final decision in purchasing your offering? Are you aiming at targeting a specific level of decision maker (i.e. CFO), or are there multiple points of engagement?

• What pain could you resolve specifically to the potential decision maker b approaching them with your idea/product?

• Is there a broader community or industry body that could benefit from solving this problem and could potentially help you educate your target market to solve this problem? 

What is the demand for your idea/product? 

• Who is already in market trying to solve the same problem that you’ve identified?

• What do your target market think of these alternatives? These alternatives are going to be your competitors so understanding their strengths and weaknesses will be critical to articulating how you are different.

• What would your target market need from your idea/product so as to have their problem completely resolved?

• What barriers exist that would stop your idea/product being used by your target market?

Does your idea/product need any technology for it to work?

If the answer is yes then you’ll need to:

• Establish whether you need to build the technology to drive the product? How much will it cost in both time and finances?

• Once you’ve built the technology how much will  it cost you ongoing?

• Is there an alternative to use someone else’s platform to build your idea/product/ If so what the cost? Is it more or less?

In addition to the above is there any other potential issues, legal obstacles or roadblocks that might need to be factored.

Develop a GTM Blueprint. 

Now that you have established through data and common sense that your idea/product is feasible it’s time to start building your actual plan. The blueprint is aimed at being step by step guide on how you are going to deliver your idea/product to market or to your target audience. You will leverage some of the learnings and insights you gained in the first few steps, however this is now the opportunity to get more detailed as you are now getting ready to launch.

What is your marketing strategy?

• Recap on who is your target market?

• How are your competitors reaching this market (i.e. Social media, search marketing, sales force etc)?

• Who are the customers you are going to target specifically?

• What are their personal goals, their issues and or pains?

• What are their beliefs, personal values, social status, digital competence, income levels, budgets etc?

• Are there any groups and or clusters that become apparent as a result of investigating your customers?

• What are your competitors doing to right now to serve these groups? What is and isn’t working with these competitor strategies?

• What are the strengths and weaknesses that your competitors have?

• How are your competitors communicating with customers through marketing, selling etc?

If you establish that you will have more than one type of customer it will be beneficial for you to create some simple customer personas so that your customer story/value proposition isn’t limiting your potential for reach and growth. Give these persona’s a name so that you can refine them and continue to be focused on understanding them when you are in market.

Map your customer journey.

This is the time to walk in the shoes of your customer from the moment they are exposed to your idea/product  right through all the steps ending in you actually purchasing and then continuing to engage with the company ongoing.

In this phase you are thinking about process, it needs to be as simple as possible. Consider this in the context of your customers and be sure that you can clearly answer the following questions in establishing this process:

• Is your customer aware that they have a problem? If they’re not how will you make them aware?

• Where will the customer need to look to find your product? Are there multiple places that they might look and how can you be sure your product is found?

• How can you stand out from your competitors when they find you?

• Once your customer has made the purchase how can you keep engaging them? Is there an opportunity to use your customer to become an advocate for your idea or product in the future?

Given the different channels and technologies available to customers there will be so many different ways in which they can engage and buy your idea or product.  Mapping every possible touchpoint in as many channels as possible will be critical in understanding the customer journey but will also be important at ensuring there are consistencies and synergies across the entire value stream.

Establish your pricing strategy.

This is typically a great time to engage your financial advisors as the key to long term success will depend on your idea/product being profitable.

Understanding the price point of your competitors, your customer personas, the different pricing strategies that may apply to different types of customer journeys will be essential when you are considering how to process your offering.

You will need to consider the following questions in establishing your pricing framework:

• Is there a one-time cost for your idea/product?

• Is there a cost associated with every time your customer engages your product?

• Is the service ongoing and will you charge a subscription fee?

• Are there multiple variations of your product that mean you might offer the basic elements for free or at a lower cost so as to grow sales?

• Will you offer discounts or promotions to help fund sales?

The value story and how to communicate it.

• What problem are you solving for your customers? How?

• How can you leverage the customers biggest problems to create a gravitation towards your offering? What makes your product stand out from all the others? What language or tone will you use to help you stand out?

• What channels do you ideally to use for communicating this message? (Note: you will need to include this in your commercial and pricing modelling)

• Check that your channels reach as many personas and prospects across the customer journey you mapped out in the earlier phase.

Acquiring customers seamlessly.

This is the opportunity to start converting your idea into sales and as such the first moment where you formally take the idea/product to market.

This seems like the easiest part of the journey however can be the most complex and confusing given the number of avenues and potential channels you have in your go-to-market strategy.

 This is the time to answer the following types of questions:

• Can your idea/product be sold exclusively online?

• Will you need a venue and/or salespeople to sell your idea/product? What type of training will your sales team/s need to sell your idea or product?

• Will you need to establish sales tools to help sell your product (website, software, technical applications, presentations, merchandisers etc)

• How will you measure and report on the various sales channel’s performance, effectiveness, cost?

• How will you talk to customers before and after a successful or unsuccessful conversation so as they remain ‘fans’ or ‘pipeline’ opportunities?

Managing customer service.

The goal of every new idea, product or organisations is to ensure your customers enjoy a magnificent experience. In order to ensure that this ambition is a reality for your idea/product you will need to consider:

• Will you need resources to manage this experience?

• Will you offer customers ongoing communication channels/services to engage with you?

• Will you need to consider producing materials that support your offering? How will you maintain and produce these?

The objective of any process is not to add complexity and this point where you believe you are ready to go it is imperative to ensure you have checked through as many possible scenarios so as you can be confident your idea or product has every chance of being successful.

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Looking to build your own Go To Market strategy? Let us help.

To learn more about how to build a go-to-market strategy for your customers, contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au

Strategy to Execution

According to Gartner’s research (Strategy Execution Change Model Survey in 2019), only 46% of Executives and Managers felt their efforts were aligned to strategy.

There are 4 key building blocks to guide the process of strategy to execution:

#1

Market & Industry Trends

#3

Build the Plan

#2

Company Strategy

#4

Manage Performance

STRATEGY BUILDING BLOCKS

The Key Initiatives UNPACKED

What & Why?

The first two building blocks are part of identifying the strategic plan – what and why?

1. Market and industry trends – this is where you begin to address the strategic questions; understand key trends for the market, industry, economy, people and workforce.

2. Company’s strategy – this is where you articulate your goals. Define your mission/purpose to explain the reason for your existence; your core values that your foundations are built upon; your vision of what you want to be; where you have a competitive advantage; your key areas of focus; long term objectives and financial outlook.

Who, Where, When & How?

The following two building blocks focus on implementing the strategy – who, where, when and how?

1. Build the plan – this is where you align the company’s ways of working to support the strategy. Identify your company goals; understand the required capability and how to build this within your organisation; determine the metrics that will measure your success; build a budget that supports your strategy; understand your regulatory obligations; identify any risks and build out your initiatives ensuring they complement your strategy.

2. Manage performance – in order to measure your success you need to undertake regular performance reviews; evaluate the performance of your key metrics and your initiative program of work so that you are able to respond/pivot if required in order to keep to your strategic objectives; monitor any risks, challenges, issues to ensure your execution plan remains on track.

Source: 2019 Gartner Strategy Execution Change Model Survey