As I write, I’m helping to shape and define three separate client strategies. All of them are aiming to solve communication/marketing problems:
- A Content Strategy for an IT Support Company.
- A Brand Strategy for a Recruitment Consultancy.
- A Website Strategy for a Mobility Retailer.
There are plenty of methods (and many, many books) to kick-off a strategy.
Creating a strategy can feel like a big undertaking or you might have heard that specialist knowledge is required. I think it is just another business problem to solve with a logical, common sense approach. Keep it simple and hit the ground running! I always start with four questions:
- Who is our customer?
- What are we offering them?
- Why would they choose us?
- How do we connect with them?
That’s it!
There’s a sequence to it. Work out Who your customer is and What you are offering them and this will help you to uncover the Why (or your special difference, value proposition). It doesn’t matter how we term it, the equation is:
Who + What = Why
… And solving this makes the execution part, the How do we connect (messages, channels etc), much easier.
As long as we go deep and wide – do the research, listen to our customers, look honestly at our businesses, respect (and learn) from our competitors – we can discover, decide and set direction.
Off we go!