Are Your Business Strategies Random Or Connected?

When you market your business make sure you plug into the right circuit.  You want to design your business like a network of connections that all tie together.  If you are a B2B technology firm that helps develop complicated platforms and integrated architecture for international business distributors, know who you are and what you do.  Design your business to stick to the model you prefer to perform.  Do not jump around looking to make money in areas of service you do not prefer to perform.  Stick to knitting, is the traditional term.

As you define what business you are in make sure you keep working on your strategies to support what your business does.  It sounds elementary, but many good business models make this simple mistake.  They tend to drift around a little bit to 'test' some areas of revenues they think they may want to add to the model of their business efforts.  Sometimes they feel as if they are missing something.  When this type of thinking occurs, usually the marketing plan gets a little bit damaged.

In fact, many good businesses have a really good grip on doing what they do best.  Many of the good business models hire the right people to fill in with the right skills needed to service the right stuff they do.  Often times these models need to reach out and market their wares to increase sales and shares.  Some of these good models do not handle the marketing of their wares very well.  Sometimes they try to build a clever advertising program and send out a series of messages that do not accurately depict who they are and what they do.  Good business models make this mistake more often than they are willing to admit.

It is not uncommon to see this type of marketing mistake occur in a dysfunctional designed business model.  A business model designed 'at random' has the strong probability to produce a disjointed marketing plan.  Strategy sessions flash all over the place to try and capture too many 'popular' business trends and ideas that distract the model away from becoming tightly designed with a driven purpose.  Too many on and off again procedures inhibit growth and maturity.  A business that is not well connected with all of its moving parts is a business operating on random strategies.  Marketing successfully to the marketplace with a model designed in this format is a very dangerous and expensive affair.  Chances to plug into the business with a message that helps the customer find and use the offers made is a risky step for a randomly designed business to approach.  This statement is so prophetic many business owners miss the value in its depth.  If your business is well connected with all of its parts, your marketing plan is much easier to design for success.  What you need to do to reach who you want is so much easier to target when your model is strategically connected.

If your B2B technology firm is working internationally bound with distribution companies who are struggling with delivery and production issues on synchronization, you know what to do, where to get it done and who to help you to do what you do best.  If a friend calls and asks you to help one of his own friends with the redesign of one of his shopping malls in New York City, you will gladly give him a referral to someone you know who does that kind of work.  When the time comes to reach out and market your model to increase customer shares, you will not present an advertising plan that suggests your business works well on the redesign efforts of shopping malls in America.  You will present the things you are doing well and stick to those things as you send the message to new customers about what you do and where you do it.  It seems so simple.  Yet, I watch great business models make this simple mistake all of the time.

I do not even know the key players of the models as I wonder what the heck they are trying to do.  Sprint uses its CEO as its face of change in its efforts to try to tell the consumer who they are and what they do.  Do you get it?  Does the customer get it?  Do you actually see what Sprint does and completely understand who they are and what they do?  I am not convinced.  Are you?  Look at your phone, is it a Sprint phone?  How well is that marketing plan working?  They spend a great deal of money trying to increase their market share.  Is what they are spending matching what they are gaining?  I am not convinced and I do not know their numbers.  I might be wrong...but I do not see the connectivity of their model with the cost of the messages they are spending to send.  They do not appear well connected; professional yes, well connected, no.

I have been incorrect many times in my career.  I see things differently enough that it can get my assumptions into trouble.  Yet on the other hand, I have time and again watched business models who once where dominate in the marketplace slowly slip away from being significant and eventually drift completely out of the picture of success.  I see marketing activities mismatched.  I see marketing efforts plugged into circuits that do not connect the business with the marketplace.  I see marketing efforts that plug into the business but cannot find a series of proper connections within the business to support what it tells the consumer it does.  Gaps like these are tragically produced.  They can be produced by some very smart people.  It happens.  Make sure your business strategies are in line with all of the things you do well.  Make sure you are well connected with your model and how you plan to tell your customers what you do.  When you plug your marketing plan into the circuit of effort, be certain you use the circuit that connects all of your working parts together.  Do not plug your marketing plan into the random socket and expect some very good results.      

I bumped into another business owner the other day and we had a chat about some ideas he was working to consider.  He expressed how much he wanted to create a 'jingle' for his business advertisements.  His largest area competitor has been using a regular jingle for their advertising program during the past year and he feels he needs to do the same thing to make sure his customers do not forget his business.  I was perplexed at his reasoning.

As I drove away from the discussion my mind traveled around several interesting thoughts.  The first thing I considered was the idea of a business owner feeling and believing they must do what the competitor is doing.  I have not used that approach for many years so it seems awkward to me.  His discussion was centered around the idea that he needed to compete with his competitor on the same marketing techniques his competitor had selected.  The most recognizable part of his competitors marketing techniques was the jingle he described.  While I was driving away I wondered about this thought...how does his new idea for developing a jungle fit with his particular business strategy?  I wondered if his idea to develop a jungle for his company was a random thought or part of a bigger strategy and plan?

After the discussion we had, I strongly believe his idea for the jingle was a random approach to marketing his business.  These types of efforts do not usually work very well.  Random responsiveness to marketing methods are often poorly thought out, they usually cost more and in the end produce weaker results.  Random marketing efforts are usually expensive to produce.

I did not hear any discussion about his jingle plan that had anything to do with his standard business strategies.  There were no comments made about how well his jingle would connect his customers to the products and services he sells.  I heard a lot of comments that described how he needed to make a jungle that beat the one his competitor had.  I am curious to see if that strategy was written somewhere in a portion of his business plans?  You may scoff at this kind of evaluation for producing a marketing approach, but it is not a good plan.  He should not do it.  It does not appear as though the plan to produce a jingle is coming form the 'right' place.  It does not appear as though the plan to produce a jingle is actually a part of the marketing strategies already set in place for his business to follow.  It appears random.  It might work for a short while, but in the long run, it will not help the consumer become better connected with the things his business is doing well.

Think longer term.  Plug your marketing plan into the circuit that includes the other connected parts of what your business does very well.  Your chances for success will be better served.  I am still confused with Sprint?  What about you?  At least I know they have a CEO who wants to personally talk to me.  Sometimes it is so simple, we miss it.  They spend a lot of money making sure you professionally connect with their CEO.  Smart people can miss it, and do.

Until next time...