The A to Z of Strategy

 

We get it, sometimes you don’t have the time to read a whole book about strategy. So we’ve taken the time to sum it up in one easy guide. Read on for the complete A to Z of strategy planning, management and execution – and as always, happy strategizing!

Audience: In our “Think Customer-first blog” we discuss how knowing your audience is key to strategic planning success. Invest in a strong market research team to identify the target audience your strategy will aim to reach.

Branding: A brand is so much more than a logo. Building a strong brand that appeals to your target audience can be as important as the product or service you deliver; especially in the digital age.

Culture: Organizational culture is key to executing strategy and inspiring innovation. It’s a CEO’s job to create a system of shared beliefs, values and norms to align expectations and generate outcomes.

Data: Generating actionable insights from the massive amount of data available since the rise of IoT, is any organizations’s secret weapon for optimal market understanding, operational efficiency and innovation.

Engagement: Technology has changed the rules of customer engagement, forcing every company to step up if they wish to differentiate their service from the competition. Quality, on-demand, personalized and omnichannel customer service is expected to keep customers engaged and inspire loyalty.

Focus: Your strategic vision is where your company aims to be. Our StrategyBlocks Builder helps you focus in on strategic goals to communicate & execute in real-time.

Growth: With business growth as your goal, there’s a lot to keep in mind: expanding reach while targeting the right audience, market competition, new revenue streams, etc. StrategyBlocks software aligns growth strategy with real-time metrics to drive smart growth.

Hacks: Looking for innovative ways to get your brand out there and boost sales? Consider these growth hacks.

Innovation: Innovation is a top goal for all companies. Matching strategy to innovation across products, services and operations is key to delivering results.

Jacking: Newsjacking is a relatively new form of marketing, where a company injects their own ideas or thoughts into timely or trending news in real-time. This helps even the smallest company establish thought leadership and brand recognition. Think about trying it across social platforms the next time you see a relevant news event!

KPIs: Success is quantified by establishing numerous Key Performance Indicators that can be overwhelming to gather, track and present. StrategyBlocks Metrics Zone has the ability to roll up complex strategic, financial and operational metrics into dashboards and scorecards for the executive team to review in real time.

Limitations: Conventional business strategy is limited to reactivity if it cannot keep up with changing the business environment and the especially fast-paced changes of the digital economy. StrategyBlocks software solves for reactivity by allowing adjustment of all factors affecting strategic execution in real-time.

Metrics: Depending on your company’s business strategy, you might have a vast number of metrics to keep an eye on in the execution of your strategy. StrategyBlocks Metrics Zone was designed to help you manage this data.

NPS:  Net Promoter Score measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company’s products or services to others. It is based on customer surveys and is a way to gauge customer satisfaction and customer loyalty/engagement.

Optimization: Demand and accept nothing less than the best outcome for every situation your business faces by implementing strategies to minimize time, effort, manpower and money expended while optimizing output.

Pain points: When revamping marketing strategy or introducing new revenue streams (products or services) consider your target customers’ pain points. Why do your customers need your product or service, what value does it bring to their lives?

Quantitative vs Qualitative: Qualitative data is gathered from customer feedback, surveys and questionnaires while quantitative data is information that can be gathered and measured in numbers. Both are equally important to consider within your KPIs of strategy success.

Reporting: Most companies are required to share some form of reporting with their board. StrategyBlocks Metrics Zones enables executives to roll up all kinds of metrics into dashboards and scorecards that serve as real-time, easily digestible reports with minimal time investment.

Social Media: Social media is a low cost way to build brand recognition and support. Combined with newsjacking and engaging with target customers and partners, social media marketing can easily get your brand in front of the right people.

Transparency: Transparency is an essential strategy to winning over shareholders, customers and employees. With transparency a company builds trust, loyalty and reputation.

User experience: User experience is part of the design process that makes your company’s product and/or service invaluable to the consumer, and we know a thing or two about how important it is. StrategyBlocks is highly visual, investing in great design and user experience to generate successful outcomes for our customers.

Visual: With many metrics to be measured and KPIs to keep track of, strategy execution can be overwhelming. We’ve simplified it using a compelling visual system of cascading ‘blocks.’ StrategyBlocks 4.0 merges quantitative and qualitative data, linking subjective data such as workplace performance with more structured data such as KPIs.

Website: Your website is the place where you can combine brand identity with excellent user experience and customer engagement strategies. It’s worth putting some time into making your website shine as it will likely be your customers’ first touchpoint with your brand.

X-ray vision: When was the last time you examined the internal health of your organization? Research shows that disengaged staff deliver lower customer satisfaction than those who are truly engaged. Do an internal “health check” as you form your strategy and see where there could be room for improvement.

YouTube: Video is the future of content marketing. Whether B2C or B2B consider how your company can incorporate a YouTube channel into your marketing strategy.

Zigzag: The business environment will zig, the economy will zag and throughout it all your company will need to adapt and so will its strategy. StrategyBlocks software’s goal is to assist our clients to achieve new levels of strategic agility, no matter what you face.