
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” -Sun Tzu
My failures mostly come in the form of a sucker punch I didn’t anticipate. It’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security when everything is going well.
Sailing as a young kid my dad always used to say: “Keep an eye out for the freak waves. They’re the boat killers.” It’s funny though that even though I learned to keep my head up it was only once I got into business that I realized that the adage applies in every phase of life.
How then, do you develop a business or marketing strategy? I’m not the authority, everyone has their own method. I will however share some points that worked for me.
- Understand who your customers are.
- Understand your competitors
- Figure out what makes your product different and unique
- Identify the technologies or products that can kill your business
- Look for weaknesses in your competitors marketing, product and business.
- Figure out how you’re going to tell your customers why they need to buy from you.
Of course there’s tons more to say on each one the points above, but you get the idea. Figure out who you want to sell to, why you’re better than your competition, what you can offer that your competitor can and how long you’ve got before you get disrupted.