Historically strategies have been developed based on assumption made about how the markets respond and to what.
The aim of a strategy is to develop market differential, awareness and value that the market would respond to.
Old methods relied heavily on “old media” as the means to create
messages, branding and attention from targeted markets.The aim of a
strategy is to out perform competition, capture the market attention
and ultimately earn a transaction.
A strategic process includes market research to understand the
markets behavior, what is your competition doing and the subsequent
data helped organizations to think through what it should do
differently.
Markets have dramatically changed and thus old strategic thinking
and related methods are no longer relevant to the market. They simply
don’t work anymore.
What Has Changed?
In an Article titled
Transparency is the new marketing Clay Shirky writes “When
organizations think about strategy, it’s often in the context of their
own objectives. But when the surrounding reality changes—as it is doing
in the media landscape—both strategy and goals need to adjust. The
disgruntled can now organize, publish, and protest on their own,
without using any professional media outlet. Until recently
organizations of all stripes were better able to get their messages
into the media than any motley groups of individuals. That is no longer
true, because two critical organizational advantages—the ability to
coordinate group effort and to coordinate group access to the means of
publishing—are now ubiquitous, global, and free.”“Clients of an organization, whether they are citizens or
customers, now have ready access to these tools. For all the supposed
decisiveness of managed organizations, by relying on legal and PR
departments to respond, most companies now react more slowly than their
customers. In the new world we’ve entered, you can only stonewall
things on your side of the wall, yet most media is no longer on that
side of the wall.”
Strategy is Now Driven From the Other Side of the Wall
Creating a road map of how your organization will succeed is now a
process influenced by the market of conversations. Previously strategy
included an assessment of the market but limited by the perspective and
terms of how one defines “the market“. The definition
has changed in that consumers and business are now defining the market
in real-time events, conversations. The definition and sentiment of a
market is framed by real-time conversations about anything,
everything, anyone and everyone.
Market
sentiment has historically been contained within the walls of a
corporation. Complaints have been reviewed and contained as have
compliments. Compliments were added to the marketing mix while
complaints were buried until results reflected the need for change.
Today both complaints and praises are in real-time and transparent
for everyone to see and hear. Anything placed on the web enters the
digital library and the more conversations that reference your business
the more visible it is to Google, the universal linrary. The higher
the visibility the easier it will be found by others.
Before making a purchase of taking a job what do people do? 95% go the web to gather references and intelligence. Said references and intelligence are no longer driven by your media rather driven by the media from the market.
Three satisfied customers may tell three friends and those three
friends may tell twenty-seven. The power of influence is now
propagated by the web. The same is true about angry customers. One
angry customer can reach 3,000 people at the click of a mouse. Those
three thousand can reach over 100,000 through the power of social
distribution.
The web works based on a rate of change and a rate of
interest. Which gets you the highest rate? Satisfied or angry
customers? Do the math.
Strategy is critical for any business but if you are following old
strategic methods then you will fail critically. Today failure is
instantaneously spread at the click of a mouse. The markets of
conversations spread faster than most organizations can react. Building
a strategy from the outside in is vital to your future success. When
markets change so must your strategy. Much has to change and thus the
thinking about “how” to build an effective strategy must also change.
Get it?