Revealed marketing strategy to scale up any type of business which will make your revenue on auto-pilot mode
I am talking about the effective marketing strategy which are already proven by all other successful businesses and that's why 2020 is the right year to start with all these strategy which will not just transform your entire business but also will expend it to the another level.
So if you are a business holder or want to start a business then this content must be in your best concern. All strategies are well established and proven. Every industry or any business are getting advanced in setting their automate conversion system to make their visitor into their customer, so why aren't you.
Let's start one by one because the vision should be clear and our aim shouldn't be way to far to achieve.
1.Google form Survey :- Before taking any action on your any business plan or idea make sure what your followers or audience think about it. Basically collecting the data from other people to know their opinion. The conclusion will improve your action far much batter then you even planned. You will get some new ideas and aim to achieve because these ideas are coming directly through your audience. When the audience is giving their time to fill the survey form then defiantly that audience is very potential to become the part of your service in future.
Benefit of doing it
In this process you will know your interested audience.
You will get some new ideas about your service or product, directly from your potential audience.
You can improve your product launch or service launch on behalf of what customer's desire.
You will defiantly increase your conversion rate after launching your service. when you will give the credit to all those people who took part in your survey to improve your service, your audience will feel pleasure and then they defiantly want to try your service or product at least once.
How to do it
Import all your existing customer email id from your gmail account and all your social media connection's email from all social media accounts. Specially from LinkedIn. Know the how, if you don't know how to do it, do some searching and get the skill done.
Create a google form for survey and ask people about their opinion on your upcoming product. First be the expert in survey making, make your survey on behalf of what you want to ask from your audience. Again I will say know the how, go and search how to build the survey for yourself.
Share that survey to all you email id's and maintain the results on your google sheet. Give your survey the time of at-least 15 to 20 days to get all the feedback from your audience.
Know when you have all the data, you can see what people want in your product or service to improve then take action.
Always think about the customers, what they want and make your service the best.
2.Know the strategy your competitors are using :- It is really very important to know, what is trending in marketing and how it's trending in market. Specially when you have made your mind with particular idea to start a business then it is must to know how your competitors are doing with that service in market and for that there are a lot of great tools that you can use to analysis other company static data of conversion and sales. I use similarweb to know, what is the source of my compositors to make high number of sales. So go ahead use it and know what are the platform that other companies are using to drive their potential traffic so that you can also apply it to your business.
Benefit of doing it
You will get a lot of data to analyse their business.
You can apply those strategies in your business and drive their traffic to yours.
It just like knowing the secret of the other companies success.
3. Create engagement on all your social media accounts :- If you are new to the concept of digital marketing then you can have my content on it from Here. If you want to generate a lot of traffic for your website or you want to influence people about your offline business then it is must for you to be part of the top social media platform such as facebook , youtube , instagram , twiiter , linkdin , quora so if you have all these account then you can go ahead with this marketing strategy. All you have to do is to create the engagement of the followers in your post.
Benefit of doing it
Your post will be visible ten time more to to larger audience.
You will know about your potential customers.
You will get extremely high traffic to your website.
How to do it
Start running contest about your service or product.
Make your audience feel special by giving them some certification of participation.
4.Email Marketing :- Emailing is one of the most profitable method to create high number of sales for the business. It is just like the routine for all the business people to get the mail id of interesting customers and then send them mail with the best offer of their services. A lot of conversion happen over email. Amazon is the great example, if you want to make any purchase from amazon they will keep your e mail id and then they'll keep on sending offers through mails. So it is working marketing strategy that everyone should apply to keep their conversion rate on high.
Benefit of doing it
High of conversion rate.
Re-targeting existing customers.
Keep in contact with customers so that they can trust your service and always remain your customer.
How to do it
Do have a software which can build your email list and automate it according to your preference. Like Mailchimp , clickfunnel , These software will maintain your email list and they are specially created for marketing purpose.
once you have the software you can create the landing page and then you can promote it over social media, so when anybody will access that link, they have to fill their email id and once your interesting customers fills the details then you can easily send them mails with your best offers in future.
Know your how. If you don't know about email marketing tools and the landing page in sale funnel .Do the search and take the action now.
5. Run Affiliate Marketing Program :- If you are unable to generate that much traffic to make sales in your website or you are ready to take a lot more sales then you ever can imagine then you can run this program. It is like creating your secrete team which will work for you but in their own way to make the sale and all you have to do is fix their commission. Like if you are making profit of 60$ in one sale that they are working for then you can give them 10$ or above for their effort. In this way you will be making conversion on so many different traffic source.
Benefit of doing it
Building a secrete sell team which will work from their own convenience, in this way your affiliater will have the healthy relations with you and they can pull of a lot more work done for your website.
You will be promoting your service or product on so many different social media platforms which will generate much more leads for you.
If you don't want to work that hard, your affiliaters will work for you and all you have to do is sit back and make money.
How to do it
Create the affiliate program in your website, know how by searching.
Let affiliaters know that you will give away a good commission on every sales that they can make.
Always target college students to be your affiliater because they always want to make more money from side hustle.
Post your program on work from home advertising portals.
Once you have your secrete team working for you then you just need to analyse & improve the reports.
So above are the most working digital marketing strategy that are very useful and important in 2020 and so on because the competition is very high and all you have to do is know how before anybody else know how.
This year has been better than last year for marketing agencies, with most finding more new business opportunities in 2021 compared with 2020,according torecent research fromRSW/US.
The annual report was based on data from a survey conducted in September and October 2021 among 120 executives who work for marketing, advertising, and PR agencies.
Some 51% of marketing agency executives say the number of new business opportunities has increased relative to last year and 37% say it has stayed the same. Only 12% of marketing agency executives say the number of new business opportunities has decreased relative to last year.
Some 38% of marketing agency executives say obtaining new business in 2021 has been easier compared with last year and 35% say it has stayed the same.
In 2020, more than two-thirds (67%) of marketing agency executives said obtaining new business had become more difficult compared with the previous year.
Marketing agency executives say the most effective tools/approaches for generating new business over the past year have been gaining business from existing clients and referrals.
About the research: The report was based on data from a survey conducted in September and October 2021 among 120 executives who work for marketing, advertising, and PR agencies.
In Saint Louis, Missouri, a boom in puzzle sales has enabled Puzzle Warehouse, the largest distributor of puzzles in North America, to hire 10 more employees. Rancho Gordo, an heirloom bean supplier in Napa Valley, California, is seeing a massive surge in beans sales, from canned to dry beans. The Party Source, a liquor store in Bellevue, Kentucky, is enjoying more than just increased alcohol purchases. They’re also selling bitters, cherries and every other ingredient necessary for at-home cocktails.
Games, canned suppliers, and alcohol are just three industries breaking sales records during the coronavirus. Other thriving businesses experiencing an uptick in sales include, but aren’t limited to, the following:
As citizens worldwide practice social distancing and hunker down at home, entrepreneurs are innovating their products and offerings. Adapting to these new needs allows individuals everywhere to maintain a bit of normalcy in an unprecedented time — and be productive and enjoy that time, too.
If you’re ready to start a business within one of these industries, or pivot your current business model and branch out into another field to help your customers during this trying time, take a look at the shortlist of questions you’ll need to answer before you begin.
Figure out your “why”
Why do you want to go into business? What are some of your short- and long-term goals for your potential startup? Or, why do you want to pivot your existing business?
Your “why” is connected to your mindset and may be found through these characteristics:
You have a strong desire to make a difference in your community
You are driven to do what you love and possess the skills required to execute
You have found your purpose and want to pursue it
You are ready for a new challenge that inspires you and allows you to keep learning
Ask yourself: is my idea a viable business?
This question is one you should be able to answer, regardless of the current economic climate.
You may have what you think is a pretty good business idea, but have you considered its variables?
Drafting a business plan can help you better answer these questions before you launch the company. A business plan evaluates the feasibility of the company from an objective standpoint.
It also addresses the answers to these questions:
What makes my business idea unique and original?
Is there a proven demand in the market for my business and its products/services?
How will my offerings and services benefit the lives of customers?
Where can I collect feedback from customers for my business idea?
When it comes to gathering feedback, consider conducting a survey or utilizing social media platforms reach your audience for unbiased feedback.
Determine your unique selling proposition
A unique selling proposition (USP) allows you create a clear brand identity. You must understand how to sell the products or services to yourself before you can sell them to customers.
In order to develop a USP, you need to be able to address the following:
Identify your strengths. What makes you stand out from the competition? What do you have that competitors don’t?
Figure out the ways that your business can solve problems that your target audience has. Do you fill a niche in the market that was previously missing before?
Pick your business model
Will this business be full-time or will it be your side hustle? Many successful businesses often begin as side hustles, and a passion project is a great way to stay afloat during uncertain times. Either way, you’ll need to select a business model for your company. Essentially, a business model is the plan to make money.
Business models are different among industries and are impacted by four key factors:
Differentiation and pricing
Marketing and sales
Production and delivery methods
Customer experience and satisfaction
Incorporate the business
You’re almost ready to make your business a reality! Make sure you take care of the following legal areas before you launch the business:
File any necessary business licenses required by your Secretary of State for doing business in your specific industry and state
Whether you’re planning to start a side hustle or pivoting your existing business, it’s important to be prepared. We’re living in uncertain times, but by taking the above steps into consideration, you’re on your way to making the entrepreneurial leap forward.
One of the best know frameworks – probably on everybody’s top ten list: the BCG growth / market share matrix. The tool was developed by the Boston Consulting Group in the 70s. The objective is to identify priorities of specific products within a business unit, or priorities of different business unit in a larger corporate setting. The fundamental assumption is that an enterprise should have a portfolio of products that contains both high-growth products in need of cash and low-growth products that generate cash. The BCG matrix has two dimensions: market share and market growth.
The matrix results in four quadrants: Stars (high growth, high market share): Stars are leaders in the business. They are frequently roughly in balance on net cash flow. The goal is to hold or expand market share. Cash Cows (low growth, high market share): Cows are often the stars of yesterday and they are the foundation of a company. Because of the low growth, investments needed should be low. Dogs (low growth, low market share): Avoid and minimize the number of Dogs in a company. Watch out for expensive ‘rescue plans’. Dogs must deliver cash, otherwise they should be liquidated. Question Marks (high growth, low market share): Question Marks have the worst cash characteristics of all, because they have high cash demands and generate low returns, because of their low market share. Either invest heavily, or sell off, or invest nothing and generate any cash that you can.
The BCG matrix has a number of advantages. It highlight, for example, that generic targets (in terms of growth, or return on capital), can be very misleading in a portfolio of business units. The matrix was developed in the context of an overall understanding of product life cycles: A new business may start as a small star, will grow over time, becomes one of the cash cows of the company, and may end up as a dog towards the end of its life cycle. But the concept also has a number of limitations: It neglects the effects of synergy between business units. High market share is not the only success factor, and doesn’t necessarily always lead to high profitability. Market growth is not the only indicator for attractiveness of a market. Sometimes Dogs can earn even more cash as Cash Cows. There are also basic problems in terms of defining what is a “market,” getting the right data on market share and growth, etc.
But overall, it’s definitely a good model to know and keep in the back of your mind.
Even if you aren't familiar with what WordPress is, or use it to publish content on the internet, there's a good chance you've visited a website that runs on it--and probably within just the past 24 hours.
That's because WordPress--an open-source content-management system--powers an astonishing 25 percent of all websites today.
I recently spoke with Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, the company that offers a range of products and services for WordPress users.
Automattic is valued today at over $1 billion.
Matt joined me for a wide-ranging conversation on my podcast, in which he shared his aspiration to capture the 75 percent of the internet that WordPress doesn't already manage.
He also explained how his 400-person team works largely from home or in co-located offices in 43 countries, and relies almost entirely on an internal blogging platform for communication and collaboration--while avoiding the use of email.
Automattic's mission is to democratize publishing. Where do you think you are today in terms of achieving that?
It's probably a lifelong mission, to be honest. The idea is to give everyone, regardless of what language you speak or how much money you have, the ability to have a voice online using the best software in the world.
You or I can download and publish using the exact same software that The New Yorkeruses for newyorker.com. And I think that is relatively unique in the history of the world. We don't have access to the same printing press as The New York Times, but in the digital world we can have the same software as The New Yorker.
You've been a fierce advocate for the open-source movement. What's the state of play today with the movement?
Right now, we power about 25 percent of all websites--the largest of any of the content-management systems. The number two has around 3 percent. But we are not happy that we have just 25 percent, and we see a lot of work to get the remaining 75 percent.
Certainly, our near-term goal for WordPress is to try to get to a majority because I feel when a majority of the web is driven by open-source software, that will drive the web to be a better place. It'll be more open, more inclusive, with fewer closed gardens and silos, and it will drive as well the proprietary folks to be more open.
You've got a highly decentralized, dispersed work force spanning the globe--people working from home and, for the most part, never stepping foot into an office. How is that working out?
Automattic is a totally distributed company, so everyone works from wherever they are in the world. It could be a coffee shop, it could be their home, it could be a co-working space. We hire people regardless of where they are.
We now have folks in just over 40 countries. This has been amazing for the company in that we can attract and retain the best talent without them having to be in New York or San Francisco or one of the traditional tech enters.
So far this model has worked extraordinarily well, and we plan to continue it.
The "Automattic creed" states that communication is the "oxygen" for a distributed company. For a long time, you've used a blog theme called P2 for internal communication and collaboration. And for the most part, you avoid using email for communication inside Automattic.
I think email is definitely on its way out, between things like P2 and Slack, which is a work place chat tool. Email just has so many things wrong with it. I've never heard anyone who've said they love email, they want more of it--have you?
Imagine if, in your company, instead of email, everyone could post and comment on a blog. Different groups or teams could have their own space on it, but fundamentally everything was tagged and traceable and transparent. That's kind of what P2 looks like.
P2 also has its own sort of internal Google alerts, so you can keep up with everyone without having to read everything that goes by.
It's free actually, so go check out p2theme.com. I invite anyone to try it out.
Why is knowing how to write well so important at Automattic?
Skill in writing is one of the things I look for the most in hiring, because I feel that clear writing represents clear thinking, regardless of someone's background, or whether they're a designer or coder or whatever.
The ability to communicate effectively and clearly in written form is not only super important in a distributed company, but I think reflects well on how they approach life in general.
Part of the reason I started blogging and started working on WordPress was because I love writing.
If I can become a better writer, perhaps I can become a better thinker.
Experimentation, iteration and improvisational change are all the rage in today’s dynamic business environments. But when evaluating new business opportunities, there’s a paradoxical tension between strategic focus and flexibility that can define or break your business. Christopher B. Bingham, Nathan R. Furr and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
Capturing new growth opportunities is fundamental to strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship. But how can managers best meet this challenge? With flexibility or focus? The answer, as it turns out, can be more complex and more crucial to a company’s success than previously thought. Our research on mature corporations, growing businesses and new ventures suggests a paradoxical tension between focus and flexibility that can define or break your business. In this article, we explore when and where to be focused and disciplined versus when to be flexible and opportunistic.
Experimentation is a familiar innovation tool, but some industry pundits suggest that planning rarely succeeds in dynamic environments; instead, they argue for a rapid cycle of experimentation and pivoting.1 Such an approach holds both intuitive and rational appeal in a world characterized by uncertainty, where the flow of opportunities is swift yet unpredictable, where market boundaries are shifting and where competitors are constantly changing. Given the new competitive environment that promotes change and flexibility, is the old strategic emphasis on focus less relevant? We argue it is not. In fact, we discovered in our interviews with a wide variety of managers that focus may be just as important as flexibility, and, counterintuitively, a company’s focus may even influence its flexibility and vice versa. (See “About the Research.”)
Opportunities Are Complex
Opportunities are more complex than people recognize. Few managers recognize that there are two components to capturing a new business opportunity: opportunity selection and opportunity execution. Opportunity selection involves determining which customer problem to solve, whereas opportunity execution deals with solving the particular problem chosen.2 Most books, articles and thought leaders studying opportunities focus heavily on opportunity execution — how to create value by developing a solution for customers. But research suggests that most innovation efforts move so quickly to identify a solution that they have to cycle back to figure out what problem they are actually solving.3
We found that opportunity selection appears to matter as much as opportunity execution, the place where most companies spend their time. More importantly, how you approach opportunity selection (whether with flexibility or with focus) has a critical impact on how successful you are at opportunity execution.
Opportunists vs. Strategists
We observed that managers and entrepreneurs tend to fall into two groups that we label opportunistsand strategists. The opportunists relied on a less scripted and more flexible approach to opportunity selection. Instead of mapping out ahead of time which opportunities they would pursue and then letting the map be their guide for subsequent action, opportunists let emergent customer inquiries shape opportunity selection. For example, one U.S.-based security software company made the choice to enter the German market because a German customer was interested in its security-monitoring services. Likewise, the software company’s decision to go to Switzerland was based on unforeseen customer demand in the country, not a deliberate plan to enter Switzerland. As one company executive stated about that decision, “It was more like we were drawn in rather than a conscious decision.”
On the surface, these managers and entrepreneurs felt they were cherry-picking low-hanging fruit and taking advantage of narrow windows of opportunity before those windows closed or before competitors captured the opportunity. Rather than wasting time developing and then executing detailed plans that might be flawed or outdated or both, they took advantage of what emerged. Overall, this flexible approach to opportunity selection is consistent with the broader strategy and entrepreneurship literature, which argues that the dynamic nature of the markets in which many companies operate lowers the benefit of pre-action deliberation, and that ambiguity is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, many business leaders make better decisions as they go along, rather than beforehand through focused planning.4
Strategists followed a different pattern. Since a central threat facing companies that capture emergent opportunities is the lack of focus associated with trying to address the needs of multiple markets, strategists constrained the selection of opportunities to particular markets in order to help their companies channel efforts toward opportunities that were more likely to result in success. As a result, rather than taking advantage of unforeseen emergent opportunities, strategists were more disciplined. They began by studying the nature of opportunity capture in their market. Once they had done this, they created a focused plan that riveted attention on what they believed was the best opportunity (not just the easiest) and that would allow them to capture several opportunities in a row versus one in isolation. For example, at a Finland-based company that helps organizations manage inventory through point-of-sale software solutions, leaders selected their first international market, Sweden, based on what they could learn — not just on their ability to get a sale. Although not a large market, Sweden was both culturally similar and geographically close. This reduced the risk that the company’s Finnish leaders would be overwhelmed with regional differences and increased the likelihood that they would be able to learn how to do business abroad. As the CEO explained, “We were quite conservative in this process because we didn’t know much about international business. So we started with Sweden.” After Sweden, the company chose Norway, then France, Germany, the United Kingdom and then the United States. It was able to gain experience in progressively bigger markets and exploit its growing knowledge. Overall, by being more focused in opportunity selection, companies can start with easier opportunities or opportunities that are advantageous to pursue earlier; those initial opportunities then provide the foundation for subsequent opportunities. Thus, just as the order of assembly is key when building a bridge or assembling a computer, the order of experience appears critical for effective opportunity capture.
Flexible Selection and Inflexible Execution
So how do these different patterns for opportunity selection unfold? Although flexibility can be extremely useful, we found that the opportunists who had been the most flexible in the opportunity selection phase tended to be the least flexible in the execution phase. In other words, although these managers were adept at flexibly responding to emergent opportunities, once they started to execute the opportunities, many became surprisingly inflexible. For example, at a U.S.-based medical imaging software company, leaders were very flexible about the selection of opportunities. One cofounder noted, “We were trying to get something going in Europe, so we looked for opportunities and we cherry-picked.” The company decided to enter Sweden based on some interest from local doctors there. Yet, after the company entered Sweden, the doctors appeared reluctant to use what they viewed as a new technology for an established method of mammography. Importantly, instead of flexibly executing the opportunity and changing their solutions to meet local market needs, the software company attempted to sell Americanized products everywhere. Executives selected their second country, Norway, in the same flexible fashion. When sales there didn’t materialize, executives believed the targeted customers didn’t understand the product. Rather than adjusting their approach, they pushed existing solutions. The pattern of being more flexible in opportunity selection but less flexible in opportunity execution often led to poor results. For example, commenting on their entry into Sweden, executives at the medical imaging company remarked, “We could not sell into Sweden” and “They ran off a cliff. They went nowhere.” Performance in subsequent countries was much the same.
Focused Selection and Flexible Execution
Companies that were more focused in opportunity selection were generally more flexible in opportunity execution. This pattern surprised us because although these companies showed a consistent, focused pattern of disciplined search for opportunities, they were also remarkably flexible about how they pursued the selected opportunity. For example, the founders of a Singapore-based company that develops content for wireless providers thought long and hard about which markets to enter. Based on customer interviews and market observations, management outlined the best way to tackle multiple markets, concluding that they needed to start with the Japanese market, given that consumer trends appeared to diffuse from Japan to the rest of Asia. After entering Japan, leaders started selling digital content to Japanese wireless providers. But this required going head-to-head with Japanese content providers, who were technically competent and entrenched in the market. In light of these challenges, management decided to stop trying to sell their own company’s content in Japan and instead allied themselves with Japanese content companies to sell their partners’ content in Asia. As the chairman explained, “Instead of competing with them [Japanese content companies], we decided to partner with them and take their products and sell in Hong Kong, China and Japan. So we decided to change our strategy.” The outcome from flexibly executing the opportunity in Japan was greater success. As one leader remembered, “Once we decided to partner with [Japanese companies to start selling their content outside Japan], within three months we signed up quite a lot of very reputable content makers.” We observed a similar pattern with other companies in our study: Increased focus on opportunity selection meant increased flexibility in opportunity execution. (See “Focus and Flexibility in Opportunity Capture.")
Lessons About Opportunity Capture
Our research revealed two lessons about opportunity capture that are fundamental for growth in new markets: (1) Although opportunists can be flexible in selecting opportunities, they are less flexible in executing them; and (2) longer-term success partly depends on sequencing opportunities for learning.
Cognitive Lock-In
We observed that once opportunists started to execute opportunities, they often became less flexible. Our research suggests that opportunistic managers fell into what is called a cognitive dissonance trap — a psychological pattern wherein individuals who make a decision contrary to a prior belief set experience discomfort that leads them to reshape their beliefs and perceptions to match the discordant decision.5 Not surprisingly, we observed that opportunists (like strategists) generally believed they were careful decision makers. When opportunity selection was flexible and emergent, opportunists subsequently rationalized their opportunity choices, often focusing only on the positive aspects of the opportunity and ignoring the negative. In a similar vein, they tended to blame bad events associated with the selected opportunity on external circumstances beyond their control rather than questioning the way they chose the opportunity in the first place.
For example, executives at the Finland-based security software company flexibly selected opportunities. Entry into the first country, Sweden, was not planned out in advance. As the chief financial officer noted, “Sweden was very much ad hoc.” But this view was not consistent with the rationale managers gave later, when they suggested that Sweden was purposely selected as a location where employees could “cut their teeth.” When sales in Sweden fell short, leaders began placing the blame on external sources, such as their customers’ financial positions, rather than on internal ones, such as faulty strategy. Because the weak sales were attributed to external factors, leaders did not alter their method of executing opportunities. A senior leader described how the company worked with an outside lawyer to develop a standard template: “We just would not budge on that,” he said. These restrictive policies interfered with the company’s ability to work out agreements with several major customers when it was attempting to enter the United States. The experience underscores a paradox of opportunity capture: The more that leaders attempt to control opportunity execution, the less control they seem to have. The lack of control stems, in part, from trying to standardize solutions for opportunities that are inherently unique. Among opportunist companies, greater company maturity and increased executive experience seem to further decrease the chances of flexible opportunity execution. This may be because prior patterns for executing opportunities that have proved successful become increasingly rooted and institutionalized in company practices and executive actions.
A different pattern was evident among strategists. Particular opportunities within the broader set of possibilities were viewed ahead of time and found to be more attractive than others. As leaders selected the most attractive opportunities, this reduced the need to justify choices and therefore made leaders more likely to flexibly execute opportunities. As a result, they tended to improvise and experiment during the execution of opportunities, sometimes initiating radical changes to their product or business model. For example, one company we studied provided IT security software. After carefully studying its opportunity set, it decided to enter China. To management’s surprise, Chinese customers were suspicious about paying for software — they expected software to be free. So the team leading the effort switched gears and developed a hardware solution, which ended up selling very well. As the CEO recounted, “They [Chinese customers] only pay if they see hardware. It becomes an appliance … basically it’s a PC, and then they sell it to the customer.” In general, the strategists were more likely to pivot and change than opportunists when it came to opportunity execution. They were better able to abandon existing products and practices designed for opportunity execution and adopt new, more appropriate ones.
Sequencing Opportunities
On the surface, being more flexible would seem to help managers learn and adapt. However, we found that many of the managers and entrepreneurs who were the most flexible discovered an important lesson: It’s difficult to learn if you are always changing course. Sustained business success appears to depend not just on capturing one opportunity but also on stringing multiple opportunities together. Hence, longer-term success hinges in part on sequencing business opportunities: Understanding how to capture one discrete opportunity prepares managers and the organization to capture others.
Because opportunists often took advantage of the most immediate opportunities from the flow of possibilities, they found it very difficult to learn from and build off of their efforts. Managers of more established businesses often expressed confusion about the connection between the different opportunities they were chasing and uncertainty about the lessons learned. Managers of newer businesses complained that chasing multiple markets suggested a lack of vision. These executives had a morass of data — customer needs, feedback and product features — that pulled them in many directions. As a result, it was hard to know what was most important to do to succeed. For example, the CEO of the security software developer based in Finland described the difficulty his team had applying the lessons they learned, lamenting, “We should have had more focus and more country-by-country-specific plans rather than just trying to cover all the bases in a shotgun approach.” Similarly, a U.S. entrepreneur developing and testing tools for professionals recalled, “We were doing so many things — so many different tools and quiz formats — that it wasn’t clear what we were learning from any of it. Every time we made a change, we changed so many things [that] it wasn’t clear what caused what.”
By contrast, strategists who were more disciplined in opportunity selection also paid attention to how their opportunities were sequenced. They often selected smaller or more difficult markets, which allowed managers to learn from the opportunities. For example, an entrepreneur developing learning tools in the United States decided to eliminate nearly all of the solutions he had developed and focus instead on delivering quizzes to the education market. When asked why, he said, “By focusing on a single problem for a single market, we could actually really start to learn what solved customers problems … It was the best decision I ever made. We began to really understand what educators needed and what would lead to more revenue.” By narrowing his focus, the entrepreneur was able to increase revenue 400% in the next year before moving into the testing market for business enterprises, where he found even greater success.
Focus and Flexibility in Opportunity Capture
More focused opportunity selection appears to lead to more flexible opportunity execution. However, more flexibility in opportunity selection often leads to less flexibility in opportunity execution.
In other cases, we found that strategist managers sequenced opportunities to improve their legitimacy and credibility in the marketplace. Sometimes, managers of unproven businesses attempted to establish themselves with third-tier customers and then tried to move to second-tier customers and eventually to first-tier customers. For example, a provider of semiconductor solutions for wireless devices had aspirations to sell in the U.S. market but recognized that it first needed to establish a track record. To do so, it began selling to customers in Taiwan, then leveraged those sales to win customers in Korea, and eventually lined up customers in the United States, Germany and Japan. Depending on the circumstances, the pattern can also operate in reverse and involve starting at the high end and then expanding to the broader market. For example, Tesla Motors Inc. of Palo Alto, California, which designs and manufactures electric cars, decided that selling high-end electric vehicles would promote the sale of electric vehicles in other parts of the market.
Overall, creating a sequence for opportunity capture permits leaders to bring the present and future together in a way that facilitates team alignment and channels the energy and attention of geographically dispersed employees and managers. This helps organizations get into a rhythm and move forward in a synchronized fashion. Sequencing therefore provides an order for opportunity selection (that is, where organizations are now, where they want to go and the path to get there) that serves as a counterpoint to the more freewheeling manner of selecting opportunities based on emergent customer demand. More broadly, the use of sequencing reflects increased cognitive sophistication, as it takes time for individuals to gain insight about how opportunities can and should be ordered. This is perhaps one reason why the use of sequencing seems to occur more in older companies or in companies where founders have greater experience.
Managing the Opportunity Paradox
Leaders who acted more flexibly during opportunity selection (Which problem should we tackle?) tended to be less flexible during opportunity execution (How do we solve the problem?). Conversely, leaders who were more focused during opportunity selection tended to be more flexible in executing those opportunities. Focused selection and flexible execution lead to better outcomes than the reverse. The pattern of flexible opportunity selection leading to lower-performing, less flexible opportunity execution suggests another paradox for companies pursuing new avenues for growth and profitability. While being open to selecting new opportunities based on emergent customer demand appears attractive because it offers the promise of an immediate reward, that very openness may prevent the reward from being realized.6 A key implication for entrepreneurs and managers is that they should be disciplined in seeking to understand the nature of opportunities and linkages among them and then focus their resources on the opportunities that will help them move in a sequenced fashion from their current state to a desired end state.
How to Select Opportunities
At the start of the process, there are a few rules of thumb to guide you in choosing an opportunity. To begin with, resist jumping at the first potential opportunity or customer. Showing restraint may not be easy when cash is limited and the opportunity appears to be reasonable. Nevertheless, it’s important to focus on the longer term rather than the shorter term. What does the right opportunity look like, and how will it set you up for future opportunities? Remember the lessons on sequencing: Try to see if there is an internal sequence to a series of opportunities. Will one opportunity position you for another one? Will this opportunity help you learn about another one? Will it give you the legitimacy to capture future customers? The founders of a digital gaming company applied these criteria when they assessed their opportunities for building their consumer business in Asia. In their case, it meant starting in Japan and then progressively moving to Taiwan and Hong Kong before going after other markets. One founder remarked: “The digital content business is really a consumer business, and looking at Asia’s development for consumer business — whether it’s fashion or electronics or whatever, the trend always starts in Japan and progressively moves to Taiwan and then to Hong Kong and then to the rest of the market. I mean, this trend has been like that for the last 50 years. So when we pushed consumer-based, consumer-oriented digital products, that’s the same thing we did. We started by securing deals in Japan and pushed to the next most obvious market, which is Taiwan. Once [the] consumer products were accepted in Taiwan, then we progressed even more to other markets.”
Second, think about the full portfolio of choices before you, taking into account such criteria as the opportunity size (Is it large enough to be worth your time?); reachability (Does the company have or can it develop capabilities to capture the market?); and competition (How crowded is the field of competitors?). Many managers make the mistake of chasing small opportunities that are not worth the time, big opportunities that are out of reach or moderate opportunities that are too competitive.
Finally, we note that being strategic about which opportunities make the most sense may be particularly important for younger businesses. By considering the unique characteristics of each opportunity and its link to other opportunities, entrepreneurial companies can more easily and rapidly overcome inherent liabilities of newness (such as lack of resources and track record)7 by accumulating experience in a manner that builds on the past, while simultaneously increasing credibility.
How to Execute Opportunities
Once you have selected an opportunity, remember that opportunity execution requires having a flexible, rapid and iterative learning cycle. Therefore, while emphasizing common products and practices is important for capturing efficiencies, too much emphasis on routine actions can make it hard for companies to adapt or to walk away from losing situations in the future. Leaders should begin by designing a series of experiments to test what customers want and then rapidly adjust the offerings to meet their needs. Many of the companies we studied made radical changes to their products and business models (sometimes as significant as changing from selling software to selling hardware or from being content providers to being content resellers) upon entering a new market. Some of the most successful companies walked away from what seemed like an attractive opportunity after their initial experiments. In most cases, successful execution depended on regular interaction with customers and an openness to seeing negative results and adapting, rather than blaming negative results on someone else or firing salespeople.
The Opportunity Audit
How should you proceed if you suspect you have been too opportunistic in selecting new projects and too rigid in executing those opportunities? What should you do in that situation? In our view, you should conduct an opportunity audit built around the following questions:
How did you choose the opportunities you are currently pursuing?
If you could start over, which opportunities would you choose? Which opportunities make the most sense in terms of building a powerful sequence?
What are the results of your current efforts? What excuses have you made for negative results that place the blame externally? What could you be missing by doing this?
If the company were threatened with bankruptcy today, what one opportunity would you keep and which opportunities would you give up?
After answering these questions, don’t be afraid to make substantial changes to what you are doing. Throwing good money after bad is a common trap: People tend to increase their commitment to a failure they feel responsible for when, in fact, the most rational choice may be to simply let it go and adopt a more disciplined process for opportunity selection in the future. Although this may seem counterintuitive, it will help foster the flexibility you will need for opportunity execution.
Although flexibility in opportunity capture is extremely popular these days, few recognize that opportunity capture is a two-phase process involving opportunity selection and opportunity execution. Greater focus and discipline during opportunity selection through sequencing can increase effective flexibility during opportunity execution. By contrast, a lack of discipline in selecting opportunities can result in reduced ability to learn and adapt, which in turn can hurt chances for success. Overall, what appears to be at the core of successful opportunity capture is the intended capture of the expected along with the emergent capture of the unexpected. While the former is more controlled, future-oriented and top-down, the latter is more spontaneous, action-oriented and bottom-up. Moving back and forth between focus and flexibility during opportunity capture allows companies to glean the benefits of efficiency while still allowing room for change.
REFERENCES (7)
1. E. Ries, “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses” (New York: Crown Business, 2011).
2. C.B. Bingham, “Oscillating Improvisation: How Entrepreneurial Firms Create Success in Foreign Market Entries Over Time,” Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 3, no. 4 (December 2009): 321-345.
