Write Your Brand’s Obituary

  by Denise Lee Yohn

What would happen if your company ceased to exist? 

Would journalists write headlines heralding your past achievements, or would their stories simply add you to a list of bygones?  Would analysts express disappointment or would they point to indicators that made your death predictable? Would employees wonder how it could have ended, or would they have known it was inevitable? Would customers mourn your passing, or would the demise of your brand go unnoticed?

Thousands of companies come and go every year, barely leaving a trace of their existence. Even many large corporations are easily forgotten — like those in the airline industry. Remember TWA?  Once the largest domestic airline, TWA introduced many ground-breaking developments and embodied the glamour of air travel. But hit by the pressures of de-regulation, the airline suffered through bankruptcies and was eventually acquired by American Airlines, which quickly discarded the brand name. In my home town of St. Louis, TWA went from dominating the airport to a fleeting memory in just a decade.  By the end, the value of the TWA brand had diminished only to the route it flew – which were easily replaced.

Compare that to what would happen if Southwest closed its doors. Or Singapore Airlines. Or Virgin America.  These companies have built powerful brands that would be seriously missed if they ceased operations.  Who would give us the freedom and fun that Southwest is known for? Who would pamper us and attend to our every need like Singapore does? Who would design the travel experience with Virgin America’s combination of service and style?

How do you build the kind of brand that would be missed? How do you carve out such a distinctive position and create such a powerful emotional connection? You drill down to the core of your existence to identify the essential, enduring value of your brand – and then you design and run your business to execute relentlessly on that core brand essence. When what you stand for is clearly expressed and delivered in everything you do, every day, you make an indelible mark on people’s hearts and minds.

Being crystal clear about your brand essence is critical. Some organizations enjoy that clarity, but for those that don’t, there are several ways to achieve it.  One is an exercise I often use with my clients: writing a Brand Obituary.

It’s not the most pleasant thought, but it focuses the mind to imagine what it would be like if indeed your brand ceased to exist.

In this exercise, it helps to think of your brand as though it were a person — the type of person the brand would be if it came to life today. I ask my clients to think of their brand in its totality, as all that the brand entails — and on its best days, when it’s executing with excellence.

Pretend that you are a reporter for a local newspaper who must write the obituary for this person, your brand, who just passed away today. This invented scenario can help you uncover the true nature of your brand.

Here are some questions to answer in the What would happen if your company ceased to exist? 

Would journalists write headlines heralding your past achievements, or would their stories simply add you to a list of bygones?  Would analysts express disappointment or would they point to indicators that made your death predictable? Would employees wonder how it could have ended, or would they have known it was inevitable? Would customers mourn your passing, or would the demise of your brand go unnoticed?

Thousands of companies come and go every year, barely leaving a trace of their existence. Even many large corporations are easily forgotten — like those in the airline industry. Remember TWA?  Once the largest domestic airline, TWA introduced many ground-breaking developments and embodied the glamour of air travel. But hit by the pressures of de-regulation, the airline suffered through bankruptcies and was eventually acquired by American Airlines, which quickly discarded the brand name. In my home town of St. Louis, TWA went from dominating the airport to a fleeting memory in just a decade.  By the end, the value of the TWA brand had diminished only to the route it flew – which were easily replaced.

Compare that to what would happen if Southwest closed its doors. Or Singapore Airlines. Or Virgin America.  These companies have built powerful brands that would be seriously missed if they ceased operations.  Who would give us the freedom and fun that Southwest is known for? Who would pamper us and attend to our every need like Singapore does? Who would design the travel experience with Virgin America’s combination of service and style?

How do you build the kind of brand that would be missed? How do you carve out such a distinctive position and create such a powerful emotional connection? You drill down to the core of your existence to identify the essential, enduring value of your brand – and then you design and run your business to execute relentlessly on that core brand essence. When what you stand for is clearly expressed and delivered in everything you do, every day, you make an indelible mark on people’s hearts and minds.

Being crystal clear about your brand essence is critical. Some organizations enjoy that clarity, but for those that don’t, there are several ways to achieve it.  One is an exercise I often use with my clients: writing a Brand Obituary.

It’s not the most pleasant thought, but it focuses the mind to imagine what it would be like if indeed your brand ceased to exist.

In this exercise, it helps to think of your brand as though it were a person — the type of person the brand would be if it came to life today. I ask my clients to think of their brand in its totality, as all that the brand entails — and on its best days, when it’s executing with excellence.

Pretend that you are a reporter for a local newspaper who must write the obituary for this person, your brand, who just passed away today. This invented scenario can help you uncover the true nature of your brand.

Here are some questions to answer in the obituary:

• What was the brand’s biggest accomplishment in life? What will it be remembered for?
• Who did the brand leave behind?  What did the brand leave unaccomplished?  Who will mourn or miss the brand, and why?
• What lessons can be learned from the brand’s life?  What can be learned in the wake of its death?
• Now that the brand is gone, what will take its place?

Once you’ve completed the column, write a headline to capture the essence of the obituary – that headline, in turn, often captures the essence of your brand.

I often instruct members of the executive team, or a cross-functional group, to write their obituaries individually and then share them with the group in a working session. As the columns are shared aloud, there is usually some discomfort (talking about the brand’s demise is understandably not a desirable activity), but there are always moments of revelation. Common themes emerge and people start to see their purpose, their core beliefs, and what sets the brand apart with great clarity. From that point, the brand essence is just a few pen strokes away.

Positive thinking is powerful and envisioning success is a popular exercise among athletes and executives alike.  But sometimes taking the opposite approach can be just as important. By imagining a future without your brand, you can create one in which it thrives and makes an impression that is exceptional, sustainable, and memorable.:

• What was the brand’s biggest accomplishment in life? What will it be remembered for?
• Who did the brand leave behind?  What did the brand leave unaccomplished?  Who will mourn or miss the brand, and why?
• What lessons can be learned from the brand’s life?  What can be learned in the wake of its death?
• Now that the brand is gone, what will take its place?

Once you’ve completed the column, write a headline to capture the essence of the obituary – that headline, in turn, often captures the essence of your brand.

I often instruct members of the executive team, or a cross-functional group, to write their obituaries individually and then share them with the group in a working session. As the columns are shared aloud, there is usually some discomfort (talking about the brand’s demise is understandably not a desirable activity), but there are always moments of revelation. Common themes emerge and people start to see their purpose, their core beliefs, and what sets the brand apart with great clarity. From that point, the brand essence is just a few pen strokes away.

Positive thinking is powerful and envisioning success is a popular exercise among athletes and executives alike.  But sometimes taking the opposite approach can be just as important. By imagining a future without your brand, you can create one in which it thrives and makes an impression that is exceptional, sustainable, and memorable.

Seven Roads of Innovation-Based Growth

Anthony Mills

Founder & CEO, Legacy Innovation Group | Accelerating Growth Through Strategic Innovation

Most businesses are in need of finding new ways to grow. It might be a matter of finding new markets, even creating new markets, or just finding new space in your current markets through new technology and products. It doesn’t matter which of these it is, the pressure is always the same. And it’s unrelenting.

Given a business environment characterized by rapid change and global economies, the best ways to find growth at a scale that has strategic significance is through innovation.

There are seven ways your business can pursue growth that is rooted in innovation. I refer to these as “roads” because they connect your business from where it is today (“point A”) to where it wants to be tomorrow (“Point B”). The first five of these represent forms of organic growth; the latter two represent forms of inorganic growth. These are each explained briefly below.

It should be noted that none of these roads are mutually exclusive. Your business can pursue as many of them concurrently as it desires to, so long as its ability to manage them is kept in consideration.

ROAD #1 – PRODUCT INNOVATION & BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION

Your company launches innovative new offerings within its current markets.

This is generally a case of either product innovation or business model innovation. In both cases you are leveraging the fundamental elements of innovation – empathy, creativity, and delivery – to deliver new value and experiences to your markets. You may brand these under existing brands if there is a good fit, or you may launch entirely new brands to best capture and convey the essence of the new value proposition.

In the case of product innovation, this is done simply with a new configuration of your existing technologies and products. The new products will typically have a different set of attributes and performance characteristics when compared to your existing products. The innovations they represent are typically incremental or moderate. A product innovation requires product development work. The technological risk tends to be low and the commercial risk moderate.

In the case of business model innovation, this is done by establishing new ways of delivering value and experiences, such as rental, lease, and service models in lieu of ownership models. Often these types of innovation work because they redistribute the time, effort, and/or costs associated with product consumption or service receipt. These types of innovation are often moderate to disruptive. A business model innovation requires business model design work. The technological risk tends to be low, but the commercial risk may be moderate to high.

Also buried deeper into this space are methods like process innovation, design innovation, brand innovation, and packaging innovation. All of these tend to serve the same purpose of bringing innovative new offerings to your existing markets.

ROAD #2 – TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION

Your company incorporates innovative new technologies into its products for sale within its current markets.

This is a case of technology innovation, where you find new technologies – developed either by internal R&D resources or sourced externally for the sake of expedience and expense (aka open innovation) – to deliver new value and experiences to your markets. Typically, the resulting products will have new functionality, new attributes, and markedly different performance characteristics. Sometimes they are simpler and lower-performing than your prototypical products, but cost substantially less, allowing you to sell significantly more of them and potentially into new channels that you previously had no access to (bordering on market innovation). These innovations may be incremental, moderate, or in some cases disruptive. A technology innovation requires technology development and/or technology scouting work.

While the commercial risk tends to be low to moderate, the technological risk can be high. The commercial risk can elevate if the technology does not deliver on the market’s core needs, or does more harm than good, as immature technologies sometimes do.

ROAD #3 – MARKET INNOVATION

Your company enters entirely new markets with its current products (perhaps slightly reconfigured).

We call this market innovation. In this case, you are delivering new value and experiences to a particular market that are better than what that market previously had access to. Thus, your offering is not new to the world, or even new to your company, but it is new to this particular market. As a result, the technological risk tends to be low so long as your technology meets this market’s needs. The commercial risk may be quite high however given the unknowns from both sides and the need to actuate your brand in this new market.

A market innovation requires market development work, which often begins withmarket scouting to identify the best potential markets to enter into. The market development work can either be straightforward or very complex, depending upon how different the new market is from your existing markets, and how many new market channels must be cultivated. Market innovations tend to be incremental or moderate, but in some cases do prove disruptive when the value proposition they bring is substantially better than that of the existing offerings.

ROAD #4 – CATEGORY INNOVATION

Your company creates an entirely new market by creating an entirely new product category.

We call this category innovation. It involves the development and commercialization of entirely new categories of products that do entirely new and/or different things. It always involves a new synthesis of pre-existing technologies, and in some cases involves the development of new technology or the adoption and rescaling of technology from a different application.

These new product categories often cannibalize the sales of some other product category because they, at least in part, do the same things in a better way or at a lower price. Thus they are replacements for something else, though customers often end up owning and using both categories, at least for some period of time. Despite the potential cannibalization of one’s own existing products, category innovations tend to be accretive in the balance of things, boosting total sales revenues when compared to foregoing the category. This is particularly true over the long run, where the chances of a competitor being the first to launch the new category can be high.

A category innovation requires category development work, which is much like rolling technology development, product development, and market development work all into one endeavor. While they do not always demand a new brand, they often involve one, depending on how the business wishes to leverage its brands. With most category developments, the technological risk will be moderate to high and the commercial risk will almost always be high, though sometimes good market insight data can identify cases where the commercial risk is low.

ROAD #5 – SPIN-OUT VENTURING

Your company launches its own (fully-owned) startup company in order to deliver any one of the above innovations in rapid fashion while building a new brand.

This is a type of corporate venturing called a spin-out. It is often based on a new technology, product, or category that has been developed and is best commercialized under a new brand that fits better than existing brands. Or it is aimed at a different market than the parent organization currently operates in. What the new venture company brings is a different set of organizational gating processes for commercialization, which generally results in getting to market faster. Also, should the venture fail, it protects existing brands from the associated fall-out.

Spin-outs typically involve high risks, both technological and commercial, and they can involve large capital outlays. At the same time, they offer potentially high returns as well as a mechanism for risk management by protecting existing brands from damage should a fall-out occur. They typically represent moderate to disruptive innovations.

ROAD #6 – SPIN-IN VENTURING

Your company invests in outside new ventures in order to leverage fresh new thinking about how to best deliver value to your markets.

This is a type of corporate venturing called a spin-in. Its objective is to gain access to new business models from fresh thinkers who are not saddled with preconceived notions of how your market should work and operate. These always involve a new and different brand (at least until they prove their efficacy and stability, at which time they tend to be absorbed into the mother brand). Like a spin-out, these ventures move into and through markets faster because they are not subject to big-brand organizational gating requirements. Also like a spin-out, should they fail they protect existing brands from any associated fall-out.

Spin-ins generally present high risks, both technological and commercial, and can involve large capital investments depending on the stage of growth the venture has reached. The potential returns can be very high however. They almost always represent moderate to disruptive innovations.

ROAD #7 – INNOVATION ACQUISITION

Your company acquires another business – perhaps a competitor or a mature upstart – that brings with it new innovations.

This is the classic M&A strategy, except that in this case you are explicitly looking to acquire a mature business that brings with it certain specific innovations, whether they be product, technology, business-model, market, or category, relative to what your existing business is capable of. We call this an innovation acquisition. It represents the most rapid path to significant growth (since it includes an established sales base), but it also carries with it the largest capital investment of all the options. The M&A process itself may be straightforward or complex, depending on how well the acquired organization can merge into the acquiring organization culturally and operationally.

At the very least, the innovations gained here are those the acquired business brings to the table (including whatever IP protections it has secured). On top of this however, it is sometimes the case that by acquiring a particular business the acquirer is now able to leverage knowledge, technologies, and products to pursue new market innovations in markets neither company was previously operating in. Whenever that is the case, it adds an additional multiplier to the investment’s return, though it also increases the level of investment required.

Because the acquired business tends to be mature and stable, both the technological and the commercial risks tend to be low. The exception to this is when the business being acquired is distressed, which tends to bring with it numerous commercial risks requiring remediation. There is also the risk of operational slowdown during the merger process if the merger is not a good fit or is not well managed.

*******

These are the seven roads of innovation-based growth. Each company will need to establish its own growth and innovation objectives in order to determine the roads that are right for it.

The final consideration to be made is that if a company is to benefit from any of these over the long haul, it must rethink its strategies, cultures, processes, and workplaces to become proficient at using innovation effectively to continue driving its growth into the future. This is particularly true if the company has any aspirations of becoming and remaining a market leader.

Authentic Leadership: 5 Key Elements to Lead with Authenticity

Izabela Lundberg, M.S.

Global Business & Leadership Consultant | Fortune 500 Speaker & Facilitator 

WHAT IS Authentic Leadership and why is it so important? In my humble opinion, authentic leadership is demonstrated through pure heart-led and centered on genuine, self-aware, mission and value driven leadership. Simply put, as you meet, speak and listen with thousands of wide ranging leaders and influencers over the years, you start to recognize special patterns and common traits over and over.

Further, you start to identify with that authentic voice, style and synergy within your own authenticity. It is magical because you can be a unique, valuable and tremendously impactful and authentic version of yourself among other authentic leaders.

"Yes, in all my research, the greatest leaders looked inward and were able to tell a good story with authenticity and passion.” ~ Deepak Chopra

Today as I am writing this post, I want to not only emphasize the importance of authentic leadership, but also to honor some exceptional role models of authentic leadership in your life too. Beside well known and recognized names such us Oprah, Stephen Covey, John Maxwell, Mahatma Gandhi, please think about people in your life that consistently demonstrate their authentic leadership and what impact they have had on your life.

Five Key Elements of Authentic Leadership:

1. Behaving and Breathing Authentic Leadership 24/7 – "Leadership is not your business suit that you wear only while at work. It is who you are 24/7!” ~Izabela Lundberg

Anyone who thinks that leadership is performance and show it only while they are in open and visible settings, may be wondering why it is so hard to create synergy with others or why employees or partners do not trust or like them. If you can’t be authentic and true to yourself, it will show in so many places that sooner or later it will make you tired, inconsistent and very hard to trust and follow.

2. Walk the Talk – You are ready to take risks and responsibilities for your own actions as well as your team! If things are challenging and difficult, that is the time to shine. As one of my mentors JR shared with me so many times, “You find out who true leaders are not in the oasis (when things are good) but in the dessert!” It is amazing when you see consistency of quality in a person and extraordinary leadership from them during the worst times of their life. Integrity is demonstrated regardless if they are on the bottom (things aren’t going so well) or on top (everything is working perfectly)! To me these are perfect examples of great role models that we can learn so much.

3. Demonstrate Consistently Shared Values & Integrity – If you are demonstrating these values especially during challenging times with integrity, your employees, partners and vendors will not only respect you more, but also work with you to find optimal solution! Wow – this is so powerful! It is time to wake up world and assess your game plan and strategy.

4. Allow Others to Take the Lead – By allowing smart and capable team members at times to lead and coach us, it can be tremendously impactful, timely and relevant!We can’t always be right nor can we know everything. The moment we stop learning – we stop growing as a leader.

5. Know When & How to Authentically Influence & Impact – Creating High Levels of Engagement and Support by Leading with Value! That is a very simple concept yet very powerful when accomplished. Most recently I experienced a high level of engagement, value and support through BIZCATALYST360° under the authentic leadership of Dennis Pitocco. In less then two years he has managed to grow his global network on Linkedin by building a professional Group audience of more than 50 thousand members in over 137 countries. Why? How? By positively influencing and impacting others as well as allowing other thought leaders to share the stage with him to make it happen!

Learn. Lead. Love.

Game on! ~ Izabela Lundberg

14 Alternatives to Google Analytics

OCTOBER 26, 2014 • SIG UELANDin

Analytics platforms are essential for merchants to glean insight into what drives their traffic. Google Analytics is the popular choice, but there are many other analytics tools available.

Here is a list of analytics tools to help you collect and measure your customer data. Some of these applications are general analytics programs, akin to Google Analytics, to quantify traffic. Other applications look at specific aspects of the customer and should be used in conjunction with a general analytics program.

Piwik

Piwik.

Piwik is an open source, web analytics solution that’s self-hosted. It provides detailed reports on your website and its visitors, including the search engines and keywords they used, the language they speak, which pages they like, the files they download and more. Piwik offers real-time web analytics reports, historical comparisons, and geolocation data. Piwik also has mobile apps for iOS and Android. Price: Free.

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KISSmetrics

KISSmetrics.

KISSmetrics is an analytics tool that focuses on tracking your visitors, their actions, and origins. With data tied to people, you can obtain the conversion rate from initial visit all the way to purchase, even if it takes six months and multiple visits. Get the conversion rate between any two events for your business. See your lifetime value, average revenue per user, and churn rates. KISSmetrics is all about helping you to optimize your conversion rate by discovering your most lucrative referral sources. Price: Plans start at $179 per month.

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Clicky

Clicky.

Clicky lets you see every visitor and every action she takes on your website, with the option to attach custom data to visitors, such as usernames or email addresses. In addition to standard per-page heatmaps, Clicky also lets you view heatmaps for individual visitor sessions. Set up alerts to be notified of conversions, campaign visitors, logged-in visitors, and more. Price: Free version available. Premium plans start at $9.99.

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Woopra

Woopra.

Woopra is another platform for measuring your customer with real-time analytics. With a profile for each user, track each user’s activity, including website, mobile app, email, help desk and live chat. Leverage data with customer segments that update in real-time. Build funnel reports and compare different customer segments to understand why leads don’t convert. Retention reports help to understand if users are engaged enough to keep coming back. Price: Plans start at $79.95 per month.

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Open Web Analytics

Open Web Analytics.

Open Web Analytics (OWA) is an open source, web analytics program that you can use to track and analyze how people use your websites and applications. OWA was born out of the need for an open source framework that could be used to easily add web analytics features to web sites and applications. OWA includes a plugin to seamlessly integrate with WordPress and includes a number of WordPress specific features for tracking visitors. Price: Free.

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FoxMetrics

FoxMetrics.

FoxMetrics is a real-time analytics platform to track actionable data that matters to your business. You can record events from any application that supports HTTP requests, such as your website, and mobile and desktop applications. Work with the data from within your dashboard, creating segments, funnels, ad-hoc reports, real-time drill downs, and more. As a compliment to its platform, FoxMetrics encourages the use of traditional page view analytics tools, such as Google Analytics. Price: Plans start at $20 per month.

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ClickTale

ClickTale.

ClickTale provides you with on-demand session playbacks of individual customers. Understand how visitors experience your site with four different heatmaps: mouse move, click, attention, and scroll-reach. Get statistics for every page element in your heatmap. Receive in-form analytics to discover which fields are left blank and why visitors leave. Increase the conversion rate of your forms and funnels with session playback. Price: Contact for pricing.

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Mint

Mint.

Mint is a self-hosted website analytics program. Break down visits, referrers, searches, pages, popular or recent content, and browser families. Check activity from the past day, week, month, and year. Reveal feed subscription patterns, ideal design dimensions, and more. Price: $30 one-time fee.

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GoingUp!

GoingUp!

GoingUp! is a solution that combines website analytics and SEO tools. Get your traffic trend analysis, referring keywords, heat maps, recent visitor locations, inbound link monitoring, Google PageRank, and Alexa Rank tracking, all in one place. Price: Free.

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Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg.

Crazy Egg is a heatmaps-only analytics tool. To use Crazy Egg, place a small piece of JavaScript code on your site pages. Once the code is on your site, Crazy Egg tracks user behavior and creates reports that show you the clicks on the pages you’re tracking. Price: Plans start at $9 per month.

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Mouseflow

Mouseflow.

Mouseflow is a recording tool to capture all visitor mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and keystrokes to understand the behavior of your customers. Use heatmaps and in-page analytics to quantify visitor behavior. Get average page size, rendering time, number of clicks, hover and click stats for site links, and more. Price: Free plan offers 100 recorded sessions. Paid plans start at $19 per month.

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Chartbeat

Chartbeat.

Chartbeat is a simple real-time tool to find out who’s on your website and what they’re doing. Chartbeat gives you engagement metrics, traffic breakdowns, and social network monitoring. Chartbeat also offers an advanced platform for heavy content sites with larger editorial teams.Price: Plans start at $9.95 per month.

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GoSquared

GoSquared.

GoSquared is focused on providing real-time customer analytics in an elegant, functional and intuitive design. GoSquared believes businesses will connect with more customers in more meaningful ways if they can easily access and take action on their data. Get one-click access to trends data and instant insight into ecommerce performance. Price: Plans start at $18 per month.

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Moz Analytics

Moz.

Moz Analytics is a tool to measure your search, social, brand, and content marketing. Moz Analytics tracks the performance of all your inbound marketing efforts on one platform, then shows you the relationships between your content, SEO, social activity, brand mentions, and inbound links. Moz doesn’t measure your traffic, so this is an analytics tool to use in conjunction with a general traffic application like Google Analytics. Price: $99 per month.

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8 Keys to a Successful Digital Marketing Plan

July 3rd, 2014 by Scott Lambert

If you’re a business owner or marketer, you understand the importance of setting business goals such as revenue growth, sales objectives, cost of customer acquisition and improving lead generation efforts.

When it comes to crafting a comprehensive digital marketing plan, strategic planning is no less important. Although every firm is different, yours can benefit from these eight keys to success.

1. Set Constructive Goals for Your Business

A decade ago, it might have been enough just to have a website with your company’s name and logo on it. That’s not enough anymore. It’s critical to accompany the development of your website with a set of clear, quantitative goals for attracting visitors, converting them to leads and nurturing them until they are sales ready to be closed as customers.

2. Develop a Digital Blueprint

Before you start implementing your marketing goals, you’ll need a blueprint designed to take you from start to finish. The design of this blueprint will depend on the nature of your business goals and the challenges and the needs of your ideal target audience or persona. As with any blueprint, it includes several critical components that need to be effectively identified and implemented to position your company as the competitive digital force in your industry.

3. Craft a Compelling Value Proposition

You have just a few seconds online to communicate why your ideal target audience should do business with you. Everyone says their products are great. Everyone says their service is outstanding. No one believes that. You need a credible compelling value proposition to keep them interested.

4. Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is the key component of a successful digital marketing plan. After developing your company’s buyer personas, identify the information they need the most to help them through the buying cycle stages of Interest, Consideration and Decision. You need to identify the types and delivery modes of content that will compel them to engage with your company through each stage in order to become a customer.

5. Perfect Your Call to Action

You can’t sell if you don’t close. To complement your content portfolio and reinforce your value proposition, create a call to action (CTA) that compels your website visitors to convert. Ensure that it sticks by incorporating it into your website’s design and landing pages. Make sure you follow up with a Thank-You Page or tangible offer (i.e. free consultation, downloadable white paper, etc.)

6. Conduct a Competitive Analysis

Understanding your competitive marketplace is vital to knowing how to position yourself in comparison with your competitors. Therefore, conduct a competitive analysis that measures your market as well as your company’s relative strengths and weaknesses as compared to your competitors. You might even find some competitors you didn’t know you had.

7. Identify Operational Impacts on Your Firm

Determine how your digital outreach strategy will impact the workload and performance of each of your firm’s departments. The best strategies seamlessly incorporate sales, business development, product and service delivery, and support to maximize conversions and Return-on-Investment (ROI).

8. Measure Your Performance

As they always say, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. With a bevy of digital analytic tools at your fingertips, it’s possible to assess the performance of every piece of your marketing plan. If you can remain disciplined, you’ll be able to determine over time what’s working and what’s not. It’s best to use a platform that pulls all of your performance activity together.

Tying It All Together

If this all seems a bit overwhelming, you’re not alone. Every business is different, and the manner in which you employ these tips will be unique to your company’s needs. That said, one thing is clear: In an increasingly crowded online landscape, a comprehensive digital marketing plan will help your company stand out.