Strategic Alignment...
What is strategic alignment within a business ?
In the context that I'm using these words it relates to the top level strategies that are connected to the marketing continuum and revenue generation. Business, Market, Brand and Communication. These strategies need to be connected and aligned just like a human's spinal cord.
Sometimes it is clear that strategies are misaligned, or, in fact, that one strategy is too prominent in, or completely missing from the day to day actions of finding and attracting the business' desired audience.
How can you tell if you have it ?
Each day you have:
( 1 ) Increasing numbers of people that are newly "aware" of your offer. ( 2 ) Of those people, and the remainder of people that are already aware of your offer, some number of people choose to show "interest" in your offer. ( 3 ) Some subset of your total interested pool choose a "trial sale" of your product or service. And finally, ( 4 ) some subset of your trial sale pool choose to become repeat customers.
This is the outline of the marketing continuum. Awareness, Interest, Trial Sale, Repeat Sale.
If you have strategic alignment you have effective growth. Now there are many other things in play, finance for instance, and an acceptable gross margin. I don't mean, and you certainly shouldn't leave such things out, but for this post I won't cover them today.
What should you do if this isn't happening ?
First, check your offer. Is your product, or service compelling ? "Selling ice cubes to Eskimos" is a cliche, but it is real. Sometimes product / service offers are nice to have, but not need to have. In today's market those are the businesses that are failing, or the product lines that are being discontinued.
Second, check that your internal audience and external audience are not getting confusing and mixed messages.
Assuming you don't have either of these problems, here is what to do next:
Revisit your business strategy ~ is it simple and can you articulate it between floors on an elevator ride. If not fix it.
Refine your market strategy ~ who is the desired audience you are after ? Broad answers are a sure sign of a problem. Get specific. Create some profile sets that include specific demographic and psychographic detail. Men ( or women ) under the age of 35 is NOT a profile it is only a small subset of the information you need.
Refine your brand strategy ~ how does the business walk and talk and look and feel ? You wouldn't go to a professional networking event in a clown suit ~ unless you were hired to, or it was a clown convention ~ so don't make this same mistake with your business identity and voice.
Refine your communication strategy ~ where is you desired audience hanging out ? Ads at the local bus stop alone won't help if your audience is primarily online.
I'm using broad, quick examples to get you started. This doesn't have to be a hard, difficult process and it doesn't take along time. Lastly, these things need to be continually monitored and tweaked to ensure that you are at the top of your game and that your desired audience has you top of mind.
