The official blog of Ignition Consulting Group
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-Positioning Strategy-
Advertising agencies are facing competition from every dimension and direction. Upstream, they complete with marketing consultancies and brand strategy firms who seek to provide planning and strategy services to marketers. Downstream are production companies, independent freelancers, and even media companies who now aim to not just sell media but produce content. Traditional agencies are arguably in the worst place of all – right in the middle …
When describing your firm to a prospective client, it’s easy (and arguably lazy) to run down a list of all the things you do. But do you have the ability and willingness to say what you don’t do; the services you don’t offer and the markets you don’t serve? You can claim to have a focused business strategy only if you’re able to describe what your strategy is not …
Have you ever had the frustrating experience of trying to execute a “multi-pronged strategy?” It never goes well for the simple reason that a strategy with multiple prongs isn’t a strategy at all — it’s just a wish list. By definition, you can’t have multiple priorities. You can’t win a battle if you send your army off marching in multiple directions, and you can’t have a winning positioning strategy if it is constructed like a Swiss army knife …
Unless your firm has a business strategy that is crystal clear to every single associate, you are likely wasting valuable resources supporting multiple competing directions. Agencies that work in many different business segments not only lack deep expertise in any one of them, they are also obliged to devote talent and money in many dissimilar directions . . .
It’s been said that new business is a numbers game, but the most successful agencies focus their talents in areas where they have a clear advantage and pass on everything else. Agencies who have chosen a clear area of focus don’t have to “sell” much at all. They’re so well positioned that prospects actively seek them out. …
Have you experienced the “life-changing magic of tidying up” your residence? Such is the promise of the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing. The same exact principles apply to your business strategy. A firm that attempts to serve a broad swath of markets with a “complete” set of offerings has a cluttered business strategy …
While most firms are busy trying to be better than last year, truly outstanding firms are also investing in being different. Doing good work, by itself, is usually not enough to make your firm stand out. Uniqueness is discretionary …
Even if you have a “strategic plan,” you may not have a strategy. Creating a comprehensive 30-slide “plan” is comparably when contrasted with the critical thinking needed to craft a bona fide strategy. A plan can be (and usually is) fairly long, whereas a good strategy is short. The counterintuitive truth about business strategy is that it’s mostly about deciding what not to do …
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Do you perform an annual assessment of your firm’s strengths and weaknesses? Most of the firms in this habit have a similar way of interpreting the results: breeze right past the strengths and instead focus laser-like on the weaknesses. In extreme cases, managers ignore the findings about strengths altogether and quite literally obsess about the weaknesses. This is precisely the wrong reaction …
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If it feels like you’re in an unrelenting race for new business, competing against agencies offering similar services in a similar way, there’s an easy way out: stop offering similar services. If you shake off the self-imposed shackles of “high utilization,” you give permission to your team to develop their ideas for services and products that can fill the unmet needs of clients. You can fly in the blue skies where no one else is flying …
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Most executives take great pride in showing off a long list of services and clients. Somehow they feel it is an indicator of their experience and competence. But most prospective clients have the opposite reaction. Just like the restaurant that insists on putting everything on their menu, the professional services firm that stands for everything ends up looking like they stand for nothing …
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If your firm uses the term “full service” on its website, here are two good reasons you should stop. First, “full service” is one of the phrases that has officially joined the lexicon of expressions so overused they’ve lost their meaning. And second, because it does absolutely nothing to differentiate your firm from the thousands of others who make the same claim …
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Like all humans, we business executives are subject to what behaviorists call “confirmation bias.” Nowhere is this dynamic displayed more prominently than in professionals’ perception of how well their firm is differentiated from rivals. Just because some competitive differences exist within your company, they really don’t matter if no one else outside of your own board room perceives them. You’re much less differentiated than you think you are …
What are the key criteria you use when looking for prospective clients? More importantly, what criteria are your key prospects using when they’re looking for you? All too often, agencies default to the same criteria almost all other (unfocused) agencies use, which is usually some combination of “Do they have money?,” “Do we like these guys?,” and “Will they let us do good work?” All fine, but this is a woefully unfocused definition of a target client …
Despite decades of books and literature supporting the importance and value of a clear, well-defined focus, most business firms persist in trying to be a little bit of everything to everyone. These organizations not only lack an understanding of strategy (deciding what you are not), but actively resist the idea of focusing on a select number of competencies or markets …
