Clear, strong, and deliberate decision-making is essential to success in the military world. In the business and marketing world, it’s no less essential. Yet, too many business leaders or owners have a hard time making decisions that affect their business and marketing strategy.
It doesn’t matter if it's a Fortune 500 company marketing team, or, more importantly and more existentially, a small business of just a few people trying to figure out how to survive the year. Marketing strategy requires deliberate choices of who you are and what you do, and, counterintuitively, who you are NOT, and what you do NOT do. Most businesses cannot or have not answered “why do we exist?” The answer is not just about making money; it’s the reason you get out of bed each day, and why you do what you do. It’s what drives you. And, even if your products or services evolve or adapt over time, your “why” should never change (check out Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle).
By not answering that question, they have a hard time answering other questions, like where do we play, what does success actually look like, who are our competitors, how do we tell our story, and, as I mentioned above, how powerful “no” is to a brand strategy.
Every business should be able to answer “we do ___ for ___,” and, “we don’t ___ for ___.” The most powerful sentence in your strategy usually begins with “we don’t.” In fact, “we serve everyone,” feels really safe, and, it makes you basically invisible. Choosing what not to do, where not to play, and what not to offer, is where focus and direction come from. It’s also quite empowering.
When I was a military instructor once upon a time, I had an instructor counterpart who would present students with a difficult scenario while doing field training exercises, and force quick decisions. He would get these future leaders quite flustered when he would lean in close during the stressful moments, and repeat over and over: “What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?” That of course, doesn’t help anyone make decisions, or make it less stressful. And after a few seconds of paralysis, he would then start chanting “Do something. Do something. Do something,” over and over. If they would continue to delay, he would then just start “ending” the lives of teammates.
Why, you might ask, would he do that? The point is, and the lesson to be learned is, wasting valuable time on the battlefield can cost lives and jeopardize the mission. Strong decision making is imperative. It will define you. Inversely, the lack of it will end you.
What do you do that your competition also does? What do you do, that your competition DOES NOT do? That, is how you stand out and become memorable.
