Tag Archive for: Strategy

Perry Fagan

What Is Corporate Strategy?

Newport Interactive Marketers took a broader approach to its usual new-media focus to welcome Harvard Business School’s approach to developing a strategy for your brand.

NEW STRATEGY GROUP Founder P. Lawrence Fagan earned an MBA from HarvardNEW STRATEGY GROUP Founder P. Lawrence FaganBusiness School, where he spent 11 years researching corporate and organization strategy, six years as a member of the HBS research faculty.

While at HBS, Mr. Fagan contributed to the development of a general theory of organizations and authored numerous business case studies, several of them bestsellers. Subsequently, he worked nine years as a strategy leader causing breakthroughs for clients in diverse industries and geographies with Monitor Company, HBS Executive Education, the Corporate Learning division of Harvard Business Publishing, and independently.

What Is Corporate Strategy?

Strategy is an integrated set of choices an enterprise makes to create a unique and valuable position in market space.

Unfortunately, employees seldom know or understand the corporate strategy.

A study in Australia found that 70% of the company doesn’t “get it” when their CEO talks about strategy.

According to Fagan, we are living in strategy’s dark age.  We are so busy with daily tasks that we don’t see the big picture and to develop something that is effective. You must see the big picture.

 10 Fatal Misconceptions About Strategy

  1. Striving to be the best
  2. Strategy is goal-setting
  3. Strategy is innovation
  4. Being all things to all people
  5. It’s  your boss’ problem
  6. Strategy is secret
  7. Only abstract
  8. It’s academic
  9. Having one doesn’t matter, execution does
  10. It’s a form of measurement

Strategy and Purpose Are Not the Same

  • Purpose: Our call to action
  • Values: Our beliefs and code of conduct
  • Vision: The immediate future we are creating for the company
  • Strategy: The choices we make to build unique and valuable positioning in our markets, enabling us to win.
  • Metrics: How we track the performance

The Universal Structure 

  • A goal that is singular, time-delimited
  • A clear advantage to customers, in specific geographies with a winning proposition
  • Activity Set – degree of vertical integration, interlinked activities

The Key to Strategy

  • If you can’t turn a goal to action, it doesn’t exist
  • You must offer something unique and different: If you’re for everybody, you’re for nobody
  • You’ve identified a set of problems on customers’  behalf and owning those problems for them – that’s the key!

How to Be Different

  • You must always be different. Different in ways that matter to your target customers.
  • Deliver reliably on your offering. Don’t say one thing and deliver another. Be reliably different.

 What Is Your Winning Proposition?

What is uniquely yours to say?

Paint a portrait to the customer to articulate your value proposition.

For example, what is the unique winning proposition of Coke Zero?

First, determine Coke Zero’s unique qualities and the target audience.

    • Zero calories
    • For people who like Coke
    • Dieting, health conscious

Now, craft your unique winning proposition Only Coke Zero gives you zero calories with the same great taste.

Don’t miss monthly #NIMRI gatherings.

Perry Fagan

Capture the Creative Power of Strategy

Newport Interactive Marketers took a broader approach to its usually new media focus to welcome Harvard Business School’s approach to developing a strategy for your brand. New Strategy Group Founder, Perry Fagan, gave his top tips on how to develop an effective company strategy including how to:

  • Articulate and clarify your own organization’s strategy
  • Identify your unique selling proposition (USP) for target customers
  • Get what strategy is — and what it is not — and how good strategy is created

Meet Perry Lawrence Fagan

Perry Fagan
NEW STRATEGY GROUP Founder P. Lawrence Fagan earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. There he spent 11 years researching corporate and organization strategy, six years as a member of the HBS research faculty.

While at HBS, Mr. Fagan contributed to the development of a general theory of organizations. Also, he authored numerous business case studies, several of them bestsellers. Subsequently, he worked for nine years as a strategy leader causing breakthroughs for clients in diverse industries and geographies. These include Monitor Company, HBS Executive Education, the Corporate Learning division of Harvard Business Publishing, and independently.

Missed this great talk? Learn more about video & visuals and more via the NIM media library!

Become a NIM $upporting member, if you aren’t already, for access to the vast video library of past presentations and watch from your device at your convenience.

Ana Raynes gives tips on how to improve social media strategy through things like outreach and social engagement.

More Social Media Agency Secrets

Newport Interactive Marketers hosted Ana Maria Raynes, a social media specialist at Inceptor, to educate small business owners on how to improve their social media strategy.

With Raynes’ tips, the audience learned how to:

  • Deliver beyond Facebook with Influencer Campaigns
  • Utilize Google Plus and its applications (Google Hangouts, Google Circles)
  • Track social media outreach using free tools
  • Understand social engagement has ROI

Aside from providing “techy” information, Raynes’ talk gave small business owners insight on social branding and customer relationship management.

Meet Ana Raynes

Ana Raynes gives tips on how to improve social media strategy through things like outreach and social engagement.
A native of Colombia, educated in fashion design at the London College of Fashion, @StylinAna has a honed her talent for following trends and introducing new concepts.

Previously Ana was responsible for social media and information technology at the internet fashion startup “Smart Is Cool”. Also, she was featured in Glamour Magazine, appeared on FOX Strategy Room, and toured the East Coast as a motivational speaker for young girls alongside the nonprofit Girls Take Charge.

Since Smart Is Cool, she has worked in social media at New York and Boston agencies. As Inceptor’s social media manager, Ana focuses on clients’ strategic social media planning, blogger relations, and identifying news, trends, and best practices. Based in Boston, Inceptor is a Didit company.

Missed this great talk? Learn more about video & visuals and more via the NIM media library!

Become a NIM $upporting member for access to the vast video library of past presentations and watch at your convenience.

JayMurphy

Analyzing Analytics, with Google!

#NIMR hosted CEO and Managing Director Jay Murphy of Trionia, Inc to learn how Google Analytics works.

Through the instruction provided by Murphy and NIM, the audience learned how to:

  • Add and use Google Analytics
  • Interpret results from Google Analytics
  • Make solid business decisions from the data

Attendees were asked to think of questions prior to the event about Google Analytics. Also, how to attract more traffic to their business. Murphy’s expertise extends from social media strategy and search engine optimization to website development and analytics.

Meet Jay Murphy

JayMurphy
Jay works with large and mid-sized organizations to successfully convert business imperatives to effective online marketing results by delivering analytics, website development, social media strategy, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and display advertising all optimized with measurable results.  Additionally, he is the founder of Trionia, Inc., and has worked with GE, Raytheon and Janus Mutual Funds. He previously worked at Sapient Corporation as a director of program management and led projects in a variety of industries including financial services, energy, and higher education. Also, Jay holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Northeastern University and an M.S. in Electric Engineering from Tufts University.  He received a Draper Fellowship to attend Tufts University and took doctoral level coursework at MIT in Aerospace Engineering.

Missed this great talk? Learn more about video & visuals and more via the NIM media library!

Become a NIM $upporting member, if you aren’t already, for access to the vast video library of past presentations and watch from your device at your convenience.

2nd Annual Social Media Social: Through the Eyes of the Professional

Newport Interactive Marketers attended the University of Rhode Island Public Relations Society’s 2nd Annual Social Media Social. The event began with a panel of professionals, who discussed the topic in the agency setting–how to manage campaigns, how to build a strategy for paying clients, and how to track ROI–followed by networking.

Panelists:

Moderator: Adam David Roth, Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at URI

Sponsored by the Harrington School of Communications and Media and the URI Communication Studies Department

Missed this great talk? Learn more about video & visuals and more via the NIM media library!

Become a NIM $upporting member, if you aren’t already, for access to the vast video library of past presentations and watch from your device at your convenience.

Newport Interactive Marketers: Increase Sales With a Revenue Coach

Revenue Coach Shares Proven Strategies to Increase Sales

Let’s look at our websites and social media from a proven sales perspective. Revenue Coach and author Kristin Zhivago helps helps brands become to customer-centric. 

What Your Current Clients Can Teach You 

  • What you think is important, isn’t what is important to the customer
  • Go where the customers are: a lot of CEOs are NOT on Facebook
  • If you’re imitating another company then you’re blowing it…customers are coming to you for a reason!
  • Best market research/data mining is asking existing customers the RIGHT questions
  • Client interviews will reveal the trends, in 6 phone calls; they’ll all basically say the same thing
  • Anticipate their questions and help buyers on their journey. You guess= you lose!
  • Have to ask current customers the right questions in the right way
  • People are doing their homework on you before they even contact you
  • If you call your customers yourself, you will still get the data, they’ll just be more polite
  • If you’re only asking one question of an existing client, ask them what they would do if they were in your shoes.
  • Channels,social media etc.- without customer knowledge is like whistling in the wind
  • Treat customers properly and give them what they want

Understanding the Buyer’s Process

  • Buying process changing radically. Overall, you are NOT in control of the process
  • Buying: First friends, then websites, and then Google
  • 80% of buyer’s questions are answered by others, not you!
  • Need to know why and how buyer’s bought from you
  • What’s going to happen to me after I buy? A key question buyers have that you need to answer.

Common Marketing Flaws

  • “Marketing is no longer about what you say, it’s about what you do.”
  • Don’t follow fads and don’t obsess with channels!
  • Is your data flawed? If you’re relying on salespeople, focus groups, social media, surveys and 3rd parties, the chances are your data is flawed
  • Stop selling and start supporting the buyer process
  • Relationship marketing is a misnomer. Do you want car dealers showing up to dinner?
  • Surveys are a waste of time, people will not say in writing what they are really thinking
  • Need to understand where you are in the spectrum to know what to say on your site, newsletter and other content
  • Everyone is doing something that gets in the way of sales
  • Usually you’re screwing up how you’re presenting the product or something else that’s fixable
  • Are you emphasizing what everyone already promises anyway? Everyone expects a boat to float
  • The problem with social media, It’s the biggest time-suck!
  • Usability matters more than design: We don’t look at billboards on the highway never mind on your screen

Branding

  • The difference between branding and your brand? Branding is what you say; your brand is what they say about you
  • Branding is the promise you make. Your brand is the promises you keep

 

A special thanks to all the NIM attendees who tweeted during the event! @KristinZhivago, @JoAnnLefebvre, @SusanneDay, @johnpicozzi, @PRnick, @scottindermaur, @vallerieMalkin, @trendyjenny, @NEMultimedia, @sue_DesigEditor, @NewMediaNPT

 

Don’t miss Newport Interactive Marketers’ next gathering: March 29 public is welcome to the film “Connected” at the Jane Pickens Theater. Tickets are $10, payable to the theater. Preregistration requested.