ļ»æ90 % of business ideas never make it past the idea stage. This is due to fear, inaction, or lack of strategy. Which one are you? Today we're gonna talk about strategy because we know the importance of having a strong strategy in place for your business will help you to get past the stage where you do not launch your idea, your business, your service, whatever it is you're thinking about launching right now, into action.
Because you're stuck in the space where you're not quite sure what to do, how to do it, who you're talking to. All of that is what comes out when you work in strategy. And we've worked with entrepreneurs all around the globe and we know that so many get stuck in the same spot.
And it's all due to the fact that they do not have a plan in place. And that's what strategy gives you, is that clear path, that plan to take the action to do the thing that you haven't done yet.
Laura, I'm right there with you and it breaks my heart to see it when so much love and attention goes into building a product or a service, a business that someone's been dreaming of quite often for years before they ever get ready to take it to market. And then they take it to market and there's great disappointment because it's not meeting the mark, it's not filling the gap, it's not getting to the right people. And it's time and time again, that lack of strategy at the outset would have made a world of difference. It is the most critical thing to do, the most important thing to do. We see it over and over again. So Let's just unpack a little bit why what does strategy give us what pitfalls can we avoid when we have a solid strategy.
Well, strategy is all about clarity. You know, that's exactly where a lot of people are missing, the clarity for their business, who their business is trying to serve. You know, often people just want to serve the whole market. You know, I want to talk to as many people as possible. I want to catch as many fish as possible. I want to make as much money as possible. But when you're that broad, nobody really understands your message. You know, when you just create a logo because you think it's pretty and you like the color purple, you know, but you're trying to talk to a group of people that don't like the color purple, then you've missed the mark, right? And then your business, your brand falls flat and you don't quite know why, but you're just creating things and building things and throwing things out and hoping that it, like the pasta, sticks to the wall. But often you just kind of miss the mark and you don't know why, but you have, you're just rushing ahead to get this thing launched for, you know, a multitude of reasons.
And we totally understand all of that. And we've worked with loads of clients that have done just that. They've just started a business and they've thrown it out there. They've got this great idea and they know it's going to create impact and it's brilliant. And they've put together a website and a logo and all these things without any strategy in place. And then they launch it out there and it's absolute crickets. And I think that's everyone's greatest fear. You put all this money and energy and time towards something and no one responds.
Right? It's like sending that invitation to a party and no one shows up. Right? It's like everyone's greatest fear. I know I personally felt that. Right? How about you?
Absolutely. And do you know what is heartbreaking? Is that more often than not, we or our client, in that moment when it's happening to us, it feels like there's something wrong with the product or service. When actually, there's just a tweak that needs to be made or there needs to be more well-intentioned thought into the message. Because as you said, not hitting the mark.
So I love this conversation because it opens up possibilities. It opens up the awareness that just because our launch didn't go with all the fireworks and expectations that we had, it doesn't mean something's wrong with the business thing that we've created. And I also want to be clear that what we're talking about here is launch strategy, which is a part of marketing strategy.
You may have been through a business accelerator and I'm excited if you have because it's given you so much and you would have done a business strategy. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about your marketing strategy and there's a difference, right?
No, yeah, a big one. And you know, your launch plan that starts with the strategy is going to be sort of your first big marketing plan anyway, right? So you can choose how you want that launch to be. Some people prefer a soft launch, so they want to like slowly enter the market. Good for like tech or apps or things that need like a little testing because they're going to need tweaking. So you kind of like let it beta test for a little while.
Learn the lessons, get the feedback, get the reviews and testimonies and everything in, you know, get a lot of people to try it out and then fix those things and then do a bigger splash where you make a lot more noise. Or there's a hard launch. So that's when you just plan everything and you get everything ready and then you make a big bang. So that's like launching as an event or it could be online or in person. You would add all the goodies and swag and collateral and ads and marketing can be like everything just sort of all launches at once you get the media attention and all that so there's two different ways you can do that and so there's two different strategies behind those so that's what you got to get clear on is like which strategy works for your business do you need time to slowly you know eke it into the market or you know is it all ready to go and you want to do the big bang so that you have to know in advance
And that's where you got to walk through that strategy piece and get really clear on because how it lands to the market is what matters. You know, to the actual customers, how are they receiving it? And you have to have a much tighter plan in place if you're going to do that hard launch, because a lot of things could go wrong. A lot of pieces could get missed and it could just not land right with your ideal market. Right. So you got to be able to talk to them. So the strategy part is when you start thinking about
You know, who is that ideal target market? You know, or is it stay at home moms? Is it busy executives? Is it women? Is it men? Is it young? Is it old? Is it a combination? Or is it really super niche? Right? Hyper niche. So you've got to think about exactly who that target market is. And then you go into where are they? Where do they hang out? Are they scrolling social media? Are they listening to podcasts? Are they still reading the newspaper or are they, you know, where are they? Because
So your strategy then helps you to understand once you know that, where they're going to be, okay, now know exactly how to attract them because I can be there too.
I can only imagine in contrast if you didn't have these whole considerations which actually invite a lot of contemplation and if you're if you have a team working with you then a lot of conversation to get everybody to agree to what the answers are to these really important questions so in contrast if you haven't had that consideration imagine where your launch ends up it's no wonder that we see disappointment and sad faces at the launch. So, I mean, all of this is packed into the launch ready course. Did you want to just talk about that real briefly?
Exactly.
Vicki and I's years of experience in marketing and, you know, understanding media, because we both have media backgrounds and, you know, strategy, because I've been doing brand strategy my whole life too, and understanding the depth of what all this means. So we packed so many of those ideas and deep understanding of how, you know, to even start to create a strategy for yourself.
We've created a workbook that's part of this program that I'm so proud of. And it really helps you like step by step, think about every part of your business from your mission and what it means to who you're talking to and how you help them to what objectives are important to you. And then you get really clear on that and it helps you to move forward with everything else.
I'm really excited with everything we packed in this course, but I cannot emphasize enough the strategy is the most important piece and that's why exactly we start there and we tell everyone you have to start with strategy. The difference is going to make in your clarity and I won't warn you, you'll do the strategy and you might realize you do need a logo redesign. You know, you might need to change your color palette. Maybe the fonts work, maybe they don't. Maybe your website needs some tweaking because when you get the clarity, you'll start to understand like how it all comes together.
sort of that bigger picture of your business that maybe you had piecemealed together along the way. And that's totally fine. Most people do start that way and then tweak and rebrand and improve. And that's fine too. Because I always want to let people know like marketing is just a series of experiments to figure out how you attract the right customers and clients. So it's okay to experiment with your marketing. But...when you start with strategy, there's a lot less needed. You get there so much faster. You know, I don't want it to take you five years to figure this stuff out. I want to take you like one video. You know, that's what we're trying to offer here in this course is the videos, the workbooks, the time to think and plan and understand the bigger picture so that you can get the clarity that you need so you can launch your business like quickly to market and as successfully as possible.
