Clarity and insight are crucial elements of our Formula For Success. We work closely with our clients to identify exactly what success looks like to them, and then we help to build the most direct route to get there.
So what does success look like to you? And what does success look like to your business partners or important stakeholders? Are they the same things? Have you even had the conversation?
Having clear goals and making sure everyone is on the same page is fundamental to achieving success, because when you all have the same objective, it’s a lot easier to reach it.
What’s standing between you and your goals?
One of the first things we do when we’re developing an advertising and marketing strategy for our clients is a GAP Analysis session. We bring all the key stakeholders in a business together in a room and guide the discussion to ensure it reaches valuable conclusions that everyone agrees to. We cover:
- Where are you now
- Where do you want to be
- What you need to do to get there
What we often find is that although people might have worked together for years, they’ve never sat down together and formally shared their thoughts on what success means, or exactly how they’ll achieve it. Helping you to align your thinking is our role in the GAP Analysis.
Discussing Point 1, ‘Where you are now’, is aimed at setting a baseline, but it can also reveal useful information on how stakeholders view the way the business is operating, and everyone might not have the same perspective.
Point 2 ‘Where you want to be’ is about developing a shared set of realistic goals for the business over defined timeframes, usually 1, 3 and 5 years in the future.
Point 3 ‘What you need to do to get there’ is the actual Gap that needs to be bridged on your pathway to achieving your goals. Together, we’ll clearly identify why the Gap exists and what can be done to fill it.
SWOT Analysis – A Deep Dive into the GAP
A Pinnacle&Co. Gap Analysis gives you a broad brush stroke picture of where your business is currently, and practical ‘work-ons’ to move you closer to your goals. The next step in our strategic development process is another group session – the SWOT Analysis. The SWOT builds on the GAP to clearly identify the best pathway to success, with careful consideration of all the influences that might affect your business and help fill the GAP.
SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Working through your SWOT will give you a clear 360-degree view of your market and your position in it.
- Strengths are where your business excels and the things that give it stability and longevity.
- Weaknesses are the things that your competition does better, and anything specific to your business or industry that might get in the way of bridging the GAP.
- Opportunities are all the things that have the potential to help build your business.
- Threats are everything that can potentially harm your prospects of achieving success.
Knowledge is power!
With the information and insights generated at our SWOT session, we can then develop a powerful advertising and marketing strategy.
A Pinnalce&Co. strategy will play to your strengths, mitigate your weaknesses, exploit your opportunities, and protect you as much as possible from threats.
Then with a GAP and SWOT Analysis under our belts, we can go on to the next phase of your advertising strategy – aligning your brand with your customers and clients so they want to buy from you rather than your competition.
More on that next month…