The continuous changes in technologies, institutions and values, force business models to reinvent themselves at lightspeed to adapt to the new demands of the market.
The latest trend to incorporate into your business strategy is the “hype”. Yes, that rebellious movement that is all over the internet. But, before we go any further, what exactly is hype? Hype is conceived as “the furor arising from the need to fill a slow news cycle“. From just that, we already understand that one of the techniques is the reactivity and probably is connected to investigating what the clients are talking about. Both are correct, but the topic goes further. Let’s jump into the best tactic to “hype” your company!
5 Tactics to Hype Your Business Strategy
1. Forget what made you successful yesterday
Many companies stick to the strategies that took them to the top in the past, but keeping them once you have reached the top is a huge mistake. Following previous business models prevents you from spotting and taking advantage of future cash cows. The market changes continuously so your business strategy should do too. PayPal knows this well. Started as a service that allowed the transfer of funds between two Palm Pilots when most people carried a PDA and wallet, they changed their business to make themselves a part of the online purchase market by enabling eBay payments. It might be one of the most successful adaptations in business history.
2. Trial & Error method
It might be tricky to apply this theory but it definitely has its perks. When you set challenges among your team that need to be accomplished in a short period of time, people force themselves to go for a hands-on mentality that usually brings a bunch of bold, out-of-the-box ideas. Giving this chance to the best of them, has a tremendous positive effect in the team’s self-esteem and instantaneously raises the buzz around your company. It might be a major accomplishment or a failure, but with the right tools it will be a lesson learned for everyone. One of the most efficient is a retro:
“In regular intervals, they give the teams the space to reflect on how they work together and how to continuously improve that”, says Stylight Agile Coach, Manuel Küblböck.
3. Sameness sucks
It’s already said that we live in the age of the abundance; we’ve got too much of everything, so companies compete with each other for the attention of the customer. Often, competitors are more of the same too, so it’s even harder to accomplish the goal. If you want to be in the spotlight, for the right reasons, it won’t be enough to just come up with a funky strategy, you need the right people working with you too. So go for international teams with different backgrounds or even different roles. Google was one of the first companies who went for cross-functional teams in order to boost their creativity and efficiency. As result, the ideas and solutions of their teams have a 360º vision and the company is well known for coming up with the most innovative ideas! McKinsey’s ‘Diversity Matters’ report highlighted that “Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.”
4. E(motional)commerce
The win-win added value for a company should always be an emotional tie with their clients. It secures long-term customers that would also recommend your services to their family and friends. Find out which topics your clients and clients-to-be are interested in, and which channels they use to get information about them, and implement them in your business strategies. Stylight leads this idea into the integration of content and ecommerce. Fashion experts pick the best products and include high doses of lifestyle inspiration thanks to articles about how to combine the item or videos of the runway the item was spotted in.
5. Smart with emphasis on excellence
Creativity go hand-in-hand with motivation and ambition. Reward and support those of your team who bring new ideas without asking for them, those who want to learn about more things, even if they seem to have no connection with the actual business. To do so, you should invest in HR projects like Personal Development Budgets. They are great to encourage your team to learn more about the things they are into or new things they want to try. The richer the background of a person the better the ideas coming from him or her will be. Supporting the curiosity that workers have towards the world is vital to develop their soft and hard skills. As Steve Jobs said, stay hungry, stay foolish!
|By Miriam Gaztelumendi – Brand Marketing Intern|
