Jill Cress’ Post

Strategic Planning: Red vs. Blue Ocean – Which Path to Take? Businesses today face relentless pressure to stand out in a crowded market. Traditional strategies often result in fierce competition, diminishing margins, and limited growth. The key challenge is to escape this competitive environment and find new market spaces that offer profitable growth opportunities. Red Ocean and Blue Ocean strategies provide a framework to reshape our approach to strategic planning. Most businesses operate in Red Oceans, where competition is intense and markets are saturated. The challenge is to move beyond this environment and explore Blue Oceans, where new, uncontested market spaces exist. This shift requires a strategic overhaul and a commitment to innovation and differentiation. 🔴 Red Ocean Strategy: Competing in existing market spaces often leads to a battle for market share. Businesses focus on outperforming rivals, leading to a saturated market with limited growth potential. 🔵 Blue Ocean Strategy: By creating new, uncontested market spaces, businesses can make the competition irrelevant. This approach emphasizes innovation, offering unique value propositions to unlock new demand and drive growth. ☑ Strategic Planning Integration: Incorporate Blue Ocean thinking into your strategic planning process. Identify areas where you can innovate and differentiate your offerings to create new market opportunities. ☑ Competitive Intelligence: Use research to distinguish between saturated (Red Ocean) and untapped (Blue Ocean) markets. This helps in identifying where your business can thrive with minimal competition. ☑ Leadership Role: Leaders must champion the shift from competing in existing markets to exploring and creating new ones. This requires fostering a culture of innovation and encouraging creative thinking within the organization. Evaluate your current market positioning and identify opportunities to apply Blue Ocean principles. Engage your team in this strategic shift and lead them toward discovering and developing new market spaces. By embracing Blue Ocean strategies, you can drive sustainable growth and stay ahead of the competition. #Strategy #Leadership #ActionableInsights #CompetitiveIntelligence #StrategicPlanning #BlueOceanStrategy #BusinessGrowth #MarketInnovation https://lnkd.in/gu7b9X7d Transform your strategic planning with intelligence-driven insights to foresee market changes and stay ahead of the competition. Visit us at Actelligos.com or reach us at insights@actelligos.com Check out more ideas at bit.ly/OnCompetitiveness

There's a lot to be said about longevity within an organisation because it builds up strong bonds between team-mates and Siew Kim Beh and Bee Leng TAN, having worked together for 17 years at CapitaLand and now in The Ascott Limited are a good example of a duo that's built trust and camaraderie over the years that even though their roles are somewhat opposed – I mean, one counts money, the other spends it (to put it simply) – they've found a rhythm that enables them to innovate and experiment, and do pretty cool things within a huge organisation. It helps that tech has eased conversations between finance and marketing, and now there's AI which the two are mutually excited about but it takes human trust, smarts and relationships to make the difference. Have a read about how the two work together at one of the world’s leading international lodging owner-operators. #hospitality #hospitalityIT #brandmarketing #teamwork #leadership #humanrevolution https://lnkd.in/gfXTUhQH

Saying "Yes" will kill you and your DTC brand's growth. Successfully scaling a DTC brand is all about saying "No." Saying "No" so that you can preserve rigorous focus on doing a few things better than any other brand in the world. This is what will set you apart and drive your scale. The road to scaling failure is paved with a thousand "Yes's" that should have been "No's." DTC brand founders - You should be saying "No" most of the time when new opportunities come across your desk. But don't just say "No" for the sake of it. Say "No" to allow you, your team, and your business to say "Yes" to the small handful of priorities that you can be the best in the world at. ---- If you found this post helpful, click on my name, Jon Blair, and give me a follow.   You can also follow my Fractional CFO firm - Free to Grow CFO   P.S. –   If you're a brand founder who is scaling or wants to scale, consider joining my Free to Grow CFO weekly newsletter.   I write an email to hundreds of growth-minded founders just like you every Tuesday that provides actionable tips for scaling your DTC brand alongside healthy profit, cash flow and personal confidence.   You can sign up by using the link in the comments below. #dtcbrands #founders #scaleyourbusiness

As 2023 draws to a close, thoughts turn to the year ahead, and how we can drive growth. Last month PRmoment hosted its first Agency Leaders Summit, bringing together an impressive roster of experts from across the industry to look at how agencies can unlock opportunity. So how can agencies navigate a challenging economic backdrop and thrive in the face of uncertainty? Unsurprisingly there is no single answer, but below I outline five key takeaways from an insight-packed day. What do you believe is the key to driving growth? #pr #prinsight #agencygrowth https://lnkd.in/emtYcY3z

🤔 #CEOs & #Founders, what's the key to getting more from your marketing efforts? ☝ You may expect me to say budget, headcount, and investing in the brand. While those things can help, they won’t be successful without CONSISTENCY. And to be consistent, marketing teams must narrow their focus. 💫 Marketing magic happens by regularly showing up where your audience is and dominating. For start-ups and even scale-ups, that usually means a relentless focus on 1 or 2 channels. This builds brand recognition, trust and loyalty. And people buy brands they trust. 📈 Does running a focused strategy take time to see results? Yes, but staying the course and repetition will most certainly deliver results faster than periodic pop-ups in several places. Remember, doing a little bit of everything is really just doing a lot of nothing. 🤝 The best thing leadership teams can do, especially at this time of year when the asks for more typically increase, is trust and support your marketing leaders who are increasing frequency and relevancy in fewer places. 💪 Focus and consistency > breadth and variety. ----------------------------------- 🔔 I'm Sarah Eppler. I help CEOs, founders and B2B leadership teams at growing and scaling businesses generate revenue efficiently. Follow me for insights on how to get the most from your marketing efforts. #b2bmarketing #revenuegrowth #growthstage #scaleup

It's not okay that marketing agencies spend a company's money in a vacuum without knowing the rest of the business's P&L. It's not okay for an entrepreneur to hire a marketing agency to do work without giving them insights into the rest of the business's P&L. The crazy part is that everything would run smoother if everyone were on the same page. I share the reason for this in my latest video. --- Like my content? Then, I encourage you to explore any of the following ways I can help you more: If you are a COO, then consider joining the COO Alliance here: https://cooalliance.com/ If you are a CEO and you are looking to level up your managers without taking up all your time, have them sign up for my Invest in Your Leaders Course: https://lnkd.in/gcDrcfC You will want to read my books if you are a CEO or COO. You can order them on Amazon here: https://lnkd.in/eAtxmxby

Think BIG

📣 SME leaders 📣 Are you looking to drive sustainable growth for your business? Are you a decision maker with teams to lead or develop? The Growth Blueprint will give you a deep understanding of how to optimise each area of your business, actionable insights and a roadmap to drive your business to the next level. You will experience intensive and interactive sessions, designed to positively disrupt your thinking. You will leave equipped with the insights and tools you need to develop winning strategies to achieve transformative and sustainable growth for your business. You will get the opportunity to meet and collaborate with like-minded people in business and gain from their experience and ideas to inform your future strategy. -Hear from our network of inspirational leaders who have successfully grown their businesses -Learn proven insights and frameworks that underpin their success *Understand growth, predictable patterns in business cycles *Take away actionable and simple tools for your business growth -Apply these insights directly to your business *Revenue Maximisation *Capacity planning and utilisation *Functionality Review, how you must have the right number of people with the right skills doing the right thing to provide the foundations for growth *Business asset review *Capability plan to identify key accelerators to leverage *Culture and people strategies for success -Leave equipped with a roadmap, fresh ideas and awareness of what your next steps are -Personal development and know how to share with your team Find out more, or sign up, here: https://lnkd.in/epJAbqDs #SMEleadership #sustainablegrowth #businessevent #teamdevelopment #decisionmakers #leadershiptraining #businessgrowth #eventpromotion #smallbusinessowners #entrepreneurship

It's not okay that marketing agencies spend a company's money in a vacuum without knowing the rest of the business's P&L. It's not okay for an entrepreneur to hire a marketing agency to do work without giving them insights into the rest of the business's P&L. The crazy part is that everything would run smoother if everyone were on the same page. I share the reason for this in my latest video. --- Like my content? Then, I encourage you to explore any of the following ways I can help you more: If you are a COO, then consider joining the COO Alliance here: https://cooalliance.com/ If you are a CEO and you are looking to level up your managers without taking up all your time, have them sign up for my Invest in Your Leaders Course: https://lnkd.in/gcDrcfC You will want to read my books if you are a CEO or COO. You can order them on Amazon here: https://lnkd.in/eAtxmxby

We all stuff up. I think I've stuffed up three times since lunch. But there are the minor stuff-ups and then there are the BIG ones. The ones that make us cringe. The ones that help us learn and grow into better leaders. Better people. That's why when Ortto asked me to work on a new interview series about marketing failures, it was a heck yes. For the first of our 'Mea Culpa' series, I interviewed Matt Gudge, Director of Growth Ventures at Mable about a marketing pitch that went horribly wrong. Matt was a dream interviewee - frank, down-to-earth, insightful and oh so wise. If you're a CMO or VP of marketing who is open to sharing your 'failure to success' story, please DM me. Let's keep talking about the stuff-ups. That's where the gold is buried. #marketing #marketingleadership #cmoinsights