• by Darshan Sampathu , Yesterday

Our ongoing uncertainty provides the ideal backdrop for challengers to leapfrog competitors and reset their position in the category.

Here’s why: When change hits, people get defensive. They look to hold their position. They play not to lose. Risk aversion replaces creative strategy, and data overrides instinct. In trying to apply data to predict the unpredictable customer brain, marketing ends up avoiding the very activities and approaches that can produce breakthroughs.

There’s a lot of that going around. The way to leapfrog is to take the opposite tack.

Think expansive, not incremental. It’s never been easier to try something new, learn from it, and pull back only after you've got proof that it doesn't have legs. Often, you'll find that you underestimated the potential of a strategy. Look to add, not eliminate. Designate the top 50% of your plan as Champion and focus the other 50% on beating it.

Get real about your business. Take a realistic approach to your business. Admit what’s thriving versus simply surviving (if even that). Then focus your investment on the parts that need the most help.

Say you have a product with inconsistent support from core customers, like a theme park families frequent. Package a new offer – date night maybe – to attract people with new occasions. That can add a new dimension to the business altogether.  

Set a bold growth standard. Make it clear, sequential, and supported by investment targets (how much you’ll invest in which aspects of the operation as you hit higher marks). Focus on transformative growth, setting benchmarks in increments of 25% or more. A target can be arbitrary, really anything that motivates your teams to aim high. Apply it to a specific segment (not the whole business), where you can dramatically alter the approach and demonstrate meaningful results quickly.

Align on outcomes. Define exactly what you’re trying to do, who’s in charge of each process, and set benchmarks before moving ahead. That prevents the cycle of fixing that competing agendas cause whenever you rush to execution (whether it’s a product, experience, or campaign). To develop this skill with your team, practice confronting opposing goals on a spectrum. They’ll learn and reinforce that it’s more important to unify and focus on a targeted objective than to pick the “right” thing (or, worse, try to do everything). 

Go on offense. Disregard the impulse to “focus on what we know works” and make the predominant model -- 80% core, 20% test -- your worst-case scenario. Instead, make option 1 the biggest leapfrog growth opportunities (e.g. 50% net new things, 50% champions). Option 2 is more conservative, where you pick one audience or one part of the plan to completely rethink.

The key is rethinking, re-energizing, and reinvesting while your competition reliably retracts and retrenches. Commit to it and you can transcend the chaos of price-centric competition.