Do what you already do
I'm a big fan of a business doing what they already do. This may sound a little obvious, but I believe there are tons of people and business looking to do the same thing that you already do, but are they as good at it as you? Are you as good at it as you should be?
Running a business at it’s essence is an exercise in focus. There are so many things that can be compelling, that is easy to chase after too many things. There is a balance however, one of my instructors at NYU, a student of Peter Drucker , likes the idea of trying many different things and sticking with what works. A great example is 3M, a business that started out in one but found success in another, innovation is maybe their business not scotch-tape and post-its—but I digress.
A wonderful example of a business doing what they already do is T-mobile. Some bright person there realized that on a site called billshrink.com that they generally come out as having the best price for mobile phones plans. So they’ve built a campaign around it, and able to let everyone know that not only do they have the best plans, a third party agrees with them.
Seth Godin calls it making the invisible visible.
As the director of digital strategy at Simply Good Media, one thing I look for in a partnership is finding where a potential partner is looking to expand their business and what we already do. For example a large online entity really wanted to work with us. We were in favor of doing a podcast (although we try not to call them that, the term has some connotations we don’t want to associate with), it’s something we already do, Kathryn Finney is a great host, and we have a producer and editor that do an awesome job for us and a network in place to get guest that appeal to our readers.
On top of that it’s something that while this partner may have the resources to do, they just don’t. In the end we came up with a hybrid of that idea.
On the flip side of this, there are somethings we do not need to spend time or money on. There are people that do it better than us, and since it’s not our core business anyway, let’s see if we can make a deal.
Posted on Thursday, July 02, 2009 in Branding • Business • Strategy
