Chad Gabriel

There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.

Desmond Tutu

Often, life is full of challenges that seem overwhelming. Big problems cannot often be solved with one “silver bullet” solution. The same is true for approaching growth as a company, which often starts with the way you approach strategic marketing. It takes creativity and innovation. It takes collaboration to assemble a set of divergent ideas from diverse perspectives. It takes courageous leadership to converge these ideas to create the best path forward given the information at hand. A mindset that these are opportunities rather than problems will keep the energy where you need it to succeed.

One structure that has helped me simplify the approach I’ve taken to grow a business is the Marketing Bridge. This is a metaphor for building the means by which you’ll get from where you currently are as a business to where you want to be. It’s not a comprehensive tactical plan for how to get there, but rather a strategic look at what it will look like on the other side.

The Concept

The Marketing Bridge will help you think about key growth categories that make up your overall growth plan. The bridge will be constructed from left to right, with the left side being your current state and the right side being the future state. You get to decide how long you take to cross the bridge. Each category of the bridge will become progressively more challenging and riskier as we move from left to right across it, and consequently more rewarding.

The Base

Think of the base as your current revenue. It is the anchor to which you will attach your bridge as you construct it to span the chasm that lies ahead. The base must be maintained and, as a leader, you must do what it takes to keep the people, processes, and systems in place to do so.

Organic

The organic category of the marketing bridge can be seen as the most circumstantial category. It just happens to us without having to do anything about it. It’s the expected growth (or decline) that corresponds with the economic trends that impact our businesses. Using GDP as an indicator of what will happen in the next year(s) will get you started. According to Macrotrends.net, the annual change in GDP has ranged from -1.27% to 5.10% since 2010.

Pricing

There’s nothing wrong with pulling out your 4P’s of marketing card every now and then. This category of the bridge is a simple one. All it takes is some planning, a good understanding of the value of your product, and excellent channel communication. There are many ways to do this and, in some cases, contractual considerations to be made.

Market Share

Gaining market share is easy to understand and difficult to achieve. It’s much easier when you really understand your customers within a market through steady communication, voice of the customer data, and surveys. When you know what your customer values and what it takes to deliver that consistently, all you have to do is execute. Grossly simplified, I know. Although gaining market share is more challenging than growing organically and implementing price increases, it is basically doing what you already do very well. The following categories will likely help you gain market share, but in those categories, this would be more of a result than a strategic approach.

New Application

How can you utilize products, services, or technologies that you already produce to generate revenue by finding new ways to apply them? This could be a multi-million dollar question. Given you already have the infrastructure in place to deliver these revenue generating items, look for ways to market these to existing and prospective customers who could use them to solve different problems.

New Market

There’s a lot to understand when entering a new market. What’s the size of the market? What’s the likely share you’ll take over what period of time? Who are the customers? Who is the competition? What are the barriers to entry? We’re talking about selling existing products, services, and technologies to a new audience. This could be determined geographically, by industry code, channel type, or by demographics, for example.

New Product

If you thought selling to a new market is difficult, try doing it with a new product. Not only do you have all of the challenges mentioned above, but you also face the challenges of creating something you’ve never made before. There are financial considerations, manufacturing considerations, feasibility, the likelihood of success, marketing approach, channel partners, supply chain, staffing, and more. The returns of successfully launching a new product, however, could be transformative to the growth of your company.

Acquisition

Growth through acquisition is not considered organic, however, it might get you the numbers you want faster than some of the other categories in the bridge. Depending on financial health and desire for your company to grow through acquisition, this category might be used for special circumstances rather than a part of your annual strategic planning process.

Building a Marketing Bridge to simplify the way you think about growth can make the task at hand much less daunting. For example, if your company has a growth goal of 10%, you might be able to gain 2-3% in each of the categories of the bridge to achieve this. The notion of a healthy marketing bridge will depend on things like your company culture, pace, and leadership initiatives. Said differently, you may work for a company that is highly innovative and loves cranking out new products. It’s woven into the fabric of who you are. In that case, you’ll have bigger numbers on the right side of the bridge. If your company is more conservative you’ll see more emphasis on the left side of the bridge. Marketing puzzles are big and often hard to solve. Make it easier on yourself by narrowing the focus to answer smaller questions that will still help you achieve your desired result overall.