As Christmas approaches I also find myself planning for 2018 and just as George Santayana said, “Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.”, so it’s also time to look back on 2017, to be a little circumspect about the year, about what went wrong, what went right and what has potential.
It didn’t take long but it still took too long, but it appears that TallCloud Marketing has got traction. In 2017 we found a way too swim in the blue ocean, not the red ocean.
Let’s back up and explain what the red ocean and blue ocean are. It’s a term that was coined and expounded upon by W. Chan Kim (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Chan_Kim) and Renee Mauborgne in their thesis on business strategy. In very simple terms it means that most companies swim in the shark invested red ocean where the water is the colour of blood while a few companies swim in the blue ocean where there’s limited to no competition.
In the red ocean everybody competes for the same business with the same companies, targeting the same customers while in the blue ocean companies are unique and find a different audience or attract the same audience with a different hook.
Ultimately, the food is more plentiful in the blue ocean and that’s where you want to be.
And that appears to be where we are with TallCloud. We have a product that solves a problem (this is a blog, not a sales pitch so I’m not telling you what it is unless you email or Inmail me), a sales strategy that helps potential clients to identify just exactly WHAT their pain is and how we can help them solve it and strategy calls with prospects lined up in to January.
Interestingly, this “Aha” or Eureka moment (I’m thinking that if we’re talking about hte ocean maybe it’s not an “aha” moment but an “ahai” moment, as in tuna) was more of a process over a couple of months as the initial moment was built out with a process that supported the sales proposition. Unlike most other digital marketing companies we can not only value the contribution in terms of sales for our client but we can make a direct comparison with what other marketing opportunities WOULD have cost them. This is massive because it validates the product and approach twice over.
This is where it all gets better for Gateway Staffing.
Applying those blue ocean strategies to the staffing company has set us up beautifully for new business in 2018. We were forced to ask ourselves what we wanted to be when we grew up. The answer is incredibly simple but the execution strategy is incredibly difficult. And then of course, there’s the simple matter of selling it.
That said, we have the foundation to build upon and it may end up being a failure but as Thomas Edison said “I haven’t failed at anything, I’ve just found a thousand different ways of doing it”.
All in all, 2018 is shaping up to be a fun and invigorating year and like most of us on New Year’s Eve, there’s an anticipation to the year.
How’s your 2018 shaping up? Please share a few lines below on what you’re looking forward to in 2018 (and don’t say 2019!!)
