11 Ways to Find the Best Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is like a disease. For the most part, it is a disease you want over and over. Although this might sound ridiculous, the best viral marketing happens this way. Viral marketing is undoubtedly the next wave of word of mouth. As a matter of fact, it is the internet word of mouth.

So how do you find the best viral marketing strategy? The answer is simple; you create it. Some people think that the best viral marketing ideas are just going to fall into their lap. Now, I am not saying it won't, however, I would not hold my breath for it to happen. The best viral marketing strategy is to be creative and look for a means of capturing the audience.
Being creative does not have to be elaborate. In fact, being creative can be very simple, as some of the best viral marketing campaigns are. Build a viral marketing campaign that will first capture the audience. Once you have their attention, you have won half of the battle.
The next step would be to introduce them to your brand. Being that you are trying to relay your brand, you want to display it how you want it to come across. For instance, if you were selling a brand that was rugged and tough, you would not include ponies and fairies in the background. This is simple concept, yet not concrete to some. Drive home your brand. The more focused your brand statement in, the greater the response you will get.
Once you have caught the attention of your audience and notified them of your brand, provide the entertainment they sought. The best viral marketing campaigns will subtly introduce their brand in the viral marketing ad as well. The most efficient use of viral marketing is through video. Utilizing video is effective because visually, your audience automatically pays more attention.
Where is the Best Viral Marketing Done?
With no doubt, the best viral marketing places are social sites. The whole point of "viral" marketing is to pass around something like lightening. The more people in a concentrated area when the virus lets loose, they more people it will reach. The same is true about viral advertising. Look for social sites such as MySpace, FaceBook, Digg, Delicious and more. These are the most popular social sites amongst a wide range of ages. When looking for the best viral marketing strategy, target these strong points first.
After you capture the audience of the big dogs in viral marketing, look toward the smaller ones. It is imperative that you get your campaign out there in as many places as possible. Think to hit big areas with the most concentration of people first and then focus your efforts on the rest of the smaller niches.
There is a lot to learn about viral marketing. If you are looking to achieve the best marketing strategy you possibly can, look to further resources that are found on this page.
About the Author:
Fredi Donosa is an Ezine expert as well as a qualified adviser for those interested in Internet Viral Marketing opportunities. You can learn more about Fredi and read additional articles on this topic at his website: Visit http://www.FrediDonosa.com

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Affiliate Marketing Network Program

For those in search of the best business model for online trade, Affiliate Marketing Network program is the Hobson's choice. It is one of the most effective Internet marketing models that combine both multi-level marketing and network marketing. Affiliate marketing network program rewards different agents connected to the business process for every transaction that he or she brings in. There is difference between the affiliate program and network marketing. While the later involves a network of independent distributors to sell products or services directly and exclusively to consumers, in affiliate structure the process involves several resources through which the marketing is done. Another essential component of Affiliate marketing network program is the use of advertising that the affiliate marketers apply. One of the main reasons why entrepreneurs prefer the affiliate model is that the trader does not have to incur any expenses for any move that fails to bring in transaction. It only involves the expenditure when a successful dealing takes place. Thus it saves a fortune on efforts that go unfruitful. Hence it also guarantees that all the affiliates receive their due share of revenue whenever a transaction occurs in any part of the network chain. These features make Affiliate marketing network program a favorite for business magnets.
Affiliate Marketing network program is primarily an Internet driven business model. Its online status signifies that to a large extent, the model depends on sophisticated online users who are well acquainted with the latest technologies and trends of the Internet. Hence the need of utilizing every kind of web interfaces to promote your business in this regard.
Since Affiliate marketing network program is based on the Internet for its survival, one needs to choose the websites for business promotion very seriously. The websites that would prove useful for your purpose are those that attract similar target traffic as that of the advertiser but sans the competition. Such websites are called affiliate partners.
Since Affiliate marketing network program is an online marketing chain, you need to figure out which websites you will use to promote your products or services. Those websites will help to drive traffic or potential consumers to your website. The affiliate partners also lead the consumers to visit your website to have a direct interaction with your trade.
When a consumer finds out about your business through an affiliate partner, he or she clicks on the link to visit your website. If the consumer buys your product then the affiliate partner receives a commission. This is the basic concept of Affiliate marketing network program that has been popularized over the years and become a favorite for marketers.
You can earn big if you have a long subscriber list. Then you can send the promotional material to all in the list. The bigger your list, there is more probability to get traffic to the affiliate's website. And then just wait for the commission to flow in. That is how Affiliate marketing network program helps you earn a fortune.
You can find more info at: http://www.affiliate-marketingnetwork.com/

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3 Steps to a Viral Marketing Campaign That Never Dies

A long lasting viral marketing campaign is one that will be in the minds of many people for an indefinite amount of time. How do you accomplish such a feat? Keep the information fresh! The key to an effective viral marketing campaign is not only to create something that people will not push over, but to keep the information fresh and not glanced over as the same thing. Catch people's eye and they will pay more attention

.Keep the information fresh by first addressing what people are looking for. Continue to evolve in your message. People change and so do ideas. Do not stick with just one idea. Branch out and show diversity. Although one of the viral marketing campaigns might have proven good, it will circulate over and over, but people will expect more. Keep them coming back for more by giving them a reason. If you have people hooked, continue to deliver. Do not just go for the gold once

.Make your viral marketing campaign multi tiered. Do not just choose one segment to focus on such as viral video marketing, reach out into all areas of viral marketing. The most effective viral marketing campaign is the result of people recognizing the viral marketing campaign features on all social networking sites and areas of interest

.Create a sequel appearance. Leave it open having the viewer ask, what next? You want to make people come back so leave them hanging on some aspects. Please your audience, but do not over deliver.

Brand, Brand, Brand!

If you have not guessed it, the keyword here is brand. Create a brand through viral marketing. Branding is possibly the most important part of any form of advertising. You want your audience to associate with your brand. A brand is not simply a logo or a saying. It is the combination of many aspects including logo, design, slogan, product, delivery and recourse. As you may have guessed, a brand is not developed over night.

It takes time and effort to get a brand known and recognized outside of marketing efforts. When you utilize branding in a viral marketing campaign, you are essentially building your companies profile. It is necessary to take the appropriate steps in order to make sure the image you get is the response you were looking for. The adverse response to branding is negative branding. This is actually worse than having no brand at all.

A viral marketing campaign should be handled very delicately, especially if first introducing it to the market. Be aware of competitors and their viral marketing techniques. By doing so, you may be able to hedge off some of their efforts and use them as a positive reinforcement to your campaign at no extra charge. Be smart and thorough with the viral marketing campaign and the return on investment will be more than you would have expected. Utilize the tips above and you will have continual success.

About the Author:Fredi Donosa is an Ezine expert as well as a qualified adviser for those interested in Internet Viral Marketing opportunities. You can learn more about Fredi and read additional articles on this topic at his website: Visit http://www.fredidonosa.com/

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Simple Steps to Internet Advertising

Author: David Bruce Jr
This article will be assuming you already have a company website that you want advertised in Maryland over the Internet. The techniques described will prove useful if you don't already have a website.

Search Engine Optimization Explained

The first thing we want to do is get your existing website optimized for the search engines. What is meant by optimized?

Keywords, search engines operate on keywords, keywords are search terms. Keywords are what a search engine user types into a search engine to find what they are looking for.

With that in mind, keywords are what you tell the search engine you want to be found under. When a person searching for a product or service types "service they're looking for", they're also going to type in the Maryland locality they live in.

Where do you put the keywords on your site? The title. Websites have more than one title. There is the url itself, that can be considered a title, there is the title of the page, and there is what shows up at the top of the browser.

So you get 3 opportunities to use the keyword, keyword phrase and Maryland in the webpage.

If you do not add "Frederick Maryland" to your company website or company blog, you don't stand much of a chance to being on the first ten search term results pages if your company serves Frederick Maryland.

If you want to come up in the top ten Maryland search engine results, you had better use the word Maryland more than once on your webpage. You had better use the entire keyword combined with the keyword Maryland if you want to come up in the top ten.

Why is that? Let's say a person needs a to find a printer to get business cards printed up. If they type "printers" in a search engine they are going to see links to where they can buy a printer. So they get smarter and add something to the search term, for example:

printers in Maryland

Which returns this result:

Printers Directory of Maryland Printers Directory of Maryland, Find or Locate Printers, toner, ink, cartridges, printer, cartridge, cards, inkjet, hp, canon, drives, digital, photo, ...


This is NOT a printing company, it is a printing company directory. Why does that come up and not a local printing company? Because the webmaster doing the search engine optimization is more highly skilled than the local webmasters.


Rather than try to beat the directory webmaster, I suggest you use the directories existing page rank to help your little (by comparison) printing company website to rank higher.

Incoming Links.

How does a search engine determine who gets to be number one and who gets to come in second and so forth?

The precise answer to that question is a tightly kept secret within the search engine head quarters, but it's generally known that link popularity figures prominently in the rankings.

The term link popularity warrants an article unto itself and is beyond the scope of this article. Google the term and see what Wikipedia says about link popularity when finished with this article.

There are two aspects of link popularity: The total number of other websites that carry your link on it. The quality of those websites.

If the Frederick News Post website has your link on it and the Washington Post has your link on it, which one do you think is going to carry more weight?

Coming back to the directory being #1 in the search engine.

As a local small business, you're not going to be able to knock that directory out of his number one spot, but that also means your competitor isn't going to be able to do so either.

All you can hope for is to be the only real company listed in a field of useless links to directories. And how can you do that?

If you can't beat them, join them. Search for the directories that are ranking high in the search terms you want to be found under and list your website with them.

In most cases the directory is likely to have a free listing option, or offers reciprocal linking.

For now, take all the incoming links you can get, it's not going to hurt anything, it can only help.

David Bruce Jr is a Maryland Internet Advertising Consultant.
davidbruce@frederick.com
http://www.frederickwebpromotions.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Bruce

David Bruce - EzineArticles Expert AuthorAbout the Author:

David Bruce is a Maryland Internet Advertising.



Consultant who teaches how to use Business Blogs for local small businesses.

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Branding Your Business

Author: Jose Carocho

If you think only big corporate names need to think about things like brand names, think again. Your brand says a lot about you and your business, and that's as true for a one person home-based operation as it is for a multinational conglomerate. In this article we look at how creating a strong brand for your business can help you set yourself apart from the pack and lay the right foundation for the future growth of your business.

WHAT IS A BRAND?


Your brand is more than just the logo on your letterhead and business cards or your business name. It is your corporate identity. An effective brand tells the world who you are, what you do and how you do it, while at the same time establishing your relevance to and credibility with your prospective customers.


Your brand is also something more ethereal. It is how your business is perceived by its customers. If your brand has a high perceived value, you enjoy many advantages over your competition, especially when it comes to pricing. Why do you think people are prepared to pay stupid money for items of clothing with the initials "CK" on them? Perceived value. Perceived value as a result of very effective brand promotion resulting in very high brand awareness.


Now, I'm not saying we all need to rush out and start creating brands that are going to be recognized the world over. Most of us simply don't have the time or other resources necessary. What I am suggesting, however, is that it is possible for your brand to dominate your niche.


WHY DO I NEED TO CREATE MY OWN BRAND?


=> Differentiation


We touched on this in the previous section when we looked at what a brand is and how it can be used to increase the perceived value of your products and services. The main reason for creating your own brand is to differentiate yourself from your competition. New websites are a dime a dozen. So are home-based businesses. You need to constantly be looking for ways to set yourself apart from your competition. Your brand can do that for you.


=> More Effective, Efficient Marketing


Another good reason for creating your own brand is to make your sales force (even if that's a sales force of one - you) more effective and efficient.


Imagine if you didn't have to spend the first 50% of your time with a new prospect explaining who you are, what you do and how you do it. What if your brand had already communicated that for you? You can spend 100% of your time focusing on sales rather than educating your prospects about your business


Another benefit of branding is that the efforts you expend increasing your brand awareness through promoting and marketing your brand to your target market automatically transfers to your products and services. So, even when you're advertising your brand, you're indirectly also marketing your products and services.


HOW DO I CREATE MY OWN BRAND?


OK, so you're convinced you need to create your own brand. Where on earth do you start?


We saw earlier that your brand needs to say who you are, what you do and how you do it. It needs to do all these things at the same time as establishing your relevance to and building credibilty with your prospective customers. Needless to say, it is absolutely essential, if you are to build your own brand, that *you yourself* have a firm grasp of who you are, what you do and how you do it. If not, you're going to have the devil's own time getting that message across to anyone else, let alone establishing your relevance and credibility.


=> Write A Mission Statement


So, let's start by creating a mission statement. What is the mission of your business? Obviously you're in business to make a profit. But making a profit is a byproduct of a successful business. Focus instead on how you choose to achieve that profit. What are your core values?


A good place to begin thinking about your mission is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Put yourself in their target market. Let's say your business is web hosting. If you're in the market for a web host, what things are important to you? Different people will be looking for different benefits but you can bet that they want their website to be accessible to site visitors so reliability will be high on their list. Price is also likely to be high on the list as is 24/7 technical support. What about add-on features such as unlimited email aliases, cgi support and what-not? These things will be highly important to some and less important to others. So focus on the benefits that are likely to be highly relevant to the majority of your target market. Let's settle for our purposes on reliability, price and technical support.


Your mission statement might read something like this: "I strive to earn a fair return on my investment of time and money by providing affordable webhosting with guaranteed 99% uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support". That's a pretty general statement and if you decide to focus on a particular niche of the webhosting market, such as small business, you may want to more narrowly focus on that group in your mission statement.Now that you've written your mission statement, you can begin thinking about creating a brand that reinforces and supports your mission. So, getting back to the fundamental questions of who you are, what you do and how you do it, you can now begin to think of your business in these terms. You're a webhosting provider, you host websites of small businesses and you do that by offering cost-effective webhosting solutions, guaranteed 99% uptime and 24/7 telephone technical support.


When you create your brand, you need to keep the who, what and how firmly in mind but also use the brand to establish your relevance to your target market and build credibility with that market.


Let's turn now to the nuts and bolts of creating your brand.


=> Describe What You Are Branding


List out your business's key features and characteristics, your competitive advantages and anything else that sets you apart from your competition.


Using our webhosting example, you'll focus primarily on the objectives from your mission statement namely, reliable, cost-effective webhosting solutions supported by 24/7 technical support.


=> Identify and Describe Your Target Market


Decide whether you want to target lthe entire webhosting community or only a segment of it such as small business websites. Describe your market.


=> List Names that Suggest the Key Elements from Your Mission Statement


The key elements from your mission statement were reliability, cost-effectiveness and customer service. List names that are suggestive of these elements. Let's use Reliable Webhosting for our example. (I don't claim to be a creative genius.)


Don't limit yourself to real words, though. A coined name with no obvious meaning is a perfectly legitimate name provided it conveys something about your business. You will find coined names easier to trademark and secure domain names for too - a definite plus!


=> List Tag Lines that Reinforce Your Mission Statement


We'll use: "Outstanding reliability and technical support at a price your small business can afford". I know, I know. You can do much better, I'm sure.


HOW SHOULD I USE MY BRAND?


=> Create a Logo for Your Brand


Your logo is NOT your brand but your logo should allow your brand to be instantly recognized by those familiar with it. To this extent, your logo helps create and reinforce brand awareness.


The logo you create should be able to be used consistently in a variety of different media. It should be suitable for corporate letterhead and business cards, as well as for your website and corporate signage (if any). You do NOT want a confusing mishmash of logos and banners and heaven knows what else. Everything you produce needs to use the same, consistent style of logo so that, over time, your logo becomes synonymous with your brand. Instant recognition is what you're going for here, so don't dilute it by using several different logos for different purposes.


=> Consistent Usage of Company Name, Logo and Tag Line


Going back to our webhosting example, putting the brand name and tagline together, the physical manifestation of your brand will be:


RELIABLE WEBHOSTING Outstanding reliability and technical support at a price your small business can afford.
To establish brand awareness, this branding needs to be used consistently and frequently in everything your produce, whether that be letters to clients, business cards, brochures, quotations, invoices, advertising, promotion, on your website, on the front door of your principal place of business and on your products. And don't forget to be consistent in your use of color schemes. These can be powerful brand reinforcers.


=> Marketing and Promotion of Your Brand


Once you've created your brand, you need to market and promote it, in addition to your products and services. This is how you establish your credibility and relevance to your target market. You can hopefully see why your brand needs to be suggestive of your mission statement. If, at the same time as you're selling your products and services you also push your brand, your brand becomes synonymous with your products and services. And vice versa.


A properly descriptive brand and high brand awareness amongst your target market will allow you to more easily introduce a wider range of products and services when they're developed without having to start by again selling who you are, what you do and how you do it first. Your brand has already presold YOU. Your job then is to sell your products and services.

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Top Tips For Using Public Relations In Your Marketing Programs

Author: Mac H McIntosh

Help your potential clients realize how you can help with great marketing; the best public relations events end up giving you a new lead. What's public relations? A wide range of activities can be considered PR, from business marketing to personal luncheons. Outreach in magazine is the most common form of lead-generating PR. The object is to get a mention for your business, service, or staff members to appear in a publication.



Alternatively, one of your management staff can have something published which they write or have ghost written. This sort of press can have a big effect on the number and quality of leads you generate. However, although this kind of PR is cheap compared to advertisements, getting covered in magazines requires sustained effort and a time commitment, in order to nurture relationships with magazine people in your business field. An organized campaign is usually more successful than scattered attempts at getting press. The best campaigns utilize the following elements:



1) A press release

2) A press kit with bios, product photos, and reprinted content

3) Good relationship with the press

4) Features supplied by managers and other staff

5) Media coverage featuring your employees as industry experts

6) Testimonials



Complete the following actions in forming your program:



Research, compile and read the publications. What's the audience? Think about the info that gets published - is it news? Make your contributions appropriate. Talk with the writers and go to the web site. Who's the right person to talk to? Call the editors and ask for submission guidelines and what they like to publish. Try to find the editorial calendar and see what stories they're running month by month. You can usually find this on the last page of the magazine or at the site. Then decide what you'll submit, and what publication month to target your efforts toward. Don't give up - keep at it to gain rapport with editors. It gets better with time. By becoming a source of relevant info, you may supply the publication with information which is vital to their readership, and become an important contributor. Your pitch should explain how it is relevant to the editorial calendar - offer to provide an outline upon request. It can be a good idea to use a ghost writer, as these professionals have experience working for magazines and can form the article to the format of the publication with relative ease. These deadline-driven contractors will take the initiative to get the work in on time, freeing your technical or management employees to work within their fields of expertise.



Be sure your press release provides newsworthy content. It should answer some of the following questions:



1) What's the problem you help solve?

2) What is accomplished?

2) What's the take-home benefit?

4) Is it a product or service?

5) How can it do this?

6) Why will the readers be interested?

7) How much does it cost?

8) What are the main features?

9) When's it available?



Don't brag about yourself or your company. Steer clear of words like "best," "revolutionary," and "unique." These are overused. Editors prefer testimonials instead. Avoid language that is inaccessible to a lay person. Really, even the writers won't have an expert understanding of your offerings. Keep it simple. Always include contact info in two places on the page, and photos if accepted by the publication. Most prefer digital images. Name these files with relevant terms that one can search on to find them. In short, do the prep work and make it easy for them to run your piece.



PR can help improve Search Engine Optimization efforts as well. For example, wire services are excellent - after sending these out, your release will be discoverable by search engines and news wires. By including links in your online release, you can raise your info in the search engine rankings. A recent survey showed that most journalists use the Internet daily. About 75% of them make searches for press release info. For a free news wire to get you started, try: http://google.com/alerts and create a free subscription.

About the Author:
M. H. "Mac" McIntosh is described by many as one of America's leading B2B sales and marketing consultants and an expert on public relations.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Top Tips For Using Public Relations In Your Marketing Programs

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How To Audit Your Business Strategy

Author: Andrew Carey

Why conduct a business strategy audit?

Nearly all the major initiatives undertaken by corporate executives today are called “strategic”. With everything having high strategic importance, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between the many priorities and imperatives that are initiated in organisations. When everything is clearly strategic, often nothing strategic is clear. When everything is designated as a high priority, there are, in reality, no priorities at all.

However, when the overall strategic direction is clearly understood by everyone in your organisation, the following benefits occur:

• organisational capabilities will be aligned to support the achievement of your strategy
• resources will be allocated to different business processes in priority order - according to the importance of that process and its contribution to competitive advantage
• your company or organisation can excel in the market place or in its business/commercial sector.

The purpose of a strategy audit is to arm managers with the tools, information, and commitment to evaluate the degree of advantage and focus provided by their current strategies. An audit produces the data needed to determine whether a change in strategy is necessary and exactly what changes should be made.

Defining a Strategy Audit

A strategy audit involves assessing the actual direction of a business and comparing that course to the direction required to succeed in a changing environment. A company\'s actual direction is the sum of what it does and does not do, how well the organisation is internally aligned to support the strategy, and how viable the strategy is when compared to external market, competitor and financial realities. These two categories, the internal assessment and the external or environmental assessment, make up the major elements of a strategy audit.

The outline that follows is derived from The Business Strategy Audit (see References). It\'s intended to give you a clear idea of how to set about conducting a self-assessment audit in your own organisation, without the need for any additional training or external consultancy support. But note that this outline does not include the range of Questionnaires and Checklists and the detailed guidance to be found in the full, 124-page Audit.

Part 1 ~ The External Environmental Assessment

A conventional corporate mission is to provide distinct products and services to customers at a value superior to that offered by competitors. Without a strategy, valuable resources will be diluted, the work of employees will be unfocused, and distinctiveness will not be achieved. The external environment assessment provides any business with a critical external link between its competitors, customers, and the products/services it offers.

The fundamental reason for examining an organisation\'s environment in the process of clarifying strategy can be summarised thus:

• Ensure that the company is meeting the needs evident in the environment
• Prevent others from meeting those needs in a better way
• Create or identify ways to meet future or emerging needs.

The success or failure of a company often depends on its ability to monitor changes in the environment and meet the needs of its customers and prospective customers.

An organisation\'s business environment is never static. What is viewed as uniqueness or distinctiveness today will be viewed as commonplace tomorrow as new competitors enter the industry or change the environment by modifying the rules by which companies compete. Consequently, an effective strategy will do more than help a company to stay in the game. It will help it to establish new rules for the game that favour that company. Successful companies do more than simply understand their environments. They also influence and shape the circumstances around them. Companies that fail to influence their environments automatically concede the opportunity to do so to their competitors.

Steps in conducting an environmental assessment

Step 1: Understand the external environment at a macro level

The first step in the environmental assessment is to develop a basic understanding of the trends and issues that will significantly change, influence, and affect the industry. The overall industry understanding comes from looking at the elements that influence the environment.

These elements include:

• Capital markets
• Industry capacity
• Technological factors
• Pressure from substitutes
• Threat of new entrants
• Economic factors
• Political factors
• Regulatory factors
• Geographic factors
• Social factors

A useful framework to understand these issues comes from answering the following questions. They should be posed directly when used in an interview, and indirectly when analysing data:

• What is the long-term viability of the industry as a whole, and how do capital markets react to new developments?
• What trends could change the rules of the game?
• Who are the industry leaders? What are they doing? Why?
• What are the key success factors in the industry?
• What developments could allow a company to change the rules of the game?
• Five years from now, how will winners in the industry look and act?
• What is the reward (and/or cost) of being a winner/loser within the industry?
• Where has the industry come from?

Step 2: Understand the industry/sector components in detail

Industry/sector components are normally broken down as follows: competitors, customers and stakeholders. Questions that should normally be asked of each key competitor include:

BUSINESS REVIEW

Strategy Issues:

• What is the strategy of each competitor? Where do they appear to be heading?
• What is their business emphasis?
• Do they compete on quality, cost, speed or service?
• Are they niche or global players?

Capabilities:

• What do they do better than anyone else?
• Where are they weaker than others?
• Where are they the same as others?

Business Objectives:

• Who are their primary customers?
• What types of business do they not do or say no to?
• Who are their major partners? Why are they partnering? What do they gain from it?
• What are they doing that is new or interesting?

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Financial Strength - Internal:

• How much cash does each competitor generate annually?
• What are the drivers behind their financial success (from a cash perspective)?
• How do they allocate resources (funds)?
• How fast are they growing and in what areas?

Strength as Perceived by Capital Markets:

• Are competitors resource constrained or do they have strong financial backing?
• Is this perception consistent with the internal analysis? Why or why not?
• How has the company performed in the financial markets? Why?
• What constraints/opportunities do they have with respect to financial markets? Why?

ORGANISATION REVIEW

Top Management:

• Has management kept the company at the forefront of the industry? Why or why not?
• Are the key players seen to be moving the company forward?

Organisation:

• Is the company centralised or decentralised?
• Does the corporate parent act as a holding company or as an active manager?
• Is the organisation perceived as being lean and able to get things done?

People:

• How many people are employed? Is the company over-or under-staffed?
• Are people managed to achieve mainly business objectives, human objectives or some of both? How does this affect the company?
• What skills are emphasised during recruitment?

Culture:

• Is the culture results-oriented?
• Bureaucratic?
• Flexible?

Similar lists of questions should be developed for customers and stakeholders (or see the full Audit for ready-made questionnaires).

Step 3: Integrate the components into an environmental picture

Once the findings of the stakeholder analysis, customer analysis and competitor analysis (above) have been collected, audit team members should step back and integrate the data. Integrating the different components will help the team to understand the overall environment in which the business operates.

This integration should take place at two levels: assessing where the industry is heading and the likely impact of that direction on the company, and combining the organisational assessment with the environmental assessment.

The Business Strategy Audit offers a detailed framework for analysing this data. In brief, it should highlight significant changes in the environment, and the impact of those changes on the company\'s competitive position within the industry. It should address the fundamental question of how the company can influence its environment in the future, and what the business will need to look like if it is to thrive in the future.

In addition, the analysis should highlight the requirements and capabilities that are needed within the company to meet external demands. These requirements and needs should then be matched up with the current capabilities outlined in the organisation assessment. This will enable the team to determine the overall alignment of the company\'s strategy to its environment.

Part 2 ~ The Organisational Assessment

Once the company\'s environment has been examined and analyzed, managers should consider the qualities and characteristics of the organisation itself that influence what can be accomplished in terms of strategy. This section is about organisational assessment. The steps shown here will provide insights into the effectiveness of the company\'s current strategy, and provide guidelines for increasing strategic effectiveness.

• Strategy Clarification. Strategy clarification helps the leadership team determine what business they are in, the direction of the business, and framework or criteria for making strategic decisions in the future. If people at any level of a business are unclear about any of these three areas, it is difficult for them to focus their attention, cooperate with other teams, and organise their efforts to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace.

• Viability and Robustness. Measuring viability and robustness helps a leadership team test strategies and ideas against future world scenarios to determine whether the strategies can be achieved and sustained. By looking at both market and financial viability and robustness in different scenarios, a management team can see what will create advantage in the future and what key measures need to be implemented to monitor changes in business conditions.

• Business Processes. The term business process refers to the overall work flow within a company and includes elements such as product design, manufacturing, and delivery. A good process analysis will help a leadership team to see what must be done given the company\'s strategy, and how those processes can be improved.

• Capabilities. Capabilities are bundles of separate skills required to deliver the products or services that give a business competitive advantage. There are two parts of a capability assessment. First, the capabilities needed to execute the strategy must be determined. Second, the current level of ability in terms of those capabilities must be assessed. Without knowing what capabilities should be focused on and improved, competitive advantage will be difficult to achieve.

• Organisation Design and Resourcing. This part of the analysis looks at alignment issues between the environment, the strategy, the skills required to achieve that strategy, and the organisation structure. During this step, a management team can design an organisation that aligns systems in a way that will allow them to execute a strategy. Unless the systems within a business are aligned to improve effectiveness or efficiency, strategy statements are merely plaques on the wall that are seldom realised.

• Culture. Culture refers to the set of shared values that influence behaviour and direction over time. The style of management and the beliefs and assumptions commonly held by people in the organisation must be determined in order to ensure alignment and execution of the strategy.

Having completed each of these assessments, they must be integrated by the audit team. In this process, audit team members should attempt to answer one fundamental question: Is our strategy in alignment with the external environment?

To answer this broad question, the following issues should be addressed:

• Do our capabilities match our customer requirements?
• Do we offer something required by our customers that is better than the offerings of our competitors?
• How are customer demands changing?
• How are competitors changing?
• How are our internal capabilities evolving to keep pace with those changes?

Depending on the answers to these questions, the team can implement the changes dictated by the audit. In making these changes, three issues should be considered:

Structure follows strategy - This means that current organisational boundaries and structures should not be allowed to determine the selection of a competitive strategy. Rather, the environmental and organisational assessments that you have just conducted should determine and drive strategy selection.

Plans for change must be widely owned - Those people ultimately responsible for implementing strategy (typically front-line employees) should be consulted for their ideas about what changes should be made and how they should be made. Otherwise, very little change is likely to happen.

Implementation should start with what is core to gaining advantage - In other words, start with core business processes, \'pick the low hanging fruit\' first, make those changes that will make the most visible difference.

In addition, it may be useful to know that the following are the most common mistakes made by teams conducting business strategy audits:

• Expecting all data to be equally useful
• Do nothing with the audit findings
• Failing to link other support systems (rewards, administration, etc.) to strategy
• Not thinking strategically about what processes and capabilities to keep in-house and what to outsource
• Failing to prioritise those core processes that must be world-class
• Failing to match internal capabilities with customer requirements
• Failing to communicate audit findings and strategy changes to people throughout the organisation is a clear and simple language

About the Author:

Andrew Carey is editor of the full-length Business Strategy Audit referred to in this article. It is published by Cambridge Strategy Publications (http://cambridgestrategy.com).
Andrew has worked as a writer, editor, marketing consultant, publisher, team facilitator and business development adviser. He is also a practising psychotherapist.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - How To Audit Your Business Strategy

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