It’s time to break away from the herd, and think for yourself. But having the will to win isn't always key; you need more to make it in a market that is brutally competitive. You need a direction, you need a strategy. Strategic advantages will help you do things that others can not copy and paste into their own systems, services or products. If you've done your research well, people will only be able to see the “brilliant” façade of your true creation.

“I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.” Sun Tzu

A strategy needs to be well planned, and more importantly unique and desired. Listed below are 51 aspects of strategy, which are essential for your creation of strategy!

1. Introduction: Defining Strategy

A strategy is a laid out plan of action intended to reach a goal, it’s a map that’ll lead you to your vision’s fulfillment. The word strategy has a military undertone, as it originates from the Greek word for “general” and has also been used and written about for war purposes, such as Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. As years have been running by, the word strategy has gained other purposes. In business for instance, the concept of strategy is crucial, and needs to be implied if you’re going to become an independent warrior in the world of business.

Strategy requires the dedication of taking decisions. This is done; after you’ve studied and fully understood the market you’re forthcoming. It’s a plan on how you’re going to overcome your components and climb up the ladder of success. Business by classification deals with competition, and to win here we need strategy. In war people die… in business companies and organizations die if they aren’t change striving, quick, and hungry enough!

2. The Core of Strategy

Strategy is a set of actions that appropriates high value into your work. You create principles on how or in which ways you’re going to attack and triumph over your competitors, using the resources available to you. He, who has the best strategy, will have the most successful business. Hence: before jumping onto the actions: have a strategy ready so that you can stay consistent, and more importantly never forget the purpose of your work. You must have the right goals.

Knowing the core of strategy is having the significant ability to achieve competitive advantages. Recognize that competition between businesses is a battle for superiority, market position and market power. Hence, the goal is to focus your attention on skills that really affect your advantage in the strategic war of business.

3. You are building a Feeling of Gut

A strategy isn’t a manual where the actions are placed step by step. It’s a guideline that shows what you stand for. Knowing your strategy, means that when you need to implement quick decisions as opponents in the market are treating you, you can come to conclusions quickly with your strategy as the foundation. A strategy is built of principles, not strict rules.

4. Competitive Advantage

You have competitive advantage when you have an asset, where you keep making money and sustain your position against opponents.
By using creative strategy you can gain great competitive advantages. A good way to stay in the forefront of peoples’ minds is by morphing a New Game. Create Value that is new in the market: an entirely new niche, a new product or a new service. The key here is the word different.

5. Vision

Always have a vision. Your vision is the big-picture outlook of what will happen when you've accomplished your goals. A strong vision helps motivate and generate ideas. Have a good judgment of how you’re different, how you want to be different and how you’re going to extend those differences with time. Simply copying others’ works won’t get you far, as you won’t be the originator. You have to offer a different value than that which already is presented. Why should I follow you?

6. The character is the Leader

You need to have character, someone that talks with the person you’re supposed to communicate with. People understand communication when it is with some perceived character. If this is not clear, it is very hard to understand where you are coming from.

7. Major Obstacles

What will be your major obstacles? List them and then defeat them. Don’t stop thinking there though; reflect on what their defeat will lead to, more opportunities maybe?

8. Length of Strategy

Have a long plan that you can depend on, where you plan to overcome the obstacles you know of. Though this doesn’t mean that you need to have a 50 years plan which is strictly detailed. Why? Because the market is never stagnant and you have to be flexible enough to adapt your strategy to the market - peoples’ needs.

9. Don’t Blink:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete” Sun Tzu

Know the value of fast implementation; though never give the enemy the opportunity of destructing you. You need to play the game smartly, act with impact, if not make sure that you get an impactful bang! Know your field so well, that you can find where you lose and where you have the chance of winning big.

Same thing goes with when you have the opportunity to kill the enemy’s market share, take the chance! And go strong, if you don’t aim strongly, they might get up and come stronger as they won’t be as naïve anymore when they know your power. Go for their weakness and avoid their strengths.

10. Know your Customer Well

“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.” Peter Drucker.

You have to “create” your own customer. This is before you create your strategy. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, then the meaning of the word success is just a word to be dreamt about.

There can only be one person that is spoken to, if you’re trying to talk with everyone, the result will be that nobody listens. So, if there are people that find value in what you offer, then you must come to realize that there will be people that hate you as well. Here are just some of the points you should know about the person you’re going to communicate with:

• His/ her Fears
• His/ her Desires
• His/ her Dreams – Goals
• His/ her Frustrations

11. Know Yourself

Creating a business that is far away from your own values isn’t the easiest task in the world. Try to find a market that is close to what you personally believe in and then you can become the persona that really can help and guide your user.

12. Take yourself Lightly, but your Strategy with Sincerity

When things aren’t going well, dare to look back at the principles that builds your strategy. Getting pissed and hating people for not accepting your hard work will not get you far. Though looking at the problems and dissecting your faults, will lead you to an ocean of opportunities.

13. Put the User First

It’s easy to think, well how can I win from this strategy? Though this might be a very interesting question, it is wrong! You need to focus on the person using your product/service, and not yourself. It is him/her that you need to help and reach out to. So a key word in strategy is benefits. Every move you make should be beneficial to your user, or they just might go elsewhere. When you do a good job at helping your user, you’ll win as well.

First is your mission, then the people and lastly you. It would be best if you didn't exist at all.

14. Experience

This word pretty much describes your task. In strategy it is very important to create an experience, which the user always knows he/she can come back to. You need to build a certain emotion for the experience, and also a visual image associated with the emotion. We are slaves to our passions, people are not rational, sorry Aristotle, we are lead by our emotions. The Master strategist knows this and understands that our sense of urgency only happens in the right experience.

15. Branding

Branding is crucial; as it’s here you can really show the experience and values of your brand. Put a lot of focus into branding. Try to build trust and your brand will leverage this trust for you in the future.

16. Strategy’s Secret

Deception is a great tool that you should study. When you’re ready to attack, seem as if you’re not and when you’re weak, show the illusion of being strong.

17. See into the Future

Search for problems to solve by looking at:

• Demographics
• New knowledge
• Change in markets
• Needs

18. Empower your Strategy with Dominance

You must identify the market you’re going after and be strong-minded to dominant it! If you can pull this through (which you can if you really put your mind to it), then you have got yourself a solid advantage in the market.

19. Creating Value

Always make sure that you offer the customer more than they demand. At all times create more value than you demand payment for, because if you don’t offer more than you charge, the customer will likely not be impressed. So keep your customer overwhelmed with benefits.

20. How do you know that you offer high quality to your customer?

A customer looks for benefits that enhance their lives’ conditions. How they’ll perceive your value depends on how well you’ve done your market research. When you know exactly who your customer is, what their problems and passions are and what they strive for. You adapt your product/service’s marketing based on those facts, and nothing else.

21. Target Your Enemy

Know your enemies:

• Who are your competitors and what are they offering?
• What are they not offering, though the desire of the customer is there?
• What might they do in the future?
• What’s their niche?
• How can you build a strategy that makes it very difficult for them to copy you?

When it’s difficult to come to conclusions on how you should form a strong strategy that overcomes your enemies: then stop thinking about how you can make the market stronger, but instead take the other method and think of the weaknesses that exist, and in what ways you can overcome them. Create a crystal clear reason to choose you instead of your competitors.

22. Play Fair

“To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence”
Sun Tzu

Avoid tearing others down in an offensive manner, show that you’re superior by giving more and newer value than your competitors, not by back talking them.

23. Are you seeing the whole Picture

Keep questioning your ideas and try to see them from all the aspects you possibly can from the problem’s perception, from the customers, from your own perception and from your competitors. Playing with angles will help you understand every person’s emotions better, and why they decide to act in certain ways.

24. Don’t fall in love

Not falling too much in love with your own concepts is important as it can blind you from the actual problems in the market; remember to focus equally on the problems as on the solutions. Try ideas out, but don’t always complete them, don’t keep them if they simply don’t work. Try, try, try, tweak and tweak: find out what works and what doesn’t, it’s not personal, it’s basic business.

25. Don’t ask the same Questions

When in struggle to gain insight on what you should seize into your strategy, keep in mind to always switch the way in which you ask questions. For instance, if you would like to know “why your customer would pay 10 dollars extra for your product”, then you can restructure the question in many various ways that can help you come to conclusions, here are some examples:

• In what ways can I make my creation 100 dollars more valuable?
• What are the immediate objections, how can I solve these?
• Would the way of payment make any difference?

26. One Word

Try to define the niche of your strategy with only one word. One word should pop up in peoples’ minds when thinking of you. First thing’s First: avoid multitasking, focus on one thing and do that one thing well before you go to the next step.

27. Make a List

Create a list of the elements that are evolved in your strategy:

• Research
• Marketing
• Finance
• Management of info
• Management of team

28. Set up Deadlines

Set deadlines for what you should be completed with and which milestones you’re supposed to achieve. This is very closely linked to your vision. When demanding high expectations, you’ll come to realize how important speed of action is and if your strategy actually works. If you rush yourself through everything and always have a high pulse and in the verge of passing out, you’ll soon wear yourself out. Be creative when using speed of action as a strategy, have a high tempo that is rational, the main point is that you should steadily go with the tempo.

29. Methods

Write down all your methods and mediums on how you’re going to reach your target audience.

30. Focus on profit

ROI = Return of Investment. How much will you be likely to invest and how much will you gain from it? Focus on profit generation.

31. Cherish Failure

It’s viciously important that you do not neglect failure. Failure, yours and competitors, is a great opportunity to find gaps and possibilities. Don’t kick around chairs when you’ve failed, but salute the chance you’ve received to find the occasion that can enhance the position of your business.

32. Team

Create a team that is getting better and stronger to support and highlight the business requirements. If you’re going to work in a team, make sure that they consist of A- players. A winning strategy centers its attention on everyone in the organization to come together for one cause and that is to profitably create and keep a customer.

33. Small Parts

A strategy is based on smaller parts/activities that together build up the entire strategy. Therefore it is important to come to realize that each action should improve the entire strategy and stay in the same frame.

34. The AVAC Method

There are numerous of strategy frameworks that show you how to structure your strategy. One of the newest strategy frameworks is the AVAC. This framework gets its name from the first letters of each of its four words. Every word includes questions that you should answer concerning your strategy:

Activities: What activities are you involved in? Is these activities necessary or not, are they helping you?
Value: How much value are you offering and more importantly is your value worth sufficiently to your user/customer? Is your value unique, or can your customers get it elsewhere?
Appropriability: Will you make money with your strategy? In what ways will you make money?
Change: Strive for change! Does your strategy incorporate any changes?

35. Changes

There are many kinds of changes you can look for, here are some examples:

• Social Changes
• Environmental Changes
• Governmental Changes
• Supplier Changes
• Market Changes

36. Check your Notes

Constantly overlook your plans and deadlines, and see if things have gone as planned or if the implementation of the strategy has been connected.

37. Earn Loyalty

There must be a reason to believe in your promises. Plan out exactly how you are going to show that you are trustworthy.

38. Put Yourself through Risk

If you are bold and take the chances in which are facing you, you’ll come to realize that there later won’t be anyway out, you’ll choose the risk of failure rather than running away.

39. How far can you go with persuasion

Persuasion is a pretty important aspect of marketing, but it’s only the last ingredient. Persuasion is your ability to change someone’s attitudes or behavior. Though, too often this gets translated into simply persuading someone to try something for the first time. A good marketer can sell anything once. However, the trick lies in getting people to buy again. So in brief, your marketing needs to be inside of your service/product, it’s very difficult to sell things people don’t want.

40. Put forward Irresistible Offers

There are many ways you can get loyal followers. This is when you have offered high value; you can show that you own high perceived value with social psychology. Here are 5 examples:

• Authority: If you’re a maven, and let’s say have won numerous of awards, you can showcase that you’re definitely someone that should be listened to, although be careful not to be too obnoxious about it. People hate being looked down on, or feeling stupid.

• Commitment: When you show that you are serious about what you do and that you truly believe in it, people can start to trust you. Here you need to be consistent and not draw from your own frames.

• Scarcity: A great psychological catch. If there’s something that only can be bought from you, and there’s not much of it, people want to get it before the opportunity has slipped through their hands.

• Liking: Be cool and understanding. The more you give people, the more benefits they get without efforts, the more liking will be granted to you, also people will feel a certain obligation to stay by your side, as a favor back to you.

• Social Proof: We live in a herd world. We have continents, countries, cities and schools. Different nationalities and different hobbies show what “leagues” we belong in, and the bigger the group of people is, the more people want to join in. We simple want to be with the strong groups, and if there are more people… then we feel safer.

Don’t hesitate to combine these social psychological aspects of strategy.

41. Don’t be fooled

Don’t let techniques fool you. If you focus too much on the techniques, you’ll lose tracks of the big-picture. Let the mission show you what techniques to use, not the other way around.

42. Question Authority

Nothing should be neglected even if you’re facing the big guys. You need to perceive with eyes that overlook various statuses and instead look at the situation.

43. Stay Consistent

Once you’ve chosen a certain strategy, and you see that it’s working, then it’s absolutely crucial to stay consistent and not break promises.

44. Strategies Differ

Strategies engages in both conceptual as well as analytical exercises.

45. Inside Out

As you’re creating the strategy, it’s easy to look only inside your own “world”. You need to also look outside the organization and ask the market what it really needs and wants.

46. Aim High

Have a strategy that is not shy, but bold. If you don’t have high expectations, then you won’t get far. You’re the only one limiting yourself.

47. Try Different Ways of Thinking

Find various ways of understanding the strategy and see if you’ve everything in place by scheduling and planning in diverse ways. For example, you might be a person that likes to do maps, or someone that understands bullet points. Finding out how you “see” things better, will help you become more effective in improving your strategy.

48. User is always Here

As the business grows, don’t forget about the heart in which the strategy surrounds, which is the user.

49. 80/20 Rule

80% is plain work while 20% is result driven. So concentrate on the work that gives results, find those 20% and expand that number.

50. Repetition is not always a good thing

When succeeding with a certain technique, we have the tendency to stick to it as it feels safe. Though, this is very misleading since it’s not safe, quite the opposite, now it has been shown and most likely studied by the competitors. So, it’s an expected move, and if you use it in the same manner again, you might not be as lucky as the first time.

51. The market is brutally Honest, so get your A-Game Planned

You might have structure of strategy that you believe will go great, but the problem is that it doesn’t. Does this mean that your strategy doesn’t work or can there be other aspects you’ve forgot to lay your absolute attention on? This is a question that must be asked, because maybe you have planned a fantastic strategy but the implementation of it is what’s messing up your game. Though obvious, remember not to break your own promises, it’s your future at stake, don’t wait for tomorrow because the market isn’t waiting for you, you need to grab every opportunity you can and not let go no matter how tough times are.

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