The Secret to Creating Growth Moves

We’ve previously explored how to drive growth in a pragmatic way through the development of a strong customer value proposition. Now we’re looking at how to develop the actionable initiatives needed to bring that value proposition to market.

We call these initiatives and steps “growth moves” and their goal is to push a company’s thinking forward and create new ideas that can disrupt the category or challenge a competitor’s strategy.

The Secret to Successful Business Growth

The secret to creating these moves is a combination of art and science. On the one hand, they need to answer a business need that has been identified in the value proposition and make sense financially. (We recommend creating a business plan per growth move.) On the other hand, they must be a creative solution that resonates with the target customer and reflects their attitudes, behaviors and needs.

3 Actionable Steps for Achievable Business Growth

We’ve outlined a few examples below to help you get a better understanding of growth moves that have proven successful in the past. Some of these could likely be applied to your own growth initiatives.

1. Access A New Industry Type

In the previous article, we talked about our insurance client in Latin America for which we developed a channel strategy that would allow them to penetrate a new industry type – employers. In order to bring this growth strategy to life, we generated specific growth moves.

Some mid-size companies needed support in managing their employee base, so we put together an ambitious plan to educate and provide tools for employee management in small to medium-sized companies to build the notion of a partnership with the insurer, and provide access to their employee base.

“We call these initiatives and steps “growth moves” and their goal is to push a company’s thinking forward.”

2. Supporting Value Proposition

When we launched the T- Mobile “Un-carrier” strategy we helped them develop a set of moves that would support the new value proposition during the first month, including growth moves like no contracts, or the device-updating approach “JUMP” which had a massive commercial impact and made the value proposition real to customers.

3. Reignite Promotion

But growth moves don’t have to be complex. A great example is the “Breadstick Nation” concept we developed with Olive Garden, Darden Restaurant’s largest brand, which found itself in a highly competitive environment.

The restaurant chain needed to reignite its promotion strategy in a way that would increase guest reconsideration, particularly during weekday lunches. We had to develop “quick hit” promotions that could be launched almost immediately. Breadstick Nation launched to wild success, with Darden Restaurants’ stock surging 15% and hitting a new all-time high in the weeks following the #breadsticknation launch.