What is a Pivot Strategy?
A pivot is about a change in direction. It’s changing how you’re doing it, but not the why.
Therefore, perhaps the best definition of a pivot strategy is to change your business strategy without changing the purpose or vision of your organization.
In a more formal sense, it’s taking some fundamental aspects of your business strategy and deciding to change them because your business is facing a disruption or challenge.
Why do Businesses Adopt a Pivot Strategy?
Businesses adopt a pivot strategy to stay relevant and competitive when circumstances change.
This might be due to shifts in market demand, new competition, or emerging opportunities.
Pivoting allows businesses to adjust their approach while staying true to their core mission, helping them to grow and succeed in a dynamic environment.
How do you approach a Pivot Strategy?
At Crew, we approach all strategies (even pivot strategies) with the 5 P’s of marketing. These are the five levers that help drive demand in the economic value exchange. They are:
1. People
2. Product
3. Place
4. Price
5. Promotion
By looking at your business or product mix through the lens of these 5 P’s, it will give you clarity around how to develop your pivot strategy.
Let's explore in greater detail:
People
Whether you’re B2B or B2C, you must consider what is happening in your customer's world.
In terms of purchasing your product/service; is the current challenge your consumers are facing going to be a short-term or a long-term barrier? Covid, rising inflation and AI are just a few of the challenges brands have faced over the past few years. Each has impacted consumer purchasing habits.
Ask yourself; Will consumers start buying again, or is there a chance they’ll say, “You know what? I like this new offering better.”
It is always important to draw close to your target audience. Whether it’s fast and inexpensive market research or calling your customers directly, take some time to open more dialogue and understand what they’re thinking.
What do they need? What do they like or not like? This information will help inform which pivot strategies you should employ. You only have so many resources of time and money, so you must quickly and strategically figure out where you should invest for the benefit of your audience.
Product
Look at your business or product as it sits within the current economic climate.
You need to honestly and fairly answer this question: do you have the right product or service mix for the current market and is it positioned to meet consumer needs?
Do you need to change it? How does that work? Should you actually look at a new product and service delivery?
Place
Place is about the distribution of your product or service.
Depending on your business, pivoting your distribution can be difficult, but for others, it may be the solution you’ve wanted to pursue.
Embrace this as an opportunity to scale your business for the global market.
Price
Once you’ve figured out what the product is going to be, and how you’re going to deliver it, what should you charge?
Consider trends, fads and breakthroughs. What's coming next for consumers.
Consider the current economic climate. How are you priced?
A brand's pricing strategy is an important decision, and often a hard one because there’s no right answer. It comes down to how receptive your audience is, what they’re going through, and what their willingness or ability to pay is. And that’s why knowing your audience is so critical.
Promotion
Now you must decide how to bring this to market.
What should the name of it be? How are you going to create awareness? Where is your target audience spending most of their time now? Why should people care about it? What message will resonate with them?
When you’re in a situation where you need to pivot fast, these are all things you need to move on instantly.
With all the choices and decisions to be made, there are also a lot of opportunities to adapt. If you’ve walked through these steps and are struggling to develop a plan, we’d love to help you build that out.
Every day we are seeing new thinking applied to old business models and marketing strategies.
Conclusion
Regardless of the disruption or challenge, at the end of the day if you care about your consumers you will know what they need.
If you can pivot to meet their needs, you have an opportunity to adapt your business, and hopefully ignite new revenue revenue growth.
Any crisis springs forward the opportunity to be a better, more agile business with a stronger relationship with our clients, customers and consumers.