A pivot usually occurs when a company makes a fundamental change to its business after determining (usually through market research) that its product isn’t meeting the needs of its intended market. Companies will continue to pivot as these needs change or as they discover new opportunities for the business.
You probably never heard that Facebook and YouTube started fully intending to be dating sites. Still, they pivoted to something more unique when they found that dating had already become an overcrowded market. Their pivots were early but real.
On HBO, Silicon Valley is a TV comedy series that follows the misadventures of an introverted computer programmer and his brainy friends attempting to strike it rich in a high-tech gold rush.
The show explores their start-up “Pied Piper” when they realize what appeals to customers and what doesn’t, and they focus their efforts on what’s working. In many cases, they find that the product or service that clicks with consumers isn’t what their companies were originally founded on.
Communicating the pivot becomes a very important component of the plan.
Here’s how to pivot strategically and boost sales.
- Solve a problem. What your current customers say will help you pivot your company and turn your solution into something that solves a need.
- Segment your market. Know your audience. Target those who will benefit the most from your services.
- Turn your product into a service. In product marketing, only the four Ps of the marketing mix are applicable: product, price, place, and promotion. However, in service marketing, three more Ps are added to the conventional marketing mix: people, process, and physical existence.
- Outline the plan. Focus on a product feature and tell people how this helps them.
- Become the solution. Communicate how you will guide them to the solution. A “brute force” communication of the new positioning with “relentless repetition.”
- Communicate what failure to use your service and success look like. Demonstrating a product or service is one of the best ways to promote it. Further, word of mouth also helps in marketing them.
Facebook was initially aimed at college students, later at consumers in general, and more recently found a lucrative growth path with businesses. Pivots, thus, are a normal and necessary process in expanding the market, recognizing cultural shifts, and kick-starting growth.
Here are four local businesses in my Roswell, GA community that I helped pivot to a new model during this crisis.
I can help you create a new communications plan for life after COVID-19 now. Contact me so we can start brainstorming ideas.