Know: ‘timing is everything.’

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Marketing Insights from A to Z
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ingly resemble each other and are forced to compete on price, strate-
gically positioned companies avoid the bloodbath by following the
beat of a different drummer.
Looking at strategy this way prevents companies from thinking
they have a strategy because they are going on the Internet, or out-
sourcing, or restructuring, or acquiring other firms, or adopting cus-
tomer relationship management. These business initiatives can easily
be copied. They don’t define how a business is going about building
a sustainable strategy.
One of the best rules for strategy development is to strive to
find out what the target customers like and do more of it; and find
out what they dislike and do less of it. This means spending time in
the marketplace and seeing what matters. As stated by Al Ries and
Jack Trout, “Strategy should evolve out of the mud of the mar-