5 Business Strategy Frameworks That Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

In this article, I’ll describe 5 business strategy frameworks.

1. SWOT Matrix

this is usually the most versatile business strategy framework for most situations. It encompasses 4 factors:

1. Strengths – these are internal factors such as activities and characteristics that help your company reach its objectives and help your company differentiate itself from its competitors
2. Weaknesses – these are internal factors such as activities and characteristics that could prevent your company from reaching its objectives
3. Opportunities – these are external factors that could positively impact your company and help your company accelerate its success
4. Threats – these are external factors that could negatively impact your company and prevent your company from succeeding

2. Strategic Sweet Spot

This framework is the intersection between your customers’ needs and your company’s capabilities.

The Sweet Spot involves using your company’s capabilities to satisfy customer needs in ways that competitors would have the most difficulty emulating.

To use this framework, you’ll want to ask yourself these two questions:

• What core competencies does your company have that your competitors do not? Which of those core competencies are hardest to emulate and develop from the position of your competitors?
• What are some customer needs that your company is in a better position to serve than your competitors?

3. Customer Journey

This involves mapping out all the touchpoints customers encounter when dealing with your company and brand. With this framework, you determine what drives your customers to progress through the touchpoints, what obstacles prevent them from moving forward, and how to optimize customer experiences.

1. Also, you’ll want to consider how you can segment your customers and how each segment would traverse through those touchpoints differently. And you would consider whether those customer segments might have entirely different touchpoints in the beginning stages of their journeys.

4. Competitive Analysis Matrix

This is a table that helps your company differentiate from competitors in your industry.  At one glance, you will be able to see your company’s competitive landscape, your position in a given market, and possible opportunities to differentiate your company’s products and services from the competition. It helps you rank factors such as price, quality, level of customization of products, unique features important to your customers, marketing channels utilized, and more.

5. TOWS Matrix

The TOWS Matrix is a more advanced version of the SWOT matrix, which encompasses strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; the TOWS matrix allows you to combine internal and external factors with each other to develop new strategies. Those strategies are the following:

1. Strength-Opportunity Strategies – this involves using internal strengths to capitalize on external opportunities; this is a great way to identify and exploit competitive advantages
2. Strength-Threat Strategies – this involves using internal strengths to avoid and minimize external threats
3. Weakness-Opportunity Strategies – this involves improving internal weaknesses by using external opportunities
4. Weakness-Threat Strategies – this involves avoiding threats and minimizing weaknesses