Recently I read & reviewed The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber which talks about the growth of a business and the different requirements of business development. It got me thinking that the principles outlined in the book could also apply to the development of a business website and digital marketing.
The E-Myth concept is in three stages of growth:
- Infancy – where the technician is everything
- Adolescence – where better management skills are required
- Maturity – where the entrepreneurial vision is needed
The strategy to navigate this journey lies in three key activities:
- Innovation
- Quantification
- Orchestration
and seven distinct steps to achieve success:
- Primary Aim
- Strategic Objective
- Organisation Strategy
- Management Strategy
- People Strategy
- Marketing Strategy
- Systems Strategy
For your website and digital marketing strategy, where are you in the kind of three phase framework of growth?
- Is it just doing the job of showing people what you do? – Infancy
- Is it performing new or additional business functions such as customer support, customer service, sales? – Adolescence
- Is it integrated with other parts of your business with automated functions that perform tasks? – Maturity
It is worth thinking about this in terms of your readiness because as your business moves through the stages, so too should your front facing marketing activities and resources such as your website.
Skipping the section in The E-Myth Revisited on a turn-key or franchise approach for a future investigation. Next we will look at the E-Myth activities as they apply to your website and digital marketing.
- Innovation – are you thinking of new ideas to be different, offer new services, products, delivery methods, customer servicing?
- Quantification – are you measuring the activity you are attracting, the efficiency gains you are achieving, can you forecast further gains with new ideas, marketing, and sales channels?
- Orchestration – do you have a plan to get things working together, your marketing integrated, your function elements into operations? Is the automation, systems, and processes that are required bedded down.
Lastly, the considerations when thinking about the seven steps to achieving your optimal online strategy:
- Primary Aim – What do you want your digital investment to achieve?
- Strategic Objective – What does your website and digital marketing have to do to achieve your primary aim? Does it need to increase income, expand market reach, take advantage of new opportunities? What is your timeframe, how will it deliver?
- Organisational Strategy – How is it structured and intertwined with the organisation? Who will be responsible for what?
- Management Strategy – How will you manage the initiative, what project management systems will you need to put in place for development and implementation?
- People Strategy – What internal staff can be applied to tasks, what internal resources need to be employed, what external resources need to be engaged for specialist takes, where can efficiencies be gained in leveraging people?
- Marketing Strategy – What markets are you wanting to reach, who are they, how do they engage and find your services?
- Systems Strategy – what hardware is required, what software, what data needs to be gathered, how will the tools work together and with existing systems and process to form greater ones? What can be automated?
Using the framework of The E-Myth Revisited we can identify where we are currently and plan and resource a path to growth and development in the use of your website and digital marketing initiatives to further feed into your greater business growth journey.
If you would like a guided look at your own position and what can be done to bring your online resources in line with your business growth and needs, get in contact with us and book a coffee.
