A Proven Process for Creating a Growth Framework

By Kerry Juhl

Growth. Every business in the world wants to grow, wants to live their purpose, follow their mission, serve their customers, and make money from it. But sometimes it is hard to know what to do, where to go, to find that growth. We ask ourselves questions like… 

• Should we improve our products and services?  Or offer new ones? 
• Should we follow our competitors’ actions or do something completely different?  
• Should we invest in more marketing to drive awareness? 
• Or maybe we stay the course and focus on driving efficiency?   

Any of these paths could be the right direction for the business but at some point, teams must put a stake in the ground. That said, strategies don’t come out of thin air. It requires an examination of the world in which the business operates.

Teams need to thoroughly examine their: 

• CUSTOMERS – what do customers want, need and value and how do they behave 
• MARKET – what are the industry or category dynamics, the competitive actions 
• OWN COMPANY – what structures, processes, groups are working well, or not 

The output of this examination can be organized into a framework that inspires growth strategies.  Growth Frameworks allow teams to reconsider the world in which they operate – literally putting it into a new “Frame” that will help identify issues and unearth opportunities for growth. The opportunities within the framework offer a “where to play” roadmap for teams, allowing them to pick a path forward and define their strategy for growth. 

A Proven Process 

SIVO has a tried-and-true process for developing growth frameworks that has been refined over the years and across industries. The SIVO team utilizes a specific process, research approach and expert facilitation to lead business teams to a clear and relevant growth framework. The process can be customized to fit the client organization based on factors such as their existing customer knowledge, the team’s availability to participate in the process and team size. Typically, 5 to 10 client team members work collaboratively, guided through five steps, beginning with the discovery of insights that point to future opportunities and ending with an activation plan that will advance the business.  

The 5 Steps

MINE

1. SIVO recommends starting with what clients already know, by mining existing company, customer, category, and industry knowledge. 

BUILD 

2. We fill knowledge gaps with custom qualitative research with your brand loyalists to explore their needs, motivations, and perceptions, to uncover key insights. 
3. We quantify and prioritize the research findings with the appropriate audience. 
4. We leverage expert facilitation to develop and refine the growth framework. 

APPLY 

5. Once the business team has aligned on the framework, we move the team to application by facilitating the development of an activation summary to outline future steps.

The Resulting Growth Framework

The output of this comprehensive process is a framework that provides teams with an inspiring construct that has easily digestible, business-relevant content and a common language for client teams to rally around, so they can clearly see and prioritize a path to growth. These frameworks can take many forms, including:  

• Consumer Jobs Map – Consumer Jobs Maps (a.k.a. Demand Space Maps) help explain why consumers make the choices they make, highlighting opportunities to deliver on unmet needs. 
  
• Category Vision Framework – A category vision framework envisions the category of the future.  Although no one can predict the future, SIVO, in collaboration with the client business team, develops a vision for what the future state of the category will be 3 to 5 years from now. 
  
• Customer Value Equation – A Customer Value Equation framework provides an understanding of what customers value about the total brand experience by mapping the key drivers of value and the assets that support those drivers. 
  
• Competitive SWOT – A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) framework allows business teams to assess and analyze a current situation from all angles and to formulate future strategies in response to the findings. 

For more definitions and details on each of these frameworks, see SIVO’s Growth Frameworks: A Path to Action & Growth blog. 

Applying the Growth Framework

Applying growth frameworks to the business can lead to growth strategies that span across the 4P’s of marketing.  

Product strategies could include Innovation to launch new products that fulfill demand or Renovation to improve existing products to better meet customer needs. 

Pricing strategies could include Price Increases that strategically align with consumer preferences or Cost Engineering to improve profit margins by removing attributes that consumers don’t value. 

Place strategies (i.e., Distribution strategies) could include retailer and channel distribution strategies or category management negotiations to improve product placement that aligns with customer shopping habits.   

Promotion strategies could include new advertising campaigns that focus on key benefits that align with what consumers need and value or in-store promotions to align promotional activity with how consumers shop the category.

Reach out to SIVO to learn more about Growth Frameworks

SIVO wants to share our proven process for elevating your insights into a growth framework that enables your team to set strategies that put your business on the path to growth. 

Reach out to the SIVO team at Contact@SIVOInsights.com to discuss the approach and growth framework that will be the right strategic fit for your team and your business.