The economic downturn and increasing digital disruption has led to some businesses and industries folding. We use the Step Change strategic lens to explore what businesses in a sunset industry can do to rise above.

The latest economic figures released by the Bureau of Statistics show that the Australian economy is slowing down. What can businesses do to thrive in a recession? We turn to one of history’s greatest strategists and a ruthless warrior, Genghis Khan.

Many Australian companies are complacent about the effect of disruption in their industries. But disruption today can displace market leaders, their products, and their services. Responding to disruption means businesses need to think fast and act fast.

It’s easy to say your business is customer-centric; in fact, many businesses would claim they are putting their customers at the heart of what they do. 

Boards are essential to your business’s strategic success. They can add great value to your strategy, but to do so, they need to be involved in more than just your yearly off-site strategic planning.

As your business strives for growth, having the right strategy in place paves the road to success. But what does it take to deliver the best strategy? And how do you ensure you create a strong strategic plan that you can fully implement from start to finish?

Marketing a new app in today’s crowded marketplace can be tricky. But when you play your cards right, you can get it in front of the right audience and convert mere viewers to active users.

Many nonprofits today run their organisations just like any other business. Although many may not be in it for the money but solely to advance their humanitarian goal and mission, there are essential points they need to keep in mind to acquire confidence and gain trust among donors and investors, respect in the market, and support from the public.

We see this happen in businesses: The senior team would go away for a two-day offsite retreat to develop a strategic plan. And when all is said and done, they would come back with a plan or a goal devoid of strategy.

A four-billion dollar merger is underway between two of the country’s media player giants, Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media. The new company name after the merger is Nine, and it is set to become Australia’s formidable integrated media player.

With two giants combining forces to create one formidable integrated media player, there is one worthy question that begs an answer.

In the language of strategy, we often say, “There’s a need for strategy because time, dollars, and focus are scarce and limited resources.” A strong business strategy is the application of these resources for maximum leverage.

But in developing a solid business strategy, you first need to check that you’re actually doing strategy and not something else entirely — like business planning.

Over the years, growth hacking has been a widely used buzzword among startups. And although a lot has happened since Sean Ellis coined the term in 2010, many are still unsure about what growth hacking is and why it matters to their challenger business.

Every year, we work with a hundred clients everywhere and anywhere, from Wellington to Toronto, and in one of our strategic sessions, Step Change chief Ashton Bishop was given a challenge: Out of all the strategy work that the team has done at Step Change, how can we add the most value in 5 minutes? Here’s his response to the 5-minute challenge with his five tips on strategy.  

No matter how far-reaching a leader’s vision may be, the reality is that transforming organisations is a difficult and arduous task. Many businesses today are so deeply rooted in operational efficiency and stability that they continue to struggle with how to effectively manage and sustain change.

What really makes people decide to buy? And no, it doesn't have a lot to do with singing kittens riding bikes. Find out what does work here:

KitKat wasn’t always the behemoth brand that it is today. It used to be floating around with all other Nestlé products, struggling to gain traction and make a name for itself. Like KitKat, many businesses often have a great idea or product but often find it difficult to get people to buy. Because the truth is, it’s often the best marketing, and not the best product, that wins.

Matthew Osborne has always been on the lookout for different money-making opportunities. He had just started a family of his own, and he was earning less than $6 an hour — it just wasn’t enough to make ends meet.

And when you can’t see that ends are meeting, your observation skills suddenly become heightened.

So he did find his opportunity. And in the most unusual of places.

There are many different ways to launch a new brand, and any one of them can jumpstart your products from scratch. But it helps to take inspiration from some of the world’s greatest strategists because, after all, their success has been tried and tested.

Growing a business is hard in the best of times. However, in the worst of times, such as the conditions found during a recession, growing a business is next to impossible unless the right strategy is developed.

A prime example is the modern-day Great Recession where more than 170,000 small businesses closed their doors between 2008 and 2010, according to the US Census Bureau.

While the loss of over three million small-business jobs was catastrophic for many individuals, there is an opportunity to learn lessons in an effort to remain prepared should a future lengthy recession occur.

If you can’t simply define management and leadership then you can’t hope to be effective at either. We’ve got it down to a word for each. At the end of this article you should be able to see what great looks like — no matter what side of the divide you come down on.

Today’s dynamic global economy has us facing a challenging task of steering our organisations towards success.

The stress from rising competition and regulation, resource management, revenue generation, and customer retention only shows that we have the toughest jobs in the market.

Webinars deliver tremendous value both to the business and the audience. It’s a great and cut-through way to share, engage, connect, and educate your audience wherever they are in the world. That’s why we’ve always been fans of webinars.

Recently, Step Change had the privilege of leveraging the power of webinars.

Our CEO, Ashton Bishop, presented “Predatory Marketing: Repositioning the Competition to Build Business” to 76 CEOs, CMOs, and Marketing Directors for a series powered by GoToWebinar.

Unicorns are no longer a myth. At least not in business.

With only the final few seats available, we want to give you the opportunity to tackle disruption head on by assembling your ultimate advisory board.

If you had to make a list of some of the most powerful brands in history, online retail giant Amazon would undoubtedly be right at the top. According to one recent study, the company saw $2.371 billion in net income in 2016 on the back of $136 billion in net sales — and that’s just in the United States. The company is also growing at a rate of about 27% year-over-year and currently employs more than 341,000 people. All of this is to say that the fact that Amazon has decided to make its long-awaited move into Australia should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. 

Your brand is anything that comes from your company as a specific source. To the consumer, it symbolises what they can expect when they do business with you. And in today’s crowded marketplace, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your brand stands out from the crowd. 

Why does your business exist? What are you out to do?

These questions seem easy to answer. But working with different businesses all over Australia for almost a decade now, we’ve observed that not all businesses are aligned with their organisation’s purpose.

Are you selling a product or a service? If you are, then you know that having a selling proposition will make an impact and ultimately make the sale. However, it is not enough to just have a selling proposition. It needs to be enticing. It needs to be original and clever. And most importantly, the message needs to make customers buy.

When a country’s central bank increases interest rates, it creates a ripple effect that impacts the entire economy. Even with a 0.25% increase, you have to adjust your marketing strategy to respond to the drop in discretionary income as well as the currency’s relative increased strength.