The 120-Day Service Company Sprint

Brian Sooy • Aug 13, 2024

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There are typically three strategies that Olympic racers follow:

Take an early lead and try to maintain it
Hang back, marshal your strength, and finish strong
Run your pace and try to keep up (In my opinion, as a runner, that’s more of a coping mechanism than a strategy).

In the 2024 Olympics, we saw dramatic finishes and runaway winners. What lessons can service companies learn from these competitions?

Think About Creating — and Sustaining — Long-Term Value

One of Aespire’s core principles is that “Extraordinary Strategists confidently lead by learning from hindsight, guiding with insight, and acting with foresight to direct companies along a clear path to their desired future.”

Distance Your Company: Strategy is about creating a competitive advantage. To win, organizations must find ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Differentiation creates distance.
Fundamental business strategy asks, “Where are we going to compete?,” “How are we going to win?” and “What will it take to win in the marketplace?” When you think about those three fundamental business strategy questions, you realize a company needs a clear understanding of its audience, offering, and the resources necessary to create revenue and value.
Many companies need more support between strategy and operations, sales and marketing, products and customers, and leadership and teams. Instead of functioning as a system, companies devolve into silos. That’s what watching the US Men’s relay team bungle the handoff was like.

Here are a few service company consumer and marketing trends we’re watching:

September launches the 120-Day Sprint to the year’s end. We’ve been studying what’s happening in the service company market so you can adjust, adapt, and act with foresight.

Consumer behavior is changing, and tracking tactics are less effective. Google continues to rig the search game and optimize in its favor. Don’t be surprised if you see less traffic to your website and little to no traffic to your content.
Essential home services companies experience the most robust growth with a minimum of 25% new customer growth, which can lead to a higher revenue percentage.
Touchpoints matter more than funnels. Funnels are excellent for herding sheep, but consumers get annoyed if you treat them like sheep.
Commoditization is reducing revenue. People crave community. Starbucks’ Q2 operating income was down 17% year over year. Starbucks’s CEO says, “In this environment, many customers are being more exacting about where and how they choose to spend their money.” Howard Schulz notes that The drive-through supplanted the “third place.” Don’t let that happen to your business.
If customers withdraw from buying coffee and fast food, consider what that means for bigger ticket purchases like home improvements and upgrades.
Visit the Aespire Marketing Trends Report to read the latest digital marketing trends report, which includes average Google Ads and Local SEO trends.

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