2.4 Choose a Strategy

Now that we have walked through all the factors that may have an impact on your choice, we want to summarize them below:

1. Social Skills

2. Marketing Skills

3. Technical Skills

4. Motivation & Discipline

5. Social Opportunities

6. Geographical Opportunities

7. Business Related Opportunities

8. Time Limitations

9. Financial Limitations

10. Risk Tolerance

All these criteria will guide you towards your personalized strategy.

Plan A to Z

While brainstorming, you will likely end up with multiple candidates and various versions of ideas.

Make sure to note all of them down!

It is helpful to have many options to choose from. In case you get weak results out of your preferred choice, you will quickly be able to switch towards backup plans.

We recommend to not limit yourself to a single strategy. It is very difficult to assess how successful something will be before doing actual trials. Make sure to let your options compete with each other until one of them stands out.

Strong Variation

There are endless ways to execute the same strategy. Let's take distributing flyers as an example. For every variable, there are multiple options.

Variable	Option 1	Option 2
Location	On the Street	In Universities
Referral Code Format	QR Code	Shortened Link
Flyer Visuals	Abstract Graphics	Text-Based
Flyer Size	Single DIN-A5	Small Brochure
Paper Quality	Cheap & Many	Quality & Few
Distribution Time	In the Morning	On Evenings

You can quickly come up with hundreds of different combinations. Changing a single variable can have a significant impact on the overall performance. This is why you will need to find out what works and what doesn't by trial and error (more on that in section 4).

Make yourself aware of this complexity when choosing your top strategies. Some will be more straightforward than others.

If you have two competing strategies with otherwise similar characteristics, make sure to prioritize the more straightforward one. Feel free to consult with us if you are unsure.

Core Strategies

We have outlined a number of core strategies that may function as drafts for your individual solution, or even as inspirations for new ideas. You can access them below.

Core Strategies

We recommend to follow the process below to ensure maximum creative output:

1. Brainstorm about your options before going over the core strategies linked above. This will allow you to fully unleash your own creative potential and avoid a situation where your mind falls back to the already conferred options. Being unbiased is important for your first brainstorming session. Make sure to take as detailed notes as possible.

2. After completing step 1, proceed with the link above. Identify which of your ideas are outlined and which may be completely unique to you.

3. Based on the new input from step 2, do another round of brainstorming. Merge your previous ideas with newly acquired methods and settle on a few selected "finalist" strategies.