Power Up Your business strategy

What we’ll cover today Identifying your top customers & clients Establishing your competitive edge Building an effective marketing strategy Innovating to stay on top

Identifying top customers & clients

“Age of the Customer” Who is your ideal customer? How do they find you? Where can you reach them?

Power Up Your Business Strategy POWER UP YOUR BUSINESS STRATEGY

Analyze & improve customer data quality, collection & communication

Communicate effectively with your customers

Collect vital customer data

Your ideal customer’s profile, where your ideal customer “hangs out” & how your ideal customer finds you

Identifying your top customers & clients

“Age of the Customer”

Source: June 8, 2011, “Competitive Strategy In The Age Of The Customer” Forrester report

Building your ideal customer profile 80/20 rule Collect & analyze customer data Recency, frequency, monetary

Where are your customers?

Which media do they use?

Finding your ideal customer

Image Credit: NBC TV Image Credit: Btvsearch.com

Your search for customers • Signage • Traditional media ads • Internet ads • Direct mail • Email marketing

Customer searches for you • Visiting your

business • Mobile search • Online ratings &

reviews • Internet search • Asking for

referrals in real world & virtually

Word-of-mouth opportunities

Channel Actively sought info Info just came up

Online customer review sites 81% 19%

Speaking w/people I don’t know personally

72% 28%

Thru online customer communities

69% 31%

Reading blogs 57% 43%

Speaking w/people I know personally

56% 44%

Reading/posting messages on Twitter

43% 57%

Reading/posting messages on Pinterest

37% 63%

Reading/posting messages on Facebook

32% 68%

Survey Base= US online adults (18+) who indicated they have used the specific w-o-m channel Source: North American Technographics Consumer Deep Dive: Estimating the Customer Life Cycle (Discover Phase) Survey, Q3 2012 (US)

Establishing your competitive edge

Commodity or niche? Improve or disrupt? Differentiate & innovate

Evaluate successes or failures

Innovate

Introduce your product or service

To solidify your market position

Plan to be unique

How to set your business apart

Improve or disrupt?

Commodity or niche?

Establish Your Competitive Edge

Niche businesses Offer unique or exclusive products & services Dominate their market Can price products & services at a premium

High Margin

Low Margin

Low Volume High Volume

Gold Rush

Business Compass

Starbucks

Fine Art Galleries

Specialty Retailers

Wal-Mart

Costco

Home Depot

DEATH ZONE

High Margin

Low Margin

Low Volume High Volume

Gold Rush

Business Compass

Starbucks

Fine Art Galleries

Specialty Retailers

Wal-Mart

Costco

Home Depot

DEATH ZONE

R.I.P. Low Margin – Low Volume

Improving v. Disruptive IMPROVING BUSINESSES Are market leaders Offer improved versions of

existing products or services

DISRUPTIVE BUSINESSES Make cheaper, faster or

more accessible products & services Appeal to new or less-

demanding customers Are likely to crush

established market leaders

QUIZ!

Improving or disruptive?

Improving or disruptive?

Innovation Transfer technology from one market into a different market Innovate in an existing market Solve a problem Offer creative customer service

Technology transfer: new market

Technology transfer: internal to external

Innovation in an existing market

Creative customer service

Creative customer service

Solve a problem from the customer’s point of view

Building an Effective Marketing Strategy

Call attention to what makes your business unique Establish yourself as a market thought leader Adapt message to media

Opportunities to contribute

Refine your message

Contribute your expertise

Communicate the difference

Where you can be an influencer

Communication strategy

Your role as a thought leader

Your unique proposition

Marketing Strategy

Communicate the difference

© 2013 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 30

Characteristics of a thought leader • Deals with big issues your buyers face Relevant • Challenges conventional thinking Provocative • Anticipates what’s coming over the horizon Forward-looking • Different from what everyone else is saying Distinct • Energizes people about this way of thinking Inspiring • Provides actionable advice on what clients can do now Actionable • Using the ideas can produce breakthrough results. Results-driven • The tone encourages a dialogue and feedback. Conversational • Your company can help people get there. Credible • Makes no reference to your products and services Independent

© 2013 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 31

Adapt message to media: PC v. mobile device

Innovating to Stay on Top

Encourage an innovation culture Differentiate your products & services

Respond to competitors challenges

Resources to support innovation

Set your product apart

Encourage innovation across the company

To differentiate your product and services

Plan a culture of innovation

What your competitors are doing

Why innovation matters

Innovating to Stay on Top

Encourage an innovation culture

Breakthrough products

Source: Popular Mechanics Top 10 Breakthrough Products, 2012

City Business Services Visualize your customers Core strategy sessions Innovation Support

Innovation http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/02/07/googles-role-as-an-innovation-model/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/02/07/the-3-ways-innovation-is-changing-and-how-to-adapt-fast/

Market Niche Carve out an industry or two and become the most dominant player serving that industry. A really nice bonus to this approach is you can usually raise your prices dramatically when you specialize in this manner.

Establish Your Competitive Edge Improve or disrupt the market Market leaders continuously improve their service Market disruptors make cheaper, faster, or more accessible

products or services

“disruptive strategies greatly increase the odds of competitive success”

Capture disruptive growth instead of getting killed by it

Disruptive innovations Introduce products and services that are not as good as

currently available products Benefits of new products are simplicity, convenience, cost Appeal to new or less-demanding customers

Commit to Your Niche Commit to it, stay at it and resist the temptation to wander off in the next new direction. Building a brand, and that's what I'm talking about, takes time and patience. The payoff, however, is what differentiates the winners from the losers in this big marketing game.

Disruption paralyzes industry leaders

Ways to Differentiate Product - Can you offer a product that is so unique or even

trendy that your business is associated with that offering? Or, can you extend a product and offer a valuable service to make the product more useful to the customer. Service - Same goes for a service. Many times this can be

the packaging of a service as a product. Consulting is often delivered on an hourly basis. Packaging a consulting engagement based on an outcome, with defined deliverables and fixed package price is a very effective way to differentiate a service offering. Don't forget to give the service a powerful name!

What Sets Your Business Apart? Here's what I mean. I have a client that provides custom

computer programming. Essentially, they use programming languages to build custom applications for businesses. What they do is often hard to explain and even harder to put a price on, making it difficult for a prospective client to compare different companies. As a way to differentiate their business, they have begun to offer something they call Perfect Coaching. Perfect Coaching is a unique blend of training and programming and, here's the key, no one else in their business is offering anything like it. Prospects like the sound of it and are asking to know more. It's too early to tell but I suspect this point of difference will open a lot of doors for them.

Make a Compelling Offer Can you become known by an offer you make? I know an accountant that offers his tax preparation clients a 100% refund on their preparation fee when they refer four new clients. They are the 100% refund tax guys.

Once disruptive product gains a foothold in new or low-end markets, Improvement cycle begins b/c pace of tech progress outstrips customers’ abilities to use

it, the previously not-good-enough tech eventually improves enough to intersect w/needs of more demanding customers When this happens, disruptors are on a path that will

ultimately crush the imcumbents

Guarantee Can you offer a guarantee so strong that no one else in your industry would dream of doing it. This one frightens some people but, you probably guarantee your work anyway, you just don't say so. Come out and boldly announce that you guarantee results and watch what happens!

Customer Service Everyone knows the story of over the top customer service provided by Nordstrom's. Create your own over the top customer response system and word of mouth advertising will flow liberally. One of the greatest ways to kick this off is to over deliver on your first customer contact. Give them something more than you promised, give them a gift, give them a related service for free.

Clues to uncovering your difference Look at your current clients. What common elements exist among your best clients? Interview your clients. See if they can tell you why they chose to work with, why they stay, why they refer? Study your competitors more closely. What do they do that you could do better, what don't they offer they you could, how do they position themselves?

Solve A Problem So, where do you begin to look for problems? Ask yourself the questions: What do I want to make absurd two years from

now? What products can I not live without? As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I believe the next big technology companies will be lifestyle automation companies.

Next, take your problem and follow the startup process: 1. Validate your problem.

Who needs this solution to the problem? Is there a market for the solution? Setup a landing page in this format to be sure the solution to your problem is clear and concise.

The problem is in the headline and the three bullets highlight the minimum features. 2. Relentlessly pursue product/market fit.

Have you made a product that satisfies the needs of the market? Caution: Sometimes you might build a product that has no market. Also known as a startup idea.

Tips from Joel Gascoigne, Founder of Buffer: When you reach product/market fit you essentially have built something people want. You naturally get traction, and things

unfold very quickly. Reaching product/market fit is perhaps the most important thing for a startup. Andreeson puts it this way:

“Do whatever is required to get to product/market fit. Including changing out people, rewriting your product, moving into a different market, telling customers no when you don’t want to, telling customers yes when you don’t want to.”

3. Scale. Repeat what worked in step two. And it’s as simple as that! Let me know if you need any help. http://jmarbach.com/solve-problems-dont-build-ideas

Solve A Problem Companies Square -