Business development notes taken over 40 years
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10/30/23 (variety of news sources)
Every minute on the internet:
- 167M videos are watched on TikTok
- 1.7M posts are shared on Facebook
- 5.9M things are searched on Google
- 65k photos are shared on Instagram
- 3.7M videos are watched on Youtube
- 2.4M Snaps posted on Snapchat
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Anonymous (1990’s?)
This is the kind of market entrepreneurs should be looking for. One that can be eased into with little capital. Where it’s easy to identify your customers. Where you can work closely with your customers, letting their problems and ideas improve your product as you build your customer base. Where you can learn as you grow. Where you can make your mistakes at a scale that aren’t fatal. And where you don’t have to have the constant threat of a big guy cutting you off at the knees by pricing you out of the market (That may happen someday If the product proves to have commodity appeal, but by that time you’ll have enough money that you’ll just retire or start a new venture).
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Bernadette Jiwa, 2010’s
A One page marketing plan:
Why
-your purpose
Who
-your ideal customer
Difference
-how and why you are better
Price and positioning
-the story you want customers to believe about the value you create
Distribution
-how you teach people and get your products into their hands
Platform
-where you tell your story
Promotion strategy
-how you tell your story
Conversion strategy
-how you deepen relationships with prospective customers
Growth strategy
-the plan for attracting more customers
Referral strategy
-the story you give people to tell
Strategy for increasing transaction value
-how a delight customers
Retention strategy
-how you keep customers coming back
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Godin, July 2023
Customer traction is the hard part
-every new project must create change, or else it fails!
-can you find enough customers who will pay a fair price – and – tell others?
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Godin, July 2023
The right marketing question?! The components:
Make a change.
Any project that seeks to maintain the status quo is difficult to grow. You’re here to make a change, and being clear about what that is – is the first step.
The right people.
Nothing worth spreading is built to appeal to everyone. So who is your someone? What do they want, fear and believe? How do you shift from being mediocre to being specific?
The right and true story.
Marketing is never about the full experience of all the facts, specifications and impacts of your product or service. It’s a story we tell ourselves about it. A story of status, affiliation, of change and fear. Iif that story is true then you can continue to build on it over time and users won’t end up disappointed.
That helps them get where they’re going.
It’s very difficult to prove a customer or a prospect wrong. Hard to get them to want something they don’t want. The opportunity lies in helping them get what they wanted all along . . . and finally . . .
That they’ll tell to their peers.
Not to everyone but to people who trust them. Why would they do that? They won’t do it for you, they’ll do it because it raises their status, increases connection or gives them some other form of satisfaction.
Promotion then might make sense after you’ve got all this figured.
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Obviously Awesome book, April Dunford, 2019
These are the five (+1) components of effective positioning
- Competitive alternatives. What customers would do if your solution didn’t exist.
- Unique attributes. The features and capabilities that you have and the alternatives lack.
- Value (and proof). The benefit that those features enable for customers.
- Target market characteristics. The characteristics of a group of buyers that lead them to really care a lot about the value you deliver.
- Market category. The market you describe yourself as being part of, to help customers understand your value.
- (Bonus) Relevant Trends. Trends that your target customers understand and/ or are interested in that help make your product more relevant right now.
Key takeaways:
– It’s always better to be a little boring than completely baffling.
– Any product can be positioned in multiple markets. Your product is not doomed to languish in a market where nobody understands how awesome it is.
– Great positioning rarely comes by default. If you want to succeed, you have to determine the best way to position your product. Deliberate, try, fail, test and try again.
– Understanding what your best customers see as true alternatives to your solution will lead you to your differentiators.
– Position yourself in a market that makes your strengths obvious to the folks you want to sell to.
– Use trends to make your product more interesting to customers right now, but be very cautious. Don’t layer on a trend just for the sake of being trendy—it’s better to be successful and boring, rather than fashionable and bewildering.
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Age old, anonymous
The best marketing/business/business development/personal development practice:
TTP (talk to people). If this fails, TTMP (talk to more people).
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DV, for some time now.
Many look for confirmation. With practice, some look for information.
Best practice is to look for disinformation, as in:
- What am I missing?
- What could possibly go wrong?