Marketing

Three Hundred Posts

Affirmative action, Financial Independence, Habits, Marketing

I didn’t realise it but yesterday was my 300th post. What an achievement. For someone who didn’t know what to write and was always wondering why will anyone read my posts, to today watching this number made me so happy.

This journey started about 4 years back and I took my domain name around this time. Then I took the WordPress subscription to link my website to my domain.

Initially even putting up one post was an ordeal. As a matter of fact when I hit the 25 mark, I actual had a celebration post. To write my first hundred posts took me almost 3 years painful years because each time I would sit down to write on a weekend, I would think I did not have enough data and so I would go in search of data and the post would not get written.

Last year because of the lockdown due to the Covid pandemic, I got some amount of time at home and I started listening to various podcasts, one among which was I Love Marketing which is run by Joe Polish And Dean Jackson. Joe keeps talking about 2 things which I have taken to heart.

One is that – Its better to be prolific than perfect and

Two – You learn a little by hearing / reading / watching, you learn a lot more by practicing and you love the most by teaching it to others.

I have always had this penchant for wanting to share my knowledge but I didn’t think it would be of value to others so I never bothered. Then I cam across the video series on YouTube by Gary Vaynerchuk where he would put out a video everyday on wine tasting and the kind of wines he was tasting. These were short videos.

That got me on this journey to take affirmative action, to share from my practical experiences in marketing and in finance and then whatever I was reading in terms of improving our performance and health. All my articles after that have been keeping one principle in mind, you should get bite sized information in a quick read while you are standing in the line to take your coffee.

Thank you for being active readers of my blog. I hope I am able to give you even more value in the future. This writing everyday has now be one a habit and I don’t let a writer’s block come in my way. I just put down my thoughts as they flow.

Till then

Carpe Diem!!!

Who’s your customer?

B2B, differentiation, ideal customer, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, messaging, Product Management, Sales, segmentation, single target market

This is one of the most critical questions for any product management person or a marketing person and further any sales person.

I have written various articles on this same topic taking a hit at it from various angles. Some people people call it the Ideal customer profile, some the single target market.

The critical issue is that person and what could be going on in the mind of that person which will make him think about talking to you, responding to your message, asking for your white paper etc.

Understanding this one concept is such a core to all of marketing that not addressing this one issue will cause all your differentiation be useless.

Inspite of so many years doing marketing, if I get this one thing wrong, my whole plan goes for a toss. Sometimes your colleagues will tell you that its such a small slice of the market so you should expand your attributes. Slowly you start diluting the ideal profile and the marketing becomes cluttered and the message does not attract anyone.

You also need to be clear therefore on who is not going to be your customer , so that when your message starts getting diluted your alarm bells start ringing.

Once you have clearly defined this customer – even in B2B – its a person whom you will need to profile, then the company, then the industry. What’s going on in the mind of that one person, who else is selling to that person, what could be the challenges of that person. There’s no doubt its more difficult to do this profiling than it’s to do for the consumer segment because there are many more people involved in a B2B environment.

On the other hand its easier to profile industries, loss or profit making companies etc. because that data is publicly available. In addition you have tools like Linkedin which can help you identify the colleagues of the profile, you can identify the statements made in the public by their executives etc.

Once you are clear on this one aspect, then the other things like the economics, the batch size of the market, the go to market strategy, the marketing ecosystem you need etc. become easier to handle.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Riding the elephant – Using the power of relationships – networking

Influence, Marketing, Networking, Partners, relationships, Symbiotic relationship

Usually when you make friend with an elephant, you also tend to make friends to the elephants in the herd. Elephants generally move in herds. Which means you can always make more than one friend at a time. Networking is all about making multiple friends and helping them – first.

Its similar when you are able to move with one contact in a large OEM organisation which is starting something new – and this is key – if they are already well established they will not be interested into building a deep relationship. That time the relationships are more transactional.

When they are getting in new – even if they have been established, but they are getting in a new product or service – then if you can make them succeed, then the team involved with you gets into a deeper relationship with you. They are willing to recommend you.

In this the principle of reciprocity plays a big role. Robert Cialdini first articulated this principle in his book Influence. Its worth reading the book if you have anything to do with marketing.

Once you help the team which is targeted for this new offering launch, succeed with you or because of you then if you ask them for a favour to connect you with other members of the team in other regions, other countries, they oblige.

I built a lot of my international network of people because of this. Now I ask my team members to do the same thing. Being a small company we are always limited on resources, but building networks doen’t need resources. It needs humility, it needs you to be paying in advance and things work.

Most people don’t get this right because they go into any relationship with “what’s in it for me” rather than “what can I do for her” . Let me however put a caveat here – you will find some selfish people who will take advantage of this. I had given this same advice to my son and he did this with one of the restaurant owners for their free photo / advertising and she just took the photos and used them herself. But for every such incident, I have also had one person referring me to at least 6-7 new people, so it pays off. And these become long term relationships.

Till next time use the herd of elephants to build your networks and take you places.

Carpe Diem!!!

Challenges in choosing B2B partners for your market

B2B, ideal customer, Marketing, Partners, route to market, single target market

While I have always maintained doing partnerships is the key to entering a market faster, I have observed some real challenges with respect to handling expectations. It will be wise to keep this in mind if you have the responsibility to create a partner ecosystem on the selling side.

To handle the expectations mismatch, the first thing to be sure is that the partner you are targeting is actually doing business with the customers (your Ideal Customer profile) you want to target. A lot of issues arise because with the secondary research that your team does, the partners seem to be in the same market that you want to target, but after you start engaging with them, there is a disconnect. So you need to be clear before you sign up a partner, that they actually have customers in your target market.

The other issue is with respect to the sales bandwidth – if your agenda for partnering is to get access to a large market, then you need to have enough bandwidth allocated to your product/service, by the partner. Most of the times the partners over commit in terms of what they will be able to do. This happens because either

  1. They have fewer sales people than they told you.
  2. The sales people already have too many products/services to sell so your product/service is an overload on them
  3. Your product/service is technically more complex and the sales people don’t have the ability to take this to the market

One other item which I encounter often is the expectation mismatch on both sides. In my opinion this happens because from your side, the channel’s person is in a hurry to show partner acquisition without clearly understanding the partner’s strengths and weaknesses. This happens all the time because all of us have to meet our monthly/quarterly numbers.

On the other side, the partner thinks that since they are partnering with your company, you will help them sell. While to a certain extent, you will enable the partner to sell and you will have marketing programs to help the partners, at the end of the day, the partner has to sell. If you have to sell for the partner, then why do you need a partner.

I have noticed these as the key challenges. If you ensure that communication are clear, the qualification criteria for a partner that you want and the type of people that they employ is clear then a lot of heartburn and wasted time can be avoided.

As we progress I will share other challenges that you should be aware off.

Inspite of that, I would still think that the partner route is the fastest way to get into a new market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!