single target market

Diversification is admission of ignorance

B2B, ideal customer, Marketing, messaging, prioritizing, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

A few posts back I had written a post on how giving too many choices actually reduces the chance of success.

I used to hear a lot of gurus in the stock market talk about being focused with not more than 10-15 stocks to get the best returns. If you read the Wealth Creation studies by Raamdeo Aggarwal, he gives a lot of examples of how being focused can give much higher returns. If you want average returns then you can just take an Index ETF.

The other day I was listening to an interview of Garrett Gunderson with Joe Polish on YouTube. And he happened to mention this term in passing and it kind of stuck with me. Garrett has written a very nice book Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying your Prosperity.

Even in marketing if you try to do too many things trying to see which will succeed is because you are not sure of yourself either on your offering or on your market or a whole lot of other things. Most of the time we try to do multiple things at the testing stage to see what sticks and what falls. But once you start seeing what sticks you need to start improving on that. You can’t be testing multiple variables simultaneously. It never works.

You cannot be testing multiple offerings in different markets and also seeing which message works. I have done this at different times and flopped badly. Sometimes these were done because I fell in love with multiple brands and thought I could get them launched at the same time but then eventually realized I could not do justice to all of them. It was definitely my ignorance then. At other times I was in a tight spot and had to somehow get something moving and thought at least if a try so many things simultaneously, I will be able to get success somewhere.

Eventually I have come down to some very specific things for B2B marketing. I need to identify only one target market and niche it as much as possible when I am launching a new product / service. If your segmentation is done well and then you get your database / list based on that you have already come a long way. After that you test your messaging.

The 80/20 that I have been talking about in the last few posts is exactly the opposite of diversification. Its about focus and the knowledge which comes from focus. Like the image above, a few colors in a pattern can give a good look but putting too many colors on the same rug, assuming some one will like some color is ignorance.

Whether its finance or marketing or even other areas of your life you can spread your self, diversify and be shallow and ignorant or go deep, focus and be knowledgeable and get great results.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritizing top 2 or 3 – challenges -2

differentiation, execution, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Methodologies, prioritizing, Product Management, route to market, segmentation, single target market

Yesterday I wrote about the issues which come up in prioritizing the top 2 or 3 for me, in my day-to-day life. This post will talk about the top 3 things in marketing that you need to address and the challenges which come up in real life situations because of revenue pressures.

In marketing if you summarize the issues with respect to lead generation or getting business then they would be

  1. Getting footfalls (incase of a store) or hits on your website or people coming to your webinar
  2. Cost of various media to get you the traffic
  3. Cost of converting the footfall into a buying public

Perry Marshall calls this the Traffic, Economics, Conversion combination. Within each of these three you can do a prioritization of the next top 3. Like I mentioned earlier 80/20 is fractal, so there’s always an 80/20 within an 80/20 forever, you just need to identify it. That will help you dramatically. I am amazed the amount of leverage I keep getting once I recognize the 80/20 in anything. Like I have been saying – small hinges move large doors.

Now something outside this equation is Reference customers. I would like to put this in category of itself, provided you already have a running business, because this can change the game in your favor dramatically.

Now every marketer would understand the things which I have listed above. But what happens is that there is pressure from sales for leads and while you start testing one item and things are not working out, you start analysing all the issues. In the meanwhile because there’s a pressure on revenue you try something in the short term to boost the revenues and the spiral starts and things go out of control.

During this time someone from delivery comes up with another product and sales being sales, they always want new products to take to the market and suddenly you are being pushed to launch the new product in the market.

The companies who do good in marketing are the ones who ensure that they don’t mess up the prioritization, focus on it to keep things running smoothly and then look at new product launches or sales pressures. Chances are if you have a system than the system will incorporate the failures that can take place and have a place to learn from them.

Master these priorities and you could be way ahead in your marketing.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritizing the top 2 or 3 activities

Affirmative action, ideal customer, Marketing, prioritizing, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

A lot of self help books will talk about identifying the top 3 issues to be handled the next day and listing them.

The 80/20 rule is fractal, which simply means there’s an 80/20 within an 80/20. So while 20% of the causes are responsible for 80% of the problems, 64% of the problems are caused by just 4%.

Now prioritizing your day or prioritizing your marketing plan has the same basic fundamental to it. The issue is not whether the number is 3 or the number is 2 or 1. The issue is about being able to identify those key items within your next day plan or your marketing plan which will be responsible for helping you get 80% of the way.

The value is always in the hinges (20%) which help you move large doors (80%) with very little effort.

Its about utilising the 20% creative part – the subject line of your email as an example – which if done right can get the remaining part of your email campaign successful. Its not that the process of getting the emails sent is not important, but once the subject line is well crafted and gets responses, then the process of sending mails can be automated.

Within this 20% however if I look at it, identifying the right list/database/market segment, the 4% will get you more than 60% of the way, because then you can build your message accordingly better, tighter etc. Segmenting or finding a niche is all about finding the most attractive, most responsive set of clients which will help you get your product or service faster.

Not all tasks are built alike. I still get caught up in minutiae and sometimes end up spending a whole day just on them. But to come back to the self help book analogy, if you have prioritized your top tasks in your plan in advance and you STICK to them, you should be able to hit most of your goals.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!