Doing the medium – market, message match

campaign, compelling, ideal customer, Marketing, medium, messaging, single target market

A lot of times I get to hear, we want to run a video campaign, or email campaign or we want to start a podcast. People start with the medium first, which in my opinion is the wrong sequence of actions. The first thing that need’s to be determined is the “market / ideal customer”. Where is the Single Target Market that you want to focus on. Once you have determined that piece then you figure out the messages / content you want to give to that audience and then you find the vehicle (the medium) to take that message / content.

Each message / piece of content, has a “job” (job of the milkshake , Clayton Christensen) to do. One message could be get the person to raise their hand, another could be to educate the prospects, some could be to compel the prospects to buy.

Now based on the message that you are trying to give out to your audience, you can choose the medium. Choosing a medium which the market does not access will be disastrous for your message and overall marketing plan.

As an example , if your audience is doing a lot of commute then a podcast or a video both could be good. But if you realise that within that audience which does commute there are people who commute on bicycles or drive cars then a video is not a good idea. A podcast could be a better idea. For example, I do a lot of commute, where I am driving my car. And giving me company are different podcasts, some of which I refer over here as well. If someone was to direct me to watch a video, to educate me while I was driving, I would not look at it and it would be a waste.

So when you choose to either do a campaign or plan an activity related to marketing, always start with the audience of one – see what is happening in the life of that one person from the Single Target Market that you defined, and then how you will reach out to her with whatever is the focus of the messaging that you intend.

Till next time then

Carpe Diem!!!

What is the JOB that you want your campaign to do – 2

campaign, lead generation, Marketing, media

This topic was not supposed to be split into 2 posts but it so happened that today morning I was watching a YouTube recording of the ILoveMarketing Meetup Group where Dean Jackson was interviewing Paul Colligan on the topic of podcasting. For those who have not read my post yesterday – I was referring to the Clayton Christensen experiment where he talks about the JOB of a McDonald milkshake. I had used that analogy to talk about why this question is important when you are choosing media instead of blindly following others.

He made a statement similar to what I had made when I was discussing with the media company regarding people blindly choosing Instagram because they get followers faster. Paul narrated a story where he asked a prospect about what was the objective of the podcast that he was trying to make and the prospect said “downloads”. So Paul asked him if downloads from China do or if they were to come from Fiverr – would they meet the objective? Clearly the prospect got the message.

Since there’s so much hype about followers / downloads most people think the objective is to create followers or to get downloads. You need to have clarity on what is the JOB you want your campaign to do. Not multiple jobs. Just one job.

If you are going on any platform – not only social media -for business purposes, there has to be a clearly defined JOB that you want the platform to achieve. Then understand if that platform will meet the objective in the most cost effective way. This is important because you don’t have unlimited supply of funds – even if you have, it would be stupid to get an email address at $10, if there was a way to get it at $1.50.

Don’t get muddled in your thinking based on the hype of the media companies. Its their JOB to sell you on the positives of their medium, but its your JOB to determine, what’s best for you.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

What’s the JOB that you want your campaign to do

campaign, ideal customer, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, media

A few months back I had written a post on the Clayton Christensen experiment on What’s the job of a McDonald’s milkshake. That’s a very pertinent question for everything that you do in marketing. If you’d like, you can go on YouTube and search for the video, on this experiment.

Every email you make, every campaign you run, every media that you choose should have a very clearly defined job description. If you mess up over here all your decisions will be muddled and you won’t get your results.

I was discussing yesterday with a media company on the relative merits of YouTube, Instagram etc. One thing which came out during the discussion was that people choose Instagram over YouTube for running campaigns because they can generate followers faster.

Which got me thinking. Is the objective of choosing a platform only to increase followers which then led me to the base question again of what’s the job you want your video campaign or any other marketing activity to do.

Blindly creating followers should not be the job. The job in my opinion, if I was the advisor to a company would be to say – create followers of a specific kind with certain characteristics defined, which should eventually get converted leads and subsequently business.

If your campaigns on Instagram can achieve this objective, then its the right medium, if not , you need to figure out a different medium. That comes back to my favorite term, Testing. So even though all your planning suggests a given medium, based on the clearly defined job, only testing should clearly confirm it.

Let the market decide during the test about what is the right thing. Once you get your test results then go the whole hog to get business.

Most social media platforms will have a lot audience including yours. The next stage of your testing should include how you can get your ideal customer at the lowest possible price. The economics will decide your staying power . At the end of the day your marketing stamina will decide the winner in the long run.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Customer segmentation by usage

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, Sales, segmentation

One of the flaws of identifying a niche by doing pure demographics is painting all customers with the same brush.

My suggestion for identifying a niche is to first segment by demographics and then segment by usage.

Lets say you are a company which provides backup and disaster recovery services. There are a whole lot of companies who can put on their brochures that they provide backup and DR services.

All it needs is a company which has some backup software and access to the cloud platforms to say that you could provide a DR solution.

So how can you differentiate your company’s offerings.

How about offering DR to users of ERPs in zones which are prone to hurricane activity. You could talk about how you are geared to move complete IT operations of your customers to another site in case a hurricane strikes.

Your messaging then becomes very specific to those kind of customers. You then look at what all are the possible options that the customer has to achieve the same objectives. Something similar to what Clayton Christensen speaks about the job of the Milkshake

Based on this you further fine tune your niche and accordingly build your messaging and your go-to-market plan.

This was a B2B example from IT. Tomorrow we will take an example from the consumer side.

Till then.

Carpe Diem!!!