dean jackson

Lead generation challenges for small IT B2B businesses-1

B2B, Marketing, Positioning, segmentation, single target market

One of the big issues that small, B2B technology businesses face is that they try to be everything to everybody. They think that if we were to limit the market then, they may miss opportunities. A lot of technology businesses have mainly engineers driving various functions. They are very good at analysis, but marketing also has to do with a lot of psychology.

My team also has this challenge and I have to keep reigning-in their continuous “want” to try and spread the “net” as wide as possible.

One of the questions which I have to keep answering are typically like:

What if we don’t get a response to our email campaign. If we send it to many more people at least someone will respond

This is a very enticing statement – at least someone will respond. You however don’t know how long it will take before that “someone” will respond, because you don’t know the amount of time it will take to reach that “someone”. Every organisation has limited bandwidth. To be able to reach the whole “universe” of your “someone” it may take years. Everyone will be busy in the organisation, but you won’t get any results and after spending 6 months or 1 year, you will not know what you did right or wrong.

I have written multiple posts about the concept of a “Single Target Market” , at a time, which I took from Dean Jackson. All marketing books talk about segmenting and finding a niche. But when you limit your thinking to a single target market, then you focus your energy only on targeting that “one”market.

When you are segmenting, or finding a niche, depending on the interests of the people doing the segmentation, they may may make it very wide or very narrow. However the phrase “Single Target Market” makes it very clear that you are looking at “unique”, “Only One” , “Single” part of the whole market. Watch my video below to get a better understanding of this.

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/One way to figure whether the Single Target Market that you have thought of is the right one one, can be figured with the following process. If you are willing to be paid only after the client gets the result, then you have the confidence that you can successfully execute for that market. If you have doubts, then you need to recalibrate your hypothesis.

Once you have isolated your focused market, you can then go about checking the market potential, first on paper and then testing your hypothesis. If you run tests quickly and your hypothesis doesn’t work out, then you either adapt your offering/messaging/value proposition or you change the market. You learn your lessons fast and you adapt your offering faster.

But by doing it this way, you are quickly testing at a low budget if the market cares about your offering or not. You will live to fight another battle. If however you target a very large market space and can’t figure out where things are going wrong, then before you know, you will run out of money to sustain your operation.

There’s no doubt that it’s sexy to be able to tell people that we can do every thing. Today Amazon, ships almost everything. But Amazon started by just shipping books. As they became better at selling books, they launched other items. Each time they launch a new geography they follow a similar formula. But if you try to become Amazon on day one, you will be grounded very very fast.

Another question then that comes up is “what if” the customer we are targeting in the single target market, doesn’t need what we offer. Then you need to do more homework on your hypothesis before going out in the market. The more well defined your hypothesis, the better your tests will be.

So if you think an offering is good for the auto industry, then you need to think, how are the customers solving the problem right now and why should they listen to what you have to offer. I have a whole series of posts covering these points, which is basically my checklist for launching a new product or service into the market. I would suggest you visit those posts to get a more practical understanding of the process.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The power of Silence for Focusing on your business

Focus, Marketing, peak Performance, Productivity, single target market, Uncategorized

For a lot of people who follow Buddhism , today is an auspicious occasion since it Lord Buddha’s birthday. One of the things linked to Buddhism and the overall philosophy of religions that originated in the Indian Sub-Continent is the practice of “Dhyan” and Yoga. While there are a lot of people who follow and practice Yoga across the world “Dhyan” is something that is missing in our lives. “Dhyan” involves sitting in pin drop silence and just focusing all your energy to think.

We all (me included) are so busy running after deadlines all day that we don’t give our brains the bandwidth to actually do what it can do best – which is THINK. When you get into the “Dhyan” stage you are able to connect a lot of the dots which otherwise seem impossible to connect.

I have many times earlier, mentioned a practice by Dean Jackson called the focus finder. Its a very practical way to do a brain dump and then get on to the activity of Thinking.

Today I was a little frustrated that I was not being able to figure out a solution for identifying a Single Target Market. I keep giving you folks a lot of inputs on why you should go about identifying the Single Target Market and the incredible benefits it can have in your marketing.

But today I had a mind block and I was not able to think through on what would be my STM. After lazing around mindlessly and watching un-necessary web series for about an hour, I decided to just sit down with my notebook and pencil and started jotting down thoughts as they came to me about my “bullseye ” (the STM)

While doing this my brain also kept throwing up additional items that I could include. But I had to make my STM as sharply defined as possible. So I kept listing down, all the people whom I would not be able to help.

Automatically I ended up putting a lot of AND statements to ensure that there were as little possibilities as possible for some additional markets creeping in.

Once this was done I went two steps further, I even identified the the markets, one variable away and two variables away. This would help me, in case, the STM I have defined is not viable economically and I have to expand it a little bit.

While I spent close to 2 hours dilly – dalling, I was able to achieve all this in a matter of about 45 minutes, when there was pin drop silence and I was only focusing on this activity. These 45 minutes were more precious because of the immense productivity I got.

If feasible I would suggest everyone to regularly do these focus exercises, they can increase productivity levels dramatically and because you take out everything from your brain and put it on paper, there’s no chance of missing things.

Till next then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The actual nuance of a identifying a Single Target Market

Marketing, segmentation, single target market

I keep writing a lot about the SIngle Target Market. Its a term I learned from Dean Jackson. I have known about segmenting and niching but breaking down a market by usage was something which appealed to me.

Now why is it important to drill down to a Single Target Market . Once you have been able to figure that part out, you can then work on the different media you can use to engage this person and then work on what is the message you will send through the different media.

To show a practical example. We were targeting companies for selling our services. Now you can choose partners in different ways. We first did a segmentation by OEMs. If they were selling a specific OEM’s product, then we thought we could make them a partner to sell add on services from us – but these partners could be in different states, they could be of different sizes – single person companies, large companies and everything in-between. They could be owned by men, women, public listed or private. So we decided to put the limit on minimum number of employees and maximum number of employees to segment further.

As we kept on going deeper we found even more characteristics that we had not even noticed when we did the general rule partners of OEMs.

So one rule of thumb that I have figured out , to identify a single target market , is to figure what other attribute exists that could make this data set smaller till it can’t be made any smaller. Then figure out how you can combine based on the usage and expand from there once you see success with one usage area.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

What does success mean for you

Lifestyle, success

Have you clearly identified what are the parameters based on which you will be able to say that I am successful.

For some it could be a house, for some it could be travel to foreign land. For some it could be aspirational – as in – not having to go about life against a clock – its for me – though I haven’t been able to achieve it yet.

I used to have and still have this problem, that my line for defining success keeps changing on a lot of parameters. Which is where my problems start. Due to this I feel inadequate sometimes with respect to people who have more material things than me and keeping up with the Joneses becomes a problem.

On a lot of things, I think I have achieved success when I look back. Where I have come from, there’s a reason to smile. But when I keep looking at the ever moving horizon as I move forward, it does get me a little introspective and low. That’s when I follow Dan Sullivan’s advice – always look back at where you started from and how much you have covered, rather than thinking about what you have not covered. Then make a plan and take action for the next steps.

But defining what success means for you can actually help you in prioritising your life better. I had these visions of taking my family to certain countries on a vacation. Due to that I took a lot of decisions, where I had to hold back on spending on some items which were not aligned with this criteria.

Dean Jackson has actually designed his whole life around this principle. I am still a long way. But I would think you should also start defining what success would mean for you so that you know when you achieve it. Otherwise you will be running after the wrong things. Let me know what you think in the comments section below, would love to hear from you.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!