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!!!

The best companies who could use my marketing advice

B2B, Business, Customers, ideal customer, lead generation, Marketing, Riding the elephant, single target market

I keep talking about a lot on the way you should identify the market, how you should target a segment and niche it . I talk about the challenges that come up when targeting the B2B space for a complex sale and how you can go about addressing them.

While most of whatever I talk about is overall good marketing practice, this is specially useful to people who own, run or work for companies who are less than $50 million in revenue, sell mid to high value products in the B2B space.

If you sell low dollar value items, then maybe a few things – especially about mapping different people in the organisation or structuring a value proposition or identifying the ecosystem may not completely be of value to you.

If you have already crossed the revenue of $50 million then chances are that you already are doing things and putting up systems which have helped you reach such a large turnover.

Its the companies, who are reaching about half a million dollars and want to break into the million dollar league and build processes which bring regular leads, who can benefit most from what I write. These would be my Ideal Customers.

All the concepts whether its the Single Target Market or the “Riding the Elephant” can provide immense leverage to companies who want to grow dramatically.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Lead generation in B2B – 2

B2B, campaign, education, ideal customer, lead generation, Marketing, media, segmentation, single target market

While events were very expensive, and emails are free, companies would still be willing to spend the money on events, if getting the right audience was assured. Reason being, you get to interact with the prospects on a one-to-one basis. Due to which you can qualify better and you maybe able to close deals faster.

One medium which comes closest to doing a more targeted prospecting, I have found these days, is LinkedIn. Since you can choose the industry, the demographics etc. It can help you reach your ideal customer profile faster. In addition because it allows you to create different segments you can do testing quite fast to identify the best single target market to address.

I haven’t worked on Facebook for doing B2B prospecting, though I am told of a lot of B2B vendors are targeting their clients via Facebook.

With any social media platform, there’s one challenge that I warn my team or customers. You don’t own the information of the prospect. Which means anytime the social media changes its policies or algorithms, you can suffer.

When you have a visiting card of a person or an email id, until the person leaves that organization, you can communicate with her whenever you need to. You are not at the mercy of a third party. This is not completely true with social media, until the prospect share the information with you.

Therefore whenever you’re using a social media to generate leads, always find a way for the prospects to share their email via opt-ins. Once they raise their hand and allow you to share information with them, you get a chance to build a relationship.

Once you have the emails and physical addresses, you can continuously keep sharing valuable information with them and educate them about various things that you can help them with.

Marketing based on education helps build trust as well.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Single Target Market – getting down to the person in B2B

B2B, Business, Customers, ideal customer, Marketing, single target market

When you are looking at the B2B space, you have to keep one thing in mind always – you are dealing with multiple people not one person. In the consumer space you could look at the consumer and maybe the influencers like the wife / husband or children who can influence, but generally it’s a small set of one or one plus.

In the case of B2B sales however its always by default Many Buyer Persons getting involved even though at the company level this may be your Ideal Customer Profile.. Its very very rare to identify a single person who can take all the decisions. This however may happen if the buying value is very low.

Now if there are going to encounter multiple people that you have to influence towards your product or service then your first exercise should be to identify all the people involved. So before you talk to thousand clients in the single target market – you first need to analyse just one customer and how will the process move.

Recently in one of the cases that my team was fighting we got blindsided by the procurement team of the customer. We did all the evaluation exercises , the technical team was coordinating with us and we were supposedly rated the best. But suddenly we got to know that the order was handed over to someone else.

Our challenge was that we had not analysed the hidden agendas that were getting played out. This happens a lot when you are in the B2B space. Its called getting zigged when you should have zagged.

Once you have analysed the niche and got down to the usage, you then need to start mapping who all could be involved in the decision making in ONE customer. Once you have analysed what happens with ONE, then you can replicate the process across the whole segment that you have identified. You may still get zigged, but if you have put the identification in your process, then the chances of being zigged will get reduced.

Till next time then…..to your success in the market.

Carpe Diem!!!