Archive for Product Launch
Your Marketing = User Story
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the interesting things about Agile Project Management is that you start with creating a user story. In the marketing process, how many times do you start with a customer/prospect telling the marketing department how they use or will use the product or service? I know we interview people or perform won/loss analysis, but I wanted to go an additional step. What if we would paint the picture of how a user will interpret this marketing campaign or for that matter this blog, advertisement, whitepaper, etc? If we would take the time to determine that reaction, would we not create a better product? 
The master of telling the story is of course Disney and who better to help than the mouse himself.
Mickey’s 10 Commandments:
- Know your audience: Before creating a setting, obtain a firm understanding of who will be using it.
- Where your guest shoes: That is, never forget the human factor. Evaluate your setting from the customer’s perspective by experiencing it as a customer.
- Organize the flow of people and ideas: Think of a setting as a story and tell that story is sequenced, organized way. Build the same order and logic into the design of customer involvement.
- Create a weenie: Borrowed from the slang of the silent film business, a weenie was what Walt Disney called a visual magnet. It means a visual landmark is used to orientate and attract customers.
- Communicate with visual learners to: Language is not always composed of words. Use the common languages of color, shape, and form to communicate through setting.
- Avoid-overload – create turn-ons: Do not bombard customers with data. Let them choose the information they want when they want it.
- Tell one story at a time: Mixing multiple stories in a single setting is confusing. Create one setting for each big idea.
- Avoid contradictions; maintain identity: Every detail of every setting should support and further your organizational identity and mission.
- For every ounce of treatment provided a ton of treat: Give your customers the highest value by building an interactive setting that gives them the opportunity to exercise all their senses.
- Keep it up: Never get complacent and always maintain your setting.
After applying these ten commandments, keep telling the story over and over again. Are you staying on track?
The Ten Commandments were taken from, Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service
Related Posts:
Marketing Systems are Out of Control.
Posted by: | CommentsMost Marketing systems are out of control. They have not been managed with understanding of the process speed and the effect of the flow on the process. As a result, performance has to be sub-standard. My marketing has too many variables to define my Value Stream! Can you afford to say that?
Depending on your industry, marketing can be anywhere between 5 to 30% of your total expenses. In most operations that I am familiar with it runs in the neighborhood of 5 to 10%. It is not uncommon to find labor at a similar amount. Would you accept the same amount of variability in your workforce? If you have variability in your marketing, why not cut the budget? Increasing it only will increase the variability. On the other hand, if you have low capacity you have little variation. Is that the problem you want to have?
Variation in demand and in processing time will have a major impact on your total process lead time. If you are functioning close to your optimum level, customers in your value stream, and you get a sudden rush of opportunities, the opportunities will be severally minimized by just variation alone.
How do you minimize variation and get a handle on the process? It has to do with segmentation. If you have not segmented your list properly, you have tremendous variation and the numbers you are looking are skewed. You must segment until you can get a handle on variation. It does not mean you have to segment to, there is none. You have to segment until you can start to minimize the variation that is incurring. You must conquer complexity by narrowly defining your problem.
Related Posts:
Value Stream Mapping for Marketing
Lean your Marketing thru Segmentation
Implementing Lean – As fast as a Pit Crew?
Posted by: | CommentsAt the recent AME Conference, Performance Instruction and Training offered sessions that allowed you to experience their unique style of learning. The concepts PIP teaches motorsports pit crews to conduct sub 13-second pit-stops relate to your business and drive home the concepts of lean, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement. You were able to join the session and try your luck. This video depicts this pit crews first attempt. They received training between each session, and at the end they were rewarded with a sub 18-second performance.
I was first impressed by the concept of a pit crew’s performance by Jim Lewis, the author of the Story of a Lean Journey. He used this analogy several times discussing quick changeover, value stream mapping and 5S. The basic point of the exercise was that at best, we would take a minimum of 20 minutes to change a tire at home. A NASCAR team and as you saw in the video something less than a NASCAR team could do it in less than 20 seconds. Proper training, the right resources, tools and a willingness to improve is what it will take to achieve some remarkable differences within your organization.
Jim’s book was a fictitious story of Allison Manufacturing Services Lean Journey as seen through the eyes of their Lean consultant. Jim did an excellent job of depicting the cultural change that took place within the company and how it was accomplished. It was such a pleasant read, that I completed it in one night that was extended into some early morning hours. The next day, I continued reviewing the book to understand the charts and mapping process he used in the book. If you are considering a Lean Journey, this book may be an excellent starting point. After reading this, consider if your company is working at the 20 minute level(you are out of business if you are), or if you are taking 35 seconds? Can you get it down to 18 or 16 or maybe, 13 seconds?
Get Rid of Your Marketing Vision Statement and Address the NEED!
Posted by: | CommentsMost organizations try to develop a meaningful marketing vision statement designed to guide their action for today, tomorrow and in the future. The vision statement serves as a platform for all their marketing goals. Armed with a vision, you establish your marketing goals, which are time-sensitive and detailed orientated. We send the goals through the SMART procedure to make sure that they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-specific.
Duct Tape Marketing addresses the marketing vision in the book and further defines it in the Marketing Plan Pro software by using these three components:
· Goals: list the significant personal, business, strategic, and tactical goals of your marketing plan
· Marketing purpose: describe the greater purpose that the execution of your marketing plan and the growth of your business will fulfill.
· Marketing visual: write a paragraph describing a picture of this business as you would like a customer to experience it in a perfect world.
Back in April, I even wrote a blog discussing theMarketing Vision, and as I implemented the Lean Marketing House, my thoughts about a vision statement started to evolve differently. I studied the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass and used it as the Pillars in the Lean Marketing House. I segmented each Pillar based on the different customer channels that were required. However, I kept pondering because it still seemed to be missing a very important ingredient and even formulated the vision that each channel needed. The funny thing was that the answer was there all the time. It was obvious, very obvious. 
The problem was that our vision statements are internally focused. Marketing is about the customer, it’s not about us. Your vision statement needs to be a definition of the NEED that you serve for the client. John Jantsch author of Duct Tape Marketing has always defined marketing as “Getting someone with a Need to know, like and trust you. That was further developed and expanded in the Marketing Hourglass to include the other steps of Try, Buy, Repeat and Refer. However, somewhere along the line the NEED disappeared.
The NEED is the vision and for each customer segment or Pillar if you are using the Lean Marketing House. Defying that need clearly takes quite a bit of effort, but I would certainly start by using the Fishbone Diagram or the 5 Y’s to determine the actual need. It may even get a little more difficult in that and the use of Goldratt’s Logical Thinking Process could be used. However, the NEED must be defined and your ability to solve that NEED must become crystal clear in your Marketing NEED statement.
What NEED do you solve for the client? Put that at the head of the Fishbone and address the different causes. If your customer understands this message, and he should if you do it right(it is his NEED), your marketing may become extremely simplified. Even for the future, you will be thinking about how your customer’s NEED will be changing, and what they will NEED.
So would you rather go to market with a clear VISION or a clear NEED statement?
Designers, Marketers THINK BIG
Posted by: | CommentsTim is right on target, a must watch video, especially for marketers. Keyword: Participatory
Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects — even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory “design thinking.”
I want to thank Bart Gragg of the Blue Collar University for the lead to this TED video. He posted it on the The One Page Business Plan LinkedIn Page. Thanks Bart!
And lets THINK BIG!
E-Mail Marketing Suppliers, can you do this?
Posted by: | CommentsEither through a customer or utilizing the services I have used most of the most popular E-mail providers. My list includes Constant Contact, Vertical Response, IContact, Get Response and decent knowledge of several drip marketing programs such as Infusion and Swiftpage. I have limited knowledge with other auto-responders but have dabbled with a few. My question to them is with all the data available why am I so limited in being able to manipulate it and segment it?
A typical e-mail campaign will be released and I will get the standard statistics of deliverability that include bounces, opens, opt-outs, complaints, etc. I will see what links are clicked but to my knowledge only Constant Contact lets me see who clicked what link. I am allowed to segment the list with a few of the vendors but it is a tedious process.
If you review the material they publish, you will see creative ways of obtaining opt-ins, improve deliverability and how to effectively keep a list alive. But why can’t I see the data? Why can’t I see who clicks on what? Why can’t I see aging accounts? Why can’t I just drag and drop contacts into groups?
As many of you know, I have an obsession with the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass. Would it not make sense for me to manage my e-zine based on what part of the hourglass the customer is in? Would it not be important to see if open rates were decreasing by the amount of time the customer is in the hourglass? Or the amount of time they are stuck in one stage? If they attend a webinar or go to a seminar, you would move them down the hourglass. If they are repeat customers or referral customers, they receive different frequency and maybe different e-mails.
If I wanted to improve my e-mail marketing should these statistics be available? The ability to move individual and groups into different parts of the hourglass should be a no brainer? Is there any system that will allow me to do this?
I believe that if we want to reduce spam in our life, we need to create better e-mail management systems. I know all this may not be able to be automated but would this not be better use of the Email vendors time rather more templates, videos, surveys and just more products! I might be sticking my foot in my mouth, but can anyone do this?
Related Posts:
Applying the Marketing Hourglass: The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House
Developing a Lean Culture
Posted by: | CommentsOn the Business901 podcast, Jamie shared concepts and stories based on real-world Lean applications. We used The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean and the Lean Learning Center as the jumping off point but soon wandered into the development of a Lean Culture. The podcast explored how to get started in lean but maybe more importantly, how to take the next step. This is a transcription of the podcast.
Jamie Flinchbaugh is co-founder and partner of the Lean Learning Center, bringing successful and varied experiences of lean transformation as both a practitioner and facilitator. Under the leadership of Jamie and the Center’s senior managers, the Lean Learning Center has become one of the most recognized and premier lean providers in the world. step.
Gathering Information For Your Plan
Posted by: | CommentsAffiliate Post By Palo Alto Software, Inc.
A common problem people encounter when writing their business plan is finding information about their business industry and competitive companies.
Fortunately, in recent years the Internet has made information gathering simple and easy, but sometimes the best information is found much closer to home, with real people, in real time.
Always take a look at other businesses similar to your own, as a very good first step. If you’re looking at starting a new business, you may well be starting one similar to one you already know. If you’re doing a plan for an existing business, you are even more likely to know the business well. Even so, you can still learn a lot by looking at other similar businesses.
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Look at existing, similar businesses
If you are planning a retail shoe store, for example, spend some time looking at existing retail shoe store businesses. Park across the street and count the customers that go into the store. Note how long they stay inside, and how many come out with boxes that look like purchased shoes. You can probably even count how many pairs of shoes each customer buys. Browse the store and look at prices. Look at several stores, including the discount shoe stores and department store shoe departments.
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Find a similar business in another place
Find a similar business far enough away that you won’t compete. For the shoe store example, you would identify shoe stores in similar towns in other states. Call the owner, explain your purpose truthfully, and ask about the business.
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Scan local newspapers for people selling a similar business.
Contact the broker and ask for as much information as possible. If you are thinking of creating a shoe store and you find one for sale, you should consider yourself a prospective buyer. Maybe buying the existing store is the best thing. Even if you don’t buy, the information you gain will be very valuable. Why is the owner selling? Is there something wrong with the business? You can probably get detailed financial information.
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Always shop the competition.
If you’re in the restaurant business, patronize your competition once a month, rotating through different restaurants. If you own a shoe store, shop your competition once a month, and visit different stores.
It takes a little hard work but by using the Internet and doing some research at local businesses, you should be able to gather all the information necessary for your business plan. Looking for more Planning tips visit Business901.
Lean Six Sigma applied to Supply Chain
Posted by: | CommentsThis 20-page e-book is a transription from an earlier podcast with Jeff Slater of Sonoco. Jeff will be presenting at the WCBF Conference in Orlando this year. An excerpt from the Transcript:
Jeff: “It’s a great concept to talk about because what we’re really trying to say is: How do we achieve that perfect experience for the customer? They order it; they enjoy the ordering process; we manufacture it in a timely manner for them; and we deliver it at the time that they requested it be delivered. So in a sense, you’re trying to achieve this perfect experience – this perfect order.
Applications of Lean Six Sigma to the Supply Chain
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Marketing covering mistakes or mistake free?
Posted by: | CommentsIf you are a successful company, why would you need marketing? What makes you a complete success in your customer’s eyes? If you did all this, would you need marketing? Some examples:
- Sales Price = Always sell at a price customers are willing to pay.
- Diversity = Make only what customers need.
- Quality = Make products that will satisfy your customers, always!
- Delivery = Deliver products at the exact time a customer needs them.
- Cost = Produce at the lowest possible cost and less than item 1.
If you are doing this, your marketing budget may be able to be virtually eliminated. Your marketing, if needed would be customer-centric in a fact finding mode that would give you constant feedback. This would enable you to keep improving or developing new products in your pipeline. Of course, in a mistake free organization your improved/new products would be ready the day the customer needed them.
Henry Ford said: “If you would have asked the customer, he would have just wanted a faster horse!” As a company we cannot totally rely on our customer feedback. Many times, they will not have the capacity to know the latest technology and trends effecting the products or services that they use. What they do know is their business needs and requirements. So concentrating on where his business is going is an important function of marketing.
But can we have mistake-free marketing? I think there is 2-ways to discuss mistake-free 
marketing: The strategic side and the tactical side. The strategic side would be your marketing messages and the tactical side, producing these messages. I am going to spend time on the strategic side deciding on how to facilitate that interaction with the customer. I will also the tactical side, how to implement a mistake-free marketing system. The tool I will use to achieve this is defined by the Lean term, Poka-Yoke. Poka-Yoke emphasizes the detection and correction of mistakes. It puts special attention on the one constant threat to any process: human error. Careful attention to every activity in your process and to place instantaneous feedback tools in place is the key to its success.
I would enjoy hearing marketing blunders, mistakes that you have thought about during this reading, do you have any?