Training #3: Why First Then Who - Identifying Your Target Market

Here are some highlights from our training on identifying your target market:

Our goal is to build a 3 dimensional picture of who we want to service and why they would want to be serviced by us.

1) Identify key trends within and outside of your industry. For instance, let's say you sell accounting services so it's natural to think you need to examine how accounting effects your perspective clients' lives. Yes, but, don't stop there. Think about all the other services those clients are using...Services that have little or nothing to do with accounting and money. These people are still buying groceries, still buying clothing, and still buying gas. Look at what's happening in those industries, look at those trends. This is a piece to the puzzle about who these people are and what they are facing.

2) Present and Future of Consumers. Once we've got an idea of the intra- and inter-industry trends this consumer group is experiencing we can almost literally graph trends that can help inform your company's marketing decisions. For example, let's say you find that gas prices are falling, car prices are falling, and house values are falling. You can literally put the weekly values of each of these on a chart and graph the trend. While this is not the same as a hidden microphone in your consumer's home, it does provide greater depth into what they are currently looking at and what they are likely to see in the future...which means you can craft a preemptive message speaking to their world view which makes you seem almost psychic.

3) Identify their Hierarchy of Needs: We all have basically the same needs: Food, clothing, shelter, sex, water, love. Figure out what you clients are after and you'll be able to explain how your service can directly or indirectly satisfy their needs. Here's an example: You are a financial advisor so, logically, you think you sell financial products to wealthy clients. Wrong. You are selling confidence that the hard work these people did early in their lives is protected for the rest of their lives. You are selling them perceived protection from volatility. And, ultimately, money for all intents and purposes is food, clothing, shelter, etc. Money is simply a promissory note for all those things. Wealth does not change people's fears, it simply disguises it.

4) Get Curious and Get Dirty: I encourage clients when searching for their target market to get the heck out of the office, out of the meetings, and out of their cars and take a look around. If you are selling web design and you have a suspicion many of your perspective clients hang out at the local wine bar on Thurs nights... go there. Don't go there to network. Go there to see what they are seeing. See what they are wearing, what kind of cars they pull up in. What are they drinking. Get curious and talk to the bar tender, the owner of the wine bar, and maybe the waiter/waitress. Though this may sound silly if you own a company selling huge websites to Fortune 500 companies but think about it - all decisions are made by people, actual human beings, that have real lives. Get curious about their lives, no matter what you sell, and you'll find a wealth of information that focus groups and surveys would never produce.

KFC, the massive fast food franchise conducted focus groups around the country to see if people wanted skinless chicken, lower fat foods, and healthier options. Every focus group gave an emphatic "YES" and the market researchers pranced back to the KFC board and said "The people have spoken and they want healthier food." So guess what? KFC responded with healthier foods...and almost went bankrupt. No one bought it. Why? Because of one simple reason...Just because someone wants healthier food does not mean they will actually buy healthier food. There is zero correlation between what people know is the right thing to do and what they end up doing. Don't believe it? Think about smoking, alcohol consumption, drugs, driving fast, eating unhealthy foods, staying up too late, and on and on and on. We are slaves to cravings. Focus group facilitators are slaves to numbers, not reality.

Get to know your clients and they'll get to know you.

Cheers,

Resources from Training #2 - Values and Personality Assessments

Thanks to all that attended and participated in yesterday's training. Below is a list of the resources we discussed - values and personality assessments. Many are free and some are a small fee. Email us with any questions or any other resources you think should be posted.

Myers-Briggs Indicator

MAPP (Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential)

Keirsey Temperament Sorter

Career Key

The Big Five Personality Test (not the official site but still helpful)

Self-Directed Search

Cheers,

Training #2: You Matter (...to Sales)

Wednesday, November 19 6:30-8pm at the Carrboro Creative Coworking

Laugh, learn, and network with other like-minded entrepreneurs interested in identifying how their personal values is inseparably tied to the success of their company. Aberdium Consulting will be facilitating the 2nd in a 12 part series teaching the fundamentals of marketing and growth for start-ups (...especially tech).

Come with questions - leave with hope. Admission is free for all Aberdium Toolkit Trainings.

Cheers,

Events and Resources You Should Know About

Internet Summit - Nov 19th - will showcase and promote forward thinking and thought leadership on topics related to the internet economy and web oriented technologies. Huge list of amazing speakers from across the country.

Council for Entrepreneurial Development - CED identifies, enables and promotes high growth, high impact entrepreneurial companies and accelerates the entrepreneurial culture of the Research Triangle and North Carolina. Comes highly recommended by local tech companies.

Venture Conference - Put on by the CED in Pinehurst, NC. Over the past 25 years, CED’s Venture conference has created business opportunities for hundreds of entrepreneurs and investors across North Carolina and the Southeast. As the nation’s longest running financing event, CED’s Venture 2009 showcases the region’s most promising companies to an audience of top tier investors and entrepreneurial leaders. A Must Go-To for those staying up past their bedtimes praying for a sugar daddy!

South Eastern Venture Conference - This 3rd annual conference will showcase the most promising emerging technology firms in the southeast region, providing these companies with unmatched exposure to the top national and regional VC's and private equity investors.

Deck Party - Check back to this site for future times and dates. A huge group of entrepreneurs and those that love them meet up, drink, eat and, if time permits, talk about their business. Anyone got pics of the last one?

Cheers,

Our Democracy

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), Politics

...Please Vote

Coattail Marketing Revisited

Recently, we've seen some folks using our term 'Coattail Marketing' which would be just fine except they seem confused with what it actually means. Since we created the process we felt it only appropriate to help these poor misguided souls as well as those new to Coattail Marketing.

Coattail Marketing (aka Slipstream Marketing) is the process of examining a bigger company's marketing push (ie. billboards, website, print, PR) and determining several aspects that ultimately inform your marketing plan. The goal is for your company to spend very little money on marketing research the bigger company already conducted. Characteristics to look for include 1) Target Market, 2) Trends, and 3) Values. From a professional analysis your company could surmise what the outcome was from all the market research, focus group work, and board room compromises and use it.

Let's jump into an example:

Let's same you are a super small software tech firm clawing your way into the market place and you happen to sell something similar to a Microsoft product. A great use of time and money would be to literally collect every bit of material you could on recent ads pushed out by Microsoft. You also go to their site to print off examples of updates with colors, images, and the general vibe. You take all this info including notes on the Seinfeld and 'I'm a PC' ads from TV and bring your partners together for about three hrs.

You all look for themes running through all the material. Look for clues as to who they are targeting. You even look at the clothing on the actors, the colors of the backgrounds, the fonts. You look for all the arrows and determine where they point. This is made easier if you have someone on your team, whether contracted or a partner, who knows marketing.

By the end of this hyper-caffeinated meeting you start seeing sparkly, almost magical things dance off the pages in front of you. You start actually seeing what the Microsoft marketing department spent millions on. You also start seeing holes or gaps in what they did.

You have just experienced Coattail Marketing Ah-Ha. Microsoft spent all that money and, with a little detective work and some keen insight you can now incorporate the results of their market research and efforts into your marketing plan. The marketplace has essentially been warmed up by Microsoft with billboards and tv ads - now you go in with a marketing plan exploiting their weaknesses such as cliches or just plain dullness.

The point is not to compete with Microsoft but to work around them. Think about Shark Week on Discovery Channel and how all those little fish swim with the huge shark that could easily gobble them up. The small fish are riding the wake created by the shark. The small fish get to eat smaller fish and nutrients the shark has no interest in.

There are many other components and ways to use Coattail Marketing - too many to go into here. Got more ideas on creative marketing or questions? Post 'em here but please - don't advertise. This is truly supposed to be about resources - not a business card exchange at a lame Chamber of Commerce event.

Cheers,

What Business Can Learn From Politics

Let's get right down to it - political strategists are smart. They know and use a few basic aspects about the human condition:

1) We often feel afraid about the future
2) We have been hurt in the past
3) We still are not sure how to trust others
4) We want to take care of and protect our loved-ones
5) Although we seem individualistic, are actually much more like cattle

These are proven, fair, and hard to digest assumptions we can all secretly identify with (and these politicos know it). So why does it matter? Because good campaigns are built just like marketing plans:

1) Create the product/service people will actually buy, not the one they agree to in focus groups
2) Campaigns are all about selling trust. Business is all about selling trust. Period.
3) Make your message passionate (without sounding like a creepy uncle)
4) Never, never, never stray from your message - confuses the customer/voter
5) Brand (verb) from the inside out. The 'DNA' of your company/campaign should always be the same and understood no matter who you ask

Lastly, try thinking about running your business more like a campaign. If we each had to fight to keep our business 'voted into office' every 4 years, I bet we'd all get a whole lot better at convincing others we are trustworthy. We'd view our message with the outside world as if we were standing for a cause rather than trying to sell a stupid widget they don't actually need. So why are you not doing this now? Why not build that marketing plan based on your values, target market, and strong concept of your product. Turn that company into a cause and you'll see success.

Cheers.