Market Day

Customers, Needles, haystacks and ways to separate one from tother

Overview
How do you define success? What business are you in? What are the features & benefits? Which customers do you care about? Devising appropriate marketing communications Setting sales & marketing

Activity 1 - Three questions about you & your business

What is your motivation for starting a business? What skills & resources do you need? How do you define success?

Other folks answers

Focussed, struggle, expert, triumph, admired, hot, renowned, politics, hothouse, achievement, network, lounge, inventive, productive, family, intuitive, global, courage, playground, belly, fortune, retaliation, slow, mother/father, machine, joker, loose, rational, controlled, dictator, organism, sought, fugitive, dedicated, amateur, mountain, expensive, flawed, mechanical, innocent, farmhouse, approachable, blunder, malicious, swarm, surprise, local, conscious, pack, ocean, orchestra, comic, chaotic, insult, definite, chaos, fate, rockband, intellectual, hero, student home, tight, unconscious, cheap, fast, accident, sweatshop, ordered, distracted, victim, scholar, emergency room,

Activity 2 - What business are you in?

Describe the products/services Why would someone need what you offer? New market or existing? Summarise the goal of the business in terms of meeting customers needs THINK BIG

Activity 3 - Features & Benefits

List all the features of your product/service Highlight the unique ones Translate features into benefits to customers

When customers buy make-up they buy hope When customers buy pen & paper they buy communication

Benefit tempts the unwary & reminds them why they prefer to chocolate bourbons

Feature hole in biscuit shows jam centre

Identifying customer segments

List all the different types of customers you can think of Cluster these into segments Which customer segments are the most:

Sustainable regular buyers, pay a price which enables a profit to you Accessible you can afford the cost of marketing to them Measurable you know when youve reached them

Defining your customers & markets

B2B Trade Buyers Trade Press Awards & Prizes Trade Event Organisers Funders & Govt programmes Agents & Intermediaries Gallerists Talent Spotters B2C Customers Private Clients & commissions Consumer Press Curators Programme managers Audiences & Viewers

Defining the Details B2B

Trade Buyers Type of Buyer

Design/fashion house Department store Independent retail Agent/intermediary Multiple retailer Specialist outlet International buyer

Independent Retailers in the UK offering a mix of well known brands and new designers with Subdivide each broad category a homogeneous X into focus on groups and
target each group separately

Write a wishlist for what you want from each group

Defining the Details B2B event

Meet some trade buyers

Take a stand at 40degrees In the course of the show make contact with X buyers, Y journalists and win B prize Follow up from the show with personalised letters to all people met and succeed in arranging 10 meetings

Defining the Details B2C

Customers Income Age Geographic distribution Depth of interest One off vs. long term customer

Customers with a history of interest in X, who buy regularly through preferred outlets and also attend invitation only functions

Getting to know customers

B2C Age, sex, income, geographic area, buying attitudes, buying habits Geographic segmentation Demographic segmentation Family life cycle Psychographic segmentation B2B Job title Trade press they read Trade events they attend (How) does the company work with partners? Do they buy in solutions/ideas/ products? What do they outsource? Can they buy or bring

Which customers to focus on?

Do

Look at the world from customers perspectives List the benefits to the customer List the unique benefits Cherish the features that are important to you

Review

Your sort of customer Cost of new customers Not your sort of customer Patterns of success & rejection

Identifying customer segments

List all the different types of customers you can think of Cluster these into segments Which customer segments are the most:

Sustainable regular buyers, pay a price which enables a profit to you Accessible you can afford the cost of marketing to them Measurable you know when youve reached them

Adoption Curve

Lunch

What would sales enable?

Organic growth Financial sustainability Proof of concept to enable raising further finance Proof that customers want the benefits you offer

Your Goals

S M A R T

Clearly defined Measurable Do-able in a few months Relevant to you and your customers That you have the time, money & resources to achieve

Next 12 months, 3 years

Next 3 years

an outline e.g. attend 3 international trade fairs detailed e.g. take stand at 100% Design using your network of contacts to make the next steps preparing for activities later in the year

Next 12 months - prioritising

Why customers matter

No customer = no market

Markets or Illusions?
Puff of smoke ghosts & other apparitions
Market fails to materialise technical, political, financial reasons

Escape artists now you see me, now you dont

Man cant sell to innovators alone

What your mother never told you about markets

Power holders customers or suppliers? Profitability what the standard margins are? Technology who owns it, how good it is, when the IP expires, what the IP covers? Customers knowledgeable or

The Devil is in the Service

Intangibility
no substantial material or physical aspects

Inseparability
cant be separated from the service provider

Heterogeneity
variability in quality of delivery

Perishability
cant be stored

Ownership

no transfer of property

Product Lifecycles

Evaluating Results
How do you know your marketing is working? How could you build evaluation mechanisms into

market research marketing communications

Final checks
Your marketing map what have you learnt Highlight the areas of further work Action lists Final questions

A Reading List:

The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell The marketing plan (a pictorial guide for managers), Malcolm McDonald
& Peter Morris

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn Sold (how to make it easy for people to buy from you), Martin
Colleran

&

Do your own PR, Milton NLP in 21 days, Alder & Heather Breaking Through, Vandermerwe