When Does Your Point of Difference Matter

This week I was asked a questions whilst having a discussion around key marketing topics. Specifically the question arose as to how you know when your product's (or businesses) point of difference really will matter to your target market.

I believe this to be a superb question and its importance especially to SME's is underpinned by the fact that when you ask so many businesses about their (perceived) points of difference, their answers usually leave you shaking your head and thinking, "no that's really not a point of difference or at very least not an important one."

To have a chance of finding something that will be effective for your product or business, you need to meet four key qualifying criteria. Simply put, if your point of difference meets all three you will do well regardless of the market you operate in.

The criteria are as follows, where the solution you provide:

1. Must relate to some part of the unmet need of the target audience

2. Must be seen as significant in its' relation to the unmet need

3. Must be sustainable over a significant amount of time

4. Must be available at a price point that the customers are willing and able to pay

This list of criteria is a little like the SMART criteria for good objective setting, because if all five of the criteria are not met the objective you have set is a poor one. Similarly if all four of the P.O.D criteria are not met, your point of difference will not matter either.

Now with any luck as you read this list you'll be thinking 'OK this sounds logical. No problem.'

Go ahead then and relate all four of these to any business you chose and examine their supposed P.O.D to these criteria. How do they shape up? If you arrive at the conclusion that it doesn't look good, you see how important it is that the business go back to the drawing board and re-look at this key marketing mix issue.

If your business falls into this category don't worry as it is an opportunity to fine tune your strategy and potentially become a much more attractive option to your target audience.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

THe Story of the Unhappy Blackberry and the SWOT Analysis

Last week as part of one on one feedback I was doing with a group of students from a particular client in the Peninsular region, I was largely focused on one on the best and sadly least used tools we've ever had in business. Namely the SWOT analysis.

For those that may never have used it before, the SWOT analysis is a time and test model that examines the internal strengths and weaknesses or your product or business, as well as the external  opportunities your business faces within the market it operates within.

The key point being that we can actively (and hopefully proactively) do something about the internal strengths and weaknesses, whereas despite the fact we can be aware of and respond quickly to the opportunities and threats of the marketplace, in a free market society we can not directly control these factors and in fact it is illegal to even try to do so as it means contravening world wide business law.

Now to put this into perspective it is always so refreshing to see global brands not only do their SWOT analysis but leverage the insight they gain from it and respond with clearly thought out, measured and appropriate action.

I have no doubt that this is the case with Blackberry with the recent release of its impressive new Blackberry Z10 smart phone.  As someone who has been using Blackberry phones for the last six years, I am very aware of their respective strengths and weaknesses and am thrilled to see that its makers RIM have addressed the biggest weakness by now providing a full screen instead of it's more traditional half screen with fixed keys.

Yes Blackberry has always had the best email and as proud users we have also said we wanted serious business tools and not just a phone to play games on, but let's be honest for a minute. In the years since we bought our first curve or Bold phone, with the introduction of iPhone's and more recently Androids, how many time s have you wished for a full size screen, better camera and infinitely better web browsing ability? Well thankfully now these things are all in the latest and best Blackberry and you have a serious choice to make again when your current mobile contract expires.
The story of Blackberry and the SWOT analysis is a nice one.

And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.

Insights into Content Effectiveness

As a followup to last week's blog post where we discussed the various types of content that can be used to promote ideas, products or other business elements to your networks, I'm please to read this week that leading marketing group: Marketing Sherpa have released some very helpful research which has provided great insight into what types of content are and aren't working for businesses out there today.

Webinars and webcasts head the list of effective platforms with a staggering 92% of respondents claiming that they find the tool to be very effective (49%) or somewhat effective 43%), whereas podcasts that  have the same audio but no visual component was still rating at 79% but scored a modest 19% for very effective and 60% rating it as somewhat effective. Clearly this analysis highlights the importance of the visual aspects and reinforces the fact that so many people still rate visual learning as their preferred learning style.

The other extremely interesting fact from this recent research was that social media platforms came in last with a total score of 82% but again with only 18% of respondents saying that they found the modality to be highly effective and an additional 64% feeling that it was somewhat effective.

How are we to read this? Does it mean that in the real world social media doesn't work as well, or is it that it's more effective within certain markets than others or is it that businesses on mas despite have taken it up now, are still far from truly adept at using it effectively?

Well I believe that there is a little truth in all of these statements. To begin with social media is not as so many businesses believe analogous to sales promotion activities that are automatically meant to stimulate an immediate and significant spike. Quite the contrary social media is a relatively slow process where you be=ring things to a boil slowly and businesses that try to accelerate this basic tenant often see less than pleasing effects.

Secondly I do also believe that some markets are better suited to social media than others.  B2C for example is a more natural fit than B2B, and within specific markets their is a great intrinsic appeal than others.

Finally do many businesses still grapple with social media and how to use it properly. Quite simply yes and the key issue continues to be a lack of strategic planning in place that drives the tactical aspects.

Suffice to say that as marketers the good news is we have many options available to us these days and in truth each option has it's respective strengths and weaknesses that can be explored more fully another time.
For now it's probably enough to say that for the balance of 2013 and beyond the key will be to get involved with what ever options you feel will best suit you and your target audience. The transition from not effective to somewhat effective to very effective will happen naturally over time with experience and training.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.