Why Social Media is so Lean

 

Wikpedia: Lean is basically about doing the right things, to the right place, at the right time, in the right quantity while minimizing waste and being flexible and open to change.

Lean actually got its name from the best selling book, The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production-- Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry. This management classic was the first book to reveal Toyota's lean production system that is the basis for its enduring success. The next book on Lean, Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated by Womack and Jones, introduced five core concepts:

1. Specify value in the eyes of the customer
2. Identify the value stream and eliminate waste
3. Make value flow at the pull of the customer
4. Involve and empower employees
5. Continuously improve in the pursuit of perfection.

 

These concept have stood the test of time and are still used as the foundation in Lean thinking through out the world. But as I review these concepts look how readily they apply to social media and marketing today.

Specify value in the eyes of the customer: Social Media has brought on a wave of content marketing. As a result, we have more FREE information available instantaneously today than ever. Social Media is about supplying value to the customer. The essence of Social Media is the interaction and discussion. Book Recommendation:  Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

Identify the value stream and eliminate waste: To be effective in Social Media, you have to understand your value stream and do what is important to your customers. If you try to do everything, you will be quite ineffective and realize very little results, if any. Book Recommendation: Get Content Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing

Make value flow at the pull of the customer: Costumers find you in Social Media by your activity, not by your bombarding of messages. Book Recommendation:  Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)

Involve and empower employees: Social Media is about transparency and authenticity throughout are entire organization. More people are communicating with each other at all levels of our organizations then ever before. We have no barriers. World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories

Continuously improve in the pursuit of perfection: The bar is raised for us everyday. The people that are falling behind in Social Media may not recognize the world tomorrow. Do you have to jump in and spend vast amount of time in this world. No, not at this point. however, you need to have you not only your toe but a rather large portion of your foot in testing the waters. If you are participating in Social Media, the result of it will be continuous improvement. Shameless Plug: Duct Tape Marketing Social Media Pro hosted by Business901.

 

These concepts have stood the test of time and are still used as the foundation in Lean thinking through out the world. But as I review these concepts look how readily they apply to social media and marketing today.

Technorati Tags: lean,social mediam Marketing,value stream,duct tape marketing

Ever hear of the term Value Stream Marketing?

Neither have I, until I did a search and typed Value Stream Marketing instead of Value Stream Mapping. It was completely accidental, but it was exactly what I was thinking. If you think about it, do you have a value stream map for your customers? I am not just talking about a map showing the process of what you do, but a process on what value the customer receives from each stage of your marketing.

It’s a different concept that I believe is imperative to the future of marketing. Think of the touch points you have with a customer. Is each one of them creating value? As we walk through the process in the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass, we create a value stream. When your customer moves from one stage to the next stage, is it value driven? Is he receiving more bang for his buck? If he doesn’t, he may decide to jettison you right there. The stakes are being raised, and you have to deliver.

My E-book on applying the Theory of Constraints to the Marketing Hourglass is a good example on how one part of the marketing process may be limiting your overall revenue. If you find that constraint what would you do with it? How would you improve it? I would first start examining what got the person there to begin with and then increase the value of your offering based on the previous offer. If you are not getting enough referrals or repeat customers, think about an offer you could create that would add additional value to them. Give them something that they can simply not refuse. What would shake them up a bit? 

Related Information:

Ebook: Using the Theory of Constraints to improve your Marketing Hourglass

Value stream Mapping

Designers, Marketers THINK BIG

The Eagles always understood!

Technorati Tags: Value Stream Mapping,Marketing,Duct Tape Marketing

Value Stream Mapping – Finding your Customer’s Need

Focusing on the customer NEED is essential to the success of any marketing. We should all recognize this idea. However, do we really embrace this idea? Do we really believe that such an effort can drive our marketing and improve the chance of a sell?

It is important that we understand and are able to express what is critical in satisfying that need. Starting out in the Value Stream Mapping process we first create a Current State Map. I use the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass as a template in creating a current state map for each marketing segment. After the Current State Map is created, we must analyze this process. We must do this to ensure that we are working on the right things from the customer's perspective.

This is where we will start finding the true waste in our marketing process. Should we be happy with 2% direct mail returns or accepting the fact that we need to be in front of a customer 7 to 9 times before we get action. We need to ask whether we are making assumptions about what customers need. We need to ask our customers what they need and whether this is properly communicated throughout each stage of our marketing process.

An organization exists only to provide value to a customer. Are we supplying value in each phase of our marketing process? If you cannot, see how to re-create that phase in the process or it may be one that you need to stop. Everything you do should create value. If you do, your customers are much more likely to stay engaged.

In my Marketing your Black Belt Webinar, I discuss the lack of clarity as the #1 reason that professional service firms lose jobs. I also believe that your “fuzziness” may directly relate to a customer becoming disengaged.  Having clearly defined outcomes based on a customers need will prevent that and reduce your variation in the process. 

What does variation have to do with the marketing process? Variation creates uncertainty or a lack of clarity. The reason that you may be losing jobs. The lack of confidence in the ability of your marketing processes to deliver on your customer needs. Variation reduces the chances for the customer to trust you.

The simplicity of a single flexible marketing model will create clarity for your customers, staff and as a result better execution. Utilizing a process, you also will spend your time on your customer’s need versus continuously managing the process.

Shameless plug: The Ultimate Marketing System

Shameless plug: The Ultimate Marketing System

Why do The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House™ crumble?

Get Rid of Your Marketing Vision Statement and Address the NEED!

Technorati Tags: Value Stream Map,Duct Tape Marketing,Lean,Variation,Marketing

SOCIAL MEDIA IS HERE TO STAY, BE READY BY THE 1ST OF THE YEAR!

IF YOU WANT TO BE ONLINE,

YOU NEED TO LEARN ONLINE

Social media is all the rage and it’s here to stay. Maybe you’ve heard about it; maybe you’ve embraced it. Ultimately, it’s important that you understand how to use and integrate social media. Need help sorting it all out? This innovative coaching program uses coaching, strategy, feedback and accountability functions aligned with a full set of online tutorials and training to deliver the practical, tactical know how so important to the success of the small business.

 

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YOU have to participate

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Technorati Tags: FaceBook,LinkedIn,Social Media,Twitter,Web 2.0

Greater Marketing segmentation = Increase Revenue

Today’s products and services reflect greater marketing segmentation. As you know, I use the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass as The Pillar of the Lean Marketing House but there is no universal terminology, it is just convenient to stay with one message because even as you segment your list you still have to recognize the marketing process into stages such as Know, Like, Trust, Trial and Buy.

As you segment, each segment will include fewer customers. However, it should enable you to identify the individual stages more effectively or determine your material and information flow needed in each step. It will also allow you to define waste and create better value for your customer. In fact, this is basically the definition of Value Stream Mapping.

As a result of this exercise, you will change the shape of your Pillar. You should be able to shorten your cycle in some and as a result decrease your expenditure in the marketing process. Others, on the other hand, may be lengthened and a total different approach may have to be utilized. A good example of this may be in the pursuit of a governmental contract. The point to be taken is that there is nothing wrong with either situation, what is wrong is treating each segment the same.

The key ingredient to get started is developing the NEED statement for each marketing segment or Pillar. The statement should clearly define your CUSTOMER’S CORE PROBLEM and your ability to solve that problem. Defining this alone will provide clarity throughout the various stages in your marketing process. The NEED statement is a living document that will evolve as your product/service and the customer’s use of it changes. Further development of this statement should include limits on cost and time to keep your Pillar within boundaries that you are able to manage.

The point of defining the Need Statement is to succeed at developing a manageable process. We want the resulting marketing phases (Know, Like, Trust..etc.) to meet our customer’s needs, at the right time and at the right cost. It must do this in a way that maximizes our investment in the process. Marketing can be a complex and often risky process and in today’s world it mandates speedy development. The Lean Marketing process is geared to provide a framework and specific tools for efficiently and predictably reaching goals.

Related Posts:

Following the Customer’s Need in your Value Stream Map

 The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House

Value Stream Mapping for Marketing

Get Rid of Your Marketing Vision Statement and Address the NEED!

Why do The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House™ crumble?

Applying the Marketing Hourglass: The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House

Technorati Tags: Lean Marketing,Duct Tape Marketing,Lean Marketing House,Pillars

Speed may be the biggest Determent to your Marketing Success

The company that gets to the customer first, the company that releases the product first, the company that slides in and closes the sale while you are still waiting to get the final specifications, all demonstrate how important speed is to your marketing success.

Speed is much, much more than the ability to run your customer through your marketing cycle. it is an integral part of building a marketing system that responds to customers needs. Having built in trigger points to help you identify your customers readiness to proceed to the next stage in your Marketing Hourglass is imperative. I discussed handing the baton off in an earlier post and how many times that gets dropped from one stage to the next. It is similar to an athlete starting the season off and building his “speed” back up. Or a student taking the same test after summer break and scoring lower. These things happen because of the lack of activity during the non –value added time that you have identified in your Value Stream Mapping Process.

The lack of speed in your marketing process equates to the lack of engagement that you have with your customer. This can be one of the most effective uses of social media and a good content marketing strategy. The engagement of your customer is driven by the needs they identify with your product. Here are some examples of items that may help in decreasing that non-value added time.

1.  Attempting to late or to early to move a customer to the next stage.

2.  Not building upon the previous stage by starting with different content. You effectively lose the momentum that was built by the earlier stage. 

3.  Reinforce the previous stage. Creating the linkages between stages is extremely important. It is a great time for a warm-up.

4.  Make sure the customer is on the right airplane. You have been there, even if it is embarrassing when the stewardess says this plane is headed to Detroit, and you are not going there: you are getting off. If a customer is not ready for this stage give him a graceful exit and provide them an opportunity to get off, or you may lose him forever.

5.  Make a better offer. Each stage should create a better offer than the previous. You have a more qualified customer at this stage so treat them that way.

6.  Create interactive platforms or trials that the customer can use or interact with to solve some of their problems. This happens quite frequently in the construction business when someone leases a bulldozer to a contractor or online with free downloadable software.

7. A superior call to action, an offer that cannot be refused to go the next stage.

Even with these improvements, without a marketing system in place to monitor results and improve upon them, you will fall behind. Speed is not automation. Automation can be a component of developing speed but don’t mistake the use of automation. People even in the online society we have created. They still want conversation and personal connection surrounding the product and especially the service they may purchase. They want a live body behind the curtain or in our case the Marketing Hourglass. 

Technorati Tags: Marketing Speed,Marketing Cycle,Duct Tape Marketing,Marketing Hourglass,The Pillars,Lean

Related Information:

Improve your Marketing Cycle, Increase your Revenue

Have you listed all your delivery processes? What did you learn?

Is your Value Stream Mapping backwards?

Start Fixing Marketing Mistakes with a Process

Determining your Customer Perspective – Can you retain this customer?

This is part 3 of a 3 part series on Determining your customer perspective.

Can you retain this customer?

Do you really look at this as a consideration when developing your marketing segments and the value you place on acquiring a certain type of customer? Most of us look at repeat and referral strategies across the board for every segment. Though, I would not disagree that we should have a strategy for each but consider the segment or that type of customer that you acquire that always seems to give you the benefit of the doubt or refer business to you. Should you not be biased in how you allocate your resources to that segment? Would it not be beneficial to offer certain incentives to that segment? Is this not the measure that most determines the profitability of the customer? My first question to most new clients: Do you have customers that refer you, and why? That is the strongest indicator on the health of the brand.

A great book on the subject is The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld. The Net Promoter website is a great place to start. To calculate your company's Net Promoter Score (NPS), take the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtract the percentage who are Detractors.

When John Jantsch author of Duct Tape Marketing, talks about the Marketing Hourglass, he says, “The top half indeed resembles the funnel concept, but the expanding bottom half, to my way of thinking, adds the necessary focus on the total customer experience that ultimately leads to referrals and marketing momentum.”

Just considering these statements above you can see why I feel so strongly that you need to consider throughout the entire marketing process your ability to maintain and build that customer into a repeat/referral customer. The initial sale should be nothing more than allow your best advocates to experience the entire brand! If you have segmented your marketing channels into: Who you want as a customer (part 1) and Who wants you? (Part 2), the next logical step is, Who will repeat and refer?

Losing customers is the clearest possible sign that customers see a reduced stream of value from the company. It is simply the strongest indicator that a brand is in trouble, even if you are replacing the lost customers with new customers. New customers typically cost more to acquire having to go through, the entire hourglass and older customers are working in the bottom half of the hourglass. Since that is true, repeat customers tend to produce greater cash flow and profits than newer ones. Referral customers are also more profitable because they typically enter the hourglass not at the top but at a much lower stage.

Ask yourself, does retention and referrals matter? Put numbers to it. How much does it cost to obtain new customers, to retain old customers? Consider, do the repeat/referral customers have different purchasing patterns? What makes a repeat customer attract other customers?

How would you go about in gaining a repeat customer? I believe customers evaluate you based on three areas: Value for the price, Quality, Service. If you provide metrics that are very responsive to these areas and continuously educate to receive input from your customer base, you will go a long way in retaining clients. However, these measurement metrics must not be at the expense of your customers’ time and resources.

You should consider ways of making them a part of your operations, service, sales and marketing processes. As an example, you may notice less frequent contact or payments extending. Look at these as signs to engage your customer. Building quality measurement systems into your process may be the most important ingredient in your marketing hourglass.

Related Posts:

Determining your Customer Perspective – Who do you want?

Determining your Customer Perspective – Can you satisfy these customer segments?

The Eagles always understood!

Referral Machine Guide

Technorati Tags: Buyer persona,Duct-Tape-Marketing,Net-promoter-Score,Referral,Repeat,Target Market

The very best thing about organizing and systemizing your marketing is that you now have more tools at your disposal to understand and facilitate not manipulate your customer’s efforts.  I use the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass as an example, but there are other similar methods and maybe a system of your own that would work as well. One of the tools, I found quite useful after working with the hourglass is the use of Cycle time.  A Value Stream Map is quite useful in visualizing and providing calculations for cycle time.

Before I go into the explanation, the question should probably be: Who Cares? Throughput or decreasing your Marketing Cycle time can have very beneficial results. If you put customers through the cycle quicker it will more than likely increase revenue. If it takes 1 person 60 days in a normal cycle time, and you reduce it to 30, you should be able to double sales for any given period. It may also reduce expenses as there would be less people in the cycle at any given period. So increasing throughput is good.

If you look at the chart below, you will see the cycle time depicted in a value stream map. The blocks represent our value added marketing efforts. The empty spaces the non-value added time or waste. I am not going to be so naive and say that you can remove all that non-value added time and close a sale in 3 days. The point that I am delivering is that: you must learn how to mange the non-value time more effectively. Most companies deliver good presentations, advertise and get good PR. Where they fall short is handing the baton from one stage to the next. Non-activity turns marketing rotten. Even with good (refrigeration) techniques our leads may go stone cold.

Taking a look at the chart, the first thing you may notice is the time span differs for certain parts of the process. If you can make an effort to understand the customer's process during this time, significant gains may be made. Your actual processing time is insignificant in marketing. It is the lead time between the processes that are important. Consider, for example, if we would increase the offer to transfer from the Trust stage to the Trial Stage. Or maybe, you have noticed that quicker conversions happen when they attend a webinar. What would happen if we paid them to come to the Webinar? You may find out segmenting your process halfway through the cycle would allow customers to better understand the results that they may gain from your product. Many of your features and benefits may be confusing certain prospects that don’t care for them anyway.

Total cycle time can be improved. It seldom can be done without more feedback loops in your system. Speed is important in the buying process. Develop process blitzes to reduce these non-value times. Go to Gemba or the customer’s place of work and find out what happens during this time. See what is stopping him from moving forward. It may be an internal constraint within their company. However, the constraint may be yours. Your responsiveness to the customers latest needs and the ability to focus your resources with enough but not too much material providing better clarity. He needs this to make a more rapid decision.

Create a vision of shorter cycle time, greater segmentation of your customers, it will enable you to do fewer actions in the cycle and much quicker. “It not the big that ate the small. It’s the fast that eat the slow” – Jason Jennings. Cycle times need to be addresses and improved. What methods are you using to accomplish this?  

Related Blog Post

Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!

Using the Theory of Constraints to improve your Marketing Hourglass

The Eagles always understood!

Technorati Tags: Duct Tape Marketing,Marketing Hourglass,Value Stream Mapping,Cycle Time,Lean

AME Conference Marketing Lesson

This week I attended the AME Conference held in Covington, KY. I have to say it was one of the best conferences that I have attended in a long time, with a great mix of workshops, seminars and plant tours. They also paid particular attention to their vendors making sure all their needs were met. It was very impressive how the AME Staff and even the President of AME stopped by the booth daily to check on how things were going and if there was anything needed.

My favorite workshop was presented by Dan Fayer of PAS Technologies. He spelled out a formula for Lean Implementation Success that PAS used in the turnaround of that company. Bob Weiner, CEO of PAS and Tom Deforge of Lean Value Solutions have been on my podcast recently so I knew the general story before attending. Dan, however, put some real meat to the Lean Transformation and filled in the X’s and Y’s. If AME makes any part of this seminar, slidedeck or audio available, grab it!

The most interesting sideline to the conference was the masterful job that AME did in marketing their next convention. What a lesson for others. John Jantsch explains the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass:

Many marketers have been taught the concept of the marketing funnel. The idea being that you bring leads into the top of the large opening in a funnel and push the ones that become customers through the small end. The problem I’ve always had with that is all the focus is on the chase. I happen to think that real payoff in marketing comes from expanding and focusing your thinking on how to turn a lead into an advocate for your business. Long ago I started using the concept of the marketing hourglass. The top half indeed resembles the funnel concept, but the expanding bottom half, to my way of thinking, adds the necessary focus on the total customer experience that ultimately leads to referrals and marketing momentum.

The relationship to that concept was demonstrated at the AME Conference. The attendees and exhibitors have been thru the hourglass and now in the bottom half. Not to sound too clinical but they were the Buyers of the program. The next step in the funnel is the Repeat stage. AME started marketing the next conference in Baltimore immediately after you signed up for this one. In fact, they offered steep discounts before and during the show if you would commit before this convention ended for both attendees and exhibitors. During the show, there was a booth for information about Baltimore, numerous promotions and AME personnel wore Baltimore Oriole jerseys for most of the show. It was simply one of the best jobs of managing the Repeat stage in the hourglass that I have seen. The AME personnel understand the cost of gaining a new attendee and passed that savings on to their “Repeat” buyers.

The next part of the Marketing Hourglass is the Referral phase. I have not seen how AME will be handling all of that. However, I did see them, collecting and asking for referrals. I can’t wait to see it!

P.S. I was there as a result of an invitation from Systems2win.

Related Information:

The Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass makes up The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House.

E-books: Discussion of A Lean Transformation & Lean Value Solutions

Category: Marketing Funnel

Podcast:

Lean Value Solutions Podcast

PAS Technologies CEO, Bob Weiner discusses a Lean Transformation

Technorati Tags: Lean,AME,Systems2win,Manufacturing Excellence,Duct Tape Marketing

Have you taken the path of your customer?

One of my steps in working with a client is that I like to put together their Marketing calendar to understand what they have on the table, events, conferences, advertisement, flyers, etc. They usually have some type of marketing in place, and we are looking at improving the system not dismantling it. After the marketing calendar has been constructed, I start moving, sometimes  just the post-it-notes from a chronological order to a marketing flow stream based on the customers' viewpoint.  We could even call it an assessment, but in initially I am just on a fact finding mission, in Lean terms = Current State Map. The next step in the process is diagramming this current state map and in Duct Tape Marketing terms, their Marketing Hourglass.

However, this week the procedure took a strange turn. I completed the process but I happen to know one of the client’s customer very well. So, after constructing this hour glass with the new client, I was able to sit down with his customer and my friend and map the process from the customers' point of view. Voice of Customer seems to an over-used word in our Industry but this was one of my best experiences. We actually pulled the clients file from the customers file cabinet, reviewed the folders on his computer including e-mails and bookmarks. I then laid out all the marketing material that had accumulated, highlighted and even taking note of the bent corners in the catalog. This was all followed by an interview.

Of course, my sample size of 1 is not a good indicator. The key to this process was the awaking to the client and myself on what the customer valued and what his procedure was in making the decision. His process was simply different. We talk about going to Gemba and walking the walk from the customers' point of view, but do you? How much non-effective marketing could you save by doing this? How much effecting marketing could you implement?
 

Related Posts:

Is your Value Stream Mapping backwards?

Mirror Marketing E-Book

Another word for Marketing – How about Voice of the Customer?

Technorati Tags: Duct Tape Marketing,Marketing Calendar,Marketing Hourglass,Value stream Mapping

Six Sigma Marketing Coach recognized with Duct Tape Marketing Certification

Joe Dager, owner of Business901 in Fort Wayne, IN was one of a group of eleven Duct Tape Marketing™ Coaches to reach the Certification level in the Duct Tape Marketing program. This award was presented at the annual gathering in Boulder, Co. this October.

John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing and founder of the Duct Tape Marketing organization developed this initiative and established levels of Duct Tape Marketing Coaching accreditation in an effort to place heavy emphasis on the success factors of the Duct Tape Marketing system and reward those who establish pre-defined levels of success using the Duct Tape Marketing approach, tools and point of view. To obtain this advanced level, there were twelve additional requirements above and beyond the initial level. At this time, it is the highest achievable level within the organization.

Dager says, “It is quite an honor to be recognized with such an outstanding group and would like to thank John Jantsch, the Duct Tape Marketing organization and recognize the other ten coaches that achieved this level; Jeff Bishop, Troy Braithwaite, Scott Campbell, Joe Costantino, Bill Doerr, Fiona Friesen, Adrianne Machina, Cidnee Stephen, Michael Thompson, Liz Walker. I firmly believe in the Duct Tape Marketing Process and to use an old cliché, I not only talk the talk but walk the walk.”

The Duct Tape Marketing system allows business owners to create and build their very own marketing system complimented by a coaching system that has proven effective with small businesses for over 20 years. The system is perfect for those who already own a business, but want to make it soar. It's also designed for those who want to start a business but don't know how to get it off the ground." This system will help entrepreneurs build the perfect business establishing a proven marketing system to their growing company. "Why reinvent the wheel? Take a proven process, a package of tools, a trained coach and run with it.

About Duct Tape Marketing: Duct Tape Marketing is a unique turnkey small business marketing system created by award-winning small business marketing expert John Jantsch. Visit Blog, a Forbes favorite for small business.

About Business901: Business901,http://www.business901.com, uses proven methodologies to enable its customers to build applications in a very short amount of time. The result is increased development speed, higher customer satisfaction and decreased time. The simplicity of a single flexible model will create clarity for your staff and as a result better execution. Business901 provides direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma marketing and organized referral marketing. Business901 services and product offerings are implementable systems that work in the real, not enough time, not enough people world we operate in. Joe Dager, President of Business901 is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and a Certified Duct Tape Marketing Coach.. His experience includes numerous start-ups, several turnarounds in a variety of industries to include manufacturing, retail, and professional services to include marketing.

Technorati Tags: Duct Tape Marketing,Small Business,Marketing Coach,Lean,Six Sigma,Lean Sigma

Get Rid of Your Marketing Vision Statement and Address the NEED!

Most 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 wrote a blog discussing the Marketing 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?  

Value Stream Marketing: It’s just not about the Value

Applying Value in your Marketing process is not the only thing that is important. In today’s marketing managing the stream is becoming equally more important. I alluded to this concept when I discussed E-mail providers in a previous post. I concentrated on the value and the touch points within your Marketing Hourglass. Just as important though is the Stream or Flow of the process. Without managing this, you will end up creating a great deal of wasted effort in your marketing process.

Of course when I start discussing flow, I am going to start discussing Theory of Constraints. In your marketing process, you will have numerous constraints but Goldratt claims that at any given time, there is only one constraint. That constraint is much like the neck of an hourglass and will limit the entire system. Actually, if it is well managed you could throttle your process accordingly (We only wish we could that). Simply doubling the efforts in a constraint could be the easy solution and may just move the constraint to another area. However, we operate in a more complicated world than that. Something else usually cases something else to happen.

What is that something else? It is the marketplace. What we see in our constraints may not be problems but indicators. If we treat the perceived problem without really determining the root cause we just may go in a merry-go-round. It would be like just adding sales people. You could double your sales capacity and that may or may not increase sales. In fact, what typically happens is additional responsibilities are given to salespeople and you off-load other stages of your Marketing Hourglass to them without increasing sales. You did not find your root cause. The good or bad part is that your indicator will return because the constraint really never went away.

David Armano just wrote a blog post on Dynamic Signals for Business and how rapidly dynamic signals are transmitted and received. He discusses how Google has organized the Web by figuring out who has authority, but now the real-time Web behaves differently. It is about trending topics, and SEARCH JUST CAN’T REACT QUICK ENOUGH. He goes on and discusses how he receives trending information, and what they mean to him.

So marketing today has to address value and the content they are distributing. However, as importantly, they have to address the time or the stream of their marketing system. The acceleration or throughput is extremely important. Creating systems within our process that are efficient and propels customers through the Marketing Hourglass or Sales Cycle is imperative. Our days of leaving non-responsive customers on our mailing list, online or offline are ending. Creating advertising to the masses and expecting a reasonable return have already ended for small and maybe even medium size businesses. These statements are not meant to say that we only market to someone for 90 or 120 days and that’s it. It is more inline that we have to create interactive platforms that allow our customers to interact at their leisure, their timing and at their discretion. A good description of pull marketing, but how do you manage a stream?

You must understand your Marketing Stream well enough to have a throttle. You must know here your constraint is, maybe even on a seasonal basis. You must address indicators that are built into your process and not built into month-end reports. I look at my Google analytics daily. If I see web traffic dropping from referral sites, I realize that I am spending too much time pushing my message versus participating with others.

What are the real-time indicators within your business? Do you have a monitoring system that lets you know? Do you adjust your marketing message accordingly? Are you improving your stream with better information to qualify yourself to the customer? If you are proving a higher value of information to the customer, does that propel them through your marketing hourglass?

If you believe that your referral process is a sub-standard or your constraint, it may be a way to create an immediate impact in your process. Applying a couple of these principles to the bottom of the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass in the refer stage. If you worked in this area alone and increased testimonials and referrals, what would it do for you? Could you reduce the time spent in your hourglass? Do you give every customer the opportunity to refer and to provide testimonials?  Try a few of ideas and see if you can get a handle on your throttle.  

P.S. I have a Lean your Marketing thru Referral Power Group starting soon!

Technorati Tags: Value Stream,Referral Flood,Duct Tape Marketing,Marketing Hourglass

Gathering Information For Your Plan

Affiliate 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Technorati Tags: Marketing Plan Pro. Marketing,Finding information,Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Idea of the Week!

I was reading Success Coaching U Blog and Joe wrote an article about Ready, Aim, Fire. Good headline, you already can guess what the headline is about, Target Marketing. I remembered a piece of advice I received from another Duct Tape Marketing Coach on targeting your direct mail, which I call the Machine Gun approach. For obvious reasons, I won’t disclose the source, but the following statistics were shared:

I don't have a success story, I have a sobering story. Here it is:
   Number of pieces mailed: 10,000
   Response rate: 1%
   Number of inquiries: 96
   Number that you manage to reach by phone to qualify: 70
   Cost of qualifying by phone, per inquiry: $30
   Number who turn out to be qualified leads (20%): 14
   Total cost of qualifying ($30 X 70): $2,100
   Campaign cost of $10,000 + phone qualifying cost = $12,200

Total cost of $12,200 divided by 14 qualified leads = $871.42. In other words, you must spend $871.42 to get to each lead who needs your product or service, can afford it, has authority to buy, and is ready to buy now. Not so good for a small business....

I will call this method the Machine Gun Marketing. Another method of Machine Gun Marketing is the Marketing Idea of the Week.  You have an Ad Rep call on you and they have this special 3 for 2 deal. Plus they have this even that they will be attending and handing out another 1,000 pieces of whatever they are selling. Oh yeah, you will also be exclusive to your area of expertise and we will even create the ad. What a deal! But….you will have to do something by Thursday, this being Tuesday. Sounds like a great idea?

If it is not part of your overall marketing strategy, if it not targeted, and I mean really targeted, and you have extra cash in your marketing budget that you were just clueless on how to spend it and you have no collateral material supporting it and you cannot create the ad yourself(a two-step ad, by the war), and you already know how you are going to measure it and….. I have asked Ad reps, that I do not respond to this type of marketing, many have stopped calling. I wonder why…has their machine gun jammed or just ran out of bullets? 

 

Technorati Tags: Target Marketing,Ideal Client,Direct Mail,Advertising

The Ultimate Marketing System – The Forgotten Pillar

Readers of my blog have read my explanations of the Lean Marketing House and how your Marketing Channels determines your number of pillars and the size of each. You can suffice with just one pillar if it is big enough and strong enough to hold up the roof but the other day I realized that I had forgotten to describe what I will now call the Forgotten Pillar. Continuous Learning in the Lean Marketing House means theUltimate Marketing System. This is a term coined by Duct Tape Marketing and actually includes their workbook and CD's explaining their system. Most marketing plans and systems fail if adequate training is not provided.

Lean Six Sigma Practitioners always realize that the training is what makes the processes work. Without, old habits stay the same and new habits are never developed. Nor are these new habits expanded to the greatest extent. It happens in marketing too. Marketing that works today is all about authenticity, customer touch points and the connection of those touch points. You have to be everywhere, but you also have to be you. Perfect marketing is less important because people really are seeking you. Even from an organization viewpoint, they are expecting a human and personal experience.

How do you go about creating this new wave of marketing in your organization? My advice is that you have to create a continuous learning cycle within your company. This is best done by starting out with a learning system, a structured program and a Marketing coach. This is self-serving to say the least, but it is what I truly believe.

I use the Duct Tape Marketing System as the learning system and the structured program to get someone started. I am not going to go through the entire program, you can do that here, but it will set you on the road to success and provide a foundation for you to build from. Without going through these necessary steps, you will never fully defined your marketing needs and just continue to respond to the marketing idea of the week. I cannot tell you how many phone calls I get weekly a call from an Ad Rep telling me about the next greatest deal. Please take note: It's not about the money, it's about the target!

Now, the coach is pretty important. I am not going to talk about that even Tiger Woods has a coach, you to keep you on track, hold you accountable and all that garbage. I am going to discuss about someone that has been there done that in the real world. I am also going to mention another cliché: Talk the talk and walk the walk. I can only talk for myself, but I will put myself up against any other coach in the sense that I walk my system. I believe in the Duct Tape Marketing philosophies. I practice them. If you think that is not true, just look at my Tag cloud on the left. Look at my Alexa score, Hubspot rating and Twitter feeds. They are better than the vast majority of corporations and certainly better than 99.5% of other coaches and consultants. Why is that? I simply follow the practices that John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing has taught me. Have I added a few tricks of my own? Certainly - Authenticity, Personalization, Differentiation and building your Core Message is what I have learned in my Continuous Learning cycle. What can you gain from that expereince? You will simply short-circuit your learning curve by having a coach on board!

Technorati Tags: Duct-Tape-Marketing,Lean,Lean-Marketing-House,Six-Sigma

Do you have Continuous Learning going on in your Marketing?

Duct Tape Marketing with Lean Six Sigma can help eliminate waste!

I published this article practically a year ago in a series of blog posts. I thought with the recent increase in Lean Six Sigma Online Training and how you reduce waste in marketing that it was an opportune time to re-publish.


Lean Six Sigma and Duct Tape Marketing- Original Comparison -

Other Blog Posts on Lean Six Sigma

Brand Yourself before your Non-Customers do!

I was just reading an article written by John Jantsch that he posted on Could Your Brand Stand a Personality Upgrade? on the HP Small Business Marketing Guide. He discussed Small Business branding and encouraged you to work at it much harder by identifying it more clearly to your customer base.

Don’t be a big fat zero: It is pretty scary to brand yourself. You always feel like your limiting yourself and as a result try to be everything to everyone. And as a result, your are nothing to no-one. A ZERO! Another alternative is to to leave your customers do it. That perception, is of course probably the most correct one. I have recommended before, go call 10 of them and find out what your brand is. A word of caution is that it is very difficult to change this image and if you so choose to try, it is expensive. I have written several posts on this.

But don’t be less then zero: I think the scariest part is leaving the branding to your non-customers. Now, let me do the math. Your customers in your target market is called market share. Your market share, more than likely is something less than 50%. Maybe 5%, if you are extremely successful. So, if you have not developed a strong brand, if my math is right, 95% of your target market is defining it for you. So, go read John’s post, I think you need to take hold of it and brand yourself with everything you got before someone else does

Technorati Tags: SMBmarketing guide ,Duct Tape Marketing ,Branding ,Target Market

This is syndicated from Business901"

All Core Messages are not Created Equal.

I wrote a post recently that All Sales Channels are not Created Equal and talked about the resources that you would have to commit to each one. But today I had an appointment with a new client and was discussing their Core Message and went through an exercise that I thought might prove useful. More importantly, I discovered that you can have more than one sometime and that All Core Messages are not Created Equal.

List your core messages, you can have more than one but keep it short and sweet.

1. Which one differentiates you the most?
2. Which one screams the loudest?
3. Who and what influences whom?
4. Which would could prove the most effective?
5. Which one has the highest risk attached to it?
6. Which one  has the Lowest Risk?
7. Which one is the easiest to support?
8. Which is the easiest to implement?
   1. In the short term?
   2. In the Long Term?
9. Which one is the most affordable?
10. Which of them is most recognizable to your customers?
11. what are the best vehicles to reach your audience or constituents?
12. Can you combine and optimize?
13. If you decide on more than one, what is the best timing to introduce each?

So what is your core message?

Technorati Tags: Core Message,Target Market,Sales Channels,Marketing Channels

Referral Lead Offer – STEP 5 of 7

Step 5 - Referral Lead offer

Service, Product, Retail, Construction, Professional services, Employee, and Volunteer … it doesn’t matter. A referral system should include 7 basic steps that helps you identify and succeed in ways you never imagined. It is the basic understanding on how to apply the Referral Flood program to Your Business or Organization.

Step #5 – This is where you devise the creative offer that makes people want to refer you. Example: “Refer 4 people that become clients and yours is free.” There are numerous offers available but be creative. A gift certificate, dinner, and discounts can be great incentives. But know your audiences and try to be outlandish. The old adage of What is in it for ME, is never more important than right now. This single step may determine the success of your program so be creative, easy to understand, and something no one else would do.

This is from Business901.

Technorati Tags: Referral,Referral Week,Referral Flood,Core Referral Message,Lead Offer