Archive for Lean Marketing
Lean Marketing Game from the Inside-Out.
Posted by: | CommentsSeldom will you hear me utilize the phrase from the Inside-Out. In fact, after discussing Visioning in most workshops I pass out some (play) guns and ask to be shot if they hear those words at any time the rest of the day. However, there is a time and place to view sales and marketing from the inside-out. It is when you have never used an outside-in strategy before and at a loss on how to determine the customers decision making process.
The slideshow below walks you step by step through building a journey map from the inside – out. I shutter thinking this way!
You may also want to consider viewing the original Lean Marketing Game presentation.
Related Information:
Gamestorming for Service Design
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing
Games maybe your only chance to attract the best and brightest talent
Start with Journey Mapping vs Value Stream Mapping
Lean Marketers concentrate on SOAR vs. SWOT
Posted by: | CommentsHow many resources do you have? Should you be using them on your weaknesses or your strength? In a recent post Looking for a Game Changer, Start Underperforming!, I discussed not looking for areas of deficiencies and improvement but to expand on the areas we do well in. You cannot be everything to everyone and so you have to limit your resources. So why not use them on what you do well?
In the typical SWOT Analysis (SWOT analysis examines the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of different strategies), I believe most of us have a tendency to focus on our weaknesses and threats more than our strengths. Just doing the math SWOT/WT, we spend 50% of out time doing just that.
In the Appreciative Inquiry field, there has been a movement to use a SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results) analysis in lieu of SWOT. SOAR is a great method to use for expanding on the positive areas of an organization. It normally is much easier to gain buy-in from stakeholders with this approach versus others.
In the book The Thin Book of SOAR; Building Strengths-Based Strategy, the authors state:
People tend to look for problems and focus on weaknesses and threats before searching for possibilities. For example, one participant of a SWOT process described this tendency as follows: "Having used SWOT analysis for the previous fifteen years, I had experienced that it could be draining as people often got stuck in the weaknesses and threats conversations. The analysis became a descending spiral of energy." Or, as another described his experience of a planning process deeply rooted in a SWOT analysis, "[the SWOT approach] gave us a plan, but took our spirit. From our experience, drained energy and loss of spirit can negatively impact momentum and achieving results.
In SOAR, we focus on our strengths and opportunities, so that we can align and expand them until they lessen or manage our weaknesses and threats. Weaknesses and threats are not ignored. They are refrained and given the appropriate focus within the Opportunities and Results conversation. Ultimately, it becomes a question of balance. Why not spend as much time or more on what you do well and how7 you can do more of that? What gives you more energy to take action? What gives you confidence to set a stretch goal?
When I engage with a customer, I find the initial sequence of steps used to create a Lean Marketing System must ensure we carefully think through what outcomes we want to create, what supports and barriers we need to plan for, and who we have to involve within your organization to guarantee success. Our starting point looks like this:
- (Definition) What are you presently doing and how do your clients and organization feel about them?
- (Discovery) What is your present value proposition for retaining customers? What is your present value proposition for acquiring customers?
- (Dream)What are your targets? How will we measure success?
- (Design) Do you understand your customer’s decision making process? For each product/market segment?
- (Destiny) What’s your investment strategy – not only in media, but in time and events?
The SOAR framework is the beginning step in the Defining stage and is a natural lead in to the others.
- Strengths: Internal to organization; What is our core
- Opportunities: External to organization; What might be
- Aspirations: Internal to organization; What should be
- Results : External to organization; What will be
The first steps of any Lean process is identify value and create a current state. When working on the demand side of the equation, why should we identify the process through Non-Value Activities defined as waste (Weaknesses and Threats) versus the Value Added activities of SOAR?
Related Information:
Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative
Getting Resistance to Appreciative Inquiry?
Lean Engagement Team Book Released
Appreciative Inquiry instead of Problem Solving
Moving from Product to Customer Centric in 4 Steps
Posted by: | CommentsBecoming customer centric requires an organization to understand the emotional needs and difficulties of their prospects and customers (only the term “customer” will be used for the balance of the blog post). I have recently done a series of blog posts on empathy (The Role of Empathy in Design), that goes deeper into this subject.
Today’s marketing is not about getting the message out – it is about bringing the message in. Most organizations struggle in their attempts as they evaluate seas of data and lose the personality of the customer using such terminology as markets or value streams. They have a tendency to view marketing as product centric rather than customer/user centric.
You don’t wake up one day and become customer centric. It is not quite that easy. However, a concentrated effort by sales and marketing with just a few priorities can start your organization on the right path and radically improve your chances of moving from product to customer centric. 
1. Reduce complexity: Few companies can simply market by collecting more demographic data, psychographic or subjective information. Data should not be ignored; however, in the absence of a customer context, data will provide little value and be desperately in need of direction.
2. Establish the user experience as the basis of collaboration: Framing the marketing effort in the context of the customer allows everyone the opportunity to participate. Everyone can act as the customer and can contribute insight about how the user experience can be improved. Understanding how empowerment varies among roles and evolves over time can help to create priorities and informed decisions.
3. Use maps to guide the way: Mapping products and personas in terms of needs, desires, and aspirations fuels the marketing process with clarity and empathy from the outset. This is not only a powerful tool for understanding how to appeal to customers but it can also shape the debate about trade-offs that are an inherent part of implementation. Customer insight can reveal value and non-value added task. The visual understanding provided by mapping can provide a reality check and a benchmark throughout the sales and marketing process. The direction should he determined by the needs of customers and the particular company’s strategy. Strive for the ability to see where there is a disconnect between your offerings in the market and the desires of the customer to improve the user experience and bridge the gap.
4. Aim for a compass, not a GPS: Identifying an opportunity zone can increase the chances of success by focusing a team’s attention on a fixed number of priorities. These form the basis for experimentation during the sales and marketing process. The idea is to provide a clear direction but allows freedom to all parties to generate different approaches.
My research for this post came from the recent reading of Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business. The authors use these four interactions on How to Create a Design Strategy. I found the same principles applying directly to customer centric marketing. In the book, there is a special tool that the authors call the Psycho-Aesthetics Map. This is a two-dimensional mapping process in which the vertical axis shows the degree of need, from essential through to aspirational, while the horizontal axis shows the degree of interactivity from passive through to immersive. Existing products can be placed in their appropriate locations on the map, as can different groups of consumers, in order to identify gaps which might be suitable for the design of new products. More about this later.
Related Information:
Is Continuous Improvement Continuous?
The 7 step Lean Process of Marketing to Toyota
Lean needs Marketing, more than Marketing needs Lean!
Scaling the Customer Decision Making Process
