Blog posts
Segmentation and the power of focus
The more companies I talk to, the more convinced I become that thinking clearly about the segments you serve is the key to effective marketing.
The value of segmentation is really that it causes you to be objective about the kinds of people who will find your products and services interesting. Objectivity includes understanding the positive and negative aspects of ...
More >Strategy: Making your recommendation
Once your strategy hypothesis has been presented and validated, it’s time to get on to implementation. But implementation in any organization requires buy-in and understanding from a lot of people.
The recommendation phase is the process of establishing common understanding and buy-in, so that implementation can proceed.
The good news is that you have gone through a thorough process ...
More >Strategy: Effective Market Research execution
Market research is the foundation of great strategy. Knowing more about your market and your customers than your competitors gives you an advantage when it comes to identifying new opportunities and capitalizing upon them.
There are many kinds of market research, and a wide range of expert services to help you apply them. In this article I will therefore focus ...
More >Research planning drives new insights
Having defined your strategy problem and completed an environmental scan, you’re ready to plan the research. One of the key outputs from the environmental scan was a set of questions. It’s worth documenting the unanswered questions carefully, because they are the primary input to your research plan.
Questions represent gaps in your knowledge that you’d like to ...
More >Strategy: the Environmental Scan gets you oriented
Strategy is about making good decisions. The best decisions are made on the basis of a combination of experience, intuition, and fact-based analysis.
The first step is to get oriented.
The environmental scan is a process I’ve found of great value in a complex strategy project. It follows the problem definition phase. The purpose is to gather and organize ...
More >Sales and Marketing MindXchange
I just returned from three interesting days in Tempe, Arizona, at the Frost and Sullivan Sales and Marketing MindXchange. This is a highly interactive event – workshops, facilitated discussions, and a lot of networking.
I was somewhat skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a good thing for several reasons:
- The quality of the participants was high. From many ...
Articles
Pragmatic steps to strategy development
Strategy is about making informed choices with limited resources, in ways that strengthen your business. There’s no easy way to be sure that you have the right strategy, but there is a process that yields consistent results. In this post I’ll summarize a proven process for strategy development. Then I’ll describe each step in turn.
The seven ...
More >The Marketing Knowledge Base
Powerful marketing messages are built on real data. There’s an important role for creative work, clever jingles and tag lines, but they won’t work for you reliably unless they are built on a solid understanding of the market.
Market research is a large and complex discipline, worthy of a book in its own right. If you have the ...
More >Brand Magic
I have never been branded in the physical sense; however millions of farm animals over the centuries would attest to its effectiveness. The original of the word “brand” is in old Norse—the language of ancient Scandinavia. It means “to burn.” It was a good idea in Scandinavia to burn an identifying mark into the rump of your livestock, because ...
More >Services
Market Research
It is so easy to think that you are like me.
Yet every client is different, with unique interests, challenges, and organizations. Research is how we keep ourselves honest in business. It can be informal or formal; it can be statistically based or qualitative in nature.
We specialize in qualitative research, focused on understanding what’s really going on in ...
More >Links
- Interlink Partners http://www.interlink-partners.com/ - Interlink Partners is a boutique consultancy with a track record of results in semiconductors and software. Their focus is on a high-intensity examination of business issues and opportunities resulting in rapid results. The partners bring deep experience in marketing, operations, venture funding, and international business.
