articles_topic.json

[{"title":"Understanding Business Development","url":"http:\/\/sethgodin.typepad.com\/seths_blog\/2009\/09\/understanding-business-development.html","body":"Understanding business development. Business Development  is a mysterious title for a little discussed function or department in most larger companies. It\u2019s also a great way for an entrepreneur or small business to have fun, create value and make money. Good business development allows businesses to profit by doing something that is tangential to their core mission. Sometimes the profit is so good, it becomes part of their core mission, other times it supports the brand and sometimes it just makes money. And often it\u2019s a little guy who can be flexible enough to make things happen. Examples: Starbucks licenses their name to a  maker  of ice cream and generates millions in royalties. A rack jobber like  Handleman  does a deal with a mass marketer like K Mart. K Mart gives them room in the store to sell records and gets a cut, Handleman does all the work. AOL buys AIM instant messaging software and integrates it into their service. Years ago, I licensed the rights to Isaac Asimov\u2019s  Robot  novels from a business development person at his publisher and turned the books into a VCR murder mystery game which I licensed to a business development person at Kodak, a company that was experimenting with becoming a publisher. (Isaac made more from this project than he did from many of his books). Best Buy offers extended warranties on appliances you buy. They don\u2019t provide the warranty, of course, a business development person did a deal with an insurance\/service company to do it and they share the profit. The Princeton Review built a huge test prep business, but only by licensing their brand to a series of books which did the lion\u2019s share of their marketing for them. You don\u2019t see business development from the outside, particularly all the potential deals that fail along the way. Many companies, though, spend millions of dollars a year looking for deals and then discovering that they pay off many times over. Others, particularly smaller competitors, are so focused on their core business that it never occurs to them to consider partnerships, licensing, publishing, acquisition and other arrangements that might change everything. Harley Davidson probably makes more money on business development than they make on motorcycles. The thing that makes business development fascinating is that  the best deals have never been done before.  There\u2019s no template, no cookie cutter grind it out approach to making it work. This is why most organizations are so astonishingly bad at it. They don\u2019t have the confidence to make decisions or believe they have the ability to make mistakes. Think about the  Apple Nike  partnership on making a device that integrates your iPod with your sneakers. This took years and cost millions of dollars to develop. Most companies would just flee, giving up long before a deal was done and a product was shipped. Here are some tactical tips on how to do business development better: Process first, ideas second . If you\u2019re going to be bringing new partners and new ideas into your organization, you need a process to do it. Professionals don\u2019t, \u201cknow it when I see it.\u201d Instead, professionals think about the abilities of their company and strategies necessary to bring ideas in, refine them and launch them. Great business development people don\u2019t waste time in endless meetings with random vendors or hassle about tiny details up front. Instead, they have an agenda and a project manager\u2019s understanding of what it means to get things done. They don\u2019t keep the process a secret, either. They share it with anyone who wants to know. Someone needs to say, \u201chere\u2019s how we do things around here,\u201d and then they have to tell the truth. Who decides?  Because every great business development project is different, it\u2019s incredibly easy to get stuck on who can say  yes  (of course, everyone can say  no ). Professional business development people intentionally limit the number of people who are allowed to weigh in and are clear to themselves and their potential partners about exactly who can (and must) give the go ahead. Don\u2019t bother starting a business development deal unless you know in advance who must say yes. Courtship, negotiation and marriage . Every deal has three parts, and keeping them straight is essential. During the courtship phase, you win when you are respectful, diligent, enthusiastic, engaging, outgoing, and relentless in your search to make a connection. Do your homework, research people\u2019s backgrounds, learn about their kids, visit them\u2013don\u2019t make them visit you. Look people in the eye, ask hard but engaging questions, you know the drill. Basically, treat people as you\u2019d like to be treated, because the people you most want to work with have a choice, and they may just not pick you. Hint: if you skip the courtship part, the other two stages probably won\u2019t come up. Buyer and seller.  If you\u2019ve ever pitched a product or service to a business, you know how soul-deadening it can be. The buyer works hard to make it clear that she\u2019s doing you a favor, and you need every dog and every pony available at all times (and you better be the cheapest). But business development doesn\u2019t have this dichotomy. Both sides are buying, both sides are selling, right? So talented business development people never act like jaded buyers, arms folded, demanding this and that. Instead, from the start, they seek out partners. Enthusiasm is underrated.  Business development people are exploring the unknown. That means that there\u2019s more than cash on the table, there\u2019s bravery and initiative and excitement. The best business development people I\u2019ve ever worked with are able to capture the energy in the room and amplify it. They\u2019ll build on the ideas being presented, not make them smaller. Close the open door.  I regularly hear from readers who are frustrated because a big company wasn\u2019t willing to hear a great idea they mailed in. Here\u2019s the thing: there isn\u2019t a shortage of ideas. There\u2019s a shortage of execution. That means that successful business development teams look for proven partners and organizations with momentum. A key part of that is the decision to say no early and quickly and respectfully to people who don\u2019t meet that threshold. Call the lawyers later.  A business development deal that never happens is one that\u2019s sure to cause no problems. While the legal clarity you need is important, there\u2019s plenty of data that shows that ten page NDA agreements and onerous contracts early in the process don\u2019t protect you, they merely waste your time and energy. Cast a wider net.  The  Allen and Co.  annual gathering is a dumb place to choose a merger partner. Limiting the number of potential partners to people you\u2019ve met at a trade show is also silly. Business development (when it works) creates huge value for both sides, so better to be proactive in searching out and soliciting the organizations that can make a difference. Here\u2019s a simple way to widen your net: start a blog and go to conferences to speak. Describe your successful business development projects to date and let the world know you\u2019re looking for more of them. How many amazing partnerships could the Apple store launch? How many great books could Starbucks highlight? Not only don\u2019t they do this, they hide. Don\u2019t hide. Talk to the receptionist.  This is huge, and so important. When a great partner shows up at your doorstep, do you know? Here\u2019s a test: call your organization (pretending to be from some respected organization), describe a business development opportunity and ask who can help. If you\u2019re not immediately transferred to your office, you\u2019ve failed, right? Make it easy for the right people to know that you\u2019re the right guy. Hire better.  How do you decide who to put in this job? I\u2019d argue that glibness and charisma aren\u2019t as important as strategic thinking, project management and humility. Structure deals with the expectation of success.  The only real reason to do business development deals is because when they work they\u2019re so powerful. Andrew Tobias put his name on a piece of software that ended up earning him millions of dollars. It\u2019s easy to get hung up on all the bad things that could happen, but keep your focus on how the world looks when you get it right. End well.  Most of the time, even good business development deals fall down before the end of the negotiation process. If a deal doesn\u2019t come together, say so. Acknowledge what went wrong, thank the other party and end well. If it does come together, track the integration and stay involved enough to learn from what works and what doesn\u2019t. I\u2019m still waiting to hear from people who said they\u2019d get back to me \u201ctomorrow\u201d fifteen years ago, but I\u2019m losing hope\u2026 Ending well not only teaches you how to do better next time, but it keeps doors open for when you need to come back to someone who you should have done a deal with in the first place.   September 21, 2009","topic":"product growth, company growth, marketing, branding, understanding business development, growth marketing"},{"title":"What are different types of Marketing Research?","url":"http:\/\/whatismarketresearch.com\/market-research-types\/what-are-different-types-of-marketing-research\/","body":"What are different types of Marketing Research? Marketers use marketing research to find answers to various questions related to market dynamics, business environment and consumer behaviour.  For this a formal research design plan is created by marketers. But some marketers conduct research without formal plan as well. For example, a hotel owner who asks returning customers what was their experience during their stay at his hotel, is conducting a research without a formal research design.\n\nThe major component of research design is to decide which type of marketing research will be best suited for desired objective. Marketing Research can be classified into three categories depending upon the objectives of the research.\nExploratory Research\n\nExploratory research is used in cases where the marketer has little or no understanding about the research problem due to lack of proper information. For example, a marketer has heard about social media marketing techniques which are employed by their competitors with great success but he is not familiar with using these for his products\/services.\n\nHe needs to use exploratory market research to gain\/discover insights about this situation. Thus when the goal of the marketer is to precisely formulate problems, clear concepts, gain insights, eliminate impractical ideas and form hypotheses then exploratory research is used.\n\nExploratory research follows and unstructured format and makes use of qualitative techniques, secondary research and experts opinions. For example, the marketer from the previous case can use books, syndicated research, case studies, focus groups, expert interviews and survey techniques to conduct exploratory research.\n\nThe results of exploratory research can\u2019t be used for marketing decisions in most cases at least not directly.  Then the question arises why to do exploratory research in the first place? Well the answer is the core goal of exploratory research is to equip marketers with enough information to facilitate marketers plan a format research design correctly. For example by conducting exploratory research the marketer can find out that the competition is using popular social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to reach target consumers effectively and successfully engaging customers with the brand directly. Now with this information he can plan a formal research design to test his hypothesis.\nDescriptive Research\n\nDescriptive research is used to find accurate answers of questions like:\n\n    Who are users of my products \/ services?\n    How they are using my products \/ services?\n    What proportion of population uses my products \/ services?\n    What is the future demand for my products \/ services?\n    Who are all my competitors?\n\nThus descriptive research is used to explain, monitor and test hypotheses created by marketers to help them find accurate answers. Due to this reason descriptive research is rigid, well structure and well planned and uses quantitative techniques like questionnaires, structured interviews, data analysis etc.\n\nFor example, the marketer from previous case and use descriptive research to find out if he also starts using social media marketing techniques for promoting his products and services then:\n\n    How many of his current customers will be attracted to them?\n    How many new customers can be engaged using social media?\n    How much time, effort and money will be involved in this activity?\n    What will be the predicted return on investment (RoI)?\n    Will he be able to attract competitor\u2019s customers?\n\nCausal Research\n\nCausal research is used by marketers to find cause and effect relationship of variables. It is also sometimes referred as \u201cIf.. Then\u2026\u201d method. In this type of research, the marketer tries to understand the effects of manipulating independent variable on other dependent variable.\n\nCausal research uses field and laboratory experimentation techniques to achieve its goals. This research is used by marketers mainly to predict and test hypotheses.\n\nLet\u2019s take some test cases where causal research can be used:\n\n    What will happen to sale of my product if I change the packaging of the product?\n    What will happen to sale of my product if I change the design of the product?\n    What will happen to sale of my product if I change the advertising?\n ","topic":"product growth, branding, company growth, people management, marketing research, marketing"},{"title":"5 Low-Cost Marketing Research Techniques for Small Businesses","url":"https:\/\/www.credibly.com\/incredibly\/5-low-cost-marketing-research-techniques-small-businesses\/","body":"5 Low-Cost Marketing Research Techniques for Small Businesses            \u00a0 \n Big companies spend millions of dollars on TV ads, national surveys, and focus groups in order to connect with customers and better understand their needs. For successful businesses, it\u2019s a necessary investment. Doing  marketing  research is one of the first actions you need to take before launching a start-up. Skipping it is like walking through a minefield blindfolded. \n Unfortunately, not everyone can afford expensive marketing research. However, small business owners have a great advantage over the giants: they\u2019re closer to their customers. That translates into more accessible ways of conducting research by taking advantage of a few easy and affordable options. \n Here are five low-cost and extremely efficient marketing research techniques that will allow you to validate your product idea and attract more customers. \n 1.\u00a0\u00a0 Question Yourself First \n If you haven\u2019t done this already, you\u2019ve neglected the most important part of the process. Before even thinking of getting your idea out there, you have to create an estimate of how your business will perform early on, and set some realistic business goals. Here are few questions you have to address yourself first: \n \n How much money do I plan to earn each year\/month off of my product\/service? \n What are the costs of the initial startup, and what are the costs of the maintenance? \n How much do I need to sell in order to reach my financial goal? \n \n These three preliminary questions will help you understand how much effort you need to put into your business, whether or not you\u2019re on track, and how well defined your idea is before you go to market. \n 2.\u00a0 Directly Interview Your Potential Customers \n Direct interaction is king, and what better way of performing it other than directly contacting potential prospects and customers? Find out who they are, how you can reach them, and then just do it. Here are some good questions that you should prepare before starting that conversation: \n \n What is the most valuable aspect of your product? \n What alternatives do they have, and why would they choose it instead of your product? \n Why would they choose your product instead of others? \n What events or personal issues would make them instantly buy your product? \n How much are they willing to pay? \n Where is the place they\u2019d go first when looking for a product such as yours? \n \n You can add new questions, or even remove some of the above. The main target here is to discover and then analyze the people who will eventually buy from you. The more information you can get from them, the better off your new business will be. \n 3.\u00a0 Set Up Online Surveys \n An even easier way of finding out valuable answers from your potential customers is to set up surveys. There are thousands of companies online \u2014 free or paid \u2014 that will allow you to fine-tune your product idea with the help of the public. \n If you don\u2019t have a  customer database  yet, you can use social media when trying to reach a specific audience. Facebook for example has an amazing targeting feature that will allow you to place your surveys into the hands of the right people. \n Here\u2019s a quick tip. If you are serious about conducting a marketing research campaign, you need to invest few bucks into proofreading your surveys and content.  Assignment Masters  is the best solution because it\u2019s an extremely affordable and qualitative service. \n 4.\u00a0 Leverage Marketing Professors and Students \n This strategy is extremely useful and most of the times cost-free. You basically seek marketing professors from universities in your local town and ask them for help. They will be extremely happy to let their students get practical experience while working on your business\u2019s research. \n Young and motivated students are often willing to work harder for you than a paid service\/consultant would. Furthermore, the students are going to be advised by the professor throughout the process, so the marketing research will overseen by an expert and as efficient as it can be. Win-win. \n 5.\u00a0 Join Online Communities \n There are tons of blogs, live chats, and forums that everyone with an internet connection can access. Start by compiling a list of all the online destinations where your potential customers spend their time. After you have your list, begin creating a profile for yourself or your company on each of them and start engaging. \n This can be a very time consuming process, but a price needs to be paid \u2014 either your money, or your time. Engaging with potential customers online is a free method, and can be used by almost any type of business. \n Small companies should never underestimate the power of the free tools that are available to them. Remember, small businesses can become  great companies  in time, and there are hundreds of examples that prove this. Go out there and make it happen! \n May 31, 2016 \/ by  Ben Goldstein Tags:   marketing ,  online ,  research ,  startups ,  surveys ","topic":"branding, small businesses, product growth, company growth, people management, growth marketing"},{"title":" Are Product Managers the New Software Engineers?","url":"https:\/\/hired.com\/blog\/highlights\/product-managers-new-software-engineers\/","body":"Are Product Managers the New Software Engineers? Software engineers have long been the vaunted kings of Silicon Valley, but a new power nexus is rapidly emerging: Product management. Now the highest paid role in technology in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, the meteoric rise of product management mirrors that of software developers in the 1990s\u00a0\u2014 not just in monetary terms, but also in terms of cultural clout and \u2018unicorn\u2019-like scarcity. Are product managers the new software developers? All signs point to a resounding yes \u2014 as it relates to the scarcity of\u00a0 good\u00a0 PMs with the experience or skills needed to scale a product. Here are some key corollaries we\u2019re seeing between the market for product managers now and the market for software engineers historically: Higher demand is driving higher salaries, with no signs of stopping. Per  Hired\u2019s 2017 Global State of Tech Salaries,  Product managers bring in the highest average salary offers of any tech role. In 2016,  product managers saw a 5.9 percent increase in US salaries to an average of $138k, and 1.6 percent in the UK to an average of \u00a364k0 ($84k). . While UK salaries are lower across the board, product managers are still coming out on top at $83K (\u00a364K) on average in 2016. Good PMs merge technical skills with marketing acumen. We analyzed more than 280,000 interview requests and job offers from the past year to identify the most in-demand PM skills, and the top 6 skills (see right-side image)\u00a0reflect the cross-functional, full-stack nature of the PM function. \u201cGood product managers are good marketers,  explains Twitter product lead Hernal Shah . \u201cThey know their target audience and the best ways to reach them. They design their product for distribution.\u201d In a prescient 2005 comment on Ken Norton\u2019s now-infamous  How to Hire a Product Manager , PM-turned-Greylock-VC Josh Elman (then a PM lead at LinkedIn) wrote: \u201c[Product management] one of the most difficult jobs to measure\u200a\u2014\u200anot in lines of code, press releases, ad sales, etc. The hardest (and most exciting) part of the job is being responsible for answering and understanding the why\u2026 \u201cWhy do users need this?\u201d \u201cWhy is this going to support the business?\u201d \u201cWhy can\u2019t we get this done faster?\u201d \u201cWhy should it work *this* way?\u201d Mature markets have raised the stakes. Product adoption is increasingly key to company success; it\u2019s not just about shipping quality code anymore. With software eating the world, all industries are anchored in technology \u2014 and must think like one to secure (and keep) market leadership. Plus, according to Deloitte & Touche, customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than their peers. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about shipping software, explains Matt LeMay in  The Past and Future of Product Management . \u201cAs venture capital becomes more interested in companies that are revenue-focused and truly understand their market, there is an appreciable shift away from \u2018just ship software\u2019 and towards \u2018ship the right software.\u2019 It\u2019s  hard  to hire good product managers. Depending on who you ask, finding and hiring good  product managers  is now a more challenging endeavor than finding and hiring good software engineers. Why is this? \u201c Hiring developers is by no means easy, but mastery of technical systems is ultimately easier to display and quantify than mastery of human systems (if the latter is even possible),\u201d explains Matt LeMay in  The Past and Future of Product Management . \u201cAs more companies acknowledge the importance of product management, there is also a growing sense of anxiety and confusion around what makes a \u201cgood\u201d product manager and how to find them.\u201d There\u2019s no clear rubric for evaluating PM talent. Due to a wildly\u00a0varying understanding as to what  product managers  actually do, there\u2019s no clear industry framework for evaluating how good any PM is at their job. \u201cRight now, being \u2018good\u2019 at Product isn\u2019t about skills,\u201d writes Lola VP of Product  Ellen Chisa . \u201cIt\u2019s about if someone will give you a chance.\u201d Absent of a shared understanding of how to grade PM candidates, hiring managers judge candidates based on where they\u2019ve worked (which is problematic for both parties, and often results in homogenous teams). The PM CEO has replaced the programmer CEO. In the same way the 90s was the decade that minted hacker CEOs, we are now witnessing the era of the PM CEO. Technical idols like Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak of the 90s have since been replaced by a legion of CEOs who cut their teeth on product teams\u00a0(Yahoo\u2019s Marissa Mayer, Slack\u2019s Stewart Butterfield, Google\u2019s Sundar Pichai, Drift\u2019s David Cancel, Fog Creek Software\u2019s Anil Dash, and more). What\u2019s driving this PM flooding of the C-suite?  \u201cBecause a PM has a disproportionate impact on setting strategy and deciding what work actually gets done, she is the key to success or failure,\u201d writes David Auerbach in his masterful  The Age of the Product Manager . As markets mature, \u00a0the stakes are higher, market leadership is no longer secure just by being first; the product has to earn it. \u201cThough it\u2019s easier to start a company than ever before, it\u2019s harder to compete,\u201d  Medium\u2019s Ev Williams laments . Related articles  5.7K+ April 04, 2018 Diversity Reports Hired Releases Third Annual \u201cThe State of Wage Inequality in the Workplace\u201d Report In 2018, we learned that accountability and commitment are critical factors when solving pay equality issues, and the more\u2026  18.9K+ November 06, 2016 Reports Hired Releases Women, Work and the State of Wage Inequality: UK Edition I joined Hired just over a year ago as a data scientist and it's been one of the most\u2026  5.2K+ April 04, 2017 Data Diversity Reports Hired Releases Second Annual Report on the Tech Industry's Gender Wage Gap A year into my first tech job, I found out that two men on my team were being paid\u2026  ","topic":"product managers, product growth, people management, marketing, company growth, software engineers, branding"},{"title":" COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS PART 2: HOW TO ANALYZE COMPETITIVE INFORMATION","url":"https:\/\/www.campaigncreators.com\/blog\/competitive-analysis-how-to-analyze-competitive-information","body":"Competitive Analysis Part 2: How to Analyze Competitive Information  \n Once you\u2019ve  gathered all of the competitive data  you have been able to locate, it\u2019s analysis time. You should analyze to determine product information, market share, marketing strategies, and to identify your competition\u2019s strengths and weaknesses. \n more \n \u00a0 \n Product Evaluation \n You should know from your sales staff and customer feedback what product features and benefits are most important to your customers and potential customers. A product\u2019s or service\u2019s competitive position is largely determined by how well it is differentiated from its competition and by its price. \n Here's how to go about a product evaluation: \n \u00a0 \n Start with a List \n Start by making a list of product features and benefits in order of importance, and prepare a table to show whether or not each of your competitors fulfill them. \n \n \n \n Indicate with a check mark which of your competitors has which features and benefits. Features are fairly straightforward, either a product has it or it doesn\u2019t. Benefits, on the other hand, are not as simple and should only be recorded based on customer feedback. \n \n \n Now, use this table to evaluate your competition\u2019s product or service. \n \n \n \n How does your product compare to your closest competitor\u2019s? \n \n \n What features and benefits are unique to your product? To theirs? \n \n \n \n The more unique features and benefits your product has, the stronger your market position will be. \n \n \n \n \n Compare Prices \n Evaluate your competitor\u2019s price. If your price for a similar product is higher than your competitor\u2019s, then your market position is weaker; and if it\u2019s lower, then your competitive position is better. As a side note: look for trends in pricing rather than momentary rises and falls. \n \u00a0 \n Other Factors to Consider \n Customer preference of products is only part of the analysis. Some other factors to consider: \n \n Financial resources \u2014 Are they able to withstand financial setbacks? How are they funding new product development and improvement? \n Operational efficiencies \u2014 Are they able to save time and cost with clever production and delivery techniques? \n Product line breadth \u2014 How easily can they increase revenues by selling related products? \n Strategic partnerships \u2014 What kinds of relationships do they have with other companies in terms of product development, promotion or add-on sales? \n Company morale\/personnel \u2014 What is the motivation, commitment and productivity level of the employees? \n \n \u00a0 \n \n Market Share \n The most widely used measure of sales performance is market share. A competitor may not provide the best product or service; however, if they generate a significant amount of sales to the market, they may: \n \n \n Define the standards for a particular product or service. \n \n \n Influence the popular perception of the product or service. \n \n \n Devote resources to maintaining their market share. \n \n \n To determine your company\u2019s market share on a percentage basis, the following formula should be used: \n  Current Market Share = Company sales \/ Industry sales \n You should then compute each of your competitors\u2019 market shares. \n \u00a0 \n \u00a0 \n Competitive Objectives and Strategies \n For each competitor in your analysis, you should try to identify what their market objectives are and determine what types of strategies they are using to achieve them. \n \u00a0 \n Objectives \n Are your competitors trying: \n \n \n To maintain or increase market share? \n \n \n To maximize short-term or long-term profits? \n \n \n To introduce technologically improved products into your market? \n \n \n To establish themselves as the market leaders? \n \n \n To protect their market share under attack by strong competition? \n \n \n To develop new markets for existing products? \n \n \n \n Strategies \n Once you have identified what your competitors are trying to achieve, you will need to determine what type of strategy they have employed so you can eventually counteract with a strategy of your own. Some possible strategies your competitor\u2019s may be employing are: \n \n \n Reducing their prices. \n \n \n Advertising in new publications, or advertising more frequently. \n \n \n Buying out a competitor to increase market share and customer base. \n \n \n Improving a product with a new innovation. \n \n \n \u00a0 \n \u00a0 \n Identify the Competitions Strengths and Weaknesses \n In order to develop effective competitive strategies, you need to make a realistic assessment of your competitors\u2019 strengths and weaknesses, as viewed by the market. \n You need to ask yourself what each of your competitors do very well, better than your own company? Then, ask yourself in what areas are each of your competitors weak. You should construct a simple chart that summarizes this information. \n \u00a0 \n No matter what your market position may be, you need a strong online lead generation strategy. Get your free [guide] Introduction to Lead Generation now. \n \u00a0 \n Determine Your Competitive Position in the Marketplace \n By now it should be fairly clear to you if you are a: market leader, one of several followers, or new to your marketplace. Once you have identified and analyzed your competition, and understand your competitive position, you are ready to do the following: \n \n \n Identify and discuss key areas of competitive advantage and disadvantage. Review the competitive environment for your product or service. Comment on both similar and substitute products or services. \n \n \n Summarize the major problems and opportunities facing your firm which may require action. Issues which should be considered include types of market penetration, distribution coverage, product line needs, price revisions and\/or cost reductions. \n \n \n Integrate your analysis of the competition with demographic analysis of your market to develop and implement a marketing strategy that will strengthen your market position. \n \n \n \u00a0 \n \u00a0 \n What Means are Available to Limit and Control the Competition? \n Now that you understand your position, how can you limit and control your competition? \n To start, marketers of different brands of products will often pursue a particular market segment. Segmentation allows you to focus attempts to limit and control the competition on a smaller target. There are however, a broad range of strategies a business can employ in a competitive environment \u2014 from price changing and new packaging to improving customer service and new product development. \n\n  Tags:\n            \n             Inbound Marketing ,\n            \n             Market Research ,\n            \n             competitive analysis ,\n            \n             marketing planning process \n ","topic":"branding, product growth, marketing, analyze competitive information, people management, company growth, competitive analysis"},{"title":" 7 TECHNICAL SKILLS ALL GROWTH HACKERS SHOULD LEARN","url":"https:\/\/buckfiftymba.com\/7-technical-skills-growth-marketing\/","body":"7 Technical Skills All Growth Hackers Should Learn \n \n \n \n \n \n 7 Technical Skills All Growth Hackers Should Learn \n \n \n Table of contents \n \n \n \n            1. Statistics\n           \n \n \n \n            2. Programming\n           \n \n \n \n            3. Excel Modeling\n           \n \n \n \n            4. Analytics\n           \n \n \n \n            5. Database Querying \/ SQL\n           \n \n \n \n            6. A\/B Testing\n           \n \n \n \n            7. Web Scraping\n           \n \n \n \n            Start Now\n           \n \n \n \n \n Marketing\u2019s not a technical field, right? \n Think again. \u00a0As growth hacking has proven repeatedly over the last few years, a data-driven approach to marketing achieves stronger, more reliable results than traditional marketing. \n The mad men\u00a0of the future will combine  creativity  with\u00a0 rigorous analysis . ( tweet this ) \n Despite a plethora of outstanding tools that handle much of the analysis, the best marketers will understand enough statistics to explore deeper insights from Google Analytics, enough SQL to access product usage\u00a0logs without waiting for IT to build a special interface, and enough programming to effectively communicate requests to engineering. \n Learning these seven technical skills\u00a0will help you grow your product faster and more effectively. \n 1. Statistics \n  Much of the effectiveness of growth hacking comes from its data-driven approach to marketing. As such, a basic knowledge of statistics will help any growth marketer become more effective. \n Now, this doesn\u2019t mean you need to go back to school and major in applied stats, but it does mean that investing a few hours a week learning basic statistics could be worth the time. \n To run a\/b tests well, you should at least understand the basics of confidence intervals and significance. To forecast growth patterns, you should at least understand regression- and smoothing-based models (plus  data visualization ). To mine insights with SQL, you should at least understand basic statistics and logical structuring. \n Resources For Learning: \n \n Khan Academy \n Udacity\u2019s Intro To Statistics course \n ALEKS \u00a0(my personal favorite) \n \n Challenge Project:\u00a0Predict Crime \n Use  publicly available data  for your city to create a predictive algorithm ( check for your city here ). \u00a0Based on all the historical records, build an algorithm to predict crime by type and location (probably zip code). \u00a0To check for accuracy, you could build the algorithm off of data up to 12 months ago, then test it\u2019s accuracy in predicting this past year\u2019s activity. \n For an easier project, you could use that same data to create a safety rating for each part of your city - perhaps visualizing it in a map. ( like this map modeling energy use in NYC ) \n 2. Programming \n  While you  shouldn\u2019t necessarily become a programmer , all growth marketers  should learn the basics of coding . It will help you build small\u00a0things yourself (like a\/b tests) and let you communicate more effectively with your company\u2019s engineering teams. \n In general, you should master HTML\/CSS and have some familiarity with these web languages: \n \n Ruby on Rails \n PHP \n Python \n \n Remember, you don\u2019t need to become an expert programmer who can rebuild Pandora\u00a0from scratch - you just need to know enough to read code that\u2019s already written and possibly make a few small modifications. \n For instance, I\u2019m certainly far from a PHP master or even novice, but I do know enough that I can generally find the right code to add or delete within\u00a0my Wordpress theme files. \n Resources For Learning: \n \n Code School \n Treehouse \n W3Schools \n \n Challenge Project: Build A Personal Website \n Particularly for people working\u00a0in digital marketing, personal branding though a portfolio website will supercharge your career. You don\u2019t need some super complicated website or even a blog, but you should have some central place people can visit to learn more about you ( example  and  example ). \n Using Wordpress as your website framework, use coding (HTML, CSS, and PHP) to customize your website\u2019s look and feel. \u00a0Depending how ambitious you\u2019re feeling, you can start with either a free or paid theme, then learn as you go until you like the way your website looks. \u00a0Wordpress is a great framework to use for this because the Wordpress support community is massive. When you hit snags in your coding, the solution is probably just a search away. \n 3. Excel Modeling \n  Big data. Everyone wants big data, but no one knows what to do with it. \u00a0The elephant in the room, of course, is that big data is absolutely useless by itself. \n To be useful,  big data must lead to big insights . ( tweet this ) \n And that\u2019s where Excel modeling comes in. \u00a0Once you have data about how your customers use your service, you should be able to throw that into a pivot table and uncover interesting insights. Perhaps customers who downloaded ebook 2 are twice as likely to join as those who downloaded ebook 1. \u00a0Perhaps people who got both are even more likely. \u00a0You\u2019ll never know unless you can turn the raw data into key learnings. \n Happily, you can learn enough Excel to be dangerous pretty quickly by focusing on three key elements: formulas, pivot tables, and macros.  Keyboard shortcuts  will also come in handy. \n Resources For Learning: \n \n PivotTables 101 \n Introduction to Excel Financial Modeling \n Udemy\u2019s Financial Modeling and Valuation Course \n \n Challenge Project: Mutant Cell Growth \n Your neighbor, a top-secret experimental scientist, has noticed a disturbing number of mutant cells in his lab. \u00a0Knowing you\u2019re a data ninja, he asked you to forecast mutant cell growth. \n Your scientist friend currently has a total of 100,000 cells in his lab and 1% are mutant. \u00a0Every day, each cell replicates - producing 15 normal cells and 1 mutant cell. \u00a0Survival rate is low, though, and only 1 out of each 16 new cells randomly survives. \n At the end of 10 days, how many (1) normal cells, (2) clones of original mutants, and (3) new mutants will your neighbor\u2019s lab contain? ( Here\u2019s the full challenge ) \n 4. Analytics \n  With programs like  Google Analytics  and  Mixpanel , you have lots of data at your fingertips already. But do you know what to do with it? \n Sure, you know your total visitors and you\u2019re seen the colored map of visitor locations, but do you know whether people are more likely to buy from an  Android running Chrome or an iPhone running Safari ? \n The real power of analytics comes in segmenting visitors (by platform, country, source, demographics, etc) and discovering the outliers. \u00a0Some of these insights will result in major conversion rate boosts when applied to everyone while some will trigger boosts through advanced personalization. \n Resources for Learning: \n \n Official Google Training \n Distilled\u2019s guide to mobile tracking \n Distilled\u2019s guide to custom variables \n Mixpanel University \n \n Challenge Project: Track Phone Conversions \n You\u2019re not just a normal ecommerce company that can use Google Analytics\u2019  default conversion tracking . Instead, you\u2019re a local pest control chain, and most of your customers convert over the phone. \n How will you track conversions from your advertisements online through to your conversion on the phone? \n You\u2019ll need a call tracking service (my favorite\u2019s  CallRail ). Most of those services make it easy to record phone calls as conversions in Google. \n But what if you want to record your\u00a0 real  conversions - when customers actually pay? That\u2019s a little more difficult, but still possible: You\u2019ll need to write a custom script that exports from CallRail\u2019s API and imports through Google Analytics\u2019 API based on user cookies. \n 5. Database Querying \/ SQL \n  GUIs like Google Analytics and KISSmetrics make it easy to do basic analysis, but sometimes you need to really get into the weeds and study your user behavior. \n If you ran Facebook, for instance, you\u2019d want to know how often users edited their profile, how many new pictures they updated, and how much time they\u00a0spent browsing the newsfeed. That information wouldn\u2019t be in Google Analytics, but it\u2019s probably tracked in a database somewhere. \n Using SQL to query that database will give you powerful information to move the dial. \u00a0Perhaps newsfeed reading time is directly correlated to recency of content. \n You\u2019ll only uncover these insights if you know how to query raw databases with SQL. \n Resources for Learning: \n \n W3Schools SQL Training  (my favorite) \n Udemy\u2019s SQL for Marketers \n Learn SQL\u00a0the Hard Way \n \n Challenge Project: \n Using the  sample databases provided by W3Schools , find the top three employees based on revenue generated. \n To do this, you\u2019ll need to join a few of the tables provided to determine the value per order and from there the revenue per employee. \n You could solve this quickly by simply exporting data to Excel, but force yourself to do it through one SQL query. \u00a0SQL can handle much larger data sets than Excel, so you may as well practice using SQL from the start. \n Hint: Most questions you encounter can be answered  here  or with a quick Google search. \n 6. A\/B Testing \n  We\u2019ve all seen the  power of a\/b testing , but how many people really understand how it works? \n Beyond creating a one-off button experiment in Optimizely, a good marketer should create a series of experiments designed to increase conversions and contribute to a better understanding of the target customer. \u00a0Over time, only about  1 \u2044 3  of all a\/b tests run will likely contribute to an increased conversion rate - the other  2 \u2044 3  should contribute to a better understanding of your customer. \n Like most \u201cmagical\u201d things, a\/b testing isn\u2019t really that complicated once you understand it. \u00a0You simply need a document recording all previous tests (hypotheses, results, and screenshots of variations), a document recording all planned experiments, and a testing platform like  Optimizely  or  Visual Web Optimizer . \n Resources for Learning: \n \n Unbounce\u2019s Ultimate Guide to A\/B Testing \n VWO\u2019s many case studies \n Avinash Kaushik\u2019s Primer on Experimentation and Testing \n \n Challenge Project: Create Your Own Testing Plan \n Whether for your company or just for your own personal website, create a testing plan. \u00a0Looking at  case studies  for ideas, create a list of all the tests you\u2019d like to run and prioritize by potential impact. \u00a0Then, as you test, carefully document the results of each experiment (and make sure you achieve  statistical significance ). \n After running a few of these tests, review what you\u2019ve learned about your target audience. \n 7. Web Scraping \n  More information becomes available online every second, but much is relatively inaccessible. \u00a0Imagine the  potential leads you could find  and the  optimization gems you could uncover  if only you could scrape the internet! \n Happily, you can scrape the web, and you don\u2019t even need to learn programming! \n With tools like Import.io, you can visually identify the information you want to harvest, and the scraper tool will find and aggregate similar data. \u00a0If you\u2019re working in a primarily sales-focused company, this is an invaluable tool. \u00a0If your company is B2C, you can still use web scraping for everything from finding potential partners to analyzing your own blog. \n Web scraping is one of those relatively simple skills that will put you light years ahead of the competition. \n Resources for Learning: \n \n Web Scraping for Sales and Growth Hackers  (my favorite) \n The Content Marketer\u2019s Guide To Data Scraping \n Guide To Grow Your Blog 10x \n \n Challenge Project:\u00a0Find 10 Potential Blog Partners From\u00a0GrowthHackers.com \n You run growth at a b2b startup that sells tools for marketers. You know partnerships with bloggers can help drive acquisition, but how do you find the best partners? \n Using web scraping, pull all the post, user, vote, and comment data from  GrowthHackers.com . \u00a0Then, analyze the data to find the most popular blogs that could be potential partners. \u00a0If you\u2019re looking for individual influencers, you could do the same thing, but just analyze the users instead of the blogs. \n For bonus points, you can feed all the URLs you scrape through  SharedCount  to get the social sharing stats also. \n Your results will probably look something  like this . \n Most industries have their own niche forums and websites, and you can leverage scraping to uncover the influencers in your market. \n Start Now \n The vast majority of people reading this post will  do nothing . They\u2019ll nod wisely, perhaps share the link\u00a0on Twitter to impress their friends, and continue to the next post in their feed reader. \n A few people will try to  do everything . \u00a0Eagerly jumping in head first, they\u2019ll try to master all these technical skills simultaneously, but within a day or two they\u2019ll give up - overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work they\u2019ve heaped upon themselves. \n An even smaller group will pick  one skill to start learning today . \u00a0Following the principle of serial excellence, they\u2019ll focus on that one goal until they finish, then move\u00a0on to the next. \n Reading articles about growth is a good first step, but the real rewards come when you start taking action. \n \n ","topic":"company growth, branding, product growth, growth hackers, marketing, people management, technical skills"},{"title":" The Importance of Lead Generation","url":"https:\/\/criteriaforsuccess.com\/the-importance-of-lead-generation\/","body":"The Importance of Lead Generation | Criteria for Success \n\n   The Importance of Lead Generation Many businesses are struggling right now\u2014especially when it comes to growth. Let\u2019s talk about the importance of lead generation and it\u2019s impact on business growth. The Importance of Lead Generation in Sales Sure, many\u00a0of the business struggles as of late are due to the poor economy. But many businesses are having a \u201clead generation\u201d problem. Salespeople are running out of gas because they believe they\u2019ve hit the limit of people and companies to sell their products or services to. In reality, these salespeople are likely: Looking in the wrong places for new business Don\u2019t have a process for  qualifying\/ dis-qualifying leads Don\u2019t have  buyer personas  mapped out properly There is a common misconception that sales is just cold calling as many people or businesses as possible until you get a bite. The truth is, finding the  right  target\u2013or buyer persona\u2013is just as important to sales as actually selling to them. The process of finding this new business is called lead generation. Generating New Sales Leads One of the biggest keys to a successful business is the generation of  new sales leads. A lead is a person or company that has shown some interest in the services or products that your company provides. It can also be a company or person who fits a target group for what you are providing. Without leads, a sales team\u00a0cannot be successful. Therefore, generating good leads is just as important as refining your pitch or closing\u00a0well. Generating the Right Leads Now you might be asking, \u201cHow do I generate the right leads?\u201d Years ago, leads were developed by meeting people,  cold calling , and purchasing lists. And as any seasoned salesperson knows, pure cold calling has its flaws. Sure, you can generate leads through cold calling and  networking , but this process is very time intensive. And it shouldn\u2019t be the only lead generation source. Thanks to\u00a0advances in\u00a0technology, we now have many lead generation options. In the last 10-15 years advances in technology have made it extremely easy to target and acquire ideal leads. How? Social media and search engines have greatly simplified the process of generating leads. It literally takes a matter of seconds to find a multitude of companies and people who fit the criteria for a potential sale. It may take some extra research to find your new lead\u2019s contact information, and then some more time to contact them, but it will still be a thousand times faster than cold calling. It\u2019s now possible to generate an extremely high volume of leads in a short period of time. The more leads you get, the more pitches your sales team is ultimately going to close. For many companies, it will make sense to dedicate\u00a0full time employees exclusively to working on lead generation. Inbound marketing experts over at\u00a0 Hubspot  have developed a treasure trove of resources on  lead generation .\u00a0Take a look and see if you don\u2019t find some of them useful! Once you\u2019ve started collecting some really high quality leads, you might want to learn more about  running an effective prospect meeting  or  overcoming objections . And of course, let\u2019s not forget the power of LinkedIn! Want to grab a tried-and-true process to help you generate sales leads using LinkedIn? \n                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             ","topic":"branding, company growth, growth marketing, product growth, marketing, lead generation, importance"},{"title":"Market Research","url":"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/encyclopedia\/market-research","body":"Market Research Definition - Entrepreneur Small Business \n \n \n Market Research \n \n Definition:   The process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past, present and potential customers for the product or service; research into the characteristics, spending habits, location and needs of your business's target market, the industry as a whole, and the particular competitors you face  \n \n \n \n \n Accurate and thorough information is the foundation of all\nsuccessful business ventures because it provides a wealth of\ninformation about prospective and existing customers, the\ncompetition, and the industry in general. It allows business owners\nto determine the feasibility of a business before committing\nsubstantial resources to the venture. Market research provides relevant data to help solve marketing\nchallenges that a business will most likely face--an integral part\nof the business planning process. In fact, strategies such as\nmarket segmentation (identifying specific groups within a market)\nand product differentiation (creating an identity for a product or\nservice that separates it from those of the competitors) are\nimpossible to develop without market research. Market research involves two types of data: Primary information.  This is research you compile\nyourself or hire someone to gather for you. Secondary information.  This type of research is already\ncompiled and organized for you. Examples of secondary information\ninclude reports and studies by government agencies, trade\nassociations or other businesses within your industry. Most of the\nresearch you gather will most likely be secondary. When conducting primary research, you can gather two basic types\nof information: exploratory or specific. Exploratory research is\nopen-ended, helps you define a specific problem, and usually\ninvolves detailed, unstructured interviews in which lengthy answers\nare solicited from a small group of respondents. Specific research,\non the other hand, is precise in scope and is used to solve a\nproblem that exploratory research has identified. Interviews are\nstructured and formal in approach. Of the two, specific research is\nthe more expensive. When conducting primary research using your own resources, first\ndecide how you'll question your targeted group: by direct mail,\ntelephone, or personal interviews. If you choose a direct-mail questionnaire, the following\nguidelines will increase your response rate: Questions that are short and to the point A questionnaire that is addressed to specific individuals and\nis of interest to the respondent A questionnaire of no more than two pages A professionally-prepared cover letter that adequately explains\nwhy you're doing this questionnaire A postage-paid, self-addressed envelope to return the\nquestionnaire in. Postage-paid envelopes are available from the\npost office An incentive, such as \"10 percent off your next purchase,\" to\ncomplete the questionnaire Even following these guidelines, mail response is typically low.\nA return rate of 3 percent is typical; 5 percent is considered very\ngood. Phone surveys are generally the most cost-effective. Here are\nsome telephone survey guidelines: Have a script and memorize it--don't read it. Confirm the name of the respondent at the beginning of the\nconversation. Avoid pauses because respondent interest can quickly drop. Ask if a follow-up call is possible in case you require\nadditional information. In addition to being cost-effective, speed is another advantage\nof telephone interviews. A rate of five or six interviews per hour\nis typical, but experienced interviewers may be able to conduct\nmore. Phone interviews also can cover a wide geographic range\nrelatively inexpensively. Phone costs can be reduced by taking\nadvantage of less expensive rates during certain hours. One of the most effective forms of marketing research is the\npersonal interview. They can be either of these types: A group survey.  Used mostly by big\nbusiness, group interviews or focus groups are useful brainstorming\ntools for getting information on product ideas, buying preferences,\nand purchasing decisions among certain populations. The in-depth interview.  These one-on-one\ninterviews are either focused or nondirective. Focused interviews\nare based on questions selected ahead of time, while nondirective\ninterviews encourage respondents to address certain topics with\nminimal questioning. Secondary research uses outside information assembled by\ngovernment agencies, industry and trade associations, labor unions,\nmedia sources, chambers of commerce, and so on. It's usually\npublished in pamphlets, newsletters, trade publications, magazines,\nand newspapers. Secondary sources include the following: Public sources.  These are usually free, often offer a\nlot of good information, and include government departments,\nbusiness departments of public libraries, and so on. Commercial sources.  These are valuable, but usually\ninvolve cost factors such as subscription and association fees.\nCommercial sources include research and trade associations, such as\nDun & Bradstreet and Robert Morris & Associates, banks and\nother financial institutions, and publicly traded\ncorporations. Educational institutions.  These are frequently\noverlooked as valuable information sources even though more\nresearch is conducted in colleges, universities, and technical\ninstitutes than virtually any sector of the business\ncommunity. Public Information\nSources \nGovernment statistics are among the most plentiful and wide-ranging\npublic sources. Helpful government publications include the\nfollowing. The State and Metropolitan Area Data Book  provides a wide\nvariety of statistical information on states and metropolitan areas\nin the United States. Published by the U.S. Census Bureau, it's\navailable online for $31 through the  U.S. Government Printing\nOffice  and at larger libraries. The Statistical Abstract of the United States  provides\ntables and graphs of statistics on the social, political and\neconomic conditions in the United States. Published by the Census\nBureau, it's available online for $48 through the  U.S. Government Printing\nOffice  and at larger libraries. U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook  presents recent financial\nperformances of U.S. manufacturers and identifies emerging trends.\nPublished by the Commerce Department in cooperation with\nMcGraw-Hill, it's available online for $76 through the  U.S. Government Printing\nOffice  and at larger libraries. The U.S. government online bookstore  at the  U.S. Government Printing\nOffice  has an abundance wealth of publications on topics\nranging from agriculture, aviation, and electronics, to insurance,\ntelecommunications, forest management, and workers'\ncompensation. The  U.S.\nCensus Bureau website  also contains valuable information\nrelevant to marketing. The Bureau's business publications cover\nmany topics and trades--such as sales volume at furniture stores\nand payrolls for toy wholesalers--and are useful for small\nbusinesses as well as large corporations in retail, wholesale\ntrade, and service industries. Also available are census maps,\nreports on company statistics regarding different ethnic groups,\nand reports on county business patterns. One of the most important information resources you'll find is\nthe  SBA .\nThe SBA was created by Congress in 1953 to help American\nentrepreneurs start, run, and grow successful small enterprises.\nToday there are SBA offices in every state, the District of\nColumbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Among the\nservices offered by the SBA are financial assistance, counseling\nservices through  Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) , management\nassistance through programs like  SCORE , and low-cost publications. The\ncounselors at SCORE can provide you with free consultation on what\ntype of research you need to gather and where you can obtain that\ninformation. They may also be able to suggest other means of\ngathering the information from primary sources. SBDCs generally\nhave extensive business libraries with lots of secondary sources\nfor you to review. One of the best public sources is  the business section of\nyour public, or local college or university, library . The\nservices provided vary from library to library but usually include\na wide range of government publications with market statistics, a\nlarge collection of directories with information on domestic and\nforeign businesses, and a wide selection of magazines, newspapers\nand newsletters. Almost every county government publishes population density and\ndistribution figures in accessible census tracts. These show the\nnumber of people living in specific areas, such as precincts, water\ndistricts or even ten-block neighborhoods. Some counties publish\nreports that show the population ten years ago, five years ago, and\ncurrently, thus indicating population trends. Other public information resources include local chambers of\ncommerce and their business development departments, which\nencourage new businesses to locate in their communities. They will\nsupply you (usually for free) information on population trends,\ncommunity income characteristics, payrolls, industrial development\nand so on. Don't overlook your bank as a resource. Bankers have a wealth of\ninformation at their fingertips and are eager to help their small\nbusiness customers get ahead. All you have to do is ask. Commercial Information\nSources \nAmong the best commercial sources of information are research and\ntrade associations. Information gathered by trade associations is\nusually limited to that particular industry and available only to\nassociation members, who have typically paid a membership fee.\nHowever, the research gathered by the larger associations is\nusually thorough, accurate, and worth the cost of membership. Two\nexcellent resources to help you locate a trade association that\nreports on the business you are researching include the\n Encyclopedia of Associations  (Gale Research), and the\n Encyclopedia of Business Information Sources  (Gale\nGroup). Local newspapers, journals, magazines, and radio and TV stations\nare some of the most useful commercial information outlets. Not\nonly do they maintain demographic profiles of their audiences\n(their income, age, gender, amount of disposable income, and types\nof products and services purchased, what they read, and so on), but\nmany also have information about economic trends in their local\nareas that could be significant to your business. Contact the sales\ndepartments of these businesses and ask them to send you their\nmedia kit, since you're working on a marketing plan for a new\nproduct and need information about advertising rates and audience\ndemographics. Not only will you learn more about your prospective\ncustomers, you'll also learn more about possible advertising\noutlets for your product or service. Dun & Bradstreet is another commercial source of market\nresearch that offers an abundance of information for making\nmarketing decisions. It operates the world's largest business\ndatabase and tracks more than 62 million companies around the\nworld, including 11 million in the United States. For more\ninformation, visit the  Dun & Bradstreet Small Business Solutions\nwebsite . Finally, there are educational institutions that conduct\nresearch in various ways, ranging from faculty-based projects often\npublished under professors' bylines, to student projects, theses,\nand assignments. You may be able to enlist the aid of students\ninvolved in business classes, especially if they're enrolled in an\nentrepreneurship program. This can be an excellent way of\ngenerating research at little or no cost, by engaging students who\nwelcome the professional experience either as interns or for\nspecial credit. Contact the university administration and marketing\nor management studies departments for further information.  \n ","topic":"company growth, branding, growth marketing, market research, people management, marketing"},{"title":"KANBAN AND AGILE","url":"https:\/\/leankit.com\/learn\/kanban\/kanban-agile\/","body":" Kanban and Agile Kanban is a set of tools you can use to become more agile\u2026to get better at doing agile, scrum, or whatever methodology you choose. Teams practicing Agile, whether they are highly experienced or just starting out, can use Kanban software development to identify and make improvements to their existing processes. For teams just getting started with\u00a0Agile, Kanban can make it much easier\u00a0to achieve their goals of achieving a more Agile process flow. Even for experienced Agile teams, using Kanban can lead to new insights and opportunities for improvement. Kanban, at its core, is very simple. Visualize your work Limit your work in process Thanks to Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry, authors of\u00a0 Personal Kanban . Kanban teams use Kanban Boards and Kanban Cards to represent the work and workflow. This can be a physical whiteboard with sticky notes, or a virtual one, using\u00a0 Kanban Software . After visualizing the work, you will be able to watch how it moves across the board. Kanban teams call this\u00a0observing the flow of work. When there are bottlenecks in the process, or blocking issues that prevent work from being completed, you start to see it play out on the board. \n                  Stop Starting and Start Finishing!\n                 The primary mechanism in Kanban software development for improving the flow of work is the Work-in-Process Limit. You basically set a policy for the team, saying that we\u2019ll limit how much work is started, but not finished, at any one time. When the board starts to fill up with too much unfinished work, team members re-direct their attention and collaborate to help get some of the work finally finished, before starting any more new work. \n                  How does this fit in with my Agile processes?\n                 Agile, Scrum and Kanban methods for project management focus on iterative delivery. Teams work in two-to-four-week \u201csprints\u201d to deliver a small batch of User Stories (each a small part of the desired end product). Teams then get that one small batch of stories completely finished by the end of the sprint. When one sprint comes to an end, you demonstrate the new features to the customer and then plan the work for the next sprint. On a Kanban board, you visualize the flow of work. You can visualize how the work is flowing during the sprint through the very fast iterations of design, develop, and test that happen within each sprint. Or, you can let the flow of work be governed by the kanban board and replace the sprint container with a regular deployment cadence instead. It\u2019s a minor difference on the surface, but it can have a major impact. With the sprint approach, you spend time at the beginning of every sprint trying to estimate and plan a batch of work for the entire sprint. Then you work on it and push hard to have the entire batch completed, tested and deployed by the end of the sprint. When you\u2019re focusing on flow and using Kanban, you could still deploy completed code every two weeks. But instead of going through the whole cycle of planning, estimating and moving a batch of work through to completion, you can move work through the system without batching two weeks of work at a time. Planning and estimating, designing, building and testing can happen for each individual item as it reaches the top of the priority list in the backlog. When there\u2019s capacity on the Kanban board for more work (WIP limits are being honored, and people are available to do more work), they pull the next item to work on. When the two-week cadence comes around, you simply deliver whatever is ready to deliver. This encourages members of the team to take each item all the way through to completion individually, instead of focusing on having a two-week batch of work completed at one time. You ensure that each item is Done. With a capital D. \u201cDone-Done\u201d, some people call it. And you get it to \u201cDone-Done\u201d before pulling the next item available for you to work on. The Agile practice of iterative delivery is a huge improvement over old waterfall or stage-gate project management methods. Focusing on Agile process flow using Kanban can sometimes be even more efficient, resulting in shorter lead times and higher productivity. It can lessen the feeling of always \u201cstarting and stopping\u201d without abandoning the value of having a regular cadence to work toward. Does this mean that you\u2019d be abandoning Scrum for Kanban, or abandoning Agile for Kanban? Heck no. Agile and Scrum are both about much more than the sprint. Besides, if you throw out the existing process, be it Scrum, waterfall, or anything else, you\u2019ve got no starting point for your Kanban system.\u00a0Kanban itself is a process improvement approach, not a process of its own.\u00a0It\u2019s something you apply to an existing process, like Scrum, or whatever your current process happens to be \n                  Kanban vs. Agile: Is Kanban Agile, then?\n                 Eh, not really. When considering Agile vs. Kanban, there are fundamental differences between the two. The ideas behind Kanban come from the world of Lean Manufacturing as a way of doing something called \u201cJust-in-Time\u201d production. It was developed by Toyota (Kanban is Japanese for \u201cVisual Card\u201d) in the 1950s. Further development of the ideas for using Kanban for knowledge work (like software development) was done by David Anderson, Jim Benson, Corey Ladas, Alan Shalloway, Karl Scotland, Alison Vale, David Joyce, and a sizeable community of people interested in applying principles from the world of Lean to software development, DevOps, and other kinds of Knowledge work, beginning around 2007. While Agile is still growing and adapting, most of the ideas we associate with Agile had begun to solidify long before Kanban came around. So, including Kanban as part of Agile muddies the waters a bit. Agile process flow was developed primarily by software developers to define better ways of developing and delivering software. See the\u00a0 Agile Manifesto . Kanban and the Lean principle of Flow aren\u2019t specific to how we develop software. The flow system works very well for that, but it turns out it also works well in places where Agile\u2019s iterative delivery model has struggled. IT Operations for example, or software teams focused on churning out small bug fixes and enhancements to existing production systems, is a great place where the flow principle produces a ton of value. For some environments, it just isn\u2019t practical to batch up work in two week chunks. The need, for some teams, to respond in real time to a constant stream of incoming requests, makes selecting a batch of them to work on only every two weeks pretty impractical. For that matter, the principles of Kanban software development can work equally well for just about any kind of work: Creating marketing campaigns Event planning Contract negotiation Legal project management Inventory management \u2026.and many more. Since Kanban doesn\u2019t start by assuming anything about your process or what you\u2019re doing, it can be applied to anything that has a process. It can be as simple a process as \u2018To-Do, Doing, Done,\u2019 or something far more complex. What kind of work couldn\u2019t benefit from better visibility? What kind of work couldn\u2019t benefit from focusing on getting more work finished instead of starting more new work, whenever you get the chance? So, without abandoning any of the good stuff in Agile, Scrum, Extreme Programming\u2026and without abandoning any of the good stuff about your current process that is already working well for you, you can apply Kanban to it to get better visibility, and apply kanban tools to help you improve the flow of work.  ","topic":"branding, marketing, company growth, product growth, people management"},{"title":"Product Development: Turning Months Into Weeks","url":"http:\/\/www.mindtheproduct.com\/2017\/07\/product-development-turning-months-weeks\/","body":"Product Development: Turning Months Into Weeks\n\nBY JAMES DOYLE ON JULY 11, 2017\n\nHow quickly your definition of \u201cambitious\u201d can change. Five years ago getting a dog, starting a web company, working on huge projects here at Invoke all would have seemed hugely ambitious to me, but I\u2019ve done them all.\n\nBuilding an effective real-time chat that syncs perfectly between consumers and supports e-commerce would have been ambitious five years ago. But we\u2019ve just pulled it off in under a month.\n\nWe\u2019ve built a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platform that, through chat, enables users to discuss their purchase, make offers, and determine shipping methods. They can accept the terms, and even generate an invoice. They can conduct business with each other without ever leaving the chat. In the past, building a chat like this would be an incredibly ambitious endeavour. But, thanks to newly available technologies, it was easy for us too.\n\nSimpler, Faster, Better\n\nIn the past, you would have needed to invest in some serious servers and work some sort of event-polling magic if you wanted your chat to have a chance of feeling nice and snappy. Now, we live in the good times. There are options like websockets and webRTC to choose from, but we opted for a service we\u2019ve used on other projects: Google Firebase.\n\nFirebase is a service for creating and syncing a real-time database across clients. One user makes a change and everyone else sees it. For our app, a user can immediately see when another user has added a message. All our data is organized in a relatively flat structure\u2014purposefully duplicating the data we think we\u2019ll need to make for simpler data queries. Simpler means faster, and faster means a better user experience.\n\nBut what really sells it for us is just how easy it is to get started. The fantastic features and vibrant development community surrounding Firebase make getting your product launched that much more efficient \u2013 in fact some large companies have also taken note and are using it. If you\u2019ve ever wondered what song was playing and decided to fire up Shazam, you\u2019ve used this tech too.\n\nA World of Integrations\n\nThe scale and community investment that comes from a Google service like Firebase means that not only do you benefit from the core features of the service, you can also easily connect and integrate with other tools. This lets us tackle complex problems at lightning speed.\n\nWe needed to be able to let users know when they have unread messages. For this, we used the Amazon Elastic Beanstalk service to deploy a Node.js server. And wouldn\u2019t you know it, Node.js has a Firebase adapter. When it is connected to our database, it listens for changes. When it notices a new message, it stamps it with the time and marks it as unread.\n\nNot only did this help us quickly to let users know about unread messages, but the Elastic Beanstalk service also helps us mitigate any problems we might accidentally create at our end. The \u201ceb\u201d command line tool makes updating code a breeze by stamping each update as a release. That way, if someone accidentally pushes buggy code to the live site, we tap a button and things revert back to normal.\n\nThis reversion capability reduces our risk and lets us frequently update and refine the products that are being powered by these tools and services. With ongoing user feedback and analytics to base our decisions on, a release isn\u2019t a big deal. We can just do it.\n\nCut the Costs\n\nNew technologies aren\u2019t just making things faster, easier, and less risky, they\u2019re also making them cheaper.\n\nThe chat product we built uses Lambda functions from AWS to schedule emails. Lambda lets us create a schedule that emails our users with any unread messages in their conversations. Why does this matter? It\u2019s because this takes advantage of \u201con-demand computing.\u201d Instead of paying to run a server 24\/7\/365, we only pay every few hours when our function runs. It\u2019s the sharing economy of computing, and it can drastically reduce the costs required to run a modern service. In a lot of cases, this could be by over 80%.\n\nSo what has the development taught us? We\u2019ve seen that technology solutions like Firebase, Elastic Beanstalk, and Lambda are making the development teams building products happier, but the benefits extend across product teams.\n\nWhen launches happen quicker, strategy and design teams can analyze how users interact with the product that much sooner and make improvements even faster.\n\nIt also means that funding and budgets are freed up to let developers test and refine code. Designers can conduct user tests, and strategists can validate product directions and roadmaps.\n\nAbove all, it means that it\u2019s now that much easier to determine exactly where our product is, and what new heights we\u2019ll be able to reach next.\n","topic":"company growth, turning months, marketing, product development, branding, growth marketing, product growth"},{"title":" Mergers and Acquisitions: A Complete Guide ","url":"https:\/\/www.cleverism.com\/mergers-and-acquisitions-complete-guide\/","body":" Mergers and Acquisitions: A Complete Guide | Cleverism         c   l   e   v   e   r   i   s   m   c   l   e   v   e   r   i   s   m             Resume      Resume Templates     Cover Letter Templates    Jobs      Jobs     Companies    Courses      Job Interview Magnet     Job Interview Rockstar     Clever Salary Negotiation     Clever Networking Formula    Learn      Magazine     Lexicon    Login   SignUp     Resume      Resume Templates     Cover Letter Templates    Jobs      Jobs     Companies    Courses      Job Interview Magnet     Job Interview Rockstar     Clever Salary Negotiation     Clever Networking Formula    Learn      Magazine     Lexicon    Login   Sign Up  Mergers and Acquisitions: A Complete Guide      by Martin     January 23, 2015       by Martin     January 23, 2015        Home   Magazine Mergers and Acquisitions: A Complete Guide     Mergers and Acquisitions  are part of strategic management of any business. It involves consolidation of two businesses with an aim to increase market share, profits and influence in the industry. Mergers and Acquisitions are complex processes which require preparing, analysis and deliberation. There are a lot of parties who might be affected by a merger or an acquisition, like government agencies, workers and managers. Before a deal is finalized all party needs to be taken into consideration, and their concerns should be addressed, so that any possible hurdles can be avoided. \u00a9 Shutterstock.com | max sattana In this article, we look at 1) an  introduction to M&A , 2)  motives for M&A , 3)  transaction characteristics , and 4)  regulations and other hurdles . INTRODUCTION TO MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS \u2018Mergers and Acquisitions\u2019  is a technical term used to define the consolidation of companies. When two companies are combined to form a single unit, it is known as merger, while an acquisition refers to the purchase of company by another one, which means that no new company is formed, but one company has been absorbed into another. Mergers and Acquisitions are important component of strategic management, which comes under corporate finance. The subject deals with buying, selling, dividing and combining various companies. It is a type of restructuring, with the aim to grow rapidly, increase profitability and capture a greater proportion of a market share. Parties in an acquisition: The  Target  Company is the company that is being acquired. The  Acquirer  company is the company that is acquiring the target. Mergers can be divided into three types: Horizontal merger:  It happens when both companies are in the same line of business, which means they are usually competitors. Example: Disney bought LucasFilm. Both companies were involved in production of film, TV shows. Vertical merger:  This happens when two companies are in the same line of production, but stage of production is different. Example: Microsoft bought Nokia to support its software and provide hardware necessary for the smartphone. Conglomerate merger:  This happens when the two companies are in totally different line of business. Example, Berkshire Hathaway acquired Lubrizol. This kind of merger mostly takes place in order to diversify and spread the risks, in case the current business stops yielding adequate profits. Introduction to M&A   The main difference between a merger and an acquisition is that a merger is a form of legal consolidation of two companies, which are formed into a single entity, while an acquisition happens when one company is absorbed by another company, which means that the company that is purchasing the other company continues to exist. In the recent years, the distinction between the two has become more and more blurred, as companies have started doing joint ventures. Sometimes acquirer wants to keep the name of the acquired company, as it has goodwill value attached to it. Mergers and acquisitions are complex area of a  company long-term strategy . The process takes a long time, at times, even years. It involves number of parties and stakeholders: The two companies which are being merged or coordinating to venture are the main stakeholders, since any changes in the structure of the company is likely impact both companies. Employees will also be affected, since they are an integral part of the companies. At times, during a merger or acquisition employees have to be laid off. The government agencies play a decisive role in any merger or acquisition, as they want to make sure that the M&A does not create a monopoly or impinge on the rights of general public. Any merger of acquisition must not be a hurdle to competitive environment in the industry. Pressure Groups would be interested in the impact the merger or acquisition would have on the environment, worker welfare, consumer welfare and overall social impact the collusion. Some companies manufacture product\/services that are controversial, hence detested by some people. Firms must find a way to deal with possible hostility from these people. Competitors would be interested in a possible merger or acquisition between two companies in the industry, since a collusion could threaten to take away their market share as the combined company would be more powerful, financially and strategically. Financial institutions also have a stake in possible merger or acquisition, since the companies involved might have outstanding debt. Alternatively, a company involved in a post-merger or an acquisition might want to borrow more money, so that the financial institutions would have to evaluate the company\u2019s financial standing and ability to repay it later. The Mergers and Acquisitions Process   MOTIVES FOR MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS Synergy From the strategic point of view the main motive behind a merger or acquisition is to improve the company\u2019s performance for its shareholders through  synergy , which is a concept that states that the value and performance of two companies combined will be greater than the sum of the separate individual parts. Two businesses can combine to form one company which can generate more revenues that could be done if they worked independently. This is why potential synergy from merger and acquisition is evaluated before the decision is made. Growth Mergers or acquisitions can exponentially increase the growth of the company, as it has more resources at its disposal. When two companies combine their expertise, assets and market share are also combined, which leads to more opportunity in the market for growth. The market share which was previously shared by two companies will now exclusively belong to one company. The increased market power is likely to generate more opportunities for sales, revenue, and profitability. Acquiring Unique Capabilities Sometimes, mergers and acquisitions take place in order to acquire unique capabilities or resources, which could prove paradigm-shifting for the company. This would include patents and licenses, which the acquiring company will gain access to once the merger is completed. A patent,  license  or certain technology could make a lot difference for the company, which could help it substantially increase sales and profits, since it might create a natural monopoly situation for the new company. When two different companies combine, it could also result in unlocking hidden value, which becomes apparent as resources and experiences combined bring  innovation  and efficiency. Exploiting the Market Market systems in most economies are not perfect, which means there is room for companies to exploit these imperfections to their own advantage. Taking over another company or merger could facilitate a monopoly-like situation, which would give the company an edge over its competitors. Alternately, a merger could be done with a motive to control the  supply of certain raw materials  which will give the company an undue advantage over other companies. As an Answer to Government Policies Mergers and acquisitions also take place in order to cope with adverse government policies, which may require a certain size of a firm to exist. Some governments offer tax breaks and other incentives to large corporations, which encourage mergers as more profit can be made as tax liability is lower. In order to deal with government pressure to survival within an industry, companies mergers and acquisitions have greater leverage to influence government policies. Transfer of Technology Another popular reason for mergers and acquisitions is transfer of technology, especially for highly specialized companies with unique technologies. Companies buy other companies in an attempt to acquire a certain technology which is patented or unique. Subsequently, these technologies are used to make better products\/services, hence greater market share and profits. To Handle Large Clients Mergers and acquisitions, especially in the service industry, also take place in order to follow big clients. There are a lot of examples of such M&A activity happening for law firms, since sometimes the clients are so big, it forces firms to merge in order to serve them better. The merged firms have more resources and expertise to handle powerful clients. It also gives companies a way to bootstrap earning, hence better performance at the stock exchange for listed companies. Diversification Mergers and acquisitions allow companies to diversify into other areas of business, hence it spreads risks and present opportunity for more sales, profits and recognition in the market. For example, if clothing store merges with a textile company, it would help both companies, since they would be able to keep a greater margin of profit.  Diversification  can also take place in a totally different industry altogether. For example, if a restaurant chain store acquires a clothing store, it would have reduced its risks, since even if people stop eating out, hypothetically speaking, they could still make money from the clothing store, and other way. Personal Incentives In some rare cases, a merger or an acquisition is initialised due to managers personal incentives in form of higher salary, benefits etc., and has nothing to do with strategic planning. TRANSACTION CHARACTERISTICS There are several methods of payment for an M&A activity described below. Stock Purchase:  This transaction requires acquirer to provide cash, stock, or combination of cash and stock in exchange for the shares of the company being acquired. This requires shareholders\u2019 approval, since shares can\u2019t be bought without their consent. Any gain made by the shareholders on their capital is taxed by the government. Asset Purchase:  This requires acquirer to buy all the target firm\u2019s assets. The payment in made directly to the firm. This kind of transaction may not require shareholders\u2019 approval\/permission. Acquirer, in most cases, won\u2019t assume the responsibility for firm\u2019s liabilities, which would mean that the firm being acquired would have to settle the debt on its own. Cash Offering:  This kind of transaction simply requires payment in cash. Security Offering:  In this case, shareholders are given shares of common stock, preferred stock, or in some cases debt of the acquirer. The exchange ratio is calculated bases on number of securities in exchange for a share of target stock. Factors influencing method of payment There are various factors that need to be considered before method of payment is decided. The risk is usually shared among acquirer and target shareholders in a certain ratio. The ratio is decided based on financial standing of each company. Moreover, signaling by the acquiring firm is also important; they are in a much stronger position to dictate terms.  Balance sheet  and other financial documents are an immense help in ascertaining the capital structure of the acquiring firm, which becomes an important consideration when it comes to method of payment. Another important consideration includes the financial leverage the acquirer enjoys. If the company is highly leveraged, more debt wouldn\u2019t be recommended, and liability if the target company will not be assumed. Attitude of Management From the perspective of the board of directors of the target companies, the merger can be classified into two broad categories: A friendly merger:  This happens when the \u2018 board of directors \u2019 agree, negotiate and finally accept an offer. A hostile merger:  This happens when the \u2018board of directors\u2019 attempt to prevent the merger. In case of a hostile takeover, takeover defenses are used, with the intention to either prevent the transaction or increase the bid. Directors may trigger pre-offer mechanism, which makes the target company seem less attractive. This prevents the acquiring firm from making a decent offer. Alternatively, directors may try post-offer mechanism, which include addressing ownership of shares, hence reducing acquirer\u2019s power gained from its ownership. REGULATIONS AND OTHER HURDLES Legal Due Diligence It is an important exercise of an M&A transaction and helps both parties identify any legal risks associated with the merger.  Due diligence  also provides an opportunity to minimize those risks. At the initial stage, all corporate documents are thoroughly reviewed which include Articles of Association. It also covers aspects relating to registrations of company\u2019s employees with the regulatory authorities. The second phase includes reviewing details related to company\u2019s shareholders, financial liabilities, contractual rights and obligations. There are several regulatory considerations when performing M&A. In some cases, there is a need to obtain specific approvals from an M&A transaction from government regulatory bodies, especially when the company is part of core economic activities of the country like banking, insurance, electricity or water supply. Some areas of economy require licenses and NOCs to collude. Additionally, government agencies exist that ensure industries stay competitive. M&A transactions usually present a possibility of collusion between firms, in order to raise price and create a monopoly situation. This situation generated extraordinary profits for the company, but exploits consumers, since they don\u2019t have a choice and end up purchasing the goods at a higher price. Competition commissions exist on order to make sure that markets stay competitive. Some countries have foreign capital investment laws, which prevent foreign companies from investing locally or set a certain investment limit. There are no ways around these hurdles, which means that M&A transaction cannot be executed and finished. As the firm grows in size after M&A transaction, a different set of tax brackets may be applicable. This needs to be takes into considerations since it could adversely impact company\u2019s profits. Such a development will be irksome to shareholders and other stakeholders. Labor Laws Some countries have stringent labor laws, which need to be taken into account before M&A transaction take place. Big firms find themselves in spotlight when it comes to labor laws. The acquirer needs to understand how the labor laws are going to impact the company once the merger is complete. Moreover, the politics of labor unions also needs to be understood and reconciled with. Sometimes, the employees are not happy with the proposed merger, which could threaten to disrupt the operations of the company. It must also be made sure that labor is not exploited under the new administration, which can be done by paying a fair wage, providing safe working condition and health insurance.    Boost your job visibility   and reach more highly qualified active and passive job seekers A boosted job (also called premium job) will be shown  ahead of all other similar basic jobs  in the job search. In addition, boosted jobs are  included in the recommended jobs widget  and thereby reach passive job seekers. On Cleverism, you reach more than 4m high-performance active and passive job seekers a year.   Gender   Age   Education Boost your job(s) and benefit from more highly qualified applicants, faster time-to-hire and lower cost-to-hire. Act fast  because we'll be raising prices soon. Questions? Contact us  here     Outstanding employer branding   that attracts the right talents A Premium Company Profile puts your company  ahead of all other similar companies  in the company search. In addition, you are  included in the company recommendation widget  so you reach more passive job seekers. On Cleverism, you reach more than 4m high-performance active and passive job seekers a year.   Gender   Age   Education Turn on employer branding and benefit from more relevant job applicants and shorter time-to-hire.     ","topic":"branding, marketing, product growth, acquisitions, complete guide, mergers, company growth, growth marketing"},{"title":" What is Growth Hacking and How to Use it for Your Startup","url":"http:\/\/FI.co\/posts\/31391","body":"With digital media always changing, it's important for startups to constantly keep abreast of the best marketing strategies. And that's why marketing expert and friend of the Founder Institute Shivankit Arora has written this guest post that outlines the basic strategies a startup can employ to increase their internet presence.\n\nGrowth hacking has been riding the tide in the startup world for a while. While the phrase has been used by marketers more often than before, most of them still limit the concept to search engine optimization, email automation and social media marketing strategy etc.\n\nHowever, this is not what defines growth hacking.\n\nGrowth Hacking refers to a set of marketing channels that will trigger your business growth in a data driven and cost effective fashion. A successful growth hack comprises the following:\n\nBrainstorming and experimenting with a number of hypotheses to come down to a marketing strategy to take your startup to the next level.\n\nContinuously optimising your efforts, CPAs and and user retention with the discovered hacks.\n\nNow that we understand what growth hacking is all about let\u2019s have a look into the growth hacking funnel or what it is popularly known as \u201cstartup marketing funnel\u201d.\n\nGrowth Hacking Funnel\n\nThe growth hacking funnel for startup marketing comprises of 5 stages based on the AARRR model.\n\nImage Source: Referral Saasquatch\n\nAcquisition: For startup or a small business, this stage is where you gain the necessary awareness among your target audience to see results from your marketing efforts. Activation: Now that your audience knows about your business and the services\/products you have to offer, it\u2019s time to convert them into customers. This stage helps you take your audience closer to the \u2018customer\u2019 stage. Retention: The market is where you meet your competitors. However, there\u2019s must be something that gives you an edge over others. This is the stage where you tap into your USP to convince your customer to keep using your product or service instead of multiple options available in the market. Referral: It wouldn\u2019t be wrong to say that \u2018word of mouth\u2019 marketing is the best form of marketing out there. This is the stage that deals with getting more customers out of your existing set of customers. Revenue: This is the end result achieved after optimised execution of all the above steps. Here you need to understand how your business will maintain a healthy cash flow with rising profit margin.\n\nNow that we have a basic understanding of the startup marketing funnel, let\u2019s dive into some these stages with examples from popular startups.\n\n1. Acquisition: How Airbnb generates the right awareness for their product\n\nThe founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, had just raised some initial funds for their business. However soon they started brainstorming better ways to scale their business rather than the current way of paid acquisition.\n\nThey began by narrowing down their market research to one basic question.\n\nWhat are the digital channels where there target audience searches for something more than just a standard hotel experience?\n\nCraigslist was the answer.\n\nThe next thing that Airbnb had under their radar was to get their listings on Craigslist too. This would help them get more traction for their own listings.\n\nThe results?\n\nUsing this hack, Airbnb managed to pull in thousands of users from Craigslist. Moreover, since their listings were much more comprehensive aided with better descriptions and photographs than Craigslist, the idea led to a viral growth cycle.\n\nImage Source: Growth Hackers\n\n2. Activation: How to activate users, the \u2018PayPal style\u2019\n\nPayPal grew to 5 million users in summer 2000 from 1 million users in March 2000. This is one of the reasons why it is one of the most growth-oriented startup of the late 1990s.\n\nThe first step they took to trigger growth is activate users by paying them to sign up. With every sign up, you were credited $20 (apart from $20 for a referral). Over a period of time as the number of signups boomed exponentially, they reduced the bonus offered, eventually fropping down to nothing.\n\nThis way PayPal makes a classic example of activating users by awarding them adaptive incentives. While the company did invest in varied advertising practises, the above method was the best hack to achieve lowest CAC.\n\nImage Source: Quora\n\n3. Retention: How Groove pulled down their churn rate by 71%\n\nOne of the major obstacles every SaaS company faces is high churn rates. Churn rate is nothing but the percentage of people exiting out of your subscription based business.\n\nGroove was one of them. Groove is an easy to use help desk software for businesses coming at $15 per user.\n\nAlthough the company had a healthy flow of new users, Groove\u2019s 4.5% churn rate was gradually turning the business model on an unsustainable path.\n\nSo the folks at Groove analyzed users who stayed on-board for more than 30 days and the ones who quit before that. They divided people in the following categories:\n\nAT the end of a lot of brainstorming, Groove made up its mind to send targeted emails to people who spent less time on the platform or\/and were likely to opt out after 30 days period.\n\nPeople who were spending less than 2 minutes on the site in one session were sent this message:\n\nImage Source: Kissmetrics\n\nFor someone who checked in fewer than 2 times in the first 10 days was sent the following message:\n\nImage Source: Kissmetrics\n\nThe results?\n\nThis conversion optimization strategy, helped Groove reduce their churn rate by as much as 71%.\n\nUnderstanding the point where your users struggle while using your product\/service and addressing the same could just save the day for you.\n\n4. Referral: Dropbox fueled their growth by tapping into referral marketing\n\nThe success mantra for Dropbox to be one of the most popular tech startups is tapping into the power of referral marketing.\n\nWith a paid marketing campaign under progress, Dropbox spent $250 per customer for a product that was priced at $99.\n\nEvery friend you referred Dropbox to, was in turn credited with 500 MB additional storage. You got to earn up to 16GB of free space using this hack.\n\nImage Source : Referral Candy\n\nThe next thing they gave attention to was making sure the referral process was as smooth as possible.\n\nImage Source: Referral Candy\n\nThe key takeaway here is that \u2018word of mouth\u2019 marketing is a powerful hack to pull in more users\/traffic on-board. Incorporating referral signups\/purchases in your business model with complementary incentives for customers can trigger growth.\n\n5. Revenue: The growth engine of PicMonkey\n\nPicMonkey is a company in the photo editing space. But their share of growth hack involves building a great product with a freemium model.\n\nWhile millions of users were joining in, every month they were editing billions of photos using PicMonkey. While they could access basic filters for free, advanced filters and tools were available for a monthly fee of $4.99.\n\nIn addition to this, hundreds of thousands of users pay that subscription price.\n\nImage Source: Fortune\n\nThe company has been riding the tide of increasing profits ever since, with the exact growth being 40% year over year.\n\nThe major takeaway here is that going freemium could be the ultimate growth hack for your business. Offering a part of your service as free is a way of educating them how good your product is and in turn assuring them of the value they\u2019ll get once they purchase the premium product\/service.\n\nIn a nutshell, growth hacking isn\u2019t just about SEO or social media marketing. It comprises of an optimised mix of digital marketing strategies and tools that can pull in significant traction for your business in a cost-effective way.\n\nAbout the Author\n\nShivankit Arora is a growth hacker and the founder of a startup marketing agency, MarketingMasala.com. ","topic":"branding, brand development, people management, startup, company growth, growth hacking, product growth"},{"title":"The Trick to Viral Growth","url":"https:\/\/bigthink.com\/cue-the-future\/the-trick-to-viral-growth","body":"\n\n The Trick to Viral Growth\nTyler Willis\n03 July, 2012\n\nI recently helped a friend prioritize their measurement framework for a series of growth experiments. Here's a lightly edited version of my advice.\n\nWhen looking to focus on user growth, it's generally helpful to look at 3 key metrics.\n\nTime to first share\nlength of sharing period\nk factor (how many new users does each user bring in).\n\nThe time it takes for a user share for the first time dictates how quickly you start growing. Most explosive growth applications have invite friends features early in the signup\/usage flow.\n\nLength of sharing period will tell you how sustained your user growth will be. If you have an actively engaged user who will continue inviting users for a long time, you'll be less reliant on having to goose growth through new user acquisition methods. This number will be directly tied to your engagement metrics.\n\nThe K Factor is a simple calculation of how many users each new user brings in over a period of time. If you get this number over 1, you have an application that will continue to grow virally until it runs into saturation.\n\nIf you're working on a new project, you'll generally want to analyze these on fairly short timelines (what happens day to day or week to week). You'll also probably focus first on time to first share is because that's the fastest way to get feedback\/data on whether your product and acquisition flows work.\n\nUsually that's the best place to start; you can move on to longer timeframes and the other two factors after that.\n\n ","topic":"branding, people management, company growth, marketing, brand development, viral growth"},{"title":" In Search of the Hybrid Ideal","url":"https:\/\/ssir.org\/articles\/entry\/in_search_of_the_hybrid_ideal","body":"In Search of the Hybrid Ideal \n \n Social Entrepreneurship \n In Search of the Hybrid Ideal  In the first large-scale, quantitative study of nascent social entrepreneurs, researchers from Harvard Business School and Echoing Green examine the rise of hybrid organizations that combine aspects of nonprofits and for-profits and the challenges hybrids face as they attempt to integrate traditionally separate organizational models. \n \n \nBy  Julie Battilana, Matthew Lee, John Walker, & Cheryl Dorsey \n Summer 2012 \n \n Recent news coverage\nof Hot Bread Kitchen reads as if it were written about two\ndifferent organizations. The New York City bakery is widely acclaimed\nfor its innovative selection of international breads, but it\nis simultaneously an award-winning  workforce development  program.\nHot Bread Kitchen is a hybrid organization: Its employees,\nmostly low-income immigrant women, bake bread inspired by their\ncountries of origin, while learning job skills that can lead them to\nmanagement positions in the food industry. In this way, Hot Bread\nKitchen combines two traditionally separate models: a social welfare\nmodel that guides its workforce development mission and a\nrevenue generation model that guides its commercial activities. \n To outside observers, combining social welfare and revenue\ngeneration models might seem unnatural. But Hot Bread Kitchen\u2019s\nfounder, Jessamyn Rodriguez, whose professional experience\nincludes training at Daniel Boulud\u2019s flagship restaurant as well as\na decade working in international development, pursued a vision\nfor how each would complement the other. The business model\nwould use product sales to fund its social mission, reducing dependence\non donations, grants, and subsidies, as well as to scale\nup the organization. Rather than take a  nonprofit  model and add a\ncommercial revenue stream\u2014or take a for-profit model and add a\ncharity or service program\u2014Hot Bread Kitchen\u2019s integrated hybrid\nmodel produces both social value and commercial revenue through\na single, unified strategy. \n Hot Bread Kitchen exemplifies a larger trend among social innovators\ntoward creating hybrid organizations that primarily pursue\na social mission but rely significantly on commercial revenue\nto sustain operations. Such hybrids have long existed in certain\nsectors, such as job training, health care, and microcredit\u2014but in\nrecent years they have begun to appear in new sectors, including\nenvironmental services, consulting, retail, consumer products, catering,\nand information technology. \n As part of the first large-scale, quantitative research study of\nnascent social entrepreneurs, 1  a collaborative team from Harvard\nBusiness School and  Echoing Green , a nonprofit with a 25-year record\nof supporting early stage social entrepreneurs, reviewed more\nthan 3,500 recent Echoing Green Fellowship applications 2  to better\nunderstand hybrid models. Over the last five years, applications\nfrom organizations that combined earned and donated revenue\ngrew significantly: In 2010 and 2011, almost 50 percent relied on\nhybrid models vs. 37 percent in 2006. These entrepreneurs sought\nto address social issues in domains as diverse as hunger, health\ncare, economic development, environment, education, housing,\nculture, law, and politics. This recent increase in the number of\nhybrids results in part from social entrepreneurs\u2019 willingness to\nbe less dependent on donations and subsidies, as well as from an\nincreased interest in creating sustainable financial models in the\nwake of the 2007-08 financial crisis. \n Like hybrid species in nature, hybrid organizational models can\nbe a fountain of innovation. But they also face distinct challenges\nthat may prevent them from thriving. When organizations combine\nsocial mission with commercial activities, they create unfamiliar\ncombinations of activities for which a supportive ecosystem may not\nyet exist. Hybrids also must strike a delicate balance between social\nand economic objectives, to avoid \u201cmission drift\u201d\u2014in this case, a\nfocus on profits to the detriment of the social good. \n This article examines hybrids and the specific challenges they\nface in legal recognition, financing, pricing of goods and services,\nand creating a balanced organizational culture. We also explore\nemerging solutions to these challenges for those seeking to combine\nthe value-creating potential of for-profits and nonprofits. \n Integration as the Hybrid Ideal \n The organization of the commercial and social sectors has long been\ngoverned by an assumption of independence between commercial\nrevenue and social value creation. For more than a century, activities\nnecessary to create commercial revenue, it was assumed, could\nnot substantially affect or improve on social welfare, and vice versa.\nThus most organizations that sought to pursue social value and commercial\nrevenue simultaneously pursued differentiated strategies. \n For instance,  corporate philanthropy  programs were viewed as a\nnonbusiness activity and were conducted at arm\u2019s length from corporations\u2019\ncore activities. On the other hand, many nonprofit organizations\nattempted to sell products or services, creating revenue\nstreams to reduce dependence on philanthropic and public funders.\nYet earned income programs, often unrelated to the core activities\nof nonprofits, did not always live up to expectations. 3 \n Today it is clear that the independence of social value and commercial\nrevenue creation is a myth. In reality, the vectors of social\nvalue and commercial revenue creation can reinforce and undermine\neach other. The social consequences of the recent financial crisis\ndemonstrated with great clarity the danger of \u201cnegative externalities\u201d\u2014social costs resulting from corporate profit-seeking activities.\nBut in some cases, \u201cpositive externalities\u201d may also exist. It is this\npossibility that integrated hybrid models seek to exploit. \n When we talk to entrepreneurs and students about hybrid organizations,\na common theme that emerges is what we call the \u201chybrid\nideal.\u201d This hypothetical organization is fully integrated\u2014everything\nit does produces both social value and commercial revenue. 4 \nThis vision has at least two powerful features. In the hybrid ideal,\nmanagers do not face a choice between mission and profit, because\nthese aims are integrated in the same strategy. More important, the\nintegration of social and commercial value creation enables a virtuous\ncycle of profit and reinvestment in the social mission that builds\nlarge-scale solutions to social problems. \n Perhaps the most visible example of the pursuit of the hybrid ideal\nis microfinance. For many, the revolutionary appeal of the microfinance\nmovement was that poverty might be alleviated in a way that\ndoes not require continuous subsidies. When carefully managed, an\nadditional loan can equal both more revenue and more of the desired\nsocial impact. As we have seen in microfinance and other industries\nwhere hybrids have grown, however, the real-world pursuit of the\nhybrid ideal is fraught with potential missteps. Recent scandals and\ncritiques of microfinance institutions have focused on a drift away\nfrom social mission to more typical for-profit priorities\u2014leading\nmany observers to question whether social problems, such as extreme\npoverty, can be solved through strategies that also produce revenue. \n Despite these obstacles, our research reveals that some hybrids\nmanage to integrate social and commercial activities sustainably.\nStill, even when leaders manage to avoid mission drift, integrated\nhybrids can struggle to find a suitable place between the for-profit\nand nonprofit sectors, especially in their quest for legal recognition\nand access to capital, markets, and labor. We review these challenges\nin the four sections below. \n Challenge #1: Legal Structure \n Until recently, organizations in most countries had two main legal\nstructure options, each offering certain benefits. For-profits focus\nfor the most part on shareholder value maximization and are permitted\nto distribute returns to investors. Nonprofits singularly\npursue a charitable purpose, and in return, governments offer substantial\ntax benefits. Nonprofits also benefit from social legitimacy\nand goodwill that attracts grants, donations, volunteers, pro bono\nprofessionals, and other free or inexpensive resources. \n In this context, an entrepreneur seeking to create a hybrid organization\nfaces a difficult and often confusing dilemma. If the organization\nbecomes a nonprofit, selling products or services, it may have to\npay tax on revenues associated with those activities and it could also\nlose its tax-exempt status if the activities are sufficiently disconnected\nfrom its primary charitable purpose. Yet, if the organization becomes\na for-profit, it may be discouraged from pursuing social impact by the\npressures of competitive markets as well as fiduciary responsibilities\nthat generally prioritize profit maximization over other concerns. In\nother words, hybrid entrepreneurs can claim the organizational benefits\nof only one of the multiple forms of value they create. \n Indeed, a hybrid that registers as a nonprofit cannot access equity\ncapital markets because it cannot legally sell ownership stakes\nto investors. But if a hybrid incorporates as a for-profit, it cannot\noffer the same tax benefits to donors as registered nonprofits can,\neven if these approaches lead to the most effective social solution.\nFurther complicating the choice is the reality that entrepreneurs\ncannot fully anticipate their future resource needs at the time legal\nregistration choices are made, and thus risk being prematurely\nlocked in to one sector or the other. \n One solution adopted by a number of hybrid entrepreneurs is to\nexploit the benefits of both legal structures. This typically entails the\ncreation of two separate legal entities, one a for-profit and the other a\nnonprofit. Embrace, an organization attempting to commercialize a\nlow-cost incubator for premature infants, was originally a nonprofit\n social enterprise . After testing the product in India, the organization\nexplored various options for financing further growth\u2014but found the\nfinancing alternatives under the 501(c)(3) umbrella to be limited. To\naccess a wider pool of capital and scale up its operations, Embrace created\na for-profit called Embrace Innovations. The nonprofit owns equity\nin the for-profit, a structure that gives the nonprofit power to control\nthe activities of the joint venture while protecting its social mission. \n Despite its benefits, this multiple-entity approach also entails\ncomplex design requirements and administrative separation that can\nburden management. To create better options for hybrids, several\nefforts are under way to establish new types of legal structures. In\nthe United States, there are three such forms: the L3C (Low-Profit\nLimited Liability Company), the Benefit Corporation, and the Flexible\nPurpose Corporation. The L3C is a variant of an LLC, designed\nprimarily to enable companies to access investment from tax-exempt\nsources such as private foundations. The Benefit Corporation is a\ncorporate form passed in seven states and pending in four others\nthat requires organizations to consider a designated social purpose\nand corresponding social impact alongside financial analysis in\nmaking strategic and tactical business decisions. The Flexible Purpose\nCorporation, which has passed in California and Washington\n(where it is called the Social Purpose Corporation), requires boards\nand management to agree on one or more social and environmental\npurposes with shareholders, while providing additional protection\nagainst liability for directors and management. \n Around the world, other hybrid legal structures have emerged. In\nthe UK, for example, a Community Interest Company (CIC) provides\ntax benefits to hybrids that agree to limit their distributions to investors.\nA CIC, once given governmental approval, has its assets \u201cfrozen\u201d\nand designated for general community benefit. Investors can receive\ncapped dividends on their investment, but the principal is never retrieved.\nYet in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, legal registration\nis just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how legal systems affect\nthe growth and success of hybrids. Areas of corporate law, such as\nthe tax code, were not built for organizations that pursue social and\nfinancial value. Still, the emergence of new hybrid legal structures will\nlikely encourage increased hybrid activity. What remains to be seen\nis which legal structures will be the best fit for hybrids. \n Challenge #2: Financing \n As in the case of legal structures, financing has evolved for for-profits\nand nonprofits, but not for hybrids. On the one hand, the for-profit\nsector has sophisticated vehicles for financing through equity and\ndebt. On the other hand, a smaller but similarly specialized infrastructure\nof national and community foundations, early stage fellowship\ngrantors, and venture philanthropists exists to provide funding\nto the nonprofit sector. Although these sources of nonprofit capital\nare scarce, they have long been the typical source of funding for organizations\npursuing a social mission. \n The current pathway to funding for hybrids is not so clear. One\napproach is to adopt a differentiated funding strategy that accesses\nprofit-seeking investors for commercial activities and nonprofit fundraising\nand public subsidies for social activities. Sanergy Inc., a waste\nconversion startup that installs toilets in some of the poorest slums in\nthe world, leverages such an approach. During 2011, Sanergy\u2019s leaders\ncreated two organizations: a nonprofit and a for-profit, each of which\nis uniquely dependent on the other for its sustained existence. Under\nthis hybrid structure, the for-profit develops and scales up capitalintensive\nsanitation technology and infrastructure, and the nonprofit\nsupports sanitation infrastructure and services within low-income\ncommunities. Reflecting on this funding approach, David Auerbach,\nSanergy\u2019s co-founder, said: \u201cWe\u2019ve found that grant funders are comfortable\nwith the social mission priorities in the nonprofit, and that\ninvestors like the fact that we cannot fulfill our financial goal without\nactually providing hygienic sanitation. Both are inextricably linked.\u201d \n Instead of relying on a differentiated funding strategy, many hybrid\nentrepreneurs focus initially on getting funding from the nonprofit\nsector. Apart from traditional nonprofit sources of funding in the form\nof grants or donations, program-related investments (PRIs)\u2014which\nenable private foundations to allocate investments through equity,\ndebt, or a mixture of both\u2014have increased access to capital for US hybrids.\nWe find that many hybrid entrepreneurs have been able to find\nsupportive capital partners through this type of early stage financing. \n Meanwhile, some hybrid entrepreneurs have started targeting\nmore typical for-profit sources of funding. In the case of Frogtek\u2014a\nfor-profit social venture that develops business tools for microentrepreneurs\nin emerging markets\u2014CEO David del Ser decided to incorporate\nas a for-profit because he believed startup financing could come\nfrom mainstream venture capital, enabling faster growth. But del Ser\nadmits that attracting venture capital has been significantly more\nchallenging than initially envisaged. He attributes the difficulty to\ninvestors\u2019 inability to quantify Frogtek\u2019s risk even though the return\npotential is attractive. Still, Frogtek has been successful in engaging\nangel investors whose values align with those of the organization. \n Clearly, traditional early stage equity financing methods used\nby the venture capital industry are not suited to social ventures.\nRather, investors who embrace the same dual objectives as hybrid\nentrepreneurs are needed. One such group is impact investors who\nare comfortable with hybrid models and their blend of social value\ncreation and commercial revenue. Despite recent estimates that the\nglobal impact investing market will be at least $500 billion within\nthe next decade, 5  most hybrid entrepreneurs we have encountered\nstill experience difficulty in raising capital. Solving this challenge\nwill require changes in the mindsets of investors, who will have to\naccept a return that can range from a below market to market rate,\nas well as improved capital placement structures. \n Challenge #3: Customers and Beneficiaries \n Traditional businesses usually think of their consumers as customers,\nwhereas traditional nonprofits think of their consumer base as beneficiaries.\nHybrids, however, break this traditional customer-beneficiary\ndichotomy by providing products and services that, when consumed,\nproduce social value. When consumption yields both revenue and social\nvalue, customers and beneficiaries may become indistinguishable.\nThis kind of integration is powerful, in part because it resolves the\ndeeply felt tension between mission and growth. When customers\nand beneficiaries are the same, focusing on growth doesn\u2019t take away\nresources from beneficiaries; rather, growth of sales and fulfillment\nof mission are inseparable. It should be no surprise that many of the\nfastest growing hybrids have this feature, including microfinance\nand other models in the developing world that produce goods and\nservices for the bottom of the pyramid. \n Depending on the social issue that they aim to address, however,\nhybrid entrepreneurs may not be able to integrate social value\ncreation with earning commercial revenue in a single transaction.\nAn obvious challenge to this type of integration is that many beneficiary\ngroups lack the financial means to pay for the value they\nreceive from a product or service. Even when products or services\ncreate financial value for beneficiaries, the realization of that value\nmay be so distant that it is impractical to recapture. For example,\neducational programs might increase a child\u2019s future earnings, but\norganizations cannot recoup the child\u2019s future wealth. For this and\na myriad of other areas addressed by the social sector, integration\nof customers and beneficiaries may never be possible or desirable. \n Hybrid organizations addressing these types of social problems\ntypically differentiate between customers and beneficiaries. Mobile\nSchool, a Belgian nonprofit, for example, provides educational materials\nto children who live on the streets through a \u201cmobile school,\u201d\nbasically a box on wheels containing blackboards and educational\nboard games. Because Mobile School serves poor children, it cannot\nsustain its operations through selling materials or equipment to its\nbeneficiaries. Instead, founder Arnoud Raskin launched a consulting\nbusiness, Streetwize, which is incorporated as a social purpose\ncompany in Belgium. Streetwize\u2019s activities, which are separate from\nMobile School, generate revenue to sustain the nonprofit\u2019s operations.\nThe board members of Mobile School are shareholders of Streetwize. \n Although they can be effective and sustainable, such differentiated\napproaches raise a number of challenges for hybrids that may\nneed to make trade-offs between serving customers and beneficiaries.\nAs Raskin puts it, \u201cWhen we created Streetwize, there was a risk\nfor Streetwize and Mobile School to grow into two disconnected\norganizations. Although they are two separate entities, engaged\nin different activities, the challenge is to make sure that they both\nremain focused on the mission of Mobile School. I view my role as\nmaking sure that we never compromise on this.\u201d \n Yet such differentiated approaches are not the only options for\nhybrids. Some still have different populations of customers and beneficiaries,\nbut their social and economic activities are more integrated.\nThe beneficiaries of Hot Bread Kitchen, for example, produce and\nsell a product for customers, while learning job skills. In this case,\nsocial value is intimately related to sales, but is not contained in\nthe product or service itself. Certain products and services that are\nvaluable to both customers and beneficiaries create opportunities\nfor even more integrated models. Indeed, for some hybrids such as\ncommercial microfinance organizations, the beneficiaries of the service\nare the only customers of the organization. This overlap enables\nthe organization to focus on one set of activities that fulfill its social\nand financial objectives. Like all hybrids, however, these organizations\nare still subject to the risk of mission drift, as they may give\npriority to profit seeking over social mission. This drifting may lead\nthem to either start charging higher prices or expand their customer\npool by targeting wealthier and more profitable market segments. \n Challenge #4: Organizational Culture and Talent Development  \n All hybrid organizations face the challenge of remaining focused on\ntheir missions. At early stages, the passion and dedication of the entrepreneur\ncan organically communicate such commitment within\nthe organization. But as organizations grow, the influence of entrepreneurs\non new staff becomes less direct and powerful. When direct\ninfluence weakens, culture becomes a critical means by which\nbeliefs and values are communicated and maintained. Hybrids face\nthe special challenge of building an organizational culture committed\nto both social mission and effective operations. \n To keep the mission on course while still making enough money to\nsustain their operations, the leaders of hybrids must make deliberate\ncultural decisions. First, they must identify and communicate organizational\nvalues that strike a healthy balance between commitment\nto both social mission and effective operations. Equally important\nis the selection, development, and management of employees who\nare capable of recognizing and pursuing social and economic value. \n Because hybrid organizations not widespread, job candidates with\nextensive experience or training in hybrid working environments\ntypically do not exist. The alternative for hybrid entrepreneurs is to\nhire either people who have work experience in only one sector\u2014be\nit the social or market sector\u2014or a mix of people from both. Hiring\npeople who all previously worked in the same sector decreases the\nlikelihood of organizational conflict, but it significantly increases\nthe risk of mission drift, as employees are likely to slip into the habits\nand skills they learned in their previous work. On the other hand,\nhiring a differentiated combination of people from disparate sectors\ncan help the organization better balance its social and economic\nobjectives but risks conflict between employees. \n Bolivian microfinance NGO Banco Solidario (BancoSol) was one\nof the first to spin off its lending operations into a regulated commercial\norganization in 1992, transitioning from a typical nonprofit\norganization to a hybrid. As a nonprofit, BancoSol could not keep up\nwith demand for loans from low-income entrepreneurs. The newly\ncreated hybrid organization would be in a better position to achieve\nthis mission, as it would be financially self-sustaining. Needing both\nsocial work and banking skills, BancoSol hired a combination of employees\nfrom the social and business sectors and planned to train them\nto work together to achieve common goals. According to Francisco\nOtero, BancoSol\u2019s first CEO, a balanced organizational culture would\nbe created by \u201cconverting social workers into bankers and bankers\ninto social workers.\u201d Despite BancoSol\u2019s training efforts, however, the\nsingle-purpose backgrounds of their employees made it hard for them\nto adjust to the hybrid model. Those with a social work background\nand those with a financial background ended up resenting each other\nand fighting constantly, so that the organization could hardly operate. \n Another Bolivian commercial microfinance organization, Caja de\nAhorro y Prestamo (Los Andes), launched three years after BancoSol.\nIt learned from BancoSol\u2019s experience and adopted a radically different\nhiring and socialization approach. Rather than look for job candidates\nwith experience in either social welfare work or finance, Los Andes\nhired college graduates with essentially no work experience and then\ntrained them to be microfinance loan officers committed both to the\nsocial mission of the organization and to effective operations. The\nidea was that without social-based or profit-based experience, employees\nwould find it easier to adhere to the hybrid mission. Although\nthis approach constrained the rate of growth at first, it proved to be\nmore sustainable. Later, BancoSol changed its hiring and socialization\nstrategies and adopted an approach closer to Los Andes\u2019. 6 \n Los Andes\u2019 strategy of hiring inexperienced people and socializing\nthem into a hybrid organization work environment may not always\nbe ideal for early growth, but many hybrid entrepreneurs we have\nstudied adopted this approach. For example, Adive, a French nonprofit\nthat aims to transform the workforce of French corporations\nby connecting them with ethnic minority suppliers and entrepreneurs,\nhas adopted the same strategy. \u201cIn the hybrid space, it is often\neasier to work with junior people who have no preconceptions as to\nwhat the job entails,\u201d explains co-founder Majid El Jarroudi. \u201cThey\ncan be trained to do the work, while embracing the social mission\nand the need to have effective operations.\u201d \n No matter which hiring approach they choose, hybrids face the\nadditional challenge of designing compensation systems, tasks, and\ngovernance policies that reinforce an organizational culture committed\nto both social mission and effective operations. Los Andes,\nfor example, developed an incentive system for loan officers that\ntied pay to the number and quality of the loans in their portfolios.\nThe quality criteria used were meant to ensure that the pursuit of\nthe social mission would remain Los Andes\u2019 priority. \n The Future of Hybrids \n In the aftermath of the 2007-08 economic crisis, the global economic\nsystem is still regarded as broken. Calls for reform have\nbeen particularly strong among youth. Vast unemployment, ballooning\ndebt, and entrenched inequality have left a generation of\nyoung people frustrated with modern capitalism and motivated to\nchange it. Among the voices for reform, hybrid entrepreneurs are\nopening the way for a reformulation of the current economic order,\ncombining the principles, practices, and logics of modern capitalism\nwith more inclusive humanitarian ideals. \n The essence of this movement is a fundamental convergence and\nreconfiguration of the social and commercial sectors, from completely\nseparate fields to a common space. (See \u201cThe Hybridization\nMovement.\u201d) Hybrid organizations that are currently being\ncreated serve as a testing ground, and we expect that the most successful\nmodels will be replicated (see yellow arrow in the graphic).\nYet hybrid entrepreneurs are not the only actors through which the\nhybridization of the economy is happening. Existing for-profit and\nnonprofit organizations are also part of this trend. \n \n \n \n \u00a0 \n \n Using the guideposts of value creation and strategic integration,\none can map the movement of organizations from the commercial\nand social sector toward more integrated hybrid forms. Whereas\ncorporations\u2019 social programs were once primarily philanthropy,\nfully differentiated from business core, many are moving toward\nthe adoption of more integrated social responsibility programs, in\nwhich the creation of economic and social value are coupled (see orange\narrow in the graphic). Similarly, many nonprofit organizations\ncontinue to seek ways to adapt their existing models to generate some\nrevenue to be less dependent on donors (see blue arrow in the graphic). \n We expect this hybridization movement to be slow and gradual,\nas existing organizations are already embedded in models and stakeholder\nnetworks that constrain major strategic change. For full hybridization\nto occur, for-profit and nonprofit organizations and hybrid\nentrepreneurs need resources that align with their goal of creating\nboth social and economic value. Hybrid organizations will require\ninnovations in legal status, professional training, and capital financing,\nso that they do not need to make constant trade-offs between\nsocial and economic goals. At the field level, a critical step will be the\ndevelopment of measurement and reporting systems that recognize\nboth social and financial value. The development of this ecosystem\nwill not be the work of any heroic individual or organization; rather,\nit will require the creation of new systems by elected officials, policymakers,\nsocial impact investors, educators, and consumers who lift\nup a generation of hybrid organizations and their managers. \n We are not suggesting that all nonprofits should seek profits. Some\ncritical solutions to social problems will never be commercially viable,\nand it is important that we continue supporting these through grants\nand subsidies. Nor do we believe that all corporations are likely to become\nfully integrated hybrids. But for many entrepreneurs, integrated\nhybrid models offer a promising vehicle for the creation of both social\nand economic value. Someday, we may look at the advance of hybrid\norganizations as an early step in a broad reformulation of a current\neconomic order, which for all of its successes has left many disenfranchised.\nHybrid organizations offer a bold, sustainable infusion\nof humanitarian principles into modern capitalism. Yet, as with all\nsweeping social changes, success will require leadership and persistence.\nThe promise of hybrids is very real, but much work lies ahead. \n \u00a0 \n \n \u00a0 \n \n \n Notes \n \n 1  We selected a random sample of more than 3,500, or approximately 40 percent, of \nthe total applications received by Echoing Green between 2006 and 2011. We then \ndeveloped a codebook aimed at capturing the demographic profile of the applicants, \ntheir social enterprise initiative goals, their resource and funding strategies, and \ntheir approach to measuring future performance. All projects were double-coded by \ntwo independent experts, who formed a database for our analyses. \n 2  Echoing Green Fellowship applicants self-identify as nascent social entrepreneurs \nusing Echoing Green\u2019s broad definition of social entrepreneurs as \u201cvisionaries\u201d who \n\u201cdevelop bold new solutions to society\u2019s toughest problems.\u201d Applicants\u2019 organizations \ntend to be less than two years old. Although we do not claim that Echoing \nGreen Fellowship applicants are a representative sample of the broader population \nof social entrepreneurs, they provide a window of unprecedented depth and breadth \ninto the field of social entrepreneurship. Also, because Echoing Green\u2019s criteria for \ndefining social entrepreneurs are so inclusive, the sample provides a great platform \nfor us to look into the rise of hybrids and to examine their characteristics. \n 3  William Foster & Jeffrey Bradach,  \u201cShould Nonprofits Seek Profits?\u201d  Harvard Business \nReview,  83, Feb. 2005. \n 4  In the hybrid ideal, social value and commercial revenue are non-divisible. This idea \nhas been explored at length in work by Jed Emerson and others on blended value; see \n www.blendedvalue.org . \n 5  Two independent reports produced this estimate:  \u201cInvesting for Social & Environmental \nImpact: A Design for Catalyzing an Emerging Industry,\u201d  Monitor Institute, \n2009; and  \u201cImpact Investments: An Emerging Asset Class,\u201d  J.P. Morgan, 2010. \n 6  Julie Battilana & Silvia Dorado, \u201c Building Sustainable Hybrid Organizations: The \nCase of Commercial Microfinance Organizations,\u201d  Academy of Management Journal, \n53(6), 2010. \n \n Julie Battilana  is associate professor of business administration in the organizational behavior unit at Harvard Business School. Her research examines hybrid organizations and the challenges that they face in creating and sustaining an organizational culture committed to both social mission and effective operations. \n Matthew Lee  is a doctoral candidate in management at Harvard Business School. His researches focuses on entrepreneurs and organizations that pursue both social and financial performance. Previously, he was a nonprofit strategy consultant at the Bridgespan Group in Boston and New York City. \n John Walker  is director of finance at Echoing Green, where he leads all impact investing initiatives. He serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, teaching a course on raising capital for social ventures. \n Cheryl Dorsey  is president of Echoing Green, a global social venture fund that has awarded $31 million in startup capital to more than 500 next generation social entrepreneurs worldwide since 1987. Dorsey received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to help launch the Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit in Boston. \n \n \n \n \n \n Tags \n \n Benefit Corporations ,\u2002\n Corporations ,\u2002\n Echoing Green ,\u2002\n Hybrid Organizations ,\u2002\n L3C ,\u2002\n Law ,\u2002\n Social Entrepreneurship ,\u2002\n Talent Development \n \n ","topic":"branding, hybrid ideal, product growth, marketing, people management, company growth"},{"title":" The Beginner\u2019s Guide to Defining Buyer Personas","url":"https:\/\/digitalmarketinginstitute.com\/blog\/2017-4-27-the-beginners-guide-to-defining-buyer-personas","body":" The Beginner\u2019s Guide to Defining Buyer Personas \n Content Marketing \n Digital Marketing \n \u201cWhen you combine the Buyer Profile with Buying Insights, you will have clear guidance for the decisions you need to make to win their business.\u201d -  Adele Revella One of the best ways to create content and plan promotional campaigns that truly engage your target audience is by creating a buyer persona. What's a buyer persona, you ask? In a nutshell, a buyer persona is a profile that represents your ideal customer. By creating your own buyer personas, you'll gain the ability to tailor your marketing efforts and connect with your target audience to meet their needs and solve their problems. After all, if you don't know who you're aiming your efforts at, how are you going to sell your products or services? According to a study from Mark W. Schaefer, three to four buyer personas usually account for over  90% of a company\u2019s sales . And in this beginner\u2019s guide, we\u2019re going to show you how to create your own buyer personas to increase your audience, boost brand awareness, and drive more sales. \nCarry out market research When creating a buyer persona, you're essentially creating a personality that embodies a key segment of your audience - and the first step to accomplishing this is to conduct thorough research. To get a gauge on who your customers are, what they want, and what they're looking for you to solve you will need to hold surveys and polls via your social media channels; interview current customers on one-to-one basis, and look at your competitors to see how their customers interact with them online; this will help you gain a better understanding of who you're speaking to on your channels. Personalised campaigns  drive 18 times  more revenue than broadcast emails, so it's important to gain as much information as you can from the word go. Services like  SurveyMonkey  are very useful as they offer suggestions on how to phrase certain questions for your various demographics to ensure that you get the most valuable response to inform your buyer persona campaign. \n To help you with your efforts, here's a video on creating a user poll on Facebook... \n \n \n Another effective way to understand your consumers is through social listening. To find out how, read our practical  social listening guide . \nCheck your site analytics More data  has been created in the last two years than in the whole previous history of the human race. That\u2019s a lot of data. You can harness this data to strategically focus your marketing efforts and reach out to your customers in a valuable way. Inside your site analytics, you'll be able to see where your site visitors came from, the keywords they used to find you, and how long they stayed on site for once they arrived. This type of data is essential to creating buyer personas as it shows the search terms that led your audience to your site, as well as the devices and platforms they used to get there. This video will help you decide which metrics you need to use to help define your perfect buyer persona. \n \n \n \nMake a buyer persona template Now you've checked your analytics, gathered your data and gained key insights on your customer base; you'll be ready to create a buyer persona template. A buyer persona is a little like a Top Trumps card - only more useful. \n Here is an overview of what to include in your buyer persona template: Persona name:  It's very important to give your persona a name to bring them to life and humanize your marketing efforts Job title Essential information about their company (size, sector, etc.) Details about their job role Demographics Age Gender Salary or combined household income Location: are they from an urban, suburban or rural region Level of education Family size Goals and challenges Main goal Secondary goal How you help your persona reach these goals Primary challenge Secondary challenge How you can assist in resolving these problems Values and fears Main personal values Common objections during sales process Marketing message Think about how you might describe or communicate your product or services to this particular type of person? Elevator pitch Elaborate on your marketing message and decide on a consistent message based on how you're going to sell yourself to this customer. Here is an example of a basic buyer persona. \n \n \n \nAdd extra customer-specific information In addition to the core details on your template, you should add extra snippets of information relating to your particular customer base; not only will this help you target your efforts more specifically, but it will also help to breathe extra life into your personas. Each buyer persona template can be changed slightly to meet your needs, but as a guide, this information will assist you with your efforts. Level of digital competency Personal hobbies Preferred news sources Favourite blogs Most used social media platform Direct quotes from existing customer interviews \nThe power of a solid buyer persona More often than not, it's easy to spot a business that understands the value of a solid buyer persona - and knows how to use it to their advantage. JetBlue is a shining example. JetBlue's primary buyer persona is the low budget traveller that seeks a comfortable yet affordable solution to flying. Understanding its audience is young and likes to make the majority of their decisions through social media, JetBlue has crafted its efforts accordingly, picking up plenty of traction on Twitter in particular. In fact, according to a recent report from TalkWalker, JetBlue sees   74.1%  of its overall social media performance from Twitter. \n By taking on a fun, conversational tone, using slogans like 'Flying like a boss', and focusing on responding to their followers almost instantaneously, the company has earned 477 thousand followers to date, and is following just one account themselves. Even their handle -  @JetBlueCheeps  - appeals to their key buyer persona. As a result of its refined marketing efforts, aided by the company's 'Travel like a boss' campaign, and driven by its attention marketing personas, the company saw a 7.9% increase in profit in 2016 from the previous year. A clear indication of how buyer personas can help a company improve its brand message, appeal to its target audience and reap the rewards of ongoing commercial success. By following the above steps and taking the time to create at least three key buyer personas for your company, you'll be able to create content and launch campaigns that not only sing to your audience but will help you brand grow and evolve with your customers. The ability to write persuasive copy will help you to engage and convert your users. ","topic":"company growth, defining buyer personas, branding, product growth, marketing, beginner, growth marketing"},{"title":"Don\u2019t Build a Business Unless You\u2019re Ready to Give Your All","url":"http:\/\/FI.co\/posts\/28951","body":"Adeo Ressi, the co-founder and CEO of the Founder Institute, is a major proponent of perseverence as an entrepreneurial virtue. Because so many aspiring founders, unfortunately, believe that launching a company is easy and is an effective means to gain money and fame, Adeo, along with those of the rest of us at the Founder Institute, have set out to prove that only the most passionate, dedicated, and resourceful will have what it takes to survive in the startup world.\n\nAdeo recently wrote an article about the topic of commitment in the Forbes article, \"A Business Is Not Worth Building Unless You Are Ready To 'Go All In'\". Below are some of the key points.\n\nI\u2019ve started 9 businesses and have invested all of my time, all of my network, and most of my money into each and every one of them. Most have done well and others have failed, but I wouldn\u2019t advise an entrepreneur trying to build an impactful company to pursue any other strategy.\n\nHere\u2019s why:\n\n1. Building an Impactful Company Requires 100% of Your Time\n\nI am always surprised by how many founders tell me things like \u201cI can\u2019t quit my job to build this business until I get some funding.\u201d This line of thinking of completely backwards, and naive. What investor in their right mind would take the risk of investing in your company if you (the founder) won\u2019t even take on the risk of future earnings to devote your time to it? Realistically, the founders that tell me this are hundreds of steps away from getting investment \u2013 but even then, do they really expect talented people to go out on a limb to join their team full-time if they\u2019re not willing to do the same? Unless you have an amazing track record in entrepreneurship, this is non-negotiable.\n\nTo be clear, I am not saying that a business can\u2019t begin as a \u201cside-project\u201d. On the contrary, I believe starting a \u201cside-project\u201d before fully committing is the absolute best way to start a company. When it is just a \u201cproject\u201d (not a \u201cbusiness\u201d), you aren\u2019t too attached to it, and you can look at things objectively while testing the idea with customers, researching the economics, and getting feedback from experts.\n\nHowever, once you have put in several months (at least) and have gotten the proper validation, you need to devote 100% of your time to build the business if you want to have any chance of success. Realistically, this means 60+ hours per week for several years.\n\n2. Building an Impactful Company Requires 100% of Your Network\n\nIf you are trying to build something of impact, then you need to quickly get comfortable with asking your friends, family, and colleagues for favors. These favors include, but are not limited to, sharing your news, giving you feedback on your product, providing introductions, handing over money (buying your product\/ investing in your company), and more.\n\nAs awkward as this may seem, there is really no getting around it. As an early-stage entrepreneur you usually have no tangible product to sell, so all you can sell is a vision or idea. This is actually very similar to a politician starting a \u201cmovement\u201d \u2013 and a \u201cmovement\u201d requires an initial audience to get it going.\n\nTo force this thinking on early-stage entrepreneurs that are not quite ready to go \u201call-in\u201d, in the first week of the Founder Institute we mandate that our founders create a mailing list of at least 20 friends, family members, and associates. After sending an initial introductory email where people can silently opt-out, the founders then send this mailing list business updates and requests for feedback on a weekly basis. To push things further, we even require our founders to add people to the list every week, and when they finish our program they have over 125 subscribed contacts that they know personally or met in the program.\n\nIs this overkill? To be honest, when we first implemented this strategy the required subscriber numbers were much lower. However, over time we have moved the requirements higher and higher because it has be so effective. At the end of the day, this simple mailing list has acted as a forcing function that not only gets our founders comfortable with selling to personal acquaintances, but also provides them with a wide net of people from which to get valuable feedback, spread news, and more.\n\nIf you are not comfortable asking friends, family and colleagues for favors related to your business, then I suggest you do something similar. Trying to build your company alone is usually a fool\u2019s errand.\n\n3. Building an Impactful Company Might Require All of Your Own Money\n\nIt does not always require 100% of your money, like numbers 1 and 2 above\u2026 but it might.\n\nThis is what startup people call \u201cskin in the game\u201d. Joining, investing in, or partnering with a startup is always a question of risk management, and the most remedial question someone can ask to mitigate risk before working with you is \u201cAre you committed?\u201d.\n\nThere is a difference between interest and commitment. When you\u2019re interested in something, you do it only when it\u2019s convenient. When you\u2019re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.\u201d \u2013 Kenneth H. Blanchard (Author of The One Minute Manager)\n\nMost of the successful entrepreneurs you read about today have invested most of their money into their businesses at the early stage, while also taking either a very low or the legal minimum salary for the first several years. I have done the same with all nine of my businesses.\n\nObviously not everyone has the luxury to do this, but at the very least, they should expect to front the initial costs of the business (incorporation, legal, basic technology\/materials, and the like), while also offering much higher salaries to their first key hires than their own. After all \u2013 what signifies more commitment from the founder than cold hard cash?\n\nOkay, so let\u2019s say you have read my three points above but are still wavering and not quite ready to go \u201call-in\u201d with your time, network, or money. What should you do?\n\nAt the very least, I recommend that you take a step back and ask yourself two key questions:\n\nAm I fully committed to this idea?\n\nIf you are ready to go all-in but do not believe you have validated your idea, you can usually find the answer by (1) isolating your area of concern, (2) getting feedback on it through a well-constructed \u201cMVP Test\u201d with a few hundred more potential customers, and (3) reviewing the results with someone that successfully built a business targeting the same customer. If you are not sold after that, then it\u2019s time to significantly alter (\u201cpivot\u201d) your idea, or start over altogether. Keep in mind that this is not a bad thing \u2013 it is better you learn this sooner rather than later.\n\nAm I ready for the rigors of starting a business?\n\nIf you believe you have validated your idea but are still not ready to go all-in, then work backwards and create a plan that will get you to that point. Maybe you have a child on the way, or other family obligations on the horizon? Maybe you need to save up money and start another \u201cside-hustle\u201d in the interim? Or, maybe you need to take time creating relationships that will be crucial for your business to succeed? Whatever the situation, just create an actionable plan to get you there as quickly as possible. I promise you that the longer you wait, the more your chances of getting started and succeeding diminish.\n","topic":"growth marketing, product growth, business, company growth, people management, branding"},{"title":"Engineering as Marketing-Traction Channel #10","url":"https:\/\/startuprunner.com\/engineering-marketing-traction-channel-10\/","body":" Engineering as Marketing-Traction Channel #10\n\nDeveloping Definition  Jason Mares of Traction explains,\u201dWe call this traction channel engineering as marketing: using engineering time to create useful tools like calculators, widgets, and educational micro-sites to get your company in front of potential customers. These tools then generate leads and expand your customer base.  HubSpot, a marketing automation software company, has reached tens of millions in revenue in a few short years. One key to their success is a free marketing review tool they created called Marketing Grader.\u201d In the article, Your Marketing Job is about to Become an Engineering Job. Get Use to It, the focus on how marketing is changing. \u201cMarketing is largely becoming about algorithms, instead of catchy jingles. How it\u2019s become about optimization instead of \u201cgrand openings\u201d or \u201claunch dates.\u201d Data instead of instinct.\u201d Great Examples of Companies using Engineering as Marketing from Traction book.\n\n    HubSpot using Marketing Grader-free marketing review tool to gather new customers found the key was to automate process that they found were effective.\n\n    Dharmesh of Hubspot says: \u201cAt HubSpot, we really believe in marketing channels that have high leverage (i.e. write it or build it once \u2013 and get value forever). As such, we take a very geeky and analytical approach to marketing. We think of each piece of content (blog article, app, video, whatever) as a marketing asset. This asset creates a return \u2013 often indefinitely.\u201d  \u201cWe contrast that to buying an ad which does not scale as well. When you advertise , the money you\u2019re spending is what drives how much attention you get. Want more clicks? Spend more money. Contrast this to inbound marketing whereby the cost of producing a piece of content is relatively constant. But, if it generates 10x more leads in a month, your marginal cost for those extra leads is almost zero. Further, with advertising (outbound marketing), the traffic you get generally stops when you stop paying. With inbound marketing, even *after* you stop producing new content, the old content can still drive ongoing visitors and leads.\u201d\n\n    Moz  the leader in SEO software uses two free SEO tools, Followerwonk and Open Site Explorer, have driven tens of thousands of leads for them.  Followerwonk allows users to analyze their Twitter followers and get tips on growing their audience. Open Site Explorer allows users to see where sites are getting links, which is valuable competitive intelligence for any SEO campaign.\n        A key feature of these tools is their ease of use: prospects simply go to the site and enter a domain name or Twitter handle.\n        Once someone uses the tools, companies can begin to engage these potential customers through other traction channels like sales and email marketing.\n    WP Engine a WordPress hosting provider, is another prime example of a company using this channel successfully . The hosting market is saturated with hundreds of hosting companies, yet WP Engine has cornered the market on high-end WordPress hosting. This is due to their free tool that checks how fast your WordPress site loads.\n        The WP Engine speed testing tool asks for only an email address in exchange for a detailed report about your site\u2019s speed.\n        It also gives you the option to opt in for a free mini-course about improving the speed of your blog.\n        Once they have a user\u2019s email, they send them tips about improving their site speed and end with a sales pitch, as described in the email marketing chapter.\n\nValue of Engineering as Marketing  The case for spending engineering resources on marketing becomes much stronger when you think about the resulting tools as assets. These tools have the potential to become a continual source of leads that make up the majority of your traction. Tactics for Engineering as Marketing (from Traction by Weinberg and Mares) Annual Promotions  One way to boost your efforts in this traction channel is to take advantage of cyclical behavior.\n\n    Example: Code Year addressed that issue of the cyclical behavior of people annually wanting to learn more about coding. So they asked users to enter their email address to receive a free lesson about programming each week during 2012. Over 450,000 individuals signed up on CodeYear.com, nearly doubling Codecademy\u2019s userbase at the time.\n\nMicro-Sites  One tactic to really maximize impact is to put your tools on their own website. This simple technique does two things. First, it makes them much easier to share. Second, you can do well with SEO by picking a name that people search often so your tool is more naturally discoverable\n\n    Example Weinberg of DuckDuckG0 built a micro-site, DontTrack.us, which showed how Google tracks your searches and why that can harm you. The site raised awareness about these practices and spread virally. At the same time, readers learned that his main site DuckDuckGo.com does not track users or store their personal information. This provided great marketing exposure.\n\nWidgets  How many times have you seen Facebook, Twitter and other sharing buttons on a site? For each of those widgets (e.g. Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google +, and Twitter buttons), a company used engineering resources to create a marketing tool that was embeddable on sites. These widgets drive engagement, traffic and traction for these social platforms and the sites that use these tools.\n\n    Example: Chris Fralic (former head of business development at Delicious and Half.com) tells us that creating a Delicious bookmark widget more than tripled the adoption of their social bookmarking product.\n\nConclusion  Zack Linford, the founder of Conversion Voodoo, tells about how building tools can help with PR and SEO, while also nailing down the core value proposition for your product.\n\n    \u201cBuilding noteworthy tools that your target audience finds useful is a solid way to gain traction that also pays dividends down the road by helping build your SEO. A simple roadmap to executing this technical strategy includes: Providing something of true value for free, with no strings attached. Making that offering extremely relevant to your core business. Demonstrating that value as quickly as possible.\u201d\n ","topic":"branding, marketing, company growth, people management, traction channel, product growth, engineering, product discovery"},{"title":"The Core Tenets of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory","url":"https:\/\/jobs-to-be-done.com\/the-5-tenets-of-jobs-to-be-done-theory-ba58c3a093c1","body":"The Core Tenets of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory - Jobs-to-be-Done + Outcome-Driven Innovation Sign in Get started History Frameworks Templates Podcasts Case Studies Leadership Fallacies The Core Tenets of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory With decades of scrutiny in both academic and practitioner settings, these core tenets of Jobs Theory have emerged as the building blocks of predictable growth. Tony Ulwick Follow Nov 28, 2017     \u00b7       12    min read Science is about process: observing, making inferences about those observations, and then performing tests to see if the inferences are indeed true. Toward that end, science employs a particular vocabulary for describing how ideas are proposed, tested, and supported or disproven. And that\u2019s where we see the difference between a  hypothesis  and a  theory. In scientific reasoning, a hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done. A theory, on the other hand, is supported by evidence: it\u2019s a set of principles or tenets formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. The Hypothesis When IBM announced the PCjr in 1983, it was immediately declared a flop in the press \u2014 and as it turned out, they were right. As a humbled engineer on the IBM product team, I wondered how they were able to quickly and accurately predict the product would fail. I wondered what metrics they used to judge the value of IBM\u2019s new home computer and how they knew they were the right metrics. Months after contemplating the PCjr debacle, I constructed this hypothesis: It seemed to me that if a product team could know what metrics its customers were going to use to judge its new offering well in advance of product development, it could design the product to address those metrics and predictably deliver a winning solution. Proving this hypothesis raised a number of challenging questions: What metrics should be captured, and from whom? How do we make sure the metrics remain valid\/stable throughout a multi-year development cycle? Do we need to prioritize the metrics? Will all customers agree on the priority of the metrics, and if not, how will that be reconciled? Solving these challenges led to the creation of  Outcome-Driven Innovation\u00ae  (ODI), a strategy and innovation process that was first used outside of IBM in 1991 to help Cordis Corporation introduce a new line of angioplasty balloons. This led to a dramatic increase in market share (from about 1% to over 20%) and was the first of many successes. In 1999, I introduced ODI to Clayton Christensen (see  here ) as a possible solution to \u201cthe innovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d. He went on to popularize the underlying ODI theory in his best seller,  The Innovator\u2019s Solution,  labeling it \u201cjobs-to-be-done theory\u201d.   Since that time, we have independently worked to advance the theory\u2014 Clay through the lens of a well-respected Harvard Business School professor, and I through the lens of a practitioner. Jobs-to-be-Done Theory A  theory   is a set of tenets that has been formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. Jobs-to-be-Done Theory is comprised of a group of principles or tenets that explain how to make marketing more effective and innovation more predictable by focusing on the customer\u2019s job-to-be-done. Christensen and I, based on what we have published, agree on 6 of the 9 tenets (below) that form the foundation for Jobs-to-be-Done Theory. Our opinions differ slightly on tenet 5 as I will explain, and it is unknown to me whether or not Christensen would support tenets 7, 8 and 9, as they have not appeared in his writings. The core principles and tenets behind  Jobs-to-be-Done Theory  detail a sound and proven theory because they are based on evidence, verification, and repeated testing by the Strategyn team over a 26-year period. Using ODI, the theory was applied over 1000 times in applications such as: (i) product, software, service and operational innovation, (ii) product improvement and new product creation, (iii) business-to-business and business-to-consumer applications, and (iv) in over 30 industry verticals. Consequently, when companies apply Jobs Theory to better inform their strategy, marketing, innovation, development and M&A initiatives, they can confidently use these 9  Jobs-to-be-Done Theory tenets  as the building blocks for predictable growth: People buy products and services to get a \u201cjob\u201d done. Jobs are functional, with emotional and social components. A Job-to-be-Done is stable over time. A Job-to-be-Done is solution agnostic. Success comes from making the \u201cjob\u201d, rather than the product or the customer, the unit of analysis. A deep understanding of the customer\u2019s \u201cjob\u201d makes marketing more effective and innovation far more predictable. People want products and services that will help them get a job done better and\/or more cheaply People seek out products and services that enable them to get the entire job done on a single platform Innovation becomes predictable when \u201cneeds\u201d are defined as the metrics customers use to measure success when getting the job done The implications of each of these tenets on a company\u2019s efforts to create and market breakthrough products and services are far-reaching. Each of these tenets brings new insights into a company\u2019s business practices. (Also see,  What Is Jobs-to-be-Done ). Tenet 1: People buy products and services to get a \u201cjob\u201d done People have underlying problems they are trying to resolve. They have goals they are trying to achieve and tasks and activities they are trying to complete. They may be faced with situations they are trying to avoid. In each of these cases, people often turn to products and services to help them get a \u201cjob\u201d done. A \u201cjob\u201d is not a description of what the customer is doing, the solution they are using, or the steps they are taking to get a job done. Rather, the \u201cjob\u201d statement embodies what the customer is ultimately trying to accomplish. The way we (the team at Strategyn and I) put this tenet of the theory into practice is to define the customer and the job as a market: a group of people and the functional job they are trying to get done. For example, parents (a group of people) who are trying to \u201cpass on life lessons to children\u201d (the functional job-to-be-done) constitute a market. Surgeons (a group of people) who are trying to \u201crepair a torn rotator cuff\u201d (the functional job-to-be-done) constitute a market. When a company defines a market in this manner, it clarifies its target customer and the job it is going to help the customer accomplish with a product or service offering it creates. Tenet 2: Jobs are functional with emotional and social components As a customer uses a product to get a functional job done, they often want to feel a certain way and be perceived in a certain light by their peers and\/or friends and others. The way they want to feel and be perceived constitutes their emotional and social jobs-to-be-done. For example, when parents are trying to pass on life lessons to children (the functional job-to-be-done), they may also want to feel like they are contributing to the advancement of society and\/or want to be perceived as good parents by their peers. These are the emotional and social components they attach to the functional job, respectively. Understanding the emotional and social components of the functional job brings companies rich insights that can lead to the creation of a value proposition that resonates with customers at both a functional and emotional level. The way we put this tenet into practice is to first work with customers to define the market, and then work with them to define the emotional and social jobs associated with the functional job-to-be-done. When conducting qualitative research with a cross-section of job executors, it is common for people to express 20 to 30 emotional and social jobs. The job statements can be captured, quantified and used to inform a variety of marketing and development decisions. Tenet 3: A Job-to-be-Done is stable over time A functional job-to-be-done is often a job that customers have been trying to accomplish for years, decades and in some cases even centuries. Parents, for example, have been trying to pass on life lessons to children since the beginning of humanity. A functional job is stable over time. What changes over time are the products and services that companies offer to help get the job done better. Because the job-to-be-done is stable over time, it is an attractive focal point around which to create customer value. It provides a stable target for market insights, strategy formulation, innovation, R&D and M&A investment, and growth. It also offers insights that can help prevent disruption. In practice, we leverage this tenet by recognizing that a company\u2019s short- and long-term strategy should never change: the strategy should always be to help customers get the entire job done better and more cheaply on a single product platform. This is the long-term strategy that Amazon has pursued since its inception. A stable target and a stable vision bring focus and purpose to an organization. Tenet 4: A Job-to-be-Done is solution agnostic The core functional job is solution agnostic \u2014 independent of any solutions or technologies. This tenet is vital to the theory\u2019s claims of success for breakthrough innovation. Innovation isn\u2019t about \u201ca faster horse,\u201d rather it is about getting a job done better. A \u201chorse\u201d is a solution to get a job done. The job (transporting yourself from point A to point B) must be defined independent of the solution (the horse) so altogether new, breakthrough solutions can be conceptualized (e.g., the automobile). Customers don\u2019t know what solutions will get a job done best. So why ask them? Customers couldn\u2019t envision the automobile or the microwave or the smartphone. They are not experts at product definition and design; they are not materials experts and scientists \u2014 so asking them what solutions they want is a failed approach to innovation. However, customers do know what job they are trying to get done, independent of the solution they are using or what alternative solutions are possible. Defining the job-to-be-done independent of solutions opens the door to breakthrough thinking. In addition, when a job is defined in this manner, it enables a company to view its competition through a new lens. Instead of competition including only products of a similar nature, competition can (and should) be viewed as any product or home-grown solution that is being, or can be, used to get the job done. Viewing competition through this lens can help a company avoid disruption through technological advancement. Tenet 5: Success comes from making the \u201cjob\u201d the unit of analysis Making the job-to-be-done the unit of analysis means it is the job \u2014 not the product, the customer, the circumstance, or customer demographics \u2014 that is studied, dissected and understood at a granular level of detail. Note:  Christensen\u2019s view on this tenet differs from ours. In addition to saying the \u201cjob\u201d is the unit of analysis, Christensen sometimes says the \u201ccircumstance\u201d is the unit of analysis \u2014 but he defines the circumstance to be inclusive of the functional, emotional and social jobs the customer is trying to get done. When we analyze the job-to-be-done, we begin by creating a job map. A job map is different than a process map or a customer journey map in that it describes, step by step, just what the customer is  trying  to get done (a needs perspective), not what the customer is doing (a solution perspective). To understand the job at a granular level we then define customer \u201cneeds\u201d as the metrics customers use to measure success when getting each step in the job done. We call these statements the customer\u2019s desired outcomes. The desired outcome statement, which we created over 25 years ago, is a specially constructed need statement that has a unique set of characteristics: desired outcomes are devoid of solutions, stable over time, measureable, controllable, structured for reliable prioritization in a quantitative customer survey, and  tied to the underlying job the customer is trying to get done  (see  Inventing the Perfect Customer Need Statement  and  Giving Customers a Fair Hearing ). Desired outcome statements describe customer metrics for getting the job done faster, more predictably (without variation) and with high throughput\/output. They form the foundation for the Outcome-Driven Innovation process and have many downstream applications. Trained ODI practitioners capture desired outcome statements in qualitative customer interviews and construct them without the customers\u2019 help. With the customer\u2019s desired outcome statements in-hand, companies are able to: (1) identify where and why customers are struggling to get the job done, (2) brainstorm ideas for new offerings, and (3) determine in advance of development which ideas will help customers get the job done best. Tenet 6: A deep understanding of the customer\u2019s job makes marketing more effective and innovation far more predictable In Clayton Christensen\u2019s latest book, Competing Against Luck, he says: \u201cInnovation becomes much more predictable \u2014 and far more profitable \u2014 when it begins with a deep understanding of the job the customer is trying to get done.\u201d Here\u2019s why: a deep understanding of the customer\u2019s desired outcomes for a given job enables companies to know, often for the first time, all the customers needs. Companies are able to transition from a place where a cross-functional team can\u2019t agree on what a \u201cneed\u201d is to a place where they not only agree on what a need is, but they also agree on what all the customer\u2019s needs are (the 100+ desired outcomes tied to the job-to-be-done). This is truly transformational as most companies (and most VoC practitioners) don\u2019t even agree on what a need is ( learn more here ) and end up using customer inputs that derail the innovation process. The fundamentals of marketing and innovation are straight forward: if a team can agree on what a need is, what the customer\u2019s needs are and which are unmet, they are able to (1) better position and sell more of the company\u2019s existing products, (2) improve existing products and services, (3) create new products and services. Jobs-to-be-Done Theory makes this possible. In practice we leverage this tenet by conducting quantitative research that is specifically designed to reveal under- and overserved customer desired outcomes and segments of customers with different unmet outcomes. This unique research, which we have perfected over 2 decades, overcomes the issues associated with traditional market research methods (see  Reinventing Market Research To Put Jobs-to-be-Done Theory Into Practice ). Tenet 7: People want products and services that will help them get a job done better and\/or more cheaply We have learned that people aren\u2019t loyal to companies or brands. They are loyal to getting a job done better (faster, more predictably and with higher output\/throughput) and\/or more cheaply. They replace existing products and services with those that help them achieve these goals. We have learned that some people are willing to pay more to get a job done better, while others are willing to pay less to get a job done worse. Knowing what types of customers exist in your market (and in what proportions) forms the foundation for a new way to think about growth strategy. With a focus on this tenet, we have created the  Jobs-to-be-Done Growth Strategy Matrix  \u2014 a powerful framework that helps to explain the dynamics of disruptive innovation and 4 other growth strategies. A webinar detailing this tenet and the matrix can be found here: The Jobs-to-be-Done Growth Strategy Matrix Webinar Tenet 8: People seek out products and services that enable them to get the entire job done on a single platform We have discovered that many products and services available in the market only get part of a job done and that customers are left to cobble together solutions in order to get the entire job done. Customers don\u2019t want to cobble together the solution. They want it presented to them. This finding has important implications. First, your product strategy shouldn\u2019t be ever-changing. In fact it should never change. Your goal should always be to help your customers get their entire job done on a single platform. Nespresso is a great example. The company worked for years with a single strategy in mind: to enable customers get the job of \u201cpreparing a hot beverage for consumption\u201d done on a single platform. More importantly, products and services naturally (but slowly) evolve to help customers get the entire job done on a single platform. A company can accelerate this process once it knows what steps comprise the job. In this sense, a Job Map can be used as a blueprint that informs a company what product improvements to make and what M&A and R&D investments to make to create the ultimate solution \u2014 years before its competition does. Tenet 9: Innovation becomes predictable when \u201cneeds\u201d are defined as the metrics customers use to measure success when getting the job done In order to determine if a new product idea\/concept will be able to get a job done better and\/or more cheaply, it must be possible to evaluate competing ideas against a stable set of metrics.  The metrics we use to conduct this evaluation are the customer\u2019s desired outcomes. Since the customer\u2019s job-to-be-done is stable over time, the customer\u2019s needs, when defined as desired outcome statements, are also stable over time. (See the Medium article,  Define Customer Needs As Constants ). With a stable set of \u201cneeds\u201d in hand, a company is able to: Quantify which needs are underserved and overserved. Discover segments of customers with different unmet needs. Use the metrics as a baseline against which they can test product ideas and concepts  before they are developed . Knowing which product or service concept will get the job done best early in the product planning stages ( prior to development),  is the key to predictable and profitable innovation.  \n ","topic":"branding, core tenets, product growth, company growth, marketing, growth marketing"},{"title":"The 7 (Pitching) Habits of Highly Effective Founders","url":"http:\/\/500.co\/7-pitching-habits-for-founders","body":"Finding the right investors is like dating \u2014 you need to kiss many frogs before you find a prince.\n\nToday, I\u2019m going to share seven ways fundraising founders can kiss fewer frogs and find more princes \nHabit 1 \u2013 Pitch to the Right Investors\n\nNot all investors are created equal.\n\nSome investors only invest in seed investments. Some investors only focus on Series A.\n\nBefore approaching any investors, do your homework and make sure you go after the right target audience.\n\nYou can segment them with these 5 characteristics:\n\nInvestment stages (seed, Series A, B, C, etc.) Check size (e.g. $50,000 \u2013 $150,000) How many deals has he or she done in past 6 months (you will find out how active this investor is) Industry focus (if any) Geography (most Silicon Valley investors would not invest outside of the Bay Area)\n\nIt is certainly quite rare to turn someone who isn\u2019t already engaged in your industry or geography into someone who suddenly cares about what you\u2019ve created.\n\nHabit 2 \u2013 Pitch with Purpose\n\nMy colleague Andrea Barrica introduced me to this quote by Maya Angelou:\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.\u201d\n\nWhat do you want your potential investors walk away with after your pitch?\n\nKeep that in mind and you very likely will change the story you tell and the way you tell it.\n\nHabit 3 \u2013 Curate Your Story\n\nIt\u2019s harder to tell a short than a long story.\n\nIt\u2019s easy to tell your investors everything that\u2019s happened in your life since you were 3, but whittling that down to what they really need to know is much harder \u2014 and much more compelling.\n\nDon\u2019t be lazy, or self-indulgent. Put in the extra 20% effort and curate only relevant and story that make you uniquely over qualify for your startup.\n\nHabit 4 \u2013 Pitch like a Professional\n\nDuring your pitch, you need to convey two things: 1) why you are the most qualified person and 2) why investors should give you money now.\n\nBe sure to cover the following if you are ready, but always start with traction & demo if you have it.\n\nHere are 11 things to cover:\n\nTraction, traction, traction Revenue User download User engagement Major signed partnerships Product demo (If you have it. You should have it.) Market size & target market Pain point Product Team (team, investors, advisors) Technology Business model Monetization model Competition Market Trends\n\nHabit 5 \u2013 Understand the Big Picture\n\nMost founders I met are in love with their product.\n\nUnfortunately, as an investor, I don\u2019t just want a person who is in love with himself or herself or their product.\n\nI want a founder who truly understands how to create a business. You should be the one who can tell me everything about your competitors, market, legal environment or policy changes.\n\nHabit 6 \u2013 24 Hour Follow Up\n\nAfter your first call or in person meeting, be sure to follow up within 24 hours and make sure to cover the following in your follow up email:\n\nThank them!\n\nYour deck\n\nCurrent traction\n\nTeam\n\nAction items\n\nYour ask\n\nAsk for follow up meetings or phone calls\n\nHabit 7 \u2013 Show Passion & Honesty\n\nBuilding a startup is really, really hard work.\n\nAs an investor, I want to find someone who won\u2019t back down when things get (even) harder, and is willing to do whatever it takes to make things happen.\n\nA huge part of working hard \u2014 and knowing where to work harder \u2014 is knowing what isn\u2019t working (yet).\n\nShow your true self, and be honest. It\u2019s ok to say, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d You don\u2019t need to have all the answers, but you do need to have the strength of character and work ethic to figure it out.","topic":"company growth, branding, pitching, highly effective founders, product growth, company culture, people management"},{"title":"The Behavioural Roadmap for Startups","url":"http:\/\/seedcamp.com\/resources\/the-behavioural-roadmap-for-startups\/","body":"  The Behavioural Roadmap for Startups \n \n  \n The Challenge \n Now that you\u2019re clear on your  Vision Roadmap , the next step is to figure out what to actually build.\u00a0A roadmap\u2019s job is to tell you where you\u2019re going, and how to get there. With the Vision Roadmap we have a clearer idea of where we\u2019re going, but that\u2019s too high-level to let us know what to work on tomorrow. \n Normally roadmaps look something like the below, that is, a bunch of features listed down the left, with delivery timelines Gantt-charted out. These types of Roadmaps say what a company is doing, and what a user is getting, but thats where the problems begin; \n \n Its out of date as soon as you build it \n It frustrates Engineering (and others) as too rigid \n It doesn\u2019t focus on what the Customer wants (which is what matters) \n \n I believe a roadmap can be built around what the Customer wants and needs.\u00a0Lets go back to our example of Hogwash which started in the Vision Roadmap piece. One of the initial Propositions we planned to achieve was as follows; \n \u00a0\u201c Hogwash is a convenient way to get the occasional last-minute sparkle on my car\u201d Launch Proposition for the Busy Professional \n Now our Product Funnel for a typical ecommerce solution (like Hogwash) \u00a0might look something like this. These are all key steps we observer on-site, can measure, and reflect our KPIs directly. \n Unfortunately this misses out on a lot of things that the Customer is going through, many of which you can use. \n Here\u2019s an example of a full Customer Journey for the same situation. Each step is a \u201cBehaviour\u201d that the customer undertakes in their journey. It starts\u00a0well before they come to the site, and it ends only after they have demonstrated the behaviour that fulfills the company\u2019s goals. In this case, repeat-purchase. \n You\u2019ll see that all the key Funnel steps are in there, but there are also steps in there before, after, and between them. The better insight you have into your customer journey, the quicker you can make key decisions like product changes or pivots, and the more advantage you have over your competitors. \n Have a look at the step\u00a0between \u2018schedule appointment\u2019 and \u2018pay\u2019, a place where there\u2019s a particularly steep funnel drop.\u00a0The step \u2018talk to partner\u2019 is just as important, if not moreso, to the Customer, and introduces an additional persona into the equation. Understanding this creates new opportunities in Product. You might address it directly, \u201cEnter your partner\u2019s email here and we\u2019ll send them a summary\u201d, to which you could solicit the partner\u2019s feedback (eg scale of 1-10). Great new data and insight opportunity from simply recognising that this step exists! (Hogwash isn\u2019t real, of course, but the example is real, from another startup) \n Behaviours are \u201cActions\u201d performed for \u201cReasons\u201d with expected \u201cRewards\u201d. I won\u2019t go deeper on these\u00a0in this post, but the more clearly you identify and validate these with your customers, the greater opportunity you have to compare, influence, and supplant them with the behaviours\u00a0you want. The work of  Nir Eyal ,  Nathalie Nahai , and  Dan Ariely \u00a0might\u00a0be really helpful to look at. \n Now that you\u2019ve got your Customer Behaviours understood, pick the two you want to focus on for the next 90 days. This is your Behavioural Roadmap. Short, sweet, and customer-focused. All those other ideas can be saved for posterity in The Opportunity Cloud, you may get around to them later. Simple, right? I know its not pretty like the ones at the top, but hopefully you\u2019ll find its a lot more relevant. Features don\u2019t drive KPIs, Behaviours do. \n Now comes the hardest part\u2026 coming up with great ideas! There\u2019s no science to creating delight, but make sure you have your best people in the room. By focusing on Behaviours (action + motivation + reward), you have a better chance of coming up with a great idea than if you\u2019re just focusing on features. IDEO\u2019s work in the \u201c How might we\u2026 \u201d practice is worth looking at.\u00a0The following three-step process (great article  about Pandora here ) takes you from which Behaviour you want to what Minimum Viable Product tests you want to undertake. \n \n By focusing in on the entire Customer Journey, and understanding the underlying motivations and rewards for the user, you\u2019ve now developed\u00a0some serious competitive advantage. Your team is far more empowered to develop great ideas with you, and there is a much stronger sense of purpose and direction to all those late nights you\u2019ll be spending delivering your world-changing idea. \n\n \n \n TAGS \n behaviour \n product \n roadmap \n","topic":"people management, company growth, marketing, growth marketing, branding, startups, behavioural roadmap"},{"title":"Five Smart Exit Strategies","url":"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/startup-exits-should-be-positive-and-planned-early-2011-1","body":"\n \n \n\n\nStartup exits should be positive and planned early.\n\nHighway Exit\nUPTRAIN via Flickr\nIf you startup is your dream, why would you want to think about an exit? It\u2019s going to be so successful and so much fun that you don\u2019t need to think about what comes after. Wrong. There are two very real and practical reasons why you need to plan an exit:\n\n    Outside investors want to collect their return. Remember that equity investments are not like loans with interest. The investor sees no return until he cashes out, or the company is sold. Even three years is a long time to wait for any pay check.\n\n    Entrepreneurs love the art of the start. Assuming your startup takes off, you will probably find that the fun is gone by the time you reach 50 employees, or a few million in revenue. The job changes from creating a \u201cwork of art\u201d to operating a \u201ccookie cutter.\u201d\n\nIn three to five years, you will be anxious to start a new entity, with new ideas and spinoffs that have built up in your mind, and certainty that you can avoid all those potholes you hit the first time around. If your startup was less than a success, you\u2019ll definitely want to erase it from memory.\n\nSo here are the most common exit strategies and considerations these days for planning purposes:\n\n    Merger & Acquisition (M&A). This normally means merging with a similar company, or being bought by a larger company. This is a win-win situation when bordering companies have complementary skills, and can save resources by combining. For bigger companies, it\u2019s a more efficient and quicker way to grow their revenue than creating new products organically.\n\n    Initial Public Offering (IPO). This used to be the preferred mode, and the quick way to riches. But since the Internet bubble burst in the year 2000, the IPO rate has declined every year until 2010, and is now at about 15%. I don\u2019t recommend this approach to startups these days. Shareholders are demanding, and liability concerns are high.\n\n    Sell to a friendly individual. This is not an M&A, since it is not combining two entities into one. Yet it\u2019s a great way to \u201ccash out\u201d so you can pay investors, pay yourself, take some time off, and get ready to have some fun all over again. The ideal buyer is someone who has more skills and interest on the operational side of the business, and can scale it.\n\n    Make it your cash cow. If you are in a stable, secure marketplace, with a business that has a steady revenue stream, pay off investors, find someone you trust to run it for you, while you use the remaining cash to develop your next great idea. You retain ownership and enjoy the annuity. But cash cows seem to need constant feeding to stay healthy.\n\n    Liquidation and close. Even lifetime entrepreneurs can decide that enough is enough. One often-overlooked exit strategy is simply to shutdown, close the business doors, and liquidate. There may be a natural catastrophe, like 9\/11, or the market you counted on could implode. Make rules up front so you don\u2019t end up going down with the ship.\n\nTo some, an exit strategy sounds negative. Actually, the best reason for an exit strategy is to plan how to optimize a good situation, rather than get out of a bad one. This allows you to run your startup and focus efforts on things that make it more appealing and compelling to the short list of acquirers or buyers you target.\n\nThe type of business you choose should depend on your goals, and the way you grow it should be aligned with your exit strategy. Don\u2019t wait till you are in trouble to think about an exit, rather think of it as a succession plan, or a successful transition.\n\n \n ","topic":"people management, growth marketing, smart exit strategies, product growth, branding, company growth"},{"title":"How Roadmap Week helps us turn big ideas into reality","url":"https:\/\/wavelength.asana.com\/work-plans-high-level-objectives-roadmap-week\/#close","body":"When Asana was a young company of just a few people, we experienced a phenomenon that\u2019s common with early-stage startups. Just about every day, someone would come to work with a new idea. (A good idea, no less!) Most of the time, we said, \u201clet\u2019s do it.\u201d Until we got distracted by the next new idea.\n\nOn the one hand, it\u2019s hard to make meaningful progress when you\u2019re constantly open to changing strategy. On the other hand, rejecting all new ideas is the opposite of fostering the kind of organization that can learn, adapt, and react quickly.\n\nThat\u2019s why setting aside time to make meaningful, structured work plans\u2014and then carrying out those plans\u2014is so important. At Asana, we consider the planning process to be just as critical as the execution process. You wouldn\u2019t run a race without a route. Similarly, it\u2019s difficult to run an organization without mapping out clear goals.\n\nSketching out a roadmap\n\nThere are many ways to do planning. After years of prototyping our own systems, we\u2019ve landed on a model that works well for us, and that may work well for you too. We structure our calendar into ~4-month periods we call \u201cepisodes.\u201d During each episode, we stick to our plans. As new ideas come up, we write them down and table them for later.\n\nIn between each episode, we hold a weeklong event called Roadmap Week. Roadmap Week is when we reflect, integrate new ideas, and plan just how we\u2019ll carry them out. The whole company comes together for both high-level reflection on how the last episode went, and high-level planning on how the next episode should go. It\u2019s a time to dream big and review all those ideas we wrote down over the past few months. Large strategic pivots are now on the table.\n\nThe week is driven forward by committees that facilitate a series of meetings focusing on everything from deployment and scalability to metrics and design. We take an honest look back on our successes and failures, discuss our goals and deliverables, map out the next episode\u2019s key milestones, and envision new ways to experiment. Because we consolidate many meetings into that week, we have fewer meetings throughout the rest of the year.\n\nSometimes people say, \u201cI don\u2019t have time to do these kinds of planning exercises.\u201d We\u2019ve found that we don\u2019t have time not to do these exercises. Without a clear plan, you might find yourself running a race without a route\u2014perhaps quickly, but in the wrong direction.\n\nUltimately, organizations exist to accomplish goals. Succeeding at those goals comes down to being clear about exactly what you\u2019re trying to accomplish (\u201cclarity of purpose\u201d) and how you\u2019re going to get there (\u201cclarity of plan\u201d).\n\nHere are some of the major ways we\u2019ve benefited from implementing Roadmap Weeks.\n\nLearn from your failures.\n\nWe look carefully at our ideas and goals set forth during our previous Roadmap Week, and inevitably, many of them won\u2019t have come to fruition. That\u2019s okay: You can often learn more from failures than successes. Deconstructing where, and why, something went wrong gives you the chance to both identify warning signs and avoid similar courses of action in the future.\n\nBut also from your successes.\n\nOf course, it\u2019s just as important to recognize and celebrate our achievements so we can replicate them elsewhere. Looking at how ideas were implemented successfully means we can use similar approaches that will lead to more successes.\n\nLean into big, bold ideas.\n\nRoadmap Week is our chance to look at all of the big ideas that came up during an episode, and evaluate them objectively. In the course of an episode, I personally will generate five new big directions we could take the product; they all look great when they\u2019re shiny and new, but by the time Roadmap Week rolls around, only one of them will seem actually worth pursuing. Once we identify the ideas that have staying power, we sketch out a realistic work plan, and put individual next steps in Asana.\n\nCollaborate with teams that otherwise wouldn\u2019t work together.\n\nRoadmap Week is an opportunity to bring together individuals from teams that don\u2019t normally interact day-to-day. It\u2019s a chance to hear from people from different parts of the company, who might have ideas about areas they don\u2019t normally work on. For example, often a product team will present an idea for a feature, and someone from our customer success team will be able to correct their assumptions about what customers actually want from the feature.\n\nAnticipate problems.\n\nIn mapping out how to execute a goal, it\u2019s worth brainstorming all the potential roadblocks that could impede you. These obstacles can often be gleaned from past failures. Other times, they\u2019re determined by vividly imagining just how certain scenarios will play out. \u201cPre-morteming\u201d is surprisingly effective: Pretend it\u2019s four months from now, and the project has failed; what went wrong?\n\nCapitalize on collective energy.\n\nRoadmap Week is not only a reset; it\u2019s a time for teammates to come together, celebrate all you\u2019ve accomplished, and enjoy the freedom of open-ended creative exploration. Ideas produce inspiration, and inspiration produces dopamine ;-). It\u2019s a pleasure to harness the collective passion and excitement that comes out of dreaming big, together.\n\nIf you\u2019re interested in building a framework to create your own Roadmap Week, read our guide to forming successful committees that host productive planning meetings.","topic":"turn big ideas, marketing, roadmap week helps, product growth, company growth, growth marketing, reality, branding"},{"title":"4 Diverse Work Styles and 3 Ways to Manage Them","url":"https:\/\/www.tlnt.com\/4-diverse-work-styles-and-3-ways-to-manage-them\/","body":"\n4 Diverse Work Styles and 3 Ways to Manage Them\n\nBy Kim ChristfortOctober 31, 2017\nTweet\nShare\nShare\n\nAre you satisfied with the performance of your team? Are they producing the right results individually and collectively?\n\nEvery day, I interact with senior executives struggling to tackle a variety of business challenges, dissatisfied with their own answers to these fundamental questions. I\u2019ve noticed that as diverse as their challenges are, they often share a common problem: Ineffective team dynamics leading to suboptimal engagement, productivity and performance. And typically, at the heart of this problem lies a lack of understanding about diverse working styles.\n\nOur team at Deloitte has spent years researching work styles to shed light on how individuals prefer to make decisions, solve problems, work with others and even respond to stress. As a result, we developed the Business Chemistry system to help people identify with, and recognize, four core patterns of behaviors:\n\n    Pioneers, who seek possibilities and spark energy and imagination;\n    Drivers, who like a challenge and generate momentum;\n    Guardians, who crave stability and bring order and rigor; and\n    Integrators, who desire connection and bring teams together.\n\nWhen managers and co-workers identify their own Business Chemistry styles and observe the styles of others, it can help flag potential conflicts between individuals and within teams and may inform strategies to more effectively adapt and manage these styles day to day.\n\nHere are just three ways to help manage diverse work styles in the office based on our findings:\n1. Embrace the Power In Productive Friction\n\nConflicting work styles are common in the workplace. While you may prefer a certain way of solving problems or coping with pressures at work, your coworker \u2013 or manager \u2013 is likely to have a different approach. That\u2019s no surprise; whatever your primary style is, the math says that the majority of the population will likely have one that\u2019s different from yours. This can be most obvious, and painful, when a person sits at the other end of the behavioral spectrum from where you are; indeed 40% of people say their opposites are the most challenging group to work with.\n\nDon\u2019t be discouraged by the friction. Opposite styles can complement each other and result in a more balanced, higher performing team. Putting the time and effort into learning how to work with teammates with opposing work styles and preferences can create a resilient partnership in the long run.\n2. Make Room for All Voices\n\nIt\u2019s common for teams to be dominated by a particular work style, which limits the value of having diverse perspectives. Leadership roles are often occupied by styles that are more assertive and vocal (the Pioneers and Drivers who make up 65% of today\u2019s C-suite, according to our research). Unfortunately, once ideas and decisions start \u201ccascading\u201d in one direction, it can be difficult to disrupt momentum and open the process to others. Encouraging those least likely to speak up to assert themselves and take leadership early on can give them a chance to influence the direction of the conversation before the avalanche carries everyone away.\n\nThe more introverted types on a team may be less quick to speak up and can inadvertently be left out unless a conscious effort is made to seek out their input. We often find that those who are the quietest can also be the most critical, creative thinkers. Building an environment that fosters a collaborative dynamic can go a long way in encouraging everyone to participate.\n3. Cultivate a New View Of Diversity\n\nThere is commonly a lot of discussion about the power of diversity in business today, but often times those discussions focus on gender, age, and other demographic designations. We suggest that working styles can provide an insightful, additional lens to this discussion. Teams can benefit from a balance of perspectives, and those without may be exposed to blind spots and limitations as a result.\n\nThese tips have been effective in my own working relationships. For example, Dr. Suzanne Vickberg, who leads research on my team, is a self-proclaimed Guardian. She likes organization and consistency and feels stressed when she needs to come up with an answer on the spot. I, on the other hand, love spontaneity and new challenges, but feel deflated by detailed processes. We\u2019ve learned how to work together effectively and play to one another\u2019s strengths \u2014 Suzanne knows that I am focusing on the big picture, and I trust that Suzanne has considered every detail. But beyond just valuing the complementary nature of our strengths together, we have also put in place structures to help ensure Suzanne can fully contribute.\n\nOur team is fast-paced and dynamic. Taking into account Suzanne\u2019s work preferences, I carved out a role for her that is buffered from that chaos \u2013 and she has responded with amazing productivity. In our meetings, we create and stick to clear agendas, with pre-reads that allow her to come ready to share her perspectives versus feeling forced to make things up on the fly, but with room for me to explore a few tangents. This combination of strategies has resulted in an environment that suits each of us individually, while letting us work together to create common success.\n ","topic":"growth marketing, product growth, company growth, branding, marketing"},{"title":" Sprint: Monday","url":"https:\/\/library.gv.com\/sprint-week-monday-4bf0606b5c81","body":"Sprint: Monday. On Monday, you\u2019ll kick off your sprint by sharing knowledge, understanding the problem, and choosing a target for the week\u2019s efforts. With only five days, it might seem crazy to spend an entire day talking and writing on whiteboards. But if you don\u2019t first slow down, share what you know, and prioritize, you could end up wasting time and effort on the wrong part of the problem. Monday\u2019s structured discussions create a path for the sprint week. In the morning, you\u2019ll  start at the end  and agree to a long-term goal. Next, you\u2019ll make a  map  of the challenge. In the afternoon, you\u2019ll  ask the experts  at your company to share what they know. Finally, you\u2019ll pick a  target:  an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week. Of course,  the  Sprint  book is the most complete guide  to Monday\u2019s exercises and the rest of the week. But we\u2019ve included the complete Monday checklist and some tips for the facilitator below. We\u2019ve also got a video where Jake and I explain what happens on Monday and show some examples. If you have questions, check out the  live chat Q&A  we hosted during  Sprint Week . If you don\u2019t find answers, feel free to tweet us at  @GVdesignteam . And finally, here is that checklist we promised! Checklist for Monday Note: Schedules are approximate. Don\u2019t worry if you run behind. Remember to take breaks every sixty to ninety minutes (or around 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. each day). 10 a.m. \u274f  Write this checklist on a whiteboard.  When you\u2019re done, check off this first item. See how easy that was? Keep checking off items throughout the day. \u274f  Introductions.  If some people don\u2019t know one another, do a round of introductions. Point out the Facilitator and the Decider and describe their roles. \u274f  Explain the sprint.  Introduce the five-day sprint process (you can use the  slide deck on thesprintbook.com ). Run through this checklist and briefly describe each activity. 10:15-ish \u274f  Set a long-term goal.  Get optimistic. Ask: Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be in six months, a year, or even five years from now? Write the long-term goal on a whiteboard. (Read more on page 55 in  Sprint .) \u274f  List sprint questions.  Get pessimistic. Ask: How could we fail? Turn these fears into questions you could answer this week. List them on a whiteboard. (p. 57) 11:30-ish \u274f  Make a map.  List customers and key players on the left. Draw the ending, with your completed goal, on the right. Finally, make a flowchart in between showing how customers interact with your product. Keep it simple: five to fifteen steps. (p. 65) 1 p.m. \u274f  Lunch break.  Eat together if you can (it\u2019s fun). Remind your team to choose a light lunch to maintain energy in the afternoon. There are snacks if you get hungry later. 2 p.m. \u274f  Ask the Experts.  Interview experts on your sprint team and guests from the outside. Aim for fifteen to thirty minutes each. Ask about the vision, customer research, how things work, and previous efforts. Pretend you\u2019re a reporter. Update long-term goal, questions, and map as you go. (p. 71) \u274f  Explain  How Might We  notes.  Distribute whiteboard markers and sticky notes. Reframe problems as opportunities. Start with the letters \u201cHMW\u201d on the top left corner. Write one idea per sticky note. Make a stack as you go. (p. 73) 4-ish \u274f  Organize  How Might We  notes.  Stick all the  How Might We  notes onto a wall in any order. Move similar ideas next to one another. Label themes as they emerge. Don\u2019t perfect it. Stop after about ten minutes. (p. 79) \u274f  Vote on  How Might We  notes.  Each person has two votes, can vote on his or her own notes, or even the same note twice. Move winners onto your map. (p. 80) 4:30-ish \u274f  Pick a target.  Circle your most important customer and one target moment on the map. The team can weigh in, but the Decider makes the call. (p. 87) Key Ideas Start at the end.  Start by imagining your end result and risks along the way. Then work backward to figure out the steps you\u2019ll need to get there. (p. 53) Nobody knows everything.  Not even the Decider. All the knowledge on your sprint team is locked away in each person\u2019s brain. To solve your big problem, you\u2019ll need to unlock that knowledge and build a shared understanding. (p. 70) Reframe problems as opportunities.  Listen carefully for problems and use \u201cHow might we\u201d phrasing to turn them into opportunities. (p. 74) Facilitator Tips Ask for permission.  Ask the group for permission to facilitate. Explain that you\u2019ll try to keep things moving, which will make the sprint more efficient for everyone. (p. 89) ABC: Always be capturing.  Synthesize the team\u2019s discussion into notes on the whiteboard. Improvise when needed. Keep asking, \u201cHow should I capture that?\u201d (p. 89) Ask obvious questions.  Pretend to be naive. Ask \u201cWhy?\u201d a lot. (p. 90) Take care of the humans.  Keep your team energized. Take breaks every sixty to ninety minutes. Remind people to snack and to eat a light lunch. (p. 90) Decide and move on.  Slow decisions sap energy and threaten the sprint timeline. If the group sinks into a long debate, ask the Decider to make a call. (p. 91) Sprint Series \n \n ","topic":"branding, product discovery, people management, product growth, company growth"},{"title":" 9 Qualities to Look for in a High-Performing Business Development Professional","url":"https:\/\/blog.hubspot.com\/agency\/9-qualities-every-business-development-professional-should-have","body":"The role of the agency business development executive has been called the \"most dangerous job in an agency,\" due to the short lifespan, stress, and confusion surrounding the responsibilities of the role.\n\nYet, it is one of the most important positions in the agency. The success of the business development person directly influences future growth and stability.\n\nFree Download: Sales Training & Onboarding Template\nThey get hired for having strong professional qualities -- leadership skills, organizational mindset, creative thinking -- that would make them competent candidates for managing the intense pressure. But having those skills is not all the role entails. Too often, agency leaders develop unrealistic expectations for the person taking on the duties, who may not have the qualities a good executive needs.\n\nAgency leaders want someone with an enviable Rolodex who can bring in client accounts without much effort, in addition to being able to write proposals, market the agency, prospect, manage accounts when necessary, and command the respect of the team. This unrealistic view of what the agency wants in a person and the type of people actually looking to work in a sales role for the agency sets up the relationship for failure.\n\nAccording to the Marketing Agency Growth Report 2018, 35% of agencies struggle to find employees who are the right fit for the position and 12% of agencies feel one of their biggest struggles is retaining employees. To prevent high turnover in the position and to better understand what really makes a successful business development professional, consider screening business developer professionals for these key business development skills:\nBusiness Development Skills\n\n    Understands People's Buying Patterns and Trends\n    Believes in Inbound Marketing\n    Asks Great Questions and Listens Intently\n    Sets Goals and Develops Action Plans\n    Is the Right Type of Salesperson for the Role\n    Possesses a High Curiosity Quotient\n    Ability to Build a Brand\n    Sets Realistic Expectations with Clients\n    In-Depth Knowledge of the Agency Business\n\n1. Understands People's Buying Patterns and Trends\n\nAs a marketer, you know the famous stat: Buyers complete up to 57% of decision-making process before they ever even contact a vendor. With the increasing amount of information available online -- either from a brand, its competitors, or its previous customers -- buyers are more educated than ever before.\n\nBut does your salesperson know and understand the implications of this? Once upon a time, the seller had control of the information. Now, they need to serve as an advisor who can personalize the solution to the specific buyer and her challenges.\n\nBusiness development professionals need to be able to be well-versed in strategies that will help them build trust with a buyer and move the person through the sales cycle through education and qualification.\n\nDavid C. Baker of ReCourses emphasizes that you need to hire someone who understands this consultative selling approach.\n\n\"Seldom do sales people with a successful background in transactional selling make the transition to consultative selling,\" he said. \"The process and selling points and presence are completely different. For example, a transactional seller will drive the process to close a sale even if profitability is sacrificed in order to accomplish that. A consultative seller is more patient and might close three to five new substantial clients every year. Their ego doesn't require constant stroking.\"\n2. Believes in Inbound Marketing\n\nMany agencies still rely on cold calling and emailing, referrals, and networking to generate quality leads. While these can be a valuable source of business development, the best sales reps understand the role of marketing in attracting, qualifying, and nurturing the very best prospects They buy into the idea of inbound marketing and understand that CMOs and executives aren't waiting around for an agency to approach them. They are in charge.\n\nMichael Gass, founder of Fuel Lines, frequently cites a stat from a study of CMOs that found that 80% of those surveyed found their vendors, not the other way around.\n\n\"The recession, the rise of social media and the rapid advance of technology have dramatically altered business development. The Mad Men rainmaker days are over,\" Gass said. \"So before hiring someone responsible for your agency's business development efforts, in addition to the questions regarding their traditional business development expertise, you should be asking what they really know about social media, content marketing, and how to generate inbound leads.\"\n\nYour business development manager should support and, in some cases, drive the marketing efforts of the agency, and they should place the same value on the leads they did not source themselves.\n3. Asks Great Questions and Listens Intently\n\n\"The most successful business development people are those that can ask great questions,\" said Dave Currie, president of The List. \"Through their professional curiosity they ask great questions and listen with intent toward identifying and truly understanding the issues, the impact of those issues to the prospect's organization in measurable terms, and the importance of solving that issue for the prospect now versus later.\"\n\nProspects are already educated about your agency, your services, and the competition, so the business development person needs to be able value to the conversation, not just restate what the potential client already knows.\n\nTo hire for this skill, Currie's team uses two objective measures in the interview stage, an Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and a Conversational Capacity test.\n4. Sets Goals and Develops Action Plans\n\nGood sales reps understanding that they need useful, meaningful goals and an established plan for reaching these goals. This helps with a few different problems business reps in agencies face. An established plan helps with clarity surrounding the person's role, responsibilities, and priorities. Without this, the rest of the team won't buy into or support a sales plan. For many people in an agency, sales is an unknown (and mistrusted) role, and if the new biz person can't drum up support and encouragement, they will struggle to feel a part of the team and find success in her role.\n\n\"Business development professionals don't always get the support they need, even with well-intentioned leadership, so the ideal business development professional has to \u2018drive the ship' regardless of what materials they have, without waiting or making excuses,\" said Lee McKnight of RSW\/US.\n\nBefore hiring a business development person, McKnight suggest that agency CEOs\/owners:\n\n    Set their own expectations: how much, realistically, can one individual can do and how much support will they need from leadership?\n    Consider the business development team structure: Will they be the only person driving business development? Or will you create a team around this person?\n    Review the person's previous responsibilities: Were they self-sufficient? What were they in charge of? Can they find leads, set initial meetings, and run pitches?\n\nThe business development professional should create an annual plan to establish business development needs aligned with finding new client growth. This will also help to prevent a common issue that causes the business development person to fail: Once sales start climbing, they are pulled into account management to handle the additional workload. The plan should reveal how important it is to make working on business development every single day -- not just when things are slow -- a priority, and it should align with hiring and capacity forecasts.\n5. Is the Right Type of Salesperson for the Role\n\n\"While sales and business development roles are both tied to generating revenue, they require paradoxically different skills,\" said Jody Sutter of The Sutter Company. \"These days, the director of business development describes a caretaker of the pitch process and requires strengths like acute attention to detail and strong project management skills. Good business development hires tend to be people-pleasers who get fulfillment from supporting a team so that it can perform at its best.\"\n\nThe other type is the sales-focused personality -- what Brent Hodgins, managing partner at Mirren, describes as the \"hunter\" role for proactive prospecting.\n\n\"The hunter is a more aggressive salesperson, focused on results (versus detail and process),\" Hodgins said. \"In fact, while sometimes appearing less organized on the surface, they can perform well at delivering new leads. However, someone focused on managing competitive reviews\/RFPs tends to be more detail oriented and buttoned down but finds little inspiration in the idea of picking up the phone to call on prospects. Often without even realizing it, \u2018pitch managers' actually resist prospecting. This is common with most account people as well.\"\n\nHodgins continued: \"Agencies often attempt to have one character type take on both roles. It then fails, with the blame landing squarely on the shoulders of the business development director. The hunter is fired for not being a cultural fit and disorganized, while the pitch manager is fired for not proactively generating new leads for the agency.\"\n\nThe issue is: Do you simply want someone to prospect for new clients, qualify, and set up meetings so that the owner\/CEO can close the deal? Or do you need someone to build a team around -- someone who can create the business development strategy, processes, and be an important member of the leadership team?\n\n\"Most ad agency CEOs expect their business development leads to excel at both roles and are often disappointed when they don't,\" said Sutter.\n6. Possesses a High Curiosity Quotient\n\nAccording to an article written by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic in Harvard Business Review, those who possess a high curiosity quotient are more adept at handling complexity and ambiguity -- they are more skilled in producing \"simple solutions to complex problems.\"\n\nThis is a skill that Peter Levitan thinks every business development person should have, especially as the marketing and agency landscape becomes more complex and competitive.\n\n\"We can train business development professionals in sales techniques, in understanding our agency's skills, and the needs and pain points of our prospective clients. We cannot, however, train people to be curious,\" Levitan said. \"That means being actively curious about our staff and culture, our industry, the client's persona and category, and importantly, understanding the true value of our sales proposition. The bottom line is that curious people build stronger relationships and that is the essence of a great salesperson.\"\n7. Ability to Build a Brand\n\nAgencies understand the importance of building a brand, creating a differentiated and meaningful market position, and generating awareness and value around the brand for their clients -- yet they so rarely do this for themselves. And that means most agencies are indistinguishable from another: They offer the same services, describe themselves in the same way, sell to anyone, and fail to communicate their value.\n\nKarla Morales-Lee of The Art of business development believes that hiring someone who understands the importance of brand building in attracting and selling prospects is essential.\n\n\"In my experience, agencies look for all the wrong things when hiring a business development person,\" said Morales-Lee. \"Cold calling no longer works. Today, the best business development people are marketing-savvy brand ambassadors. Beyond the day to day, you need to hire someone who can build a brand externally and a business development culture internally.\"\n\nBusiness development professionals need to not only be able to define their brand but also be able to drive change throughout the marketing and sales practices of the company -- by defining an ideal client profile and qualifying which clients are a good fit (and which are not), marketing its firm, hiring and recruiting practices, and even determining its value through pricing.\n8. Sets Realistic Expectations with Clients\n\nA business development development rep should be well-versed in setting and managing expectations with prospects so your firm can exceed those expectations. This might be about when a proposal will be delivered -- promising \"tomorrow\" when it typically takes your team three days to create a proposal is not acceptable -- or creating an accurate picture of what it will be like to work with your agency. This person needs to be able to communicate your agency's values, personality, and culture to help potential clients understand what it will be like to work with your team and if your point of views match up.\n9. In-Depth Knowledge of the Agency Business\n\nWhile some will disagree with this, many believe that the person responsible for representing your agency in pitches or in \"get to know you\" meetings should have an understanding of the agency business and the services you are selling. Now, if the agency's owner can take over the role of a \"closer,\" and you simply need a salesperson to prospect and qualify, this is not as important. This might also not be necessary if you are willing to put in the time to train and budget to educate the person and give her a reasonable amount of time to ramp up.\n\nThe business development person will be helping clients not only make marketing decisions but business decisions. They should have a good understanding of general business strategies, the concerns and challenges of leaders, customer acquisition and retention, and the financial metrics that matter to executives. They have to be seen as a business advisor who can help the client to solve business problems through the services your agency offers.\nBusiness Development Manager Skills\n\n    Organizational skills\n    Communication skills\n    Technical skills\n    Interpersonal skills\n    Negotiating skills\n    Collaboration skills\n    Problem-solving skills\n    Analytical skills\n    Business writing skills\n    Self-motivated\n    Business acumen\n    Flexibility and adaptability\n\nSo, how can you be successful as a business development manager? Here are a some skills you should develop.\n\n    Organizational skills\n    Communication skills\n    Technical skills\n    Interpersonal skills\n    Negotiating skills\n    Collaboration skills\n    Problem-solving skills\n    Analytical skills\n    Business writing skills\n    Self-motivated\n    Business acumen\n    Flexibility and adaptability\n\n ","topic":"product growth, growth marketing, qualities, company growth, marketing, branding"},{"title":" Storytelling as a Business Communication Skill","url":"http:\/\/playbook.amanet.org\/storytelling-business-communication-skill\/","body":" The Art of Storytelling in Business Communications -Storytelling as a Business Communication Skill\nBy Sabita Ryder\n\nOctober 20, 2017\nStorytelling\nFOLLOW :: Communication | Leadership    \nTake the Next Step\n\n    Seminar: Storytelling Power: Secrets for Exceptional Communication\n    Seminar: Building Better Work Relationships: New Techniques for Results-Oriented Communication\n    Seminar: Communication and Interpersonal Skills for Technical Professionals\n\nBusiness leaders must exhibit the interpersonal and business communication skills that allow them to form positive relationships with others. And when it comes to establishing and maintaining those relationships at work and elsewhere, one communication technique really shines\u2014storytelling.\n\nStorytelling is one of the earliest forms of communication. Before humans could read and write, they relied on storytelling to connect and share information with others. Over time, we expanded on how we transfer information to others by using written text and graphical representations. We worked to be more precise and concise, making use of models, graphs, charts, and bulleted lists. Storytelling took a backseat for a long time, recognized as a skill that only writers or performers needed to possess.\n\nHaving come full circle, we\u2019re back to acknowledging storytelling as one of the best methods for getting a message across and connecting with others. Now everyone who understands the value of storytelling wants to be able to tell great stories.\nThe unconventional power of business storytelling\n\nOne reason storytelling has reclaimed its elevated status is that we now have greater insight into how our brains process information. We see how humans are affected by stories. As explained in the AMA seminar Storytelling Power: Secrets for Exceptional Communication, our brains don\u2019t distinguish between stories and reality, which enables us to experience events that don\u2019t actually happen in our own lives simply by having them explained to us through words and\/or images. The sadness, anxiety, excitement, or joy that is communicated through a story can be internalized and felt rather than merely contemplated philosophically\u2014something that isn\u2019t likely to be accomplished with even the fanciest of pie charts.\n\nStorytelling translates into new and improved relationships by encouraging something that great relationships are built upon: empathy. Indeed, the ability to empathize is a base requirement for developing authentic relationships with others, and the act of vicariously experiencing the feelings of another person\u2014such as through a story\u2014is the very definition of empathy itself.\n\nWhen we believe that we genuinely understand, or empathize with, another person, we tend to judge that person less harshly and appreciate him or her more. This understanding further develops and strengthens a relationship, long after a great story has been told.\nThe importance of improving business communication skills\n\nBusiness storytelling is a great way to build rapport. Humans are social creatures, and as such, maintaining healthy relationships is an essential part of our well-being. Also, having positive business relationships enables us to be more collaborative and ultimately more productive at work, meaning these relationships have a desirable effect on the bottom line.\n\nIt\u2019s for this reason that successful companies place such a high value on interpersonal employee communication skills, and why the ability to tell a great story is recognized more and more as an invaluable business communication skill.\nRelated Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...  \nAMA\nWhen you develop your communication skills, you\u2019ll be equipped to build mutual understanding and connect with anyone in your organization. \n ","topic":"people management, company growth, business communication skill, marketing, branding, storytelling, product growth"},{"title":"Kanban vs. Scrum: Which Is Better?","url":"https:\/\/www.projectmanager.com\/blog\/kanban-vs-scrum-better","body":"Kanban vs. Scrum: Which Is Better? - ProjectManager.com       Skip to Content Home Features Tools Gantt Kanban Tasks Dashboards Plans Reporting Timesheets Pricing Resources All Training Videos Blog The Project Manager Blog Productivity Project Management Leadership Books Templates Guides Community Customers Support Contact About Us Login               contact Login start free trial Features Pricing Customers Resources   Menu   Agile Kanban vs. Scrum: Which Is Better? by  Peter Landau \u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0Sep 12, 2017 All Training Videos Blog Templates Guides Books Software         Agile Kanban vs. Scrum: Which Is Better?   ProjectManager.com         By  Peter Landau \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sep 12, 2017 Should you use kanban or scrum when managing a project?  Well, it\u2019s a trick question, because it depends on what that project is, the nature of your organization and which path is best for your team. And certainly both methodologies have their value. In fact, there are  lots of methodologies  you can use for your projects, but kanban and scrum are often debated. So for the sake of argument, let\u2019s put them together in the squared ring, and may the best methodology win! In This Corner: Scrum! Scrum methodology  has been around since the mid-1980s, and has been a core sub-methodology of agile since 2001, when Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle literally wrote the book on it:  Agile Software Development with Scrum. Scrum is a well-defined process framework to structure work, often used by smaller teams in what they call sprints, made up of\u00a0tasks of a shorter duration, to make the project more flexible and adaptable to change. The cycles are roughly two-weeks long and led by a  scrum master , which can be, but doesn\u2019t have to be, a certified CSM (Certified Scrum Master) position. Related:   17 Scrum Master Interview Questions to Find the Right Hire The scrum master is the team expert on the process, and they are instrumental in guiding the team to optimize the use of scrum in the project. This can be through  scrum meetings , which are held daily in scrum, but they act almost as a teacher throughout the project to support the team and give them direction. While scrum has been scaled to apply to bigger projects and organizations, its roots are in agile software development, and has come to work seamlessly in that smaller, nimble environment. That hasn\u2019t stopped practitioners from using scrum in varying industries, from retail logistics to event planning.   And in This Corner: Kanban! Kanban  is from Japan, originating in the factories of the Toyota car company. It\u2019s a visual way to manage workflow. The name means billboard in Japanese, and you can see why, as the process involves placing tasks on a kanban board. That way the project\u2019s progress is clear and simply delineated for all involved. Less structured than scrum, there is no real process framework, only the model of the kanban board and the cards on it that visual represent some aspect the project. Work is organized on the kanban board as testing, ready for release and released columns. It\u2019s used to manage work in progress. One value of using this method is that it\u2019s easier to see the inefficiencies in the project schedule and address them before they create slack. Such advantages have seen kanban used in visual planning apps, where it can help with like storyboarding user stories and  sprint backlog planning . A kanban board in ProjectManager.com\u2014 Click to learn more! \u00a0 Kanban, like scrum, is used by agile teams (and the issue of\u00a0 whether agile is right for your teams \u00a0is a discussion for another time), but the method is open to any number of applications. In fact, almost any organization, or individual for that matter, can benefit from using a kanban board. The cards can represent any project phase, task deadline, team members, even ideas or whatever you can imagine. Scrum vs. Kanban: Are You Ready to Rumble?! This should be an interesting contest, as there are many similarities between scrum and kanban that make them evenly matched. For one, both are ideal for lean and agile projects, limiting work in process and favor a continuous scheduling flow as opposed to pushing through a schedule. Both are focused on delivering fast and often, work within a transparent culture to help with improving process and like to break the project into smaller, more manageable pieces. They are embraced by self-organizing teams who are continuously optimizing based on the project data. Why Scrum Process Is Better Scrum is structured. If you\u2019re working in a project that requires more specific roles and procedures, then scrum is going to fit that bill. It has advantages because of this framework. For example, there is more transparency and visibility in scrum than even in kanban, and certainly more than in most other methodologies. That works to your benefit when you want to get everyone on the same page so they can collaborate and work as a fully integrated team. Another advantage scrum has going for it is that scrum increases team accountability. Because you\u2019re moving quickly, you\u2019re meeting often, at least daily. This adds to the transparency of the project, naturally, but also keeps  scrum team members  accountable for their work. That means you can reward those that are performing and help those that aren\u2019t. Change is often a problem in big projects, which are like tanker ships, in that they take time and effort to turn. But not with scrum. It was designed to stay as a nimbler process that can\u00a0pivot whenever that is called for. In fact, it wants change, or at least it can easily accommodate change. Because of its makeup, speed and tendency for small teams, scrum is also a money-saver. That\u2019s a huge boon to startups and other institutions where the bottom line is being scrutinized (and, honestly, when isn\u2019t it?) Problems with Scrum Scrum has come out of its corner fighting, and it looks strong, but there are some openings where it might suffer some damage. First off, it\u2019s that scrum master. You need to have experience, and at a high level, to get scrum working. If not, you\u2019re going to risk scope creep. Not only must the scrum master live up to their name, but the team requires a level of experience, too. If your scrum master or team are not up to snuff, there\u2019s going to be trouble. Likewise, if the tasks are not well-defined, then you\u2019re going to have inaccuracies. Of course, that\u2019s true in any project, but it\u2019ll come fast and furious in a scrum environment. Secondly, the daily those daily scrum meetings might pose a bit of a problem to your team, especially if you have remote team members or an especially large team. It can be hard to keep scrum meetings efficient over a webcam or with dozens of people, which is why scrum is usually best used by a small, local team. This is key in the scrum vs. kanban, debate, as kanban doesn\u2019t have any team size limitations. Why Using Kanban is Better Okay, scrum has had a good round, but here comes kanban, and it\u2019s looking good. One advantage is that kanban doesn\u2019t require the training and experience of scrum. It\u2019s easy to learn and understand. That\u2019s a big plus. You can hit the ground running. Kanban is great for improving workflow and minimizing the time cycle, but it also increases the process flexibility. If you\u2019re looking for a methodology that can bend, not break, with the winds of change, then kanban is for you. Related:   Kanban Board Software You\u2019re going to have less waste from the process of running your project, because you\u2019re going to see it sooner and can trim what you don\u2019t need. It also improves the delivery flow, so you get what you want from the project, faster. One way it does that is by reducing the time cycles of the project, which again speaks to its workflow efficiencies. Kanban can be used by anyone in the project, both general team members and more skilled ones can all work on the same kanban board. Speaking of the kanban board, there are no required time boxes. So, no sprint. You don\u2019t have to reset the kanban board as you move through the project. It flows as long as the project needs it to. Problems with Kanban Kanban is simple, so the problems that do arise tend to be associated with using the kanban board incorrectly. For example, an outdated kanban board creates problems in the development process of your project. Another issue is when teams make the board overly complex. Kanban is known for its simplicity, so to add complexity goes against the very logic for using kanban, and your project will suffer for it. The advantage of not having a timeframe can also be disadvantage. Without a hard deadline, it\u2019s more likely that a task or phase will stagnant and take longer than it needs to. And the Winner Is\u2026 Um. There is no clear winner of the kanban vs. scrum fight. Sorry. It\u2019s really a case-by-case contest, and even a case of potentially using both methodologies to suit different projects or different aspects of the same project. Both of these methodologies are champions of continuous improvement and as such are well-suited to tackle any kind of work. It\u2019s up you to decide which one is best for the needs of your project and team. Now, no punching below the belt. Let\u2019s keep this a clean project! Whether you practice scrum or kanban, you want to have the best tools at your fingertips to get the job done fast and right.  ProjectManager.com  is a cloud-based project management software that has Gantt charts for traditional waterfall projects and kanban boards and tasks lists for more agile and flexible strategies. ","topic":"marketing, company growth, product growth, growth marketing, branding"},{"title":"How to Define and Build a Great Organizational Culture in 2018","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/the-mission\/how-to-define-and-build-a-great-organizational-culture-in-2018-f8b972e433b6","body":"How to Define and Build a Great Organizational Culture in 2018 Sign in Get started Mission Originals Subscribe Photo by  rawpixel.com  on  Unsplash How to Define and Build a Great Organizational Culture in 2018 Beyond the keywords and catch phrases, what really works? David Smith Follow Dec 18, 2017     \u00b7       6    min read A company\u2019s culture is its identity. It is how the company views itself and how the company wishes to be viewed by the outside world\u2026 but, building the culture you want is not quite as easy as you may think. Simply claiming some set of values or plastering catchy phrases and core values on the wall won\u2019t build your culture. Since people are the most important asset of any organization and hiring top-notch people can be challenging, it makes sense to look at what it takes to build a culture that attracts and retains top talent. Here we go\u2026 What is culture? The first step in building anything is to define it. Culture is a buzzword in the startup and corporate space these days\u2026 but what does it really mean? Merriam Webster defines culture as \u201c The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society .\u201d In fact, culture was  Merriam Webster\u2019s 2014 word of the year  (I didn\u2019t even know there was a word of the year!) As usual, a dictionary does very little for us in helping to truly understand the depth and context of a word. Let\u2019s dig a little deeper. Culture is dynamic\u2026 it represents both what brings people together, but also what drives people apart. It is inclusive of the things that make an organization great, but also the things that serve as drawbacks (no organization or person is perfect, right?). An organization\u2019s culture is represented by the values which it truly lives by, not just by the words that it chooses to showcase on a wall somewhere. Photo by  Paul Bence  on  Unsplash . However, the problem with values is that they are words which represent beliefs or actions and as such different people will place different meanings to them . Take for instance the following words: responsibility, grit, freedom, hospitality, and innovation\u2026 each of these words may mean something entirely different to you than they do to someone else, based upon your life experiences and world beliefs. So, a company that chooses to define its \u201ccore values\u201d as a representation of the building blocks of their culture inevitably will run into problems of what those words really mean and how well, if at all, the company truly represents them. Nevertheless, let\u2019s dive into how a company can define and shape its values and therefore its culture. Shaping values, building culture In order for words to have meaning, you need to clearly define them from your own perspective. Before you go and plaster your \u201ccore values\u201d all over the hallways and boardroom you need to determine what you want them to mean to you and to your employees. More importantly, you need to live them. So, if we look again at one of the words from above,  grit , what does that mean? Does it mean courage, resolve, dependability, endurance, resilience, or something else? Is it the courage to make hard decisions? The resolve to stick with hard decisions? Do even you want people to make hard decisions alone? Each of these questions and answers will vary based on your goals as a leader or founder. For example, I\u2019ll say that I want grit to be a company value and by that I create a personal definition: Grit is the fortitude to face down challenges, ride the storm with tenacity, finish the job well and look forward to the onslaught of future challenges. There, in less than sixty seconds, I framed up a core value in a way that would be inspiring and motivating to employees and teams within my organization. Now comes the hard part\u2026 In order for this flashy definition to be more than just a whole sentence replacing a single word, I need to LIVE by this definition . When the chips are down and I\u2019m the one in charge, I need to show grit as defined above\u2026 and I need to inspire others to live it as well. Then and only then does it begin to become part of our culture. Let\u2019s take for example the  Marine Corps\u2019 core values : Honor, Courage, Commitment. These are more than words; they are deeply embedded in what it means to be a United States Marine. From boot camp through initial training and into the fleet, Marines of every rank live the core values every day. The leadership lives the values and sets the example, instilling pride in the organization and the mission from top down\u2026 and it works! Now, you don\u2019t need to start some crazy boot camp at the office or make employees crawl through the mud and do physical training with telephone poles above their heads to understand that, grit, for example is a value\u2026 but you do need to clearly define it and lead from the front. More than words on a wall, keeping your values As Ben Horowitz of a16z says, \u201c perks are not part of your culture \u201d. In other words, the puppy spa, the jello shots, the foosball table, the quidditch in the quad, the rock wall, the free food, the bean bag chairs, or whatever else it is that you think makes your culture so unique\u2026 is not really a part of your culture. Any company can buy that stuff and sure, it\u2019s nice to have sometimes, but it is not a long-term intrinsic motivator to change the way that your people view their existence in your company. It is all simply a short-term \u201cnice to have.\u201d The only thing that will truly define your culture is by determining what your values are and holding yourself and your employees to them every single day. Culture is not built overnight. It takes patience, sacrifice and vision. It requires that leaders have the passion to improve their organization and to motivate, engage, and inspire their people with more than simply words or perks. Building strong culture takes time and commitment, but is arguably the most important aspect of your workplace. If you want to recruit, hire, onboard and retain top talent, they\u2019ll most likely be looking at what everyday life inside your company is like and what you stand for. Likewise, it\u2019s critical that you not only find people who fit your culture well, but people whose personal culture fits your organization well also. Culture goes both ways and as with any good relationship, it takes effort from both sides to make it work through thick and thin. In short, culture is constantly changing. It flows like water\u2026 or at least it should if you don\u2019t want to end up working in a scene straight out of Office Space. But, this is a good thing. It allows creativity and growth to thrive. Not everything you try will work. Some things will work longer than others and some won\u2019t work at all.  Most importantly, learn to make and stick by decisions that consistently align with and demonstrate your inner values . All else will flow from that. The reward? If you can mage to define your values clearly, motivate others to see the importance in them, and stick with choosing the hard right over the easy wrong even in times of adversity, you will build a culture that people respect and admire\u2026 and as a result, you will be able to recruit, hire, onboard and retain top talent for longer and at less cost than your competitors. About Author:  David Smith David Smith is the Chief Marketing Officer for  SalesScreen  , a SaaS platform that helps organizations around the world to track progress on KPIs, reward completion of key activities and surpass their goals. As a result, customers experience stronger culture, lower turnover, better awareness on targets and increased activity on the metrics that matter most to revenue growth and success.\n ","topic":"great organizational culture, company growth, branding, people management, product growth, marketing"},{"title":" How Netflix does A\/B Testing","url":"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/how-netflix-does-a-b-testing-87df9f9bf57c","body":"How Netflix does A\/B Testing\n\nHave you ever wondered why Netflix has such a great streaming experience? Do you want to learn how they completed their homepage plus other UI layout redesigns through A\/B testing? If so, then this article is for you!\n\nI\u2019ll start with sharing my takeaways from a Designers+Geeks event I attended last week at Yelp. The two great speakers Anna Blaylock and Navin Iyengar, both product designers at Netflix, walked through insights gleaned from their years of A\/B testing on tens of millions of Netflix members, and showed some relevant examples from the product to help attendees think about their own designs.\n\n\n\nExperimentation\n\nI really liked this first slide of the presentation and think it\u2019s smart to use an image from the TV show \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d to explain the concept of experimentation!\n\n\n\nThe Scientific Method\n\n\n\nHypothesis\n\nIn science, a hypothesis is an idea or explanation that you then test through study and experimentation. In design, a theory or guess can also be called a hypothesis.\n\n\n\nThe basic idea of a hypothesis is that there is no pre-determined outcome. It is something that can be tested and that those tests can be replicated.\n\n\u201cThe general concept behind A\/B testing is to create an experiment with a control group and one or more experimental groups (called \u201ccells\u201d within Netflix) which receive alternative treatments. Each member belongs exclusively to one cell within a given experiment, with one of the cells always designated the \u201cdefault cell\u201d. This cell represents the control group, which receives the same experience as all Netflix members not in the test.\u201d \u2014 Netflix blog\n\nHere\u2019s how A\/B testing is done at Netflix: as soon as the test is live, they track specific metrics of importance. For example, it could be elements like streaming hours and retention. Once the participants have provided enough meaningful conclusions, they move onto the efficacy of each test and define a winner out of the different variations.\n\n\n\n\n\nExperiment\n\nExperimentation is the act of experimenting. Many companies like Netflix run experiments to generate user data. It is also important to take time and effort to organize the experiment properly to ensure that both the type and amount of data is sufficient and available to clarify the questions of interest as efficiently as possible.\n\nYou probably have noticed that the featured show on the Netflix homepage seems to change whenever you log in. They\u2019re all part of Netflix\u2019s complex experiments to get you to watch their shows.\n\n\n\nThe idea of A\/B testing is to present different content to different user groups, gather their reactions and use the results to build strategies in the future. According to this blog post written by Netflix engineer Gopal Krishnan:\n\nIf you don\u2019t capture a member\u2019s attention within 90 seconds, that member will likely lose interest and move onto another activity. Such failed sessions could at times be because we did not show the right content or because we did show the right content but did not provide sufficient evidence as to why our member should watch it.\n\nNetflix did an experiment back in 2013 to see if they can create a few artwork variants that increase the audience for a title. Here is the result:\n\n\n\nIt was an early signal that members are sensitive to artwork changes. It was also a signal that there were better ways they could help Netflix members find the types of stories they were looking for within the Netflix experience.\n\nNetflix later created a system that automatically grouped artwork that had different aspect ratios, crops, touch ups, localized title treatments but had the same background image. They replicated experiment on their other TV shows to track relative artwork performance. Here are some examples:\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow Netflix selects the best artwork for videos through A\/B testing\n\nThe Netflix experimentation platform, a service which makes it possible for every Netflix engineering team to implement their A\/B tests with the support of a specialized engineering team.\n\nWhat I learned\n\nA\/B testing is the most reliable way to learn user behaviors. As designers, we should think about our work through the lens of experimentation.\n\n\n\nWhen and why A\/B testing\n\nOnce you have a design in production, use A\/B testing to tweak the design and target two key metrics: retention and revenue. By A\/B testing changes throughout the product and tracking users over time, you can see whether your change improves retention or increases revenue. If it does, make it the default. In this way A\/B testing can be used to continuously improve business metrics. Are your users finding or doing one thing you want them to find or to do?\n\nMy experience is that often times users cannot always complete a task as fast as you expect, and sometimes they can\u2019t even find a certain button you put on a page. The reasons can vary: it might because the design is not intuitive enough; the color is not vibrant enough; the user is not tech savvy; they don\u2019t know how to make a decision because there are too many options on one page, and so on. Are your intuitions correct?\n\nSadly, when it comes to user behavior, our intuitions could be wrong, and the only way to prove it is through A\/B testing. It is the best way to validate whether one UX design is more effective than another. At work, our consumer product team have proved that through A\/B testing on our real estate website. For example, they wanted to figure out whether they can make a design change to improve the registration rate for users who clicked on a Google Ad. They created a few different experimental designs and tested them. They thought the design that only hides the property image would win, but found that the design that hides both the property image and the price got the highest conversation rate. Explore the boundaries\n\nThe best ideas come from many idea explorations. At work, our product team works collaboratively across many different projects. With so many parties involved (from designers to product managers to developers), we get to explore the boundaries together. Some of the best ideas are sometime from the developers or the product managers after testing out our prototypes. Observe what people do, not what they say\n\nWhen talking to users, it\u2019s important to keep this in mind: they always say one thing but do it differently. I conducted a few user testing sessions this week and have one perfect example to show you why. I had this one user testing out a Contacts list view prototype and asked him if he usually sorts\/filters his Contacts. He said no because he wouldn\u2019t need do so. However, when he discovered the new filters dropdown menu, he was amazed by how convenient it is to sort and filter multiple options at a time and immediately asked when that can roll out in production. Use data to estimate size of opportunity\n\n\u2022 It\u2019s always about the whys\n\n\u2022 Data can help shape ideas\n\n\u2022 Check if any A\/B testing are in conflict\n\nIsn\u2019t it so fun to be a UI and UX designer? :) Knowing your user is the most exciting part of design process! There is no finished design, but many chances for iteration to improve the design and give our users the best experience possible! I enjoy the opportunity to make subtle tweaks for our users, measure their reactions and work with the product team to figure out the next steps.\n","topic":"product growth, product discovery, growth marketing, branding, testing, company growth"},{"title":"How to Deal With Industry Competition","url":"https:\/\/www.liveplan.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/how-to-deal-with-industry-competition\/","body":"\nHow to Deal With Industry Competition\nPosted October 11, 2018 By Harriet Genever\n\nindustry competition\n\nIndustry competition includes businesses that sell a similar product or service. So if you\u2019re starting an education tech app, your industry is education technology and your competitors are other businesses creating education tech apps.\n\nAll businesses have competitors, and in some cases, industry competition is so fierce that companies have to fight for the business of potential customers. This is why some players have a negative view of competition.\n\nA competitive matrix can be a helpful tool for thinking through who your competitors are and how your product or service is different from theirs.\n\nDespite the negative implication of the term \u201ccompetition,\u201d the very state of industry competition can have a major influence on business strategy. Don\u2019t make the mistake of assuming that you don\u2019t have industry competition if your product or service seems truly unique. Every single business has competition, and if there\u2019s really a market for what you\u2019re selling and you are on the cutting edge of something that\u2019s never been done before, you\u2019ll see your industry grow, and new competitors will emerge all the time.\n\nKeep in mind that strategically responding to competition in your industry isn\u2019t just about your marketing strategy or how you\u2019ll maximize your market share. Your strategic plan for growth should speak to competition among your suppliers, economies of scale, potential new entrants, and substitute products that could threaten your viability.\n\nfinancial dashboard\n\nThe 5 forces that drive industry competition\n\nAccording to Professor Michael E. Porter, there are five basic forces (Porter\u2019s Five Forces) that drive competition in an industry:\n1. Industry rivalry\n\nThe first of the five forces focuses on the intensity of the current competition in the marketplace.\n\nIndustry rivalry looks like competitors within an industry jockeying for position, using tactics such as product launches, advertising competition, and price competition.\n\nWhen business owners feel competitive pressure or see an opportunity to improve their current position, rivalry can become intense. Sometimes it can even lead to industry disruption. Rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft are a good example of disrupting the urban transportation industry. They have been able to leverage tech, a new pricing and delivery model, and a latent resource\u2014cars that are otherwise sitting unused by their owners\u2014to capture a huge share of the taxi market.  \n2. Threat of new entrants\n\nNew industry players are always a threat to existing businesses. The seriousness of the threat, however, will depend on barriers to entry and the reaction from current competitors in the marketplace.\n\nIf barriers to entry are low (e.g. it costs little to enter the industry; there are few economies of scale in place), new entrants can weaken the existing businesses\u2019 position in the market.\n3. Bargaining power of customers\n\nCustomers can affect the pricing. Prices are affected by how many customers purchase a product or service, how significant each customer is to a company and the cost to a customer of switching from one business to another.\n\nIf a company has a limited but powerful client base purchasing its product, they can often dictate their terms and drive prices down.\n4. Bargaining power of suppliers\n\nIf customers can drive prices down, suppliers can drive prices up. This force is driven by the number of suppliers, the uniqueness of the supplier\u2019s product, and how much it would cost a company to switch from one supplier to another.\n\nIf a company has few suppliers, it becomes dependent on them and the suppliers, in turn, have the power to increase their prices.\n5. Threat of substitutes\n\nThe demand for substitutes can reduce the demand for industry products and services. If a company increases its prices, customers are more likely to switch to cheaper alternatives. This can significantly reduce a company\u2019s power within the industry.\nHow should business owners deal with industry competition?\n\nCompetition is everywhere. There is no way existing businesses can stop new entrants from trying to get a share of the market, but there are plenty of strategies that can help them retain their position in the marketplace or get them ahead of the competition.\nIdentify a need in the industry and satisfy it with a product or service\n\nIt is great to be the inventor of a specific product or service, but sometimes all you have to do is reinvent what is already out in the market. For example, as of 2017, Forbes reports that Nike is still the most valuable sports brand in the world in the business category, with a value of $29.6 billion.\n\nThe Nike brand first became popular in 1972 when company founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman invented \u201clighter weight training shoes that had an outsole with waffle-type nubs for traction.\u201d They saw the need for a shoe that would improve an individual\u2019s athletic performance. In 1979, the company launched its Nike Air technology and this strengthened the Nike brand further.\nImprove on existing products or services\n\nVirgin Airlines was established by Richard Branson when his flight to the Virgin Islands in 1984 was canceled. He chartered a plane and offered other travelers a seat on that plane for $29.\n\nToday, Virgin Airlines still offers affordable fares, full-service flights, and excellent customer service. Instead of copying what was already being offered by other airlines, Virgin offered something much better to air travelers.\nFocus on the needs of your customers\n\nApple has developed several innovative products and created a network of services that seamlessly work together. The company continues to provide customers beautifully designed, high-tech products that make working with electronic gadgets faster and easier.\n\nApple makes the customer experience central to the product design and development process by incorporating participatory design to understand customer pain points and opportunities. In addition, Apple has ensured that its computing and entertainment devices\u2014the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iTunes\u2014integrate to create a streamlined, intuitive system.\nDo not focus on your competitors\n\nDo not fall into the habit of constantly checking on your competitors. Doing so will draw your attention away from the needs of your customers.\n\nAs a result, instead of developing your products into something that will address your customers\u2019 needs, you start looking at what your competitors are doing for their customers. This will be detrimental to your business and you may end up losing customers to your competitors. Instead, talk to your customers regularly\u2014ask them what they like and what they hate about your product or service, so you can use their feedback to improve.\nDo not underestimate your competitors\n\nYou don\u2019t want to obsess over your competitors, but you shouldn\u2019t ignore them either\u2014that too can be bad for business.\n\nIn 2013, Nokia sold its handset business to Microsoft for $7.2 billion. At one time, Nokia had been the dominant mobile phone manufacturer in the world, but by the time the company was acquired by Microsoft, it only had three percent of the global smartphone market. Nokia underestimated how dominant the iPhone and Android smartphones would become over the coming years.\n\nTo avoid the same fate, never project future success based on current market conditions, as market players, product innovations, and customer expectations can change in an instant.\nCompetition is a good sign\n\nDon\u2019t panic when other businesses enter your space. When others want a share of the market, it\u2019s proof that you\u2019re doing something right.\n\nOthers want to get in on the same business when they notice that business owners are onto something. When your competitors copy your moves, it means you are leading in your industry. Just remember to keep developing your product or service so that you won\u2019t get left behind.\nSome competitors may turn out to be good partners\n\nIn some cases, companies that used to be competitors have learned that collaboration can be mutually beneficial. Sometimes this manifests as acquisition\u2014one company being absorbed into another\u2014but it might also look like a strategic partnership where two parties retain independence.\n\nBy looking at your competitors as potential partners and by creating strategic alliances, you may open yourself up to more business and more success in your industry.\n\n\nSign up for email alerts from the LivePlan Blog\nCase study: a small business that succeeded in a saturated market\n\nThe party and event planning industries are saturated with players; in the US alone as of 2015, there are 129,776 party and event planning businesses. But, this didn\u2019t stop one former salesman from building a business from an initial \u201ccrazy\u201d idea.\n\nIain Fox had been working in sales but found himself feeling \u201cvery unstable\u201d in his job and he was not enjoying what he was doing. In 2006, while on holiday with his wife, the couple played miniature golf on a course next to their hotel.\n\nWhile there, Iain told his wife, \u201cCan you imagine doing this for a living?\u201d\n\nWhen they got home, Fox came up with the idea of creating a portable course that could be used at parties and other events. He left his sales career, built the course, bought a van, developed a website, and designed a logo. On March 2007, Crazy Fox Golf was born.\n\nWhen he contacted venues such as pubs and leisure centers in his local area of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in the United Kingdom, he received mixed reactions. But his persistence paid off, and soon he started to get bookings. In the beginning, he did a bi-weekly event in a local leisure center. When people started talking about Crazy Fox Golf, more business came in. This led to an editorial coverage in the local papers which, in turn, brought in more business\u2014this time, through corporate events.\n\nWhen Fox tried advertising in phone directories, business opportunities weren\u2019t as frequent as expected, but when he set up a Google AdWords account, the growth of his business increased significantly.\n\nCrazy Fox Golf has continued to grow and has provided entertainment for a variety of corporate events for companies such as L\u2019Or\u00e9al, Slimming World, and British Gas.\n\nFox started with a simple idea that seemed crazy to others but due to his persistence, his \u201ccrazy\u201d idea is now a booming business recognized in the UK and some other countries.\n\nCompetition is everywhere. Businesses come and go. But consider competition as a challenge for you to improve your products or services. Analyze and strategize. A good strategy will help you compete with other industry players and ultimately get you ahead in the game.\n","topic":"company growth, product growth, growth marketing, industry competition, branding, people management"},{"title":"The 10 Most Popular Startup Revenue Models","url":"https:\/\/fi.co\/insight\/the-10-most-popular-startup-revenue-models","body":"The 10 Most Popular Startup Revenue Models  \n \nThe 10 Most Popular Startup Revenue Models\n \n Regardless of how good your product, service, or app is, it\u2019s only useful when you can get it into the hands of your target customers. But once you\u2019ve got a finalized offering, selling it should be easy, right? Not really. There are countless factors that need to be taken into account when you set out to bring your product to market, like the industry you\u2019re in, whether you\u2019re selling a web-based product or physical hardware, the channels you use to attract your customers, etc. \n The Founder Institute has helped launched many profitable startups around the world. Apply to a program to a program in a city near you! \n And that\u2019s why we\u2019ve prepared an extensive guide that clearly outlines some of the most commonly used revenue models startups use to sell their offerings, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each to help you pick the best revenue model for your company. \n Business Model vs Revenue Model vs Revenue Stream \n Before we delve into the different types of revenue models, we should spend a little time differentiating between the terms \"business model\", \"revenue model\", and \"revenue stream\", as they are very often used interchangeably. In the  GlowingStart  article, \" What Is The Difference Between A Revenue Model, Revenue Stream And A Business Model \",\u00a0 Alex Genadinik  does a great job explaining the difference between those terms. They are summarized below: \n \n \n A  revenue stream  is a company\u2019s single source of revenue. A company can have zero or many revenue streams, depending on its size. \n \n \n A  revenue model  is the strategy of managing a company\u2019s revenue streams and the resources required for each revenue stream. \n \n \n A  business model  is the structure comprised of all aspects of a company, including revenue model and revenue streams, and describes how they all work together. \n \n \n Types of Revenue Models \n There are numerous types of revenue models, so this list in no way attempts to list them all, especially since so many of them go by other names in the startup community. However, below are ten of the most popular and effective revenue models employed by companies, both big and small. \n Genadinik\u2019s article, \u201c Different Revenue Models \u201d, covers some of the more common revenue models that countless recently-launched startups use to generate their first sales. Here are the revenue models he covers below: \n 1. Ad-Based Revenue Model \n Ad-based revenue models entail creating ads for a specific website, service, app, or other product, and placing them on strategic, high-traffic channels. If your company has a website or you have a web-based company, Google\u2019s AdSense is one of the most common tools get ads. For most websites, AdSense will earn about $5-10 per 1,000 page views. \n \n Advantages : Making money from ads is one of the simplest and easiest ways to implement revenue models, which is why so many companies utilize ads as a source of revenue. \n Disadvantages : In order to generate sufficient revenue to withhold a business, you will need to attract millions of users. In addition, most people find ads annoying, which can lead to low clickthrough rates, and therefore, lower revenue. \n \n 2. Affiliate Revenue Model \n Another popular web-based revenue model is the affiliate revenue model, which works by promoting links to relevant products and collecting commission on the sales of those products, and can even work in conjunction with ads or separately. \n \n Advantages : One of the most obvious benefits of employing an affiliate revenue model is that it generally makes more money than ad-based revenue models. \n Disadvantages : If you use an affiliate revenue model for your startup, remember that the amount of money you make is limited to the size of your industry, the types of products you sell, and your audience. \n \n 3. Transactional Revenue Model \n Countless companies, both tech-oriented and otherwise, strive to rely on the transactional revenue model, and for good reason too. This method is one of the most direct ways of generating revenue, as it entails a company providing a service or product and customers paying them for it. \n \n Advantages : Consumers are more attracted to this experience because of its simplicity and the wider set of options. \n Disadvantages : Because of the directness of the transactional revenue model, many companies employ it themselves, which means more competition and price deterioration, and therefore, less money to made for everyone who uses this model. \n \n \n 4. Subscription Revenue Model \n The subscription revenue model entails offering your customers a product or service that customers can pay for over a longer period of time, usually month to month, or even year to year. \n \n Advantages : If your company is far enough along in its development, this model can generate recurring revenue, and can even benefit from customers who are simply too lazy to cancel their subscription to your company (which is the dirty little secret of a subscription-based model). \n Disadvantages : Because this model depends so much on having a large consumer base, it\u2019s critical to maintain a higher subscribe rate than an unsubscribe rate. \n \n In the blog post \u201c Comparing Business Models to Sales Models \u201d,  Dave Parker  outlines the various ways that a company can sell their product or service, emphasizing how the market you pick affects the way in which you take your product to market. Here are the methods he describes: \n 5. Web Sales \n This is an offshoot of the transactional revenue model, in which a customer pays directly for a product or service, except that customers must first come to your company via a web search or outbound marketing, and conduct transactions solely over the internet. \n \n Advantages : Web sales work with a wide variety of offerings, including software, hardware, and even subscription services. \n Disadvantages : Relationship sales are incompatible with the web sales model, so if your company is related to consulting or big ticket items (high-value items such as houses, appliances, and cars), you should consider employing a model that\u2019s more suited to your offering. \n \n 6. Direct Sales \n There are two types of direct sales: inside sales, in which someone calls in to place an order or sales agents calling prospects; and outside sales, which is a face to face sales transaction. \n \n Advantages : Direct sales models work great with relationship sales cycles, enterprise sales cycles, or complex sales cycles that entail multiple buyers and influencers. \n Disadvantages : The direct sales model often requires hiring a sales team of some sort, which means that it isn\u2019t optimal for small ticket price items. If your offering is priced below the $1,000-$2,000 range, you\u2019ll have trouble building a scalable company. \n \n 7. Channel Sales (or Indirect Sales) \n The channel sales model consists of agents or resellers selling your product for you and either you or the reseller delivering the product. The affiliate revenue model is a good companion model to this one, especially if your offering is a virtual product. \n \n Advantages : The channel sales model is ideal for companies who have a product that\u2019s an incremental sale for their channel and can produce incremental profit. \n Disadvantages : Don\u2019t employ this model if your product requires you to evangelize your marketplace, or if your product competes with that of your partner\u2019s, as they will push theirs and not yours. \n \n \n 8. Retail Sales \n Retail sales entails setting up a traditional department store or retail store in which you offer physical goods to your customers. Keep in mind that the retail sales model will require shelf space (that you\u2019ll have to pay for) at existing stores, and is best suited for products that require logistics to reach your customers. \n \n Advantages : Retail sales is a great way to offer deals and complimentary products to an existing customer base to help boost brand awareness. \n Disadvantages : The retail sales route is not ideal for early stage companies, or companies that offer digital products like software or apps. \n \n In the Domain.me article, \u201c Planning The Expansion and Revenue Models for your Startup \u201d,  Sarah Green  lists even more effective revenue models for startups, including two that are based around the idea of giving something to your customers for free to help generate revenue at a later point. \n 9. Product is Free, But Services Aren\u2019t \n This model is unique compared to others, in that you have to give your product away for free, yet require customers to pay for installation, customization, training or other additional services. \n \n Advantages : This model is great for building trust with your customer base and boosting brand awareness, as any company that offers anything for free will generate considerable buzz. \n Disadvantages : Remember, employing this model means that you are basically running a services business with the product as a marketing cost. Also, a model like this isn\u2019t always the best for scaling your company in the long term, so keep your eye on additional revenue models to utilize later on. \n \n 10. Freemium Model \n The freemium model is one in which a company\u2019s basic services are free, yet users must pay for additional premium features, extensions, functions, etc. One of the biggest companies to use this model is Linkedin, the most popular business\/social media platform. \n \n Advantages : Similar to the previous model, the freemium model offers something free to users, which is a great way to give them a taste of your product or service while simultaneously enticing them to pay for something later on. \n Disadvantages : This model requires a considerable investment of time and money to reach out to your audience, and even more effort to convert free users into paying customers. \n \n \n Final Thoughts \n Remember to do your research, and take the time to decide which model is most ideal for your startup, as once you settle on a revenue model, especially if you\u2019re early stage, it can be hard to pick another. As stated before, this blog post doesn\u2019t cover every revenue model used by startups, but by highlighting the most popular ones, you should have enough information to help you pick the revenue model that will boost your startup into the big leagues. \n\n ","topic":"product growth, growth marketing, branding, company growth, marketing"},{"title":"What is Market Research?","url":"https:\/\/www.oberlo.co.uk\/ecommerce-wiki\/market-research","body":"Market Research\nJustas Markus\n23 Mar, 2019 3 min read 0 comments\nWhat is Market Research?\nWhat is Market Research?\n\nMarket research is a systematic process of collecting, analyzing and interpreting information. The information could be about a target market, consumers, competitors and the industry as a whole. This is the foundation of any successful company. The research has a number of different purposes \u2013 from identifying a new market to launching a new business.\n\nMarket research helps entrepreneurs make well-informed decisions. It can take the guesswork out of innovation, and funnel resources into ideas and projects that hold the most potential. Businesses at different stages of growth carry out market research for different reasons. There is a list of ways of how businesses can use market research:\n\n    Determine the feasibility of a new business. If market research indicates there\u2019s little or no demand for the product or service, the business is unlikely to succeed.\n    Identify and develop potential new markets.\n    Keep close tabs on marketing trends and develop strategies on how to stay ahead or adapt to changing market conditions.\n    Test the demand for new products or features.\n    Ensure optimal product placement \u2013 how, when and where should a product enter the market.\n    Improve and innovate their business. You can identify issues with certain business aspects such as customer service early. This can help companies overcome costly disruptions later.\n    Boost the success of their promotional campaigns. By gauging customer sentiment and understanding the perception of their brand, businesses can better shape their branding and marketing strategies.\n\n\nHow To Do Market Research?\n\nThere are two types of market research data: primary information and secondary information.\n\nPrimary information is first-hand data gathered from original sources. You either collect the data yourself or hire someone to do it for you. The bottom line is that you control the process from A to Z.\n\nSecondary information is information and data that has been gathered by others and is publicly available either online or offline. This could be data published in newspapers, reports, journals and so on, or information freely available online. The downside is that everyone has access to this information and you have had no control over the collection methods.  \n\nTypes of information collected through both primary and secondary sources can be either qualitative or quantitative.\n\nQualitative information helps you gain a better understanding of how people feel about certain topics. You can ask them what they think and how\/why they make choices that they do. The best sources to collect qualitative information include in-depth interviews, focus groups, and direct observations.\n\nQuantitative information is statistical data and tends to be more structured. Closed question Questionnaires and surveys fall under this type of information.\nSources of Primary Market Research\n\nPrimary research is often more expensive and time-consuming. But it is the best way to get the information that your business needs. The most popular primary research tools are:\n\n    Customer surveys. Surveys conducted via phone, in person, on paper or using an online survey software like SurveyMonkey, are hugely informative. It\u2019s a list of questions crafted in a way that gives you the best possible insight into how a customer feels about your product or service, your brand and the experience you provide. It can be as broad or as specific as you want.\n    In-depth interviews. Carried out either by phone or face-to-face, in-depth interviews give you an opportunity to ask more probing questions. You can also follow-up with an interviewee wherever necessary to obtain satisfactory answers.  \n    Focus groups. A focus group is an organized session with a group of 6-8 people that share some common characteristics. These characteristics include age, location, buying habits, etc. They will participate in a discussion of a predefined topic led by a moderator. It\u2019s an expensive but effective method of getting feedback on bigger scale upgrades, product features or new products.\n    Observation. It involves watching or video-recording how consumers interact with a product or service in a natural setting. Although a time-consuming method, it has the advantage of providing unbiased research. This is because consumers are not under any pressure and will behave naturally.\n\nSources of Secondary Market Research  \n\nOften referred to as \u2018desk research\u2019, secondary market research is best suited for gathering broad insights into market trends. This helps to predict and analyze the current situation in terms of competition. The most popular secondary research sources are:\n\n    Government reports and studies\n    Trade or industry-specific journals, magazines, newspapers\n    Television and radio\n    Academic papers and educational resources\n    Literature reviews\n    Online articles and case studies\n\n ","topic":"branding, marketing, growth marketing, market research, company growth, people management"},{"title":"THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE STRATEGIC ACCOUNT MANAGERS","url":"https:\/\/yesler.com\/blog\/customer-engagement\/the-7-habits-of-highly-effective-strategic-account-managers","body":"\n The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Strategic Account Managers \n Blog   \n \n Strategic account management doesn\u2019t happen by accident \u2013 it\u2019s made up of formalized, repeatable, and measurable processes. Luckily, like other good habits, these processes can be learned, and in time, become engrained in your company culture. \n Here are our seven habits for highly effective strategic account managers: \n \nExecute a smooth handoff from sales to account management.  Create and refine a scripted, orderly handoff from sales to your account management team. Make sure that every new customer belongs to someone in your company and that your new customer is (at minimum) being tracked in a methodical way and, optimally, being proactively and strategically advised and engaged. \n Conduct research.  Sift through all the intelligence marketing and sales gathered during the lead nurturing and sales process and then augment that with more research\u2014about your customer\u2019s business, its markets, challenges, goals, and competitors. Your goal is to figure out how you can help your customer meet their goals and solve their problems. Begin by reading your customer\u2019s annual report and industry research about the health of their industry. Is their company growing? Why? If it\u2019s public, what is it telling the street? What are management\u2019s key initiatives? Pore over their website. Read what analysts have to say about their company and industry. Identify and understand stakeholder roles, responsibilities, and constraints. \n Conduct a needs assessment.  With all this research in hand, now you can go figure out what you can do for your customer\u2014beyond selling the product or service it just purchased. Maybe your fresh eyeballs see a potential problem looming. Maybe you have a fresh take on an old problem the company has been banging away at for a long time. Uncover all the opportunities you can to help this customer be more successful\u2014and enrich your relationship. Your ultimate goal is to grow with the customer, not away. \n Create a rock-solid account plan.  Write down all those great ideas in a strategic plan that your account management team hammers over and polishes to a sheen. Figure out what your customer really needs and which of these needs you\u2019re able to fill. Make recommendations about how other companies can help or augment your plan to include complementary service offerings. We understand that you\u2019re not doing charity work here, but putting your customer\u2019s welfare above your own profits will generate returns to you in the long run. \n Convert that plan into a strategic proposal.  Surprise your customer by showing that you\u2019ve done your homework, gone above and beyond the call of duty, really taken its business problems to heart, and put your best people on those problems to come up with ideas for solving them and being more successful. Demonstrate that you\u2019re in it for the long haul, that you value this business, and that you want the company to succeed\u2014not only with your product but as a company. Refresh the strategic proposal at key junctures\u2014annual planning, quarterly business review, when the competition starts to nip at the customer\u2019s heels. \n Establish a cadence for meeting and reporting.  Decide how often you will communicate with your customer, for what purpose, and using what venues. Be proactive. Never let your customer be left wondering when or how they will hear from you. \n Keep the relationship crackling.  Keep the partnership going by continuing to stay up on that customer\u2019s issues, understanding how the company is using your product, resolving problems along the way, deepening the relationship, bringing fresh ideas to the table, never letting the relationship go stale. Remember, competitors are wolves. They\u2019re constantly coming on to your customers (just as you are to theirs). Don\u2019t let a relationship grow stale and create an opening where a competitor can woo your customer away. \n This is an excerpt from The Modern Guide to B2B Marketing.  Download it now \u00a0to get our recommendations for how to measure the effectiveness of your marketing programs at every point along the customer life cycle. \n \n Tags \n Customer Experience   \n ","topic":"habits, growth marketing, marketing, product growth, company growth, branding"},{"title":" The Role of a Product Manager","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/swlh\/the-role-of-a-product-manager-e0354b4b6845","body":"The Role of a Product Manager - The Startup - Medium Sign in Get started Medium Things Submit The Role of a Product Manager Michael Siliski Follow Oct 14, 2015     \u00b7       4    min read I was reading  Ben Horowitz\u2019s book  last week, and a section on integrating new team members and setting expectations jumped out to me. Particularly expectations. Product management is an ambiguous role by nature. Most of the performance gaps I have seen over the years are directly attributable to a failure on the manager\u2019s (my) part to set clear expectations. Same for getting high performers to seize growth opportunities\u2013I know my own professional growth has been limited more often by my failure to recognize something additional I could be doing than it has been by a lack of capabilities to go do it. We\u2019re in the middle of our semi-annual performance review cycle here at Google, and I think we could do better at communicating expectations to PMs. So I wrote up this summary of the role of a product manager for my team. It seeks to establish a shared set of expectations and language that we can refer back to over time. It\u2019s what I look for in recruiting, how I gauge performance, and what I measure myself against to see where I can do better. It tells you what you need to get done, but it\u2019s not prescriptive about how you do it. It\u2019s also level-agnostic; as you progress, you just do more of these things, better, over bigger scope. Vision & Strategy You own the vision, strategy, and roadmap. You know the market, our users, the product, and the competition. You create innovative product plans that address real user needs. You make the right judgments, repeatedly. You tell the story of what we\u2019re building, how we\u2019ll get there, why it will be awesome, and why we\u2019ll win. You drive alignment: with the development team, within the team, across teams, cross-functionally, with your manager, with your reports if you\u2019re a manager. If I ask 5 different people what you\u2019re building and why, I\u2019ll get one answer. Execution & Impact You drive execution and remove roadblocks. You know where we are and where we\u2019ll be in 6 months, and when to change those plans. You know what needs to be done now and what can wait, and you focus the team on the key priorities. You make them happen faster and better. You ensure the product is world-class. You are constantly product testing in real-world conditions. You define progress and impact, measure them, and maximize results. You convince other people to do what you need them to do for the good of the product. You drive things to closure. Communication & Visibility You are the face of the product in the organization. People bring you questions, advice, and ideas. You represent and champion the team. You ensure that everyone \u2014 your manager, execs, ops, teams down the hallway \u2014 knows who you are, what your team is doing, and what impact your team is having. You build relationships that help the team get things done. You ensure the product\u2019s story is told, and understood, internally and externally. You create collateral, FAQs, docs, and presentations that can be leveraged by marketing, PR, sales\/BD, executives, etc. Honesty & Culture You are open, honest, and fair. You build trust, credibility, and respect with the team. You act with integrity. You do not politick or backstab. You create a strong team with high morale and build camaraderie. People like working with you. You make others around you better. Ownership Your success is the success of the product. You\u2019re accountable for devising and executing a winning plan \u2014 no excuses. I can give you a problem statement, but you\u2019re the one who determines what your job is. You don\u2019t get driven around by the team; you figure out what the team needs, and you deliver that. If there are gaps in vision, strategy, execution, impact, communication, visibility, team culture, team capabilities, or anything else, you own them. Further reading Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager  by  bhorowitz Product Manager\n ","topic":"company growth, product manager, branding, marketing, product growth, growth marketing"},{"title":" One Cow Describes Eight Business Models","url":"https:\/\/www.businessbacker.com\/blog\/one-cow-describes-eight-business-models\/","body":"One Cow Describes Eight Business Models\n\nWritten by Jennifer Gueringer \/\/ Also shared on Startups.co.\n\nBusiness theory can be tricky to understand. Leave it to the power of one cow to help you grasp the workings of these popular business models.\n\nTHE DIRECT SALES MODEL\n\nA direct sales business operates through a network of salespeople. Typically there is no fixed retail location.\n\nExamples: Avon, Mary Kay, Traveling Vineyard\n\nTHE FREEMIUM MODEL\n\nA business under a freemium model gives away a service at no cost before offering advanced services as add-ons.\n\nExamples: Dropbox, Hootsuite, MailChimp\n\nTHE SUBSCRIPTION MODEL\n\nThe objective of a subscription business model is to retain customers under a long-term contract and secure recurring revenue.\n\nExamples: Netflix, eHarmony\n\nTHE FRANCHISE MODEL\n\nUnder a franchise business model, business owners purchase another organization\u2019s business strategy.\n\nExamples: McDonald\u2019s, Subway, Starbucks","topic":"business models, branding, product growth, marketing, company growth, people management, cow describes"},{"title":"YOUR BIGGEST COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES: YOURSELF AND YOUR COMPANY CULTURE","url":"https:\/\/startupsventurecapital.com\/there-are-really-only-two-substantial-and-sustainable-competitive-advantages-that-are-within-your-d0625c0fbc28","body":"YOUR BIGGEST COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES: YOURSELF AND YOUR COMPANY CULTURE\n\nThere are really only two substantial and sustainable competitive advantages that are within your control.\n\nThey are: 1) You (as Leader) and 2) Your Culture.\n\nYou\u2019ve heard people say it many times: It all starts with you.\n\nAs the founder (and CEO) of a new company (talking to startup founders here, but this can also apply to seasoned CEOs) \u2014 your job is not just to focus on growing your business, you must also focus on growing yourself. This takes a deep commitment to understanding yourself \u2014 how you think, how you act, your strengths, your blind spots, and your leadership gaps. It also takes a deep commitment to working on yourself.\n\nThe more you invest in your own leadership skills (yes, it\u2019s an investment) \u2014 the better you will be at inspiring your people, creating and seizing opportunities, and handling problems and challenges.\n\nHere are a few things you can do to push yourself towards self-mastery and leadership excellence:\n\n1. Implement a leadership development plan. Via self-reflection, asking for feedback and\/or 360 degree reviews, determine what behaviors or skills you want to improve and then create (and stick to) a plan to do so.\n\n2. Practice self-care. It is your job to optimize yourself for peak performance and to bring a healthy, creative, and productive YOU to work each day. Building a sustainable life for yourself and your employees is crucial to building a sustainable business.\n\n3. Hire a coach. Growing yourself into the best leader you can be while also growing your company is hard. Having an accountability and thought partner is a wise investment.\n\nThe second, sustainable competitive advantage you can create is a strong, positive company culture. Not to beat a dead horse here, but it all begins with you, first and foremost. Leading a company is akin to being a parent \u2014 i.e. the kids are watching, and most likely mirroring, everything you do.\n\nEven when you think no one is paying attention, they are. They are watching what you do to signal what is acceptable behavior \u2014 how they should act and interact, if they should burn the midnight oil, if they should treat Mondays like good days, etc.\n\nThere are many things that go into creating a strong company culture. Here are just a few things you can do to shape and sustain a culture that helps your employees and business to thrive:\n\n1. Be thoughtful about your company\u2019s core values. No copying and pasting from the websites of the companies you admire most! Have explanations for, and discussions around, what each value means, and then \u201cWalk the Talk\u201d as the leader.\n\n2. Stay consciously focused on maintaining a foundation of trust. Lead from an authentic place and your team will follow. Trust in the A-team you hired and they will, in turn, trust you and each other.\n\n3. Promote a culture of learning. Practice and preach growth mindset and develop a feedback-seeking culture by asking for feedback as much as you give it.","topic":"company growth, marketing, company culture, product growth, people management, branding, biggest competitive advantages"},{"title":"IS AFFILIATE MARKETING RIGHT FOR YOUR STARTUP?","url":"http:\/\/www.nextupasia.com\/is-affiliate-marketing-for-startups\/","body":"\nIs Affiliate Marketing Right for Your Startup?\nFebruary 28, 2013 Gobala Krishnan\n\nWhenever I bring up the topic of affiliate marketing for startups or business owners, the response is usually something along the lines of; \u201cI will try affiliate marketing when everything else fails\u201d.\n\nSeriously?\n\n \n\nIs Affiliate Marketing Suitable for Your Startup\n\n \nSo Is Affiliate Marketing Right For Your Startups?\n\nI\u2019m not sure what they actually understand about affiliate marketing, and just in case you don\u2019t know what it is either, let me quote trusty old WikiPedia for a \u201cproper\u201d definition:\n\n    Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate\u2019s own marketing efforts. [\u2026]\n\n    Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers\u2019 marketing strategies.\n\nAffiliate marketing is basically a revenue-sharing arrangement between the business owner (merchant), and free agents (affiliates). The affiliate can be an individual blogger working from home, or large media organizations with a portfolio of online publications. Under this arrangement, the affiliate promotes the merchant\u2019s products and offers, with the understanding that a percentage of each sale generated would be paid to the affiliate.\n\nThat\u2019s why it\u2019s also commonly referred to as \u201cperformance-based advertising\u201d; you pay for measurable performance and quantifiable results. This is drastically different from traditional media advertising, where you pay the agency for pure hit-or-miss mass exposure.\n\nAffiliate marketing is not multi-level marketing, although lots of sneaky MLM companies commonly use the same term to mask the true nature of their business. There is no \u201cupline\u201d or \u201cdownline\u201d or whatever in affiliate marketing; it\u2019s a one-on-one relationship between the merchant and each individual affiliate.\n\nHere are some advantages of using affiliate marketing for startups:\n\n    You get traffic fast \u2013 If you are running your affiliate campaigns through an \u201caffiliate network\u201d like Commission Junction (US), ShareASale (US), or JomNiaga (Malaysia) [Disclaimer: We own JomNiaga], your brand is usually visible to a massive army of affiliates. Most of these affiliates can just plug your offer into their existing traffic channels, sending you high-quality traffic fast.\n    You don\u2019t need to be an expert at everything \u2013 Want to master SEO, Google Adwords and social media? Good luck, but you\u2019ll probably still be \u201cmastering\u201d it ten years later (don\u2019t ask me how I know). You should be an expert at just one thing; growing your idea. Get ten affiliates, each a master in a particular traffic generation method, you\u2019ve covered it all without having to learn anything.\n    You pay only for results \u2013 Almost all types of traditional advertising require that you pay upfront, with almost no guarantee of measurable success. With affiliate marketing, you pay the affiliate when a sale is made. It\u2019s very easy to scale your affiliate marketing efforts and remain profitable at the same time.\n    You don\u2019t need a big sales team \u2013 Downsize your sales personnel, and hire an affiliate manager to recruit affiliates to your cause. You reduce your overhead costs and risk, while leveraging on the affiliate\u2019s existing market relationships. Affiliates do not earn a \u201cbasic salary\u201d, so it\u2019s in their best interest to make more sales for you.\n    You can discover new markets \u2013 No matter how large your sales team is, you cannot possibly reach out to all demographics and verticals, specially the ones you never knew existed! By getting affiliates in a range of markets, you may discover that your idea has the potential to be re-targeted (or spun off) to an entirely new market.\n\nOf course, affiliate marketing is not the cure for all your problems. Here are some of the disadvantages of affiliate marketing;\n\n    Doesn\u2019t work as well if you have nothing to sell \u2013 Affiliate marketing works best when you are actually selling something. If your startup is built on offering services, content syndication or selling ads, it just doesn\u2019t work as well. (An exception to this is Cost-Per-Action \/ CPA \/ Pay-Per-Lead affiliate marketing, which I will probably discuss here someday.)\n    Does not work well for extremely niche products \u2013 At the end of the day, affiliates are human beings who respond to brands and products that they understand. If your product is more mainstream, you will be able to find more affiliates who understand it, and thus be interested in promoting it. If your product or idea is too niche, you will have trouble finding good affiliates. Even if you do, affiliate marketing will not make up for a large part of your sales.\n    You have less control over branding \u2013 You cannot have complete control over when, where and how an affiliate promotes your brand. The last thing you want is a spammer on your side. That being said, if you choose your affiliates wisely, and give them clear instructions on how you want your brand represented, you will probably never have a problem.\n\nI think the biggest selling point for affiliate marketing is that you have nothing to lose to give it a try. You don\u2019t have to pay a boatload of cash just to get in, and you can track your results easily with the web-based control panels offered by all affiliate platforms. You can scale up or down without investing in your own sales team.\n\nYou don\u2019t have to wait till everything else fails before you try affiliate marketing, because it may be a little too late. Affiliate marketing should be one of the first options you explore, as it will give you a steady flow of traffic and sales until you\u2019ve cracked the magic formula and your business becomes insanely viral.","topic":"branding, startup, company growth, affiliate marketing, product discovery, product growth, people management"},{"title":"11 Remarkably Effective Ways to Lead by Example","url":"https:\/\/www.inc.com\/peter-economy\/11-surprisingly-effective-ways-to-lead-by-example.html","body":"11 Remarkably Effective Ways to Lead by Example | Inc.com \n \n 11 Remarkably Effective Ways to Lead by Example   Lead 11 Remarkably Effective Ways to Lead by Example     When you walk the talk, you'll be a better and more effective leader. Isn't that what we all want?    By    Peter Economy The Leadership Guy @   bizzwriter Getty Images If you're a leader, your employees are watching every move you make. It's not because they don't trust you, and it's not because they want to keep track of your every move. The reason your people watch you closely is that they want to know if what you say and what you do are the same--that is, that  you walk the talk . If you want to gain the  trust and confidence  of your employees (and, believe me, that's something you definitely want to do), you must set an example for them. But it's not enough to set that example--your actions must be consistent with it. Here are 11 ways to lead by example--and to prove to the members of your team that their trust in you is well placed. 1. Be sensitive to people's feelings, and be kind to them Everyone has a rough day, or a day when everything seems to go wrong. Be sensitive to those times for your employees,  and support them instead of tearing them down. 2. Take time to make people feel special We all want to feel special. Take time to sincerely praise your employees for things that they do to advance your company or serve your customers. 3. Listen to people's emotions as well as words Remember that 60 to 90 percent of our communication is nonverbal. Learn to read your  employees' body language  as well as their emotions. 4. View people's needs and wants as valid Instead of jumping to the conclusion that your people can survive quite well without the things that they tell you they need and want, take the position that they are valid, and then do everything in your power to respond. 5. Choose your battles wisely Don't waste your time and energy engaging in fights that either have no consequence, or that will leave you drained. 6. Respect people's differences Each one of us is unique. Take your employees' differences into account when you make decisions that affect them. 7. Avoid being defensive--and placing people on the defensive Don't take honest feedback personally--learn from it and  use it to improve . When you provide feedback to your employees, make sure that it is candid, fair, and honest, and helps your people find ways to use it to improve. 8. Give people the benefit of the doubt No one goes to work each day wanting to do a terrible job. Assume that each one of your employees is a good and honest person who wants to do the best job possible. 9. Resolve interpersonal problems as quickly as possible Don't let disagreements or hurt feelings fester. Get these issues out into the open and work to resolve them quickly. 10. Treat people the way you would like to be treated You know how you would like to be treated by others. Now do the same for your employees. 11. Never take people for granted--never Don't forget that people are your most important asset. Give them the attention and consideration that they deserve.\n ","topic":"branding, marketing, growth marketing, company growth, product growth"},{"title":" The 2-Step Facebook Lead Gen Funnel For Local Businesses","url":"https:\/\/www.crazyeyemarketing.com\/blog\/the-2-step-facebook-lead-gen-funnel-for-local-businesses\/","body":"The 2-Step Facebook Lead Gen Funnel For Local Businesses | Crazy Eye Marketing \n What if you could consistently and predictably generate more business? \n You flip a switch and BOOM, a flood of new leads and customers flow into your business. \n That would be pretty cool, wouldn't it? \n As a local business, you're at a  unique advantage  to make this happen because you're only competing against your local competition \u2026 who likely aren't here reading this article. \n This leaves you wide open to really crush it! \n The Big Idea \n You're going to send traffic from Facebook ads to a simple, 2-step sales funnel that offers a voucher\/coupon for something of incredible value  (we call it an \u201cinitial offer\u201d)  in exchange for contact information (name, email, phone). \n You'll try to get the new lead to follow up with you first by offering a bonus if they call you right away; however, if they don't call you \u2013 you'll follow up with them via phone and\/or email and\/or retargeting and\/or text. \n The end goal is to get the person into your business, provide them with a great experience, and up-sell more offers. \n Pretty simple, right? \n Who This 2-Step Lead Gen Funnel Is For\u2026 \n This funnel is specifically designed for small, local businesses. Brick & mortar types \u2026 where you get to actually  see  your customers and clients. \n It  will  help you generate leads and customers. \n Here is just a handful of businesses this works amazingly well for.  (If you have questions or wonder if it will work for your business,  just shoot me an email .) \n \n Gyms \/ Health Centers \n Dentists \n Chiropractors \n Masseuses \n Barbers \/ Hair Stylists \n Real Estate Agents \n Restaurants \n Retail \n Live Events \n And beyond! \n \n The 2-Step Lead Gen Funnel \n Here's \u201cThe 2-Step Lead Gen Funnel\u201d in all its glory! \n \n >>  Get This Sales Funnel For  FREE!  << \n It should go without saying, but the images and wording need to change to fit your offer; however, the overall structure and strategy remains\u00a0the same. \n As you've noticed from above,  I am giving this funnel away for free \u00a0\u2026\u00a0all you need is a ClickFunnels account to use it. They offer a 14 day free trial, so you might as well try it out. What's the worst that could happen? You get a few leads and customers?! \n The Initial Offer \n On page 1, offer a voucher\/coupon to claim your initial offer. \n In the above example, the initial offer is 1 month, free access to the Crazy Eye Marketing Gym. \n Your initial offer is important. \n It's more important than what both your ads and pages look like. \n If your offer sucks and no one wants it \u2026 you're not going to get anywhere. \n And, yes! I've seen free offers bomb. Just because you slap the word \u201cfree\u201d on it, doesn't mean people will want it. \n Put some thought into your initial offer. Do some research. See what your competition is doing. \n Make it better. \n Make it  juicy . \n You want people to salivate over your initial offer! \n Side Note:  Your image(s) should reflect a customer receiving the benefit of the initial offer. For example, if you're a gym offering a free membership, show people working out. If you're a masseuse offering a free 15 minute massage, show someone receiving\u00a0a massage. If you're a dentist and offering a free teeth whitening, show someone with a brilliant smile. \n Side Note #2: \u00a0Don't use stock images. Whip out your phone and snap some photos of customers receiving the benefit you're offering. The \u201camateur\u201d look from taking your own photos is REAL \u2026 and people appreciate REAL. \n How Much Should The Initial Offer Cost? \n The initial offer should be between $0 and $19. \n Free is ideal; however, under $20 is the goal. \n Keep your end goal in mind \u2026\u00a0get the person into your business, provide them with a great experience, and up-sell more offers. \n If you have to \u201close\u201d a little money up front to make lots of money on the back end, why wouldn't you? \n Initial Offer Idea Generation: Google\/Yelp and Groupon \n I created a short video to guide you through the idea generation phase for your initial offer: \n \n \n \n Thank You \/ Success Page \n Page 2 of the 2-step funnel is the \u201cThank You\u201d or \u201cSuccess\u201d page. It's the page they see after giving you their contact information. \n The first thing you need to do on this page is confirm you're sending them the voucher\/coupon they originally asked for. THIS IS CRITICAL! If you don't tell them how to get what they originally requested, it causes a lot of confusion and confusion is bad. \n The next thing you want to do on this page is try to\u00a0 motivate the individual to call you! \n It's so much nicer to have people call you rather than you having to call them and follow up with emails. \n To help motivate people, I recommend offering another incentive or bonus. \n What's one more thing you could offer that someone would want to grab? \u2026 \n \n Gyms:  1-on-1, personal training session; $10 gift card for the snack bar \n Dentists:  x-rays \n Masseuse:  15 extra minutes \n Barbers\/Stylists:  a deep cleansing shampoo \n Restaurants\/Retail:  an extra 10% off \n etc., etc., etc. \n \n Just remember, it's sooooooo nice having people call you! So, make it worth their time. \n Side Note: \u00a0No matter how juicy your thank you page offer is \u2026 most people will NOT\u00a0pick up the phone and call right away. You're going to have to do some work! (more on this in a minute\u2026) \n Side Note #2:  I recommend using a call tracking platform like  CallRail  to help track inbound calls generated by your thank you page. \n Side Note #3: \u00a0Sometimes there's nothing to offer here. That's fine. You can try to\u00a0get people to call you anyway without any incentive. \n Your Leads List Tracker \n There are many ways you can track your leads. \n You can get fancy with a CRM tool or keep it simple with a Google Sheet \u2026 \n \n Here's a blank lead tracker sheet you can use:\u00a0 Click here to open the Google Sheet .  (You will need to click \u201cFile\u201d and \u201cMake A Copy\u201d on your Google Drive to be able to use it.) \n Then, all you have to do is connect your 2-Step Lead Gen Funnel, that's built in  ClickFunnels \n, to the Google Sheet with a tool called  Zapier . \n Here's a video on how to make the connection: \n \n \n \n Here's the code I mentioned in the video that generates the Date Stamp:\u00a0{{zap_meta_human_now}} \n The Money Is Made In The Follow Up \n I'm going to get real with you for a minute \u2026 \n Most of your leads are going to sign up for your offer while they're on the crapper or at work \u2026 \n They're typically not going to be able to call you right away \u2026 \n They're going to finish their business and by the time they're done \u2026 \n They'll have forgotten about you \u2026 \n It's the nature of the game \u2026 \n Don't take it personally. \n You simply gotta play the game! And know \u2026 \n The money is made in the follow up! \n You  HAVE  to follow up with these people. \n If you're not willing to do the follow up, don't even start. \n Now, I'm going to show you a way to outsource it in just a minute \u2026 but, you need to understand that  following up is something  you will have to do . \n Follow Up Strategies \n 1) Have Them Call You \n We've discussed this one already. In an ideal world, everyone that becomes a lead will take the initiative and come to your business. \n We try to make this happen by offering another bonus on the thank you page \u2026 but, most people still won't take any action \u2026 so \u2026 \n 2) You Call Them \n You're going to have to call these leads or, at the very least, hire a call center to do it  (more on this in a minute) . \n After an individual opts-in to claim the initial offer and they're greeted with the thank you page, they have  10 minutes  to call in and claim the extra bonus \u2026 so, you give them 10 minutes to do it on their own. \n If you don't hear from them within 10-15 minutes, pick up the phone and call them. \n It has to be that soon!\u00a0 \n Every minute you wait, the lead gets colder and colder. You want them when they're hot! \n What Do You Say To Them? \n What you say to your new lead is simple \u2026 \n \u201cHi {lead name}, this is {your name} with {your business name}. I see you just requested our {initial offer} and wanted to follow up with your real quick to {action}.\u201d \n Actions: \n \n \u201cSee when you'll be coming by to take advantage of it!\u201d\n \n If you don't schedule appointments, it might not matter when they come in; HOWEVER, by asking them this question they're making a verbal commitment to you and they'll be much more inclined to actually follow through and show up! \n Ie. if you're a retailer \u2026 you probably don't really care when they show up; however, if they make an \u201cappointment\u201d to be at your store by telling you they'll be there, they will likely show. \n \n \n \u201cSchedule a 15 minute call with our staff so we can answer any questions you may have.\u201d\n \n This is ideal for businesses that require a bit more \u201cselling\u201d before someone walks through the door, ie. a plastic surgeon.\u00a0Scheduling a 15 minute follow up call is a logical step for people to take and they'll be more inclined to go through with scheduling the call. \n Of course, when you're on the call with them, you'll \u201csell them\u201d on your offering. \n \n \n \u201cSchedule an appointment.\u201d\n \n Go straight for the jugular! \n \n \n \n Of course, you can have your own \u201cactions\u201d and try different ones to see which produce better results. I simply wanted to present a few frameworks to get you headed in the right direction! \n 3) Email Follow Up \n You'll use email automation to follow up with leads to, at the very least, send them the voucher\/coupon for the initial offer. \n The goal of these emails isto have them call you and\/or to have them use the voucher\/coupon to claim the initial offer, if they haven't already. \n If the person calls or visits your business, stop sending them the emails. \n Keep these emails short and to the point. For example: \n \n Hi {lead name}! \n Congratulations on being one of the lucky ones to grab a 1 month free gym membership! \n To claim your slot, please give us a call at (123)456-7890 or just show up! \n We're able to hold your slot for 3 days. If we don't hear from you by then, your slot will go to the next person on our list. \n Thanks! \n Nathan \n \n Send another follow up email\u00a0\u2026 \n \n Hey {lead name}, \n It looks like you haven't claimed your 1 month free gym membership yet \u2026 \n And, I wanted to let you know your slot is still available for 2 more days. \n Please call\u00a0(123)456-7890 or just show up! \n Thanks, \n Nathan \n PS. If you already claimed your slot, please disregard this email. Our systems sometimes take a day or two to catch up! \n \n And a \u201clast chance\u201d email \u2026 \n \n Hi {lead name}, \n This is the last chance to claim your 1 month free gym membership. \n If you don't call\u00a0(123)456-7890 or visit us today, your slot will go to the next person. \n Sorry to \u201cput pressure\u201d on you, but we only have a few slots available and want to make sure they're given to those who really want them. \n Thanks, \n Nathan \n PS. If you already claimed your slot, please disregard this email. Our systems sometimes take a day or two to catch up! \n \n That's all there is to it.\u00a0Short, sweet, to the point. \n 4) Retargeting \n Retargeting is a type of paid advertising where you can present specific ads to a specific group of people. \n For example, if someone opts-in for the voucher\/coupon, you can retarget them with ads that remind them to claim their voucher\/coupon by calling and\/or visiting your business in the next few days. \n Or, if you're hosting an open house or event, you can retarget everyone with ads that remind them of the date, time, and location of the open house or event. \n You can do a lot with retargeting and it's certainly worth digging deeper into its functionality! \n 5 ish ) Text Messages \n You can automate text messages for follow up;  however , they tend to be more trouble than they're worth. \n Typically, when someone receives a text, they reply via text. So, unless you want to text back and forth all day \u2013 I do not recommend this option. \n If you decide you still want to throw it into the mix, just remember to keep it short (less than 160 characters) and have the Call-To-Action be to  call you . \n For example, \u201cHey, it's The Crazy Eye Gym! Your 1 month free gym membership is waiting! Please call (123)456-7890 to claim your slot!\u201d \n Running Facebook Ads To Your Funnel \n All that's left to do now is send traffic to your 2-step funnel! \n Fortunately, there's a pretty simple formula for doing this \u2026 \n \n Ad Text:  {Call out your audience}! {Tell them what you're giving them}! {Tell them how many you're offering}, {give them a Call-To-Action}! \n Image:  Use the same exact image as your squeeze page background. Add text to it that says \u201cWant {whatever you're offering}?\u201d  (If you need help adding text to an image, check out  Canva ) \n Headline:  {DISCOUNT AMOUNT}! {What you're offering} \n News Feed Link Description:  Want {what you're offering}? \n \n Example: \n \n Simple enough, right? \n There are a few other things I'd like to point out with regard to launching your ad campaign: \n \n Campaign Objective should be set to  conversions . This means you need to have a properly installed tracking pixel and are tracking leads correctly! \n Ad Set Settings:\n \n Edit Placements : Only show on Facebook News Feed and possible Instagram if it makes sense to do so. You may split test desktop vs. mobile. \n Conversions : Set this to  Lead   (again, this assumes you have your pixel and tracking setup correctly) \n Budget : Start at $20-$30 a day \n Audience : Make sure you target your ideal audience and the correct location(s) \n \n \n \n Beyond that, you can get fancy with custom audiences, lookalike audiences, retargeting, and split testing more ads and offers. But, all that's a bit beyond the scope of this post \u2026 \n What you see above will yield you 80%+ of the results. All that extra \u201cstuff\u201d can get you that extra 20% or so; however, with what I've shown you, you should have no issues creating a profitable 2-Step Facebook Lead Gen Sales Funnel! \n BONUS:  How To Setup A Call Center \n Picking up the phone to call a new lead can be terrifying. \n I hate it. \n Even if you call within 15 minutes of them opting in for the voucher\/coupon \u2026 they may have already changed their mind and become irrationally irate at the fact you have the nerve to call them. \n Yes, people will give you their name, email, and phone number and then yell at you for calling them. \n People are crazy. \n I personally like to avoid crazy as much as possible. It's just not something I like to deal with. \n Beyond having to deal with the crazy factor, all  these initial phone calls take time . And, you need to stay on top of them too \u2026 remember, you need to call withing 15 minutes of them opting in.  (obviously, do this within business hours. If someone opts-in at 2am, call them at 11am.)\u00a0 \n If you have employees, you can obviously task them with this role \u2026 or,\u00a0you can outsource these initial calls to a professional call center! \n Jill's Office \n A Google search will reveal hundreds of call centers you can outsource these initial calls to. Or, you can hire a friend, neighbor, or independent freelancer. \n Do whatever makes sense for you; however, I wanted to let you know who I use and trust \u2026  Jill's Office . \n I have no affiliation with them whatsoever. I don't earn a commission or anything by referring you. Nothing like that. They just do good work and I recommend them. \n To be honest, I haven't tried any other call centers because Jill's Office was the first one I came across that was US based and quick to reply. I've stuck with them ever since. \n So, there may be better options out there, I just haven't\u00a0needed to look. \n\n   ","topic":"people management, local businesses, growth marketing, branding, company growth, product growth, lead gen funnel"},{"title":"When Is It Time to Scale Your Business?","url":"http:\/\/www.coxblue.com\/when-is-it-time-to-scale-your-business\/","body":"When Is It Time to Scale Your Business? \n \n Entrepreneurs work long hours and dedicate their lives to get their businesses on the right time. When success happens, it is certainly cause for celebration, but also brings new challenges! How do you know when it is time to scale your business? After all, if the business starts to scale without truly understanding who the customer is or whether the demand is sustainable, the growth can derail quickly. The Right Time to Scale Your Business While there isn\u2019t a magic formula that can tell you exactly the right time is to scale up your business, there are many things you should have figured out before you decide to take that step. Below are a few questions that should be in the back of your mind. If you have these questions figured out, you should be in a good place to expand. \u201cDo You Have Enough Demand?\u201d Just because a business may be booming now, doesn\u2019t mean it will be sustainable moving forward. One of the biggest challenges businesses face when scaling up is being able to  attract enough customers and clients to support their growth . Before you scale, you need to understand your market trends and forecasts. Put together various scenarios of what could happen to your demand once you expand, and layout how you would respond to each situation. Put a lot of thought and analysis into this. Don\u2019t just base your direction off of emotions or assumptions. \u201cAre Your Finances in Order?\u201d Cost is another major concern for companies who are planning to scale. Uncertainty comes with change, and to help ease your anxiety around changes within your business, it\u2019s recommended that you have a financial plan in place to accommodate the immediate \u201cwhat ifs\u201d that may occur. Put together some projections and simply see if your business can pay for business essentials moving forward. \u201cDo You Have the Right Technology? Technology and connectivity both play key roles in the growth of businesses . Your business needs to have the right tools in place to ensure all systems are running efficiently and effectively. Businesses these days need solutions that range anywhere from internet and storage solutions to voice over IP and cloud-based applications. The technological requirements of a business vary greatly based on size, goals, and structure of a company. You\u2019ll need to have a clear vision of what your business needs before scaling it forward, both in terms of functionality and cost. According to a  study by Cox Business and Forbes Insights , the largest technology challenge faced by businesses in the process of scaling is understanding changing technology needs and what products and services will meet those needs. The fear that \u201cyou don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know\u201d can be incredibly daunting when it comes to figuring out the right technology for your business. If you\u2019re unsure where to start, consider hiring an internal IT employee that can help put the technological processes in place. If you aren\u2019t quite ready to hire internally for that position, a  managed service  provider can be a very useful partner to lead you in the right direction. \u201cDo You Know Your Customers Expectations?\u201d When considering expansion, it is imperative that you keep your customers and their expectations top of mind.  Your business should revolve around their wants and needs , not your wants and needs. Spend less time worrying about day-to-day logistics and more time on connecting and innovating with your customers. After all, your business wouldn\u2019t exist without them! \u201cDo You Have the Right Processes in Place?\u201d Companies are taking shape in many different forms, from standard brick and mortar establishments to completely distributed workforces. It is essential that no matter how you plan on scaling your business, you have documented systems in place to accommodate your company\u2019s structure. Types of questions around processes to consider include: \n \n Do you have a training process in place for new employees? \n \n \n If you\u2019re a remote company, how do you track employee productivity? \n \n \n Are company goals documented for people to refer to? \n \n \n Will you be using  cloud-based solutions  for collaboration and file-sharing? \n \n Lastly, do you actually have a documented plan to scale your business? If not, it\u2019s essential that you put one in place before you begin. \u201cDo You Have the Right Team in Place?\u201d One in ten companies is concerned with finding employees  and how the change would affect them, as well as how the change would impact customers.  Rarely can businesses scale up without hiring talent in some capacity.  You\u2019ll need to let go of some of your control and hire appropriate people to support you as your business grows. Achieving Ideal Growth The Cox Business and Forbes Insights report  found that customer expectations and technology have the biggest impact on growth, and small business owners who get them right will come out on top. There are no shortcuts to scaling up. Once you have a strategy to scale, you\u2019ll be in a good position to take the first step. Remember, every major company was a startup at some point. These are exciting times for businesses, and having the confidence to scale up is essential when you\u2019re ready to take that step. By following the tips mentioned above, you\u2019ll be ready to scale your business successfully and will set yourself up for the growth you\u2019ve been looking for.   About   Latest Posts   Chelsea Segal Chelsea Segal is the CEO of Targetwise. TARGETWISE empowers agencies, brands + marketers with results-oriented solutions that grow, nurture + maintain a social ecosphere.  Neutralizing all digital channels, we accelerate performance by applying data driven optimizationin real-time across a superior blend of mobile, video,display and email inventory. Converting the right people at the right time, we drive brand solutions, while securing optimal impact, engagement + results.  \n ","topic":"people management, growth marketing, branding, product growth, business, company growth"},{"title":"7 Steps for More Effective A\/B Testing","url":"https:\/\/www.usertesting.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/20\/7-steps-for-more-effective-ab-testing\/","body":"As marketers, we\u2019re supposed to be great at running winning A\/B tests.\n\nWe\u2019re supposed to be able to run a test, put our feet up, and marvel at the success of the B-version.\n\nYet, it rarely works out that way because, most of the time, our A\/B tests fail.\n\nWe let them run for weeks (or months!) and when it\u2019s all said and done, the B-version outperforms the A-version only about 10% of the time.\n\nThat means we\u2019re wrong 9 times out of 10.\n\nAnd sadly, that\u2019s not even the biggest problem. The real problem is how much time all of this stuff takes.\n\nRunning each test probably takes anywhere between 3-6 weeks on average. And the fact that you\u2019re only winning 1 out of 10 times means that most of us are only right about one time per year.\n\nSo how can we do it faster?\nWhy we\u2019re only right 1 out of 10 times\n\nMy leading theory is that we just have too many ideas.\n\nWhen we want to run an A\/B test, most of us go online and search for A\/B testing ideas, and here\u2019s what we get:\n\nab-test-ideas-search\n\nIf I\u2019ve done my math right, that\u2019s more than 295 ideas in one Google search. I\u2019m sure they\u2019re good ideas, but the problem is there\u2019s too many of them.\n\nAnd what we often do is write them all down in a list, and choose the one that sounds the best.\n\nOnce we run that test, we choose another one from our list that sounds good.\n\nI think you can see where this is going.\n\nAnd this is probably why most of us are only right about 10% of the time. Because just picking randomly like that isn\u2019t going to get us the big wins we\u2019re looking for.\nWhat we need is a process\n\nYou\u2019re probably thinking process = boring. But in this case, process = more revenue and more experiments.\nProcess = More Revenue\n\nWhen your challenge is having too many ideas, using a process helps you come up with the right ideas, know which ones to choose, and really speed things up.\n\nThe core of the process is to find out what\u2019s stopping people from converting\u2026 and fix it.\n\nYou\u2019re probably thinking that\u2019s the most obvious thing you\u2019ve ever heard. But it\u2019s often the simplest things that make the largest impact.\n\nBut how exactly do you find this out? Let\u2019s break this down into a few actionable steps you can use right away.\nHow to come up with A\/B test ideas\n\nThe first step is to take your list of 150+ A\/B test ideas and throw them away. I\u2019m sure they came from smart people, but they just might not be right for your situation. And starting from a list is the wrong approach.\n\nWe\u2019re starting from scratch.\n\nThe same thing goes for your gut. You\u2019re a smart, hard-working marketer who knows your product really well. Your gut is good, it just knows a little too much.\n\nIt\u2019s what best-selling authors Chip and Dan Heath call the of the curse of knowledge.\n\nWe\u2019re all so familiar with our websites and products that we just can\u2019t see them with fresh eyes anymore. We look at our website every single day, and the way that we see it is fundamentally different than the way our customers and first time visitors see it.\n\nAnd in this case, it really holds us back.\nListen to your customers and prospects\n\nAgain, this sounds obvious, but very few of us actually do it.\nIt sounds obvious, but very few people actually listen to their customers and prospects.\n\nIf we want to find out what\u2019s stopping people from converting, then we need to listen to our customers and prospects. They\u2019re the only ones that can show us why.\n\nLet\u2019s talk about some specific ways we can listen to get A\/B test ideas that we won\u2019t find on any list:\n\n    Put Qualaroo on your pricing page and ask visitors, \u201cIf you\u2019re not going to sign up today, can you tell us why not?\u201d You can do this on any page on you site. \n\n    Look at chat transcripts from when people chatted in with frustrations and confusion. \n\n    Ask members of your sales and support teams \u201cWhat are the common questions that you\u2019re hearing?\u201d\n\n    Run a user test where you send 3 users through your funnel, to your competition\u2019s site, and to a huge company in your space (click here for the exact process).\n\n    Run a free Peek test, and in about an hour you\u2019ll get a video back of someone using your site\n\nUse a framework to run your experiments\n\nNow that you\u2019ve generated a lot of ideas from your customers and prospects, what you need is a framework to decide what to test and when.\n\nHere\u2019s the framework we use at UserTesting. You can take it, use it, and tweak it to your needs. You don\u2019t have to use it word for work, do whatever is best for your team:\nStep 1: Test objective\n\nThe first step is deciding your test objective. So before you run any A\/B tests, write down the answer to this question in 1-2 sentences: \u201cWhy are we running this test?\u201d\n\nWhy the heck are we doing this? How many times do you run tests without knowing exactly why you\u2019re doing it? I\u2019m guilty of this myself.\n\nThis question will prevent you from running a lot of unnecessary tests and wasting time.\nStep 2: Hypothesis\n\nAll of these steps are important, but this might be the most important one. And it\u2019s having a hypothesis, or an educated guess, about what you think the results will be. We follow this formula:\nIf X, then Y, because Z.\n\nFor example, if we do this, then that will happen, because of these assumptions.\n\nAnd it\u2019s very important to write this down.\nStep 3: Opportunity size\n\nThe next thing to consider when running tests is opportunity size. If this test works, what\u2019s the total impact we could expect to see over a year? Again, I think this is very important and often overlooked.\n\nIf you\u2019re running an A\/B test that (even if it\u2019s wildly successful) is only going to contribute $50 for the rest of the year, then it might not be worthwhile for you to take the time to do it.\n\nWhereas, if you\u2019re running a test that has a lower likelihood of winning, but if it wins it\u2019s going to have a huge impact on the business, then it might be worth doing.\n\nBut more often than not, we run tests without considering opportunity size.\nStep 4: Time to test\n\nNext is determining the time involved. How long will it take to run this test?\n\nIs it going to take 1 day, a month, or is going to be a really slow one because you need to get engineering and designers involved, and you need to get sign-off?\n\nKnowing all of this going into the test will help you.\nStep 5: Likely scenarios\n\nThen write out the 3 scenarios that you think are most likely to happen.\n\nMost of the time one of those things will happen, so you won\u2019t be surprised.\n\nOther times something will happen that you didn\u2019t account for. But rather than being dumbfounded, you can approach it from a different angle and say, \u201cOh, I didn\u2019t have that as a likely scenario, because I was assuming that the clickthrough rate would be between 2-4%, and the CTR was actually 20%, which I had no way of knowing.\u201d\n\nAnd that will inform you for next time.\n\nSo instead of being in shock that your test worked (or not), you can track it back to the specific assumption that you were making, which helps you make your future A\/B tests better.\nStep 6: Next steps\n\nAfter you run this A\/B test, it\u2019s important to consider what you should do next.\n\nIf it\u2019s a big success, how can you expand it? What are similar campaigns you can run that will get you similar results?\n\nIf it was a big failure (and that\u2019s okay, a lot of tests are) then what can you learn to run better tests in the future?\nStep 7: What worked & what didn\u2019t\n\nAnd lastly, what worked and what didn\u2019t? It\u2019s important to take the time to consider all the work that you\u2019ve done.\n\nSo what did you learn? What are you gonna do different on the next test?\nConclusion\n\nAgain, these steps aren\u2019t meant to be followed rigidly. We use them on the marketing team at UserTesting a lot, but hopefully you can think through a framework for your own team (or for yourself) that will help you make the right decisions.\n\nSo let\u2019s go back to the problem as we\u2019re wrapping up here. We\u2019re only right 1 out of 10 times, which means we\u2019re only seeing 1 winner per year on average. If you can be right 2 or 3 times out of 10, what kind of impact would that have on your business?\n\nI think there\u2019s a big opportunity for us marketers to come up with our B versions by listening to our customers and prospects rather than listening to long list. And through that we can start to have more big winners each year, and really drive our businesses forward.","topic":"effective, company growth, testing, brand development, steps, product growth, branding, people management"},{"title":" The Importance of Market Research to Your Business","url":"https:\/\/www.thebalance.com\/why-marketing-research-is-important-to-your-business-2296119","body":"\n Are Market Research and Marketing Research the Same? \n \n \nThe Balance Small Business\n \n \nThe Importance of Market Research to Your Business  \n \n \n \nUpdated October 29, 2018\n \n \n \n \n Just contemplating the need to do market research for your business can feel overwhelming. However, you need to jump in because market research is key to the success of your business. First, you need to understand the difference between \"market research\" and \"marketing research.\" \n \n   \n \n Market research is when you have narrowed down a  specific \"target,\"  and you are delving into the behavior of that target. In other words, its research into a very narrow group of consumers. \n \n   \n \n Marketing research entails dealing with a broad range of consumers. Marketing research includes \"market\" research, but it also delves into more. The best way to differentiate the two is to understand that  marketing research  is essentially about researching the marketing \"process\" of a company\u2014not just \"who\" they are targeting. \n \n   \n \n First, let's look at how to implement marketing research, which includes the following steps and the questions you should be asking yourself along the way: \n \n   \n \n Problem definition.\u00a0 The problem is the focus of your research. For example, \"why are sales soaring in your Midwest territory, but dismal in other parts of the country?\" Data collection method and needs. \u00a0This is where you ask, \"how will I collect the data I need to solve the problem? Do I use surveys, telephone calls or focus groups?\" Determine the sampling method.  Sampling represents those you will be collecting information from. You need to ask yourself, \"what sampling method will I use? Will it be a random sampling, a sampling that contains a similar element, or a natural sampling?\" \u200b\u200b Data analysis.  You need to figure out how you will you analyze the data. Will you use software or do it by hand? Also, how accurately do the results need to be? Determine budget and timeframe. \u00a0You must determine how much you're willing to spend on the research and how soon it needs to be completed. Data collection.\u00a0 Now it's time to collect all the data you have available after following steps one through five. Analysis of the data.  At this point, you\u00a0conduct the analysis of the data that has been collected in the previous Steps. Error check. \u00a0Be sure to check for errors in the data you've collected and analyzed. Errors can occur in the sampling method and data collections. Create your report.\u00a0 The final step of marketing research is to draft a report on your findings. Your report should contain tables, charts, and\/or diagrams. It's important that your report clearly communicates the results that you found. Your findings should lead to a solution to the problem you identified in Step One. \n \n   \n      3 Key Benefits of Market Research    \n \n Market research also provides many benefits. It takes the guesswork out of marketing and gives you data that you can use to drive your  marketing strategy \u2014and accomplish your objectives and goals. It's a systematic approach that can make your marketing not only easier but more effective.\u00a0 \n \n   \n \n Market research includes the following benefits: \n \n   \n \n Communication driver. \u00a0It drives your communication not only with your current customer base but your target prospects as well.\u00a0 Identifies opportunity. \u00a0Market research shows you where the opportunities are and helps you identify not just high-level opportunities but assists in showing you the more immediate \"low hanging fruit\" opportunities.\u00a0 Lowers risk.\u00a0 Detailed data keeps you focused on the real opportunities and helps you avoid unproductive areas.\u00a0 \n ","topic":"product growth, business, market research, product discovery, branding, people management, importance, company growth"},{"title":" 5 Steps to Executing the Perfect Sales Prospecting Campaign [+ Templates]","url":"https:\/\/blog.hubspot.com\/sales\/perfect-outbound-sales-plan","body":"5 Ways to Create a Crazy-Successful Sales Campaign\n In modern  sales automation , it\u2019s easy to make your small team of five feel like an army of 50 reps. But more volume isn\u2019t always the answer to successful campaign outreach. \n more \n If you have email automation and dialing tasks queued up for your sales team -- but are wondering how to turn the corner with automated outreach, this post is for you. I\u2019ll dive into the tactics and tools used by some of the top sales campaigns out there. \n Here\u2019s how you can turn your sales outreach from good to great -- plus some helpful  email campaign templates  you can implement today. \n HubSpot Call-to-Action Code  [if lte IE 8]><div id=\"hs-cta-ie-element\"><\/div><![endif]  end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code  \n 1. Built-in dial analysis \n What separates the best calls on your team from the worst? If the answer doesn\u2019t jump to mind right away, you have a problem. It\u2019s important to know the calls that get demos and deals vs. those ending with upset prospects or hang ups. \n Dial analysis tools like  Rambl  answer this question for you. You can see when certain topics are coming up (i.e., competition, budget, and timeline) and monitor for certain keywords (i.e., cost, specific features, and point points). \n One of the best features of dial analysis is that it gives each of your reps the ability to see their performance from the perspective of listen time and follow up. Sales leaders also receive full access to analytics, so they can make changes on the fly. \n Head of Sales Andrew Johnson says, \"Dial analysis gives me visibility into the conversation quality my reps are having on the phone. With this information, I can see calls are qualified and whether our call playbook is working. Our reps love it too -- it\u2019s streamlined their process, so they spend more time on calls and less on data entry and logging calls in our CRM.\" \n 2. Automatic contracts \n Are your SMB reps spending too much time on the wrong prospects? Deals that will never have an average revenue per account (ARPA) worth your time can still add value to your company -- but you don\u2019t want to use account executives on unprofitable accounts. \n What if certain leads could self-select into your closing process? Tools like  PanaDoc  enable you to add lightweight contracts right into your workflow. This lets your reps focus on larger, more complex deals and relies on a low-touch\/no-touch model to bring in SMBs. \n With auto-contract sending as part of your workflow, you can have certain customer types (those that raise their hands) pinged with the right information to make a buying decision when and where it\u2019s convenient. \n Additionally, these tools enable you to send one-pagers and PDF content as part of your workflow. \n 3. Hand raises \n How does your team handle content engagement? When a prospect engages with an email -- you usually know it\u2019s done its job. Once you get the prospect on your website, it\u2019s time to get your BDR team engaged. \n Dialing a prospect after they\u2019ve self-selected (i.e., clicked on your content which signals they deem it relevant) gives you the opportunity to connect with a prospect at the right time in the buying cycle. \n This can be achieved by using text alerts on  HubSpot Sales . A text alert can be set to notify the campaign owner any time a prospect performs a certain action. \n For example, if someone clicks your email and visits the pricing page, you might trigger a text alert to the relevant BDR, so they connect with the prospect to field questions and qualify the opportunity. \n 4. Direct mail campaigns \n What do you do when leads don\u2019t respond; Put them back into a nurture drip campaign? Before throwing in the towel, give your contact one last push through a new channel. \n Direct mail has come back into the forefront in recent years as a great way to get through all of the noise prospects have in their inbox. How can you get direct mail to tie in to your sales automation? \n Tools like  Inkit  make it easy to automate direct mail helping companies leverage exploding offers and promos to the tune of a 8.9% redemption rate. That makes for one nice revenue boost. \n These systems integrate directly with your outreach cadence,  your HubSpot CRM , and your other conversational commerce channels (i.e., chat). \n 5. Automated email sales campaigns \n Brandon Redlinger , director of growth at  Engagio , says, \u201cMarketing automation is perfect for nurturing campaigns and email newsletters. But when it comes to sales -- especially if you\u2019re doing targeted account selling --  pure automation is dangerous .\u201d \n There are too many moving pieces in top-of-funnel sales, and Redlinger says if you mess them up, you instantly lose the trust of your prospects and will be condemned to the spam folder. \n He preaches the importance of coupling an understanding of the dangers of too much automation with a powerful platform that streamlines the personal elements of your outreach efforts. Here\u2019s Redlinger\u2019s strategy for creating the perfect  automated email prospecting  strategy. \n Create Your Campaign Templates \n For your first warm outreach email, follow these guidelines to boost your chances of getting a reply: \n \n Keep it short:  People don\u2019t have much time to read, let alone respond to your email. Aim for no more than three to five sentences. \n Open strong:  Mention a common professional connection or interest, offer congratulations on a new job or award, or send a relevant piece of content. \n Offer a compelling value proposition:  Distill the value of your product into one sentence. \n Include a call to action:  What action do you want your prospect to take next? Ask a specific question or give them instructions on how to follow up. \n Sound like a real person:  Remember,  people want to connect with other people . Buyers are much more inclined to answer an email that says \" Hey prospect, did you have a chance to check the whitepaper I sent? Let me know! \u201d than one saying \u201c Dear Mr. Prospect, I would like to cordially invite you for a brief demonstration of our product. Sincerely, Mr. Salesman. \u201d \n Choose a relevant subject line:  Don't slap on a completely irrelevant subject line. \n \n Here\u2019s a template for your first  warm outreach email campaign . \n \n [Your Company] > [Prospect\u2019s Company] \n \n Hi [First name], \n I saw on LinkedIn that we\u2019re connected through [common connection. [Write one sentence about why that connection is relevant]. \n Given your position, I think you might be interested in what my company does. [Give your one or two sentence value proposition]. \n Are you free for a 15-minute call this Thursday or Friday? I\u2019d love to see if I can help. \n Thanks, \n [Your name] \n \n \n \n Subsequent touchpoints should not be \u201c Just checking in, \" or \u201c Wanted to follow up. \u201d Instead, formulate a legitimate reason for following up. Here are four great reasons to follow up that will make you a welcome guest instead of an annoying pest: \n \n Re-emphasize business value:  It\u2019s all about what you can do for them. Find a different way to show value. Talk to a different pain point. \n Offer insights:  Share a different perspective on their problems or a novel idea for how they can reach their goals. \n Educate:  Not every follow up should be a pitch. Instead, offer a piece of valuable content, like a whitepaper, ebook, or webinar recording. \n Share news:  Why do you think social media is so addictive? People don\u2019t want to miss out. Follow up with news in your industry, product updates, or news about their competitors. \n \n After some time has passed and you haven\u2019t received a response, a big mistake is thinking the lead is now dead. But that's not true -- it might just be a matter of following up a few more times. Here's one of my most effective follow up emails for 30+ days out. \n \n Quick question about [pain\/problem you solve] \n \n Hey [First name], \n Are you still interested in [Your solution]? \n Cheers, \n [Your name] \n \n \n \n That\u2019s it. \n It gets great responses. Some people thank me for reaching out, others politely say no. Both are valuable answers because I now know the status of that lead. \n Set Up Your Campaigns \n Here\u2019s where you\u2019ll apply a custom cadence for each campaign touchpoint. Set up different campaigns for various segments of your list. The more you can segment your list, the better your chances for a reply. \n If you have a large list, start A\/B testing different aspects of your campaign to find the best outreach plan. Here are a few suggested variables to test: \n \n Number of touches \n Time between touches \n Subject lines \n Social media mix \n Calls to action \n Top-down vs. bottom-up approach \n Language and tone \n \n Add Your Leads \n It\u2019s time to start importing your leads and dropping them into appropriate campaigns. If you\u2019re using the right platform, at the end of each working day you can drop the newly discovered leads into ongoing campaigns without having to start a whole new campaign. The trick here is to make sure you don\u2019t have the same leads in different campaigns. \n Launch Your Campaign \n Make one final pass through your list and templates to ensure there are no missing variables -- then hit send. \n Analyze and Adjust \n After you\u2019ve given your campaign enough time to run, take a step back and see what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not. Hopefully you have benchmarks to compare how each touchpoint and campaign is performing. If not, don\u2019t worry. Start tracking now so you can run a  data-driven prospecting  campaign. \n A cautionary note:  Beware of \u201cindustry averages,\u201d which are often inflated. Companies sharing benchmarks are usually those doing well. Furthermore, many of these companies are much further along in their testing programs. So, aspire to benchmark numbers but don\u2019t be held captive by them. \n These tactics and tools are all about helping your reps work smarter not harder. Sales requires a lot of volume to get results -- but that doesn\u2019t mean more volume is always better. \n Sometimes what your outreach really needs is better insight on what call types and content are getting the most traction. \n Other times, it\u2019s about adding a touchpoint and remembering not to throw in the towel too soon. Either way, the determining factor for having your sales cadence turn the corner is your ability to iterate and try new tactics. \n ","topic":"steps, product growth, branding, marketing, executing, growth marketing, company growth, templates"},{"title":" Inexpensive Ways to Conduct Marketing Research","url":"http:\/\/buzz.greatfxprinting.com\/inexpensive-market-research.htm","body":"4Inexpensive Ways to Conduct Marketing Research\n\nAs small business owners, we typically don\u2019t have the resources to spend tons of money on marketing research tactics like corporate American uses, such as focus groups or national surveys, which cost a lot of money to conduct. However, we do have an advantage over big companies \u2013 we are closer to the customer. Which means we have more inexpensive, and relatively easy, options available to us.\n\nBefore conducting any sort of marketing research as a small business owner, you first need to make sure your client list is up to date with current addresses, telephone numbers and, most importantly, e-mail addresses.\n\nE-mail is one of the best, quickest, and budget efficient ways to communicate with your clientele. It\u2019s also an inexpensive way to do some marketing research, by offering current clients an incentive to take an online survey, such a coupon for 15% off their next purchase. You could also offer an additional 10% off for referring your survey to friends or family who are not current customers. That way you have a chance to get an expanding survey base.\n\nThere are online survey tools available to small businesses at a reasonable cost, most of which provide survey templates that you can tweak to fit your business specifically, without any knowledge base in research marketing. Some of these providers include Survey Monkey, which has a free basic or inexpensive upgraded options; or Constant Contact, which offers both e-mail marketing and online surveys for a low monthly rate.\n\nAnother research option is to add polling to your website. This is something you often find on news websites, that poll the reader about their thoughts on a specific situation. The premise is very similar for your website, accept that you ask a question (one question is sufficient) that provides important information to you about your customers.\n\nFor example, on my photography business website I could add a polling question that asks \u201cWhen was the last time you had family pictures taken?\u201d and give multiple choice response possibilities, such as 0-6 months ago, 6 months to a year ago, 1-5 years ago, or I can\u2019t remember when. If this is the route you take, be sure to change your polling question often \u2013 probably about once every couple of weeks, depending on the traffic your website gets.\n\nAnother option is to offer a link to a coupon on your website. When the customer clicks on the link, set it up to direct them to a brief survey (no more than 10-15 questions) in order to redeem the coupon. Remember, with any survey or polling question, multiple choice responses are the best option.\n\nBlogs, message boards and feedback\/customer review options are always good opportunities to find out what your customer is looking for from your business and your product, and they are inexpensive additions to any website. Though they aren\u2019t a definitive marketing research tool, most customers who post a message have something important to say that you should probably be taking into consideration.\n\nAnd, of course, your sales team can provide some essential insight regarding your customers and what they are looking for. Be sure to arrange monthly meetings between your sales and marketing teams, no matter how small, so that they can provide each other with valuable information that will help both areas to be more successful. And it doesn\u2019t cost a thing to have these two areas of your business work together.\n\nAs always, be creative. Though you may not have the financial resources that larger businesses have, you surely have just as much (if not more) brain power and pizazz. \n ","topic":"conduct marketing research, growth marketing, company growth, branding, people management, product growth, inexpensive ways"},{"title":"The Five Types of Virality","url":"https:\/\/news.greylock.com\/the-five-types-of-virality-8ba42051928d?source=rss----f89b20443665---4","body":"The Five Types of Virality\n\nand choosing the right one for your product to grow\n\nEvery entrepreneur has the dream of making their startup\u2019s product go viral. But too often this is couched in a na\u00efve understanding of virality. \u201cLet\u2019s make our app viral!\u201d Or your investors ask you, \u201cCan you take your app and add a little bit more virality?\u201d (I often hear this described as growth hacking, too.)\n\nSometimes it feels like people believe virality is just magic pixie dust that can be sprinkled on anything. Fortunately, it\u2019s much more concrete than that. But to understand how virality works, you first have to know that not all virality is the same. Many successful companies have done distinct things to help make their products go viral, all in completely different ways. So I thought it would be helpful to try to classify the disparate approaches.\n\nIf you\u2019re trying to build your company and grow your product, it helps to think as specifically as possible about how to get your product in front of people. You can engineer features that will amplify the chances that people will want to try it. Of course first, you have to make a great product that people love. Once they love it, they\u2019ll talk about it more. But how do you actually feed them the language to talk about it and enhance that word of mouth experience? How do you remind them to talk about it when they\u2019re having a great experience? Or later? You need to understand what\u2019s inside your core users\u2019 minds, and use that knowledge to help them share your product through whatever means makes the most sense.\n\nDo you need to build incentive programs into your product and marketing plans? Or, if people are making something tangible and shareable with your product, like pictures, how do you get them to share it in a way that other people will be naturally exposed to the product? And then how do you make sure that the flow of interested people actually converts to new users as seamlessly as possible?\n\nThe most basic element common to all these different types virality is inception. The goal of all viral efforts is to insert (or \u201cincept\u201d) an idea of what a product can do into someone else\u2019s head, and to get them so excited about it they want to try it and use it. That\u2019s the most important component of any type of virality. What is that little sentence, that little hook, that little reason why somebody actually wants to try your product out?\n\nSo here\u2019s what I\u2019ve found are the five main types ways a product can do this. Do you have another way I didn\u2019t cover here? I\u2019d love to hear about it.\n\nWord-of-mouth virality\n\nThis one is straightforward: It\u2019s simply a product being so good that people can\u2019t help telling their friends about it. For example, when Google was just taking off, people would notice you searching on Alta Vista or Infoseek or another search engine and they\u2019d tell you \u201cuse Google, the search is so much better.\u201d So the next time you did a search, you\u2019d try it, and pretty soon you\u2019d be telling others about it too.\n\nA couple of years ago, when we got our first iPhone apps, geeks like me were telling everyone they knew about Evernote, because it lets you sync notes between your computer and your smartphone. It often happened when you\u2019d see someone taking notes on their phone, and they\u2019d tell you they were using Evernote and how simple it was to keep one copy of the notes everywhere.\n\nOne other key to word of mouth virality is making sure your product is easy to find later. Having a name that is easy to remember, *and to spell* certainly helps (Google is easier than Googol \u2014 the number it was named after). Missing vowels and doubled letters, not having the right domain name or app store name always make it trickier. One test I like to do when trying out new company names is check the typeahead in the App Store. If you are calling your application InstaGreatCoolThing, you might realize users typing ahead will see Instagram and similar apps before yours (until you are as big as Instagram).\n\nThe other key is to make sure your product is easy to describe. The words you use to describe your product \u2014 on your home page, in your press messaging, and in the product itself will be the foundation of how your users describe it. This is really important because it\u2019s how your users will incept other users with what your product does. Funny side features like Google\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m feeling lucky\u201d or Facebook\u2019s \u201cPoke\u201d often help to make the description memorable too. If you don\u2019t have a pithy way to describe your product, you should assume your users won\u2019t be able to either.\n\nIncentivized word-of-mouth virality\n\nThis is similar to word-of-mouth, but with a little added incentive for people to refer their friends. For instance, 15 years ago, Paypal would give you $10 if you referred a friend and they created an account. Similarly, Dropbox and Uber have used incentives to great effect. Refer a friend and they\u2019ll get more free storage (and you too), or a discount on their first ride.\n\nIt helps when the incentive works both ways, as a coupon for the new users as well as an reward for the referring user when the recipient creates a new account. Because you are paying for it and discounting your service, it\u2019s not quite as clean or pure as word-of-mouth, but it can be very effective.\n\nDemonstration virality\n\nDemonstration virality is when the nature of a product is such that, simply by using it, people are showing it off. One great example is Instagram: In 2010 it was fairly difficult to get photos off your phone and into some useful place, so Instagram added tools for people to easily share their photos out to Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. Instagram\u2019s filters naturally caught people\u2019s attention on those networks. It provoked an instant \u201cHow did you do that?\u201d reaction.\n\nYou can see Prisma blowing up this summer in the same way. You can create these incredible, stained-glass-like artworks with it, and then share them on Instagram or wherever. Of course people want to know how did you did that, so they\u2019ll ask you \u2014 or they can see the little Prisma logo on the image, and then go get the app themselves.\n\nMusical.ly spreads in a similar way as users and influencers create very cool music videos and then share them on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and people decide to try Musical.ly to make their own.\n\nAnother example is Pinterest. If I create a pinboard of fun GIFs or wedding ideas or recipes, and I share it, the act of sharing is a built-in advertisement for Pinterest\u2019s awesomeness.\n\nEven Uber benefited from demonstration virality early on. You\u2019d show up to a meeting in a black car and people would be like, \u201cDude, where did you get the limo?\u201d Or you\u2019d be leaving a party and you\u2019d just press the Uber button and a car showed up for you. Meanwhile, your friends were trying to hail cabs or call for rides. Just by using Uber, you were a walking advertisement for the product and how much better it was.\n\nInfectious virality\n\nInfectious virality is when a product is designed in a way that people will work to get other people using it because it will make it better for both of them. It\u2019s when one user is \u201cinfecting\u201d another with the virus, I mean the product so that they are both hooked. For example, Snapchat users have a big incentive to encourage their friends to download Snapchat so they can send photos back and forth in a more authentic and safe way. Twitter works the same way: If you follow me on Twitter I\u2019ll have more followers, and you can see what I\u2019m doing and tweeting, and it\u2019ll be great for both of us. Nextdoor is a really interesting example where even though people might not know their neighbors, they can send them postcards to invite them and make the neighborhood community larger and more productive for everyone. And of course LinkedIn and Facebook are the canonical examples of infectious virality where people invited you to be their colleagues or friends on the service.\n\nInvitations are the key to spreading infectious virality. However \u2014 false invitations or overly spammy invitations often have a deleterious effect on virality. When someone invites you to a service only because they invited their entire address book, it doesn\u2019t feel personal or connected. And if you sign up and the person doesn\u2019t even use the product, then the likelihood for the next person to become active diminishes greatly.\n\nThis is what most people think of as classic virality, because it\u2019s how we\u2019ve seen social networks and communication networks spread. And who doesn\u2019t love the special feeling of being \u201cinvited\u201d to a product by their friend? But infectious virality doesn\u2019t and shouldn\u2019t apply to all products. Being invited into a product that isn\u2019t naturally social doesn\u2019t really work. So use this method carefully and make sure it really applies to your product.\n\nOutbreak virality\n\nFinally, some things just spread because they\u2019re fun to share, or because they\u2019ve got a lot of popular momentum and people want to look cool by sharing them. YouTube videos blow up because they\u2019re funny, or addictive, and it\u2019s just fun to share them with your friends.\n\nIn a similar way, Pok\u00e9mon Go took off this summer in part because everyone was doing it, and it was just fun to tell your friends about it and to participate yourself. Of course, there are other aspects to this game\u2019s success, such as the fact that it was leveraging a very established, beloved brand, but it also benefited from this virtuous circle of fun, popularity, and sharing.\n\nPutting it all together\n\nWhen you understand the different tools and that they all work differently, you can design or build virality into your product in a way that\u2019s very natural.\n\nI often see founders saying something like, \u201cI\u2019m just going to add an invite flow to my product.\u201d That doesn\u2019t work in most cases. If it\u2019s not well positioned and well integrated, an invite flow is just going to produce a bunch of ineffective invites that won\u2019t convert into new users. It might just bring in a bunch of transient users who don\u2019t stick around. You don\u2019t want to try infectious virality unless it really is applicable \u2014 that you want each user to bring another user into the product experience so that it will be better for both of them. If your product is about creating content or having experiences that are easy to show off, it\u2019s often much better to focus on demonstration virality. And if your product costs money and has value, an incentivized word of mouth strategy can really pay off.\n\nWhen you successfully create that moment of inception, and get the idea of your product into someone\u2019s mind, you do need to follow that up with a smooth new-user flow. The person who shows up to your website or the App Store is ready to try it. They are excited to try it and give your product some attention. This is your best chance ever to get them to learn more about what the product does and get it set up for their value. You need to start the onboarding process right so the product has a chance to become a habit, and then for that user to spread it to the next set of people.\n\nIt\u2019s entirely possible to have mass deception, where you find a good growth hack and get a bunch of people show up and try your product quickly. But if you\u2019ve enticed them for the wrong reason, they don\u2019t actually adopt the product, or if they do, they don\u2019t stick around long enough to feed the next round of viral adoption. So whenever you\u2019re thinking about engineering virality, you need to be sure that it\u2019s reaching the right people, gets them interested for reasons that align with the intrinsic value of your product, and leads them to the right actions.\n\nI still remember when I was first invited to Snapchat. A friend texted me to join them so we could send funny faces back and forth and they would be deleted. When I joined up, the first thing he did was send me a funny face and we ended up having a lot of fun with it. The viral hook connected directly with my first use. Over time we learned to send a lot more types of communication together and added more and more friends and it took off. But if Snapchat had offered free beer to everyone who signed up for Snapchat, they might have driven a lot of new users even faster, but those people would all be gone as soon as they finished the beer.\n\nRemember, at the end of the day, there\u2019s only one metric that really matters: How many people are actually using your product. Not downloading it, not clicking on it, not trying it for a day. Actually using it. So your viral techniques all need to be aligned toward the goal of increasing the number of actual users.","topic":"growth marketing, company growth, branding, virality, marketing, people management"},{"title":"The Evolution of a Product Manager","url":"http:\/\/www.mindtheproduct.com\/2017\/05\/evolution-product-manager-josh-mcwilliam\/","body":"The Evolution of a Product Manager \u2013 Josh McWilliam\n\nBY TREMIS SKEETE ON MAY 15, 2017\n\nJosh McWilliam is a co-founder and Vice President of Product at College Factual. Their mission is to help every student realize their full potential through the best fit education their money can buy. While their focus is on students with the College Factual brand, they also have other brands like Ed.ai (for advisors), Educate.ai (for colleges), and BRIGHT HUB (for teachers).\n\nIn Josh\u2019s Product Tank NYC presentation, he explains his evolution as a product manager. His roles over the last 15 years have started with engineering and architecture, and moved on from there to product management, and now he oversees product, but also data science, engineering, and UI\/UX teams. His current role is best identified as Chief Operating Officer.\n\nWhat is a Product Manager?\n\nJosh openly admits that he has struggled at times to truly define the role of product manager. In fact, many people, both outside and inside the product community also struggle with this reality. Knowing that the product manager role is dependent on one\u2019s career background and skills and the industry that one works (among other things), Josh has gone through many different ideas of what product managers should do.\n\nBuild More Product\n\nJosh first assumed that his primary responsibilities involved satisfying his stakeholders and releasing lots of features. The problem with that definition, however, was that he had no validation process in place, and his technical focus caused him to ignore things such as marketing. He found himself being angry with stakeholders for failing to validate product ideas, despite doing exactly what he was told. He then realized that while his stakeholders may ask for certain things, his responsibility is to know what will or will not succeed.\n\nBuild the Right Product the Right way\n\nNext, Josh began to think about his effectiveness as a product manager more often. He focused on the product-market fit and user testing. At first, things began to work very well. But after a while, he started to realize that product success leads to managing more products, until eventually you start to lose control and become a bottleneck. Deadline pressure leads to making shortcuts, and you find yourself going from being a leader or coach on the team, to being a dictator, which can create friction on a team. Josh learned from his experiences with this that he needed to become scalable.\n\nJosh discovered that once you start to focus on scalability, the other areas start to work themselves out. You need to start investing in things like systems, automation, feedback loops, and metrics dashboards.\n\nHow do you Become a Truly Scalable Product Manager?\n\nJosh\u2019s short answer to that question is: \u201cyou can\u2019t.\u201d To be truly scalable, you can\u2019t be a product manager; you need to be a product leader. To become a product leader, you need to start letting things go and sharing them with the rest of your team. Josh explains that many product managers become hoarders of things like:\n\nVision . A product manager creates and shares their grand vision with the team, whereas a product leader creates a shared vision with the team, and continues to evangelize it.\n\nUsers. Product managers regularly talk to users, whereas product leaders ensure that the entire team is regularly talking to users.\n\nLearning. Products managers are always learning, whereas product leaders are always teaching.\n\nAnswers. Product managers give the right answers, whereas product leaders ask the right questions.\n\nDecisions. Product managers make all of the decisions, whereas product leaders delegate all of the decisions.\n\nPower and Control. Product managers retain power and control, whereas product leaders distribute power and control.\n\nEfforts. Product managers\u2019 direct efforts of those in their company, whereas product leaders inspire efforts of those in their company and beyond.\n\nIn his conclusion, Josh reminds us that being a product leader is a matter of combining effectiveness and scalability. You need to be building the right products, but also building them the right way and thinking large scale and outside the conventional ways of getting things done. Being a leader is also very much about being a member of your team, rather than overseeing your team. Product managers create products, but product leaders create \u201cmovements\u201d or experiences.","topic":"product manager, marketing, growth marketing, company growth, evolution, branding, people management"},{"title":"4 Steps to Defining GREAT Metrics for ANY Product","url":"https:\/\/hackernoon.com\/metrics-game-framework-5e3dce1be8ac","body":"\n 4 Steps to Defining GREAT Metrics for ANY Product \n A Mental Model & Framework You Can Use For New Products, Existing Products, and  Even  PM Interviews In this\u00a0series\u2026 Part 1:  WTF is a Metric? \u200a\u2014\u200a introduction to the basics of metrics, what it is, and why it matters. Part 2: 4 Steps to Defining GREAT Metrics for ANY Product\u200a\u2014\u200ahow to develop a metric from scratch. Part 3:  WTF is Your Metric Doing to Your Customers? \u200a\u2014\u200ahow to avoid the unintended consequences of the \u201cone metric that matters.\u201d M etrics matter. Your product\u2019s success is dependent on and defined by metrics. Metrics are a lens into your product\u2019s health and performance. Defining your metrics, therefore, should be as intrinsic to your product development process as defining requirements. In fact, metrics are one of the most frequently asked product manager interview questions: How would you define the success metric for feature\u00a0X? The Challenge Developing metrics from scratch can be incredibly daunting, precisely because there is so much at stake. Unless you work in an industry where standard metrics are widely accepted (such as in gaming, e-commerce, or retail), metrics are anything but trivial. Many product managers start bottom-up: monitoring and collecting the near-infinite number of data points they can get a hold of. However, an obvious truth quickly begins to surface\u2026 \u2026not all data are created\u00a0equal. Just because you can track everything doesn\u2019t mean you should.  Some data are more valuable than others  because they give you a unique insight into your product\u2019s health. Conversely, there is a lot of subpar data that can cloud your judgement. A Mental Model for\u00a0Metrics Let\u2019s step back. Think about your product as a box: You can start to instrument this box and collect all available data, but this can become an aimless approach characterized by constant trial-and-error. In order to build a product your users value, you first need to determine the inputs and outputs of this box. Your inputs are anything your users come to you with: their problems and their resources. Your outputs are the circumstances resulting from the use of your product. These become your  goals . But this is not a black box. Most products require the user take  actions  within the product to extract value and achieve their  goals . Quantifying and measuring these actions gives you insights into how (and how many) users are getting value from your product. When you track these actions over time, they become your  metrics . Once you start to collect data for your metrics, you can then put them to work towards evaluating your product. The results of your  evaluations  can inform any number of adjustments in your  goals ,  actions , or even  metrics  themselves. You can start to see that this very simple model can be applied in any number of ways: Defining success metrics for a  new product Determining a  new feature\u2019s  success and impact Re-vamping metrics for an  existing product Fielding  interview questions  about metrics For each step, here\u2019s a bit more detail on how to do this. The GAME Framework The GAME framework is a  4-step process that can define metrics for any feature or product . For the remainder of the post, I will refer to a hypothetical \u201cproduct\u201d but feel free to substitute in \u201cfeature\u201d whenever a \u201cproduct\u201d is discussed. Step 1: Articulate Your\u00a0Goals This is obvious, but you should  always start by defining your goals  for your product. Your goals are critical to ensuring that you maintain a purpose-oriented strategic mindset. They also serve as tangible markers for revisiting and validating directional correctness throughout the metrics development process. Placing goal-setting as your first step forces you to be top-down, which is critical for developing metrics. A bottom-up approach is suboptimal because it relies on intuition and can often lead to analysis paralysis. To define your goals, ask yourself the following questions: User Goals:  How will my users benefit from my product? What problems do my users want my product to solve for them? How will my users interact with the product? How will my users feel when they use my product? What is my vision for how this product will integrate in my users\u2019 life? Business Goals:  What are the tactical or strategic business benefits? Increase revenue? Decrease cost? Be more competitive? Enter a new market? What does my business look like if my product is successful? Note that for many of the best products, user and business goals align. These goals are often two sides of the same coin. Once you have this set, you are ready to get in on the action. Step 2: List the Actions That\u00a0Matter The next step is to define your user actions, or more precisely, all the actions you want your users to take within your product. This should start as a  qualitative  list. Don\u2019t worry about the numbers or whether they are trackable yet. Here are some example questions you may ask yourself using the common ARM metrics framework. Pick the set of questions that align with your goals: Acquisition & Activation : How will my prospective users hear about my product? What actions do my prospective users have to complete to become a user of my product? What actions do my users have to take to get value from my product? At what point is my product solving a real problem for my users? Retention & Engagement : What gets my users to come back to my product? What do my users do when they are engaged with and interested in my product? What are the actions that provide my users repeat value? How often does it make sense for my users to take those actions? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Once in a long while? Monetization & Revenue : What form of \u201cpayment\u201d does my user purchase with, money or time? What actions do my users take for my product to start charging? If my product is free, what are the reasons my users will opt to pay for it? Do they pay me directly or does someone else pay me when my users take action (e.g. ad\/affiliate)? Do they pay me for every action (transaction) or do they pay me periodically (subscription)? You can also use metrics frameworks like  AARRR  to flush out the actions. The key to doing this well is to be  comprehensive but not exhaustive : have the broadest coverage, but don\u2019t bother differentiating the minutiae.  For example, if your acquisition user action is \u201cnewsletter signup,\u201d don\u2019t worry (yet) about listing each newsletter sign-up interface. Step 3: Define Your\u00a0Metrics You are now ready to turn each desired user action (qualitative) into a measurable, trackable value (quantitative). Note that if you haven\u2019t already done so, bring engineering and data teams in at this stage to vet your metrics and provide technical guidance on the feasibility of collecting\/storing the desired data. Here are some major decisions for how to count each action: Direct vs. Proxy : Can the action be directly tracked? Or do you have to use a proxy to measure the action?  For example, you can measure \u201cclicks\u201d directly, but you may need to proxy \u201cviews\u201d with values like scrolling. Individual vs. Aggregate : Can you group many actions for an overview, then separate out as slices for later analysis?  For example: total revenue \u2192 revenue by product line \u2192 revenue by individual product. Magnitude vs. Ratio : Does it matter more for you to measure the overall magnitudes of the action? Or should you track as a comparison using a ratio, whether it be a rate (per time) or a normalizing factor (percentage, per user, etc)?  For example, you can measure \u201ctotal revenue,\u201d or you can measure \u201crevenue per day\u201d and \u201crevenue per payer,\u201d which will give you very different perspectives on the same data. Intrinsic vs. Heuristic : Can you derive more knowledge from the measure intrinsically? Or do you have to rely on heuristics for the metric to be valuable?  For example, while \u201cdaily active user\u201d (DAU) may be intrinsically useful for B2C apps, a heuristic like \u201cnumber of paying users who were active in the last 30 days\u201d may be more appropriate for B2B SaaS products that are expected to be used monthly. For most, this is the hardest step in the framework. Some of your decisions are informed by strong intuition, while others are informed by technical constraints or further data analysis. Often you won\u2019t know for certain whether a metric is working until some iterations. At this stage, you can also begin to weed out  vanity metrics . Tweak the metrics that can be \u201cgamed,\u201d i.e. artificially inflate or deflate through clever design\/engineering or malicious user intent.  For example, inflating page views by using pagination or slide shows. Step 4: Evaluate your\u00a0Metrics The best way to ensure your metrics are providing you the correct insights into your product is to  test and iterate . You simply will not know how a metric behaves until you start collecting data. The most import evaluation you need to make is the functional usefulness of the metric.  You can check for usefulness by monitoring the metric for any false-positives or false-negatives. For example, if the metric drops, does it signal a real problem in the product? Conversely, if an issue surfaces, is the metric helping you flag this issue? Of course, you would also expect the metric to flag true-positives and true-negatives. Different behavior with your metrics may inform iterations in each of your GAME steps: Evaluating Metrics : Is the data trending in the way you expected? Is the metric stable over time (i.e. not wildly fluctuating)? Is the metric flagging issues with your product and prompting further analysis? Are these the correct data points to collect? If you answer \u201cno\u201d to any of these questions, you want to reconsider how you developed your metrics. Evaluating Actions : Are these actions reflective of product, user, or business goals? Are your key actions telling the correct story about user behavior? Does your action set cover all emerging user behaviors? Are your actions safe from being \u201cgamed\u201d by your users? If you answer \u201cno\u201d to any of these questions, you want to redefine the set of key actions. Evaluating Goals : Is the metric correlating to business or user success? Are your users happier when your metrics are positive? If you answer \u201cno\u201d to any of these questions, you want to revaluate how your metrics relate to your goals. Ask yourself these honest questions and remember that you are looking for your metrics to measure the vital signs that give you an actionable indication of health and performance. Applying GAME: Facebook\u2019s Newsfeed\u00a0Example Disclaimer: I have no insider information from Facebook. This section is pure speculation.  \ud83d\ude07 The Facebook Newsfeed comes up as one of the most common interview questions, particularly because it has the right mix of ubiquity, complexity, and opaqueness. Let\u2019s apply the framework step-by-step: G oals for the Newsfeed can be broken down between user and business goals: User Goal : I want to be able to see the latest of what my friends are up to without going to each of their profiles. Business Goal : Users are only coming to Facebook when they have a reason to: they are looking to post or they have been messaged\/mentioned. We want to improve engagement by creating an evergreen content discovery experience. A ctions taken on the Newsfeed can be collected into the following qualitative list when considering \u201cengagement\u201d as the primary goal for both user and business: Logging  into Facebook to look at Newsfeed Posting  to Newsfeed (text, photo\/video, photo\/video album, live video) Viewing  Newsfeed items, including watching a video Scrolling  through the Newsfeed Clicking  on Newsfeed items (content, name\/photo of the poster) Commenting  or replying to a comment Liking  a Newsfeed item or a comment Sharing  a Newsfeed item to your own or someone else\u2019s wall (person, page, group), or as a private message Saving  a post (yes, you can  look at saved posts later \u2026 who knew?) Hiding, unfollowing, reporting, or turning off notifications  for a Newsfeed item Notice how the list is relatively  comprehensive but not exhaustive : it covers all of the bases but doesn\u2019t try to split hairs between all the different post, click, or comment types. We can also see how product design around creating or changing actions can be a major lever for impacting engagement. M etrics is where this gets interesting. In trying develop the most useful, actionable metric, we can vet them through our various decision points: Direct vs. Proxy : Most of the actions above can be tracked directly with clicks  except  for viewing a feed item. For viewing, we may use a proxy to count the number of items viewed, such as \u201ccount viewed if 75% of the feed item is in the device viewport.\u201d Individual vs. Aggregate : Because our primary goal is measuring engagement, we care about our users engaging with the Newsfeed in general more than any specific action, so we will define a metric with aggregate measures. With that said, some actions (like posting) are more valuable to us, so we may choose to group them differently. For example, we can aggregate Newsfeed  posting  actions into the first bucket,  viewing  actions into a second bucket, and  interacting  actions (inclusive of links, comments, share, blocks) into a third. Magnitudes vs. Ratios : Looking at the magnitude of Newsfeed action is relatively meaningless since any given user can generate a great number of actions. It is more useful if we consider either actions-per-day or actions-per-user (or both, i.e. actions-per-user-per-day). Intrinsic vs. Heuristic : Unfortunately, there\u2019s no easy measure to determine whether someone is \u201cengaged\u201d or not. Let\u2019s say a  hypothetical  analysis shows that people who  post at least 1 feed item  OR  view at least 20 feed items  OR  interact with at least 3 feed items  are 2x more likely to come back to Facebook the next day. We can use this data to develop a heuristic around an engagement metric, whereby if a user crosses any of the three thresholds above, they are considered \u201cengaged.\u201d Pulling this all together, our metric for the Facebook Newsfeed will look something like this\u2026: \u2026where \u201cengaged user\u201d is a  heuristic  that\u2019s developed by  aggregating  both  direct and proxy  actions and comparing it as a  ratio  to \u201ctotal users\u201d on a daily basis. E valuations will come in the form of validating many of the assumptions we made above by putting your newly defined metric to work. For example: Honing Heuristics : We may find that the definition around \u201cengaged user\u201d is overly permissive and that 90% of our users are regularly considered \u201cengaged,\u201d which doesn\u2019t leave much room for insight or improvement. We dig deeper to find that of the 90%, a majority became engaged through the \u201cview at least 20 feed items\u201d criteria, so we adjust that threshold up to 50 to create a higher bar for an engaged user. Disaggregating Actions : We may find that people who take actions against negative posts (hiding, unfollowing, reporting, or turning off notifications) actually correlates inversely to engagement. From this, we can decide to pull these actions out of our \u201cinteracting\u201d bucket (bucket 3) and develop a separate metric to monitor negative Newsfeed behavior. Shifting Goals : We may find that we\u2019ve done such a great job on engaging users with the Newsfeed that engagement is no longer the primary goal. Instead, we may decide to shift the goal to \u201cmonetization,\u201d where we develop ad-related features into the Newsfeed. While engagement may not be the primary goal anymore, we want to continue monitoring the engagement metric to ensure the new monetization features do not have an adverse impact on engagement. A Case for Defining Your Metrics Before You Need\u00a0Them In a \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d world, it is tempting to concern yourself with metrics only after the product has launched. However, having metrics defined before you start development can translate to huge benefits because: Metrics help you maintain  focus Metrics set a  common goal  for team to rally around Metrics hold you (the PM)  accountable  to your users and business Metrics enable more  objective decision-making  during the critical launch period, including triage and prioritization Flying blind at any stage of your product\u2019s lifecycle will substantially decrease your ability to learn. After all, you can\u2019t improve what you don\u2019t measure. Having the right data up front may be difference between success and failure for a  startup ! I hope this has been a useful breakdown on how to develop metrics. Please leave comments if you have any thoughts or ideas about how to improve this post, or was able leverage the tools here to improve your metrics! For more Product  Management  or general business writing, please follow me on Medium or browse my other writing: @vincelawco. I can also be found at my website  http:\/\/vincelaw.co , on  Quora  answering product-related questions, or at the  PMHQ Slack  community if you want to chat! \n \n Product Management \n Startup \n Metrics \n Strategy \n Management \n \n ","topic":"company growth, growth marketing, steps, product growth, branding, people management, defining great metrics, product"},{"title":" What Jobs-To-Be-Done research can teach you about your users your product and your company","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/@Productized\/what-jobs-to-be-done-research-can-teach-you-about-your-users-your-product-and-your-company-b5240089c95b","body":"What Jobs-To-Be-Done research can teach you about your users, your product and your company  What Jobs-To-Be-Done research can teach you about your users, your product and your company Productized Follow Jan 22, 2018     \u00b7       10    min read Whats is a JTBD theory? By  Rene Bastijans , product leader and facilitator of   Masterclass on Jobs to be Done This post is a case study for what you can learn about your users, your product and your company by applying  Jobs-To-Be-Done , a theory of motivation that seeks to understand why consumers buy and use products. A new way to understand what customers want and why they want it, JTBD can help you become better at building, marketing and selling products and services that people will buy. What\u2019s Jobs-To-Be-Done theory? If you are unfamiliar with the theory of Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD),  Alan Klement \u2019s \u201c When Coffee and Kale Compete \u201d (available for free as pdf) is an excellent primer. Besides the theory, \u201cJTBD\u201d also describes what you are investigating when you are doing JTBD research. Here is a description from Alan\u2019s book of what a JTBD is: \u201cA Job to be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to transform her existing life-situation into a preferred one, but cannot because there are constraints that stop her.\u201d At the backend of 2016, I interviewed twenty existing and prospective users of our product applying the theory of Jobs-To-Be-Done. I set out to learn about our users\u2019 struggles (their JTBD) by deconstructing their actual behaviours at work (what they really do vs. what they say they do). Equipped with this knowledge, I thought, our team would be able to become better at having conversations with our users and become better at making decisions about our product development and marketing. The following outlines what my JTBD-based interviews taught me about our users, our product and our company. I am sharing my learnings here in the hope that they will inspire you to explore the JTBD theory for your products and services. 1. We are in the business of helping our customers become better surfboard manufacturers The biggest learning has been that we are not simply providing a cloud-based \u201cone-stop management tool for the Surfboard Manufacturing Industry\u201d as we currently say on our website,  we are in the business of helping our customers become better surfboard manufacturers . This is the high-level job that the business owners, the people who are paying us, are using our product for to get done. Skatepark in Estoril (Lisbon) by  amarquet This is game changing in my opinion. We must understand that we are more than a technology company that builds an IT solution for people producing and selling surfboards. We are a company that is responsible for humans who are struggling and who are looking at us to help them become better. This is going to be a cultural change that will take time, especially for team members who are used to thinking that more features are the answer to our users\u2019 problems and requests. As a team, we must learn to think every day how we can empower our users to solve their struggles through our product and thus make their lives better. 2. Becoming better surfboard manufacturers is an ongoing journey My interview data suggests that, just like learning to become a better surfer, becoming a better surfboard manufacturer is an ongoing journey. At a high level, this journey can be described in 3 stages. Leaning on surfing language, the 3 stages are: 1st stage:  \u201cPaddling\u201d  (Turning professional) 2nd stage:  \u201cPop-up\u201d  (Surviving) 3rd stage:  \u201cRiding the wave\u201d  (Scaling) The above graphic is simplified. The journey to become better is not as linear as it looks. Each stage comes with its own challenges and jobs, and it can take a surfboard manufacturer many years, even decades, to progress from one stage to the next. The initial stage,  \u201cPaddling\u201d , is about transitioning from a beloved hobby (shaping and surfing) to a full-time profession. There are plenty of jobs that the \u201csurfer-shaper\u201d needs to get done to make this happen, e.g. acquiring more customers ordering boards, and there are many hires to resolve these jobs, e.g Instagram, Facebook or speaking to surfers on the beach. This is when our product first becomes attractive to surfer-shapers because they believe that with a product that helps them \u201cget organised\u201d, they will be able to enjoy more shaping and surfing whilst also getting the \u201coffice management job\u201d done. Another benefit of JTBD-based research is it uncovers the \u201cforces\u201d that are at play when users are looking to make progress. In the 2nd stage, the  \u201cPop-up\u201d , the \u201cone-man show\u201d has grown into a surfboard factory with a small number of in-house staff and contractors who do discrete production work steps assigned to them. As the business grows, new problems arise. In particular, keeping up with the increasing demand for boards and their timely delivery to customers becomes a problem. This is when they need solid surfboard production management. They hire various solutions for resolving this job from Excel spreadsheets to capture and track board orders to employing a dedicated Production Manager. Interestingly, the surfer-shaper who started the business, has now hired their wife to run the \u201cbusiness side of things\u201d so that they themselves can continue to shape, surf and promote their brand. Surfboard manufacturers in the 3rd stage,  \u201cRiding the wave\u201d , are keen on scaling their businesses and sell surfboards in large quantities in the hope of becoming the world\u2019s number 1 brand for surfing. Larger factories are strategically placed in several locations around the globe to satisfy demand. A dedicated General Manager and Sales team are in place managing large retail and distributor accounts. The factories enjoy a steady stream of board orders from their website and retail and distribution partners. Level up your skills as Product Manager: Join  Rene Bastijans  &  Andrej Balaz  for a full day of lectures, live customer interviews and hands-on practice that will help you understand the progress customers are wanting to make by bringing products into their lives.  Get 10% off the Masterclass on Jobs to be Done  in Lisbon on 1 February 2018 (apply a JTBD2018 code at checkout). At this Scaling stage, surfboard manufacturers are facing a new set of problems: they struggle with reporting on sales, forecasting for the next financial cycle, inventory management and selling wholesale to distributors and retailers without direct intervention from the Sales team. Revenue management and enabling distributors and retailers to place large orders for surfboards and accessories directly from the available stock are all good potential hires for this new JTBD,  \u201criding the wave\u201d . 3. We need to appreciate where our product\u2019s jobs stop Over the last 5 years, our product has grown into a behemoth of an application that could easily stand up to enterprise-level ERPs. Knowing that our users are going through at least 3 stages with changing jobs is telling us that a complex, one-size-fits-all solution that wants to be a production management, accounting, CRM, POS and e-commerce solution will only serve a small set of users. We need to learn not to attempt to solve the entire working day of your user through our product and appreciate where our product\u2019s jobs stop. Why would we want to compete in areas that we have little expertise in and that have well-defined market leaders already anyway? 4. New opportunities are right in front of us I found out through my research which features do and do not help our users get their jobs done, i.e. help me turn professional or help me become the world\u2019s number 1 brand for surfing. We can use this insight to make decisions about which features to improve or kill. Knowing our users\u2019 jobs can also help us explore new product opportunities that will enable our users to make the desired progress as they move through the stages. Table created in Excel showing how a Production Manager struggles with scheduling new and existing surfboard orders. This could be a new opportunity for us. Furthermore, since we know our users\u2019 jobs change throughout the stages, we should consider breaking the product down into separate sub-products, like  Intercom  did, that address a specific job for a stage and work together as a system. These sub-products could be priced separately and bundled up. Essentially, we could tap into new revenue. Another benefit of JTBD-based research is it uncovers the \u201cforces\u201d that are at play when users are looking to make progress.  These forces are the problems with and the attractions of our product, our users\u2019 anxieties and their existing habits.  For example, for prospective users in Australia and the US, our biggest markets, it is a real concern that we are not in the same timezone. They need to be assured that a small team in Portugal that is 11 hours behind and 8 hours ahead respectively, is available to quickly resolve product issues that can potentially stop the board production. To reduce this anxiety, we have to adapt our support team\u2019s availability. Jobs-To-Be-Done forces diagram by Margaret Wilkins Understanding the forces will not only help our team have more productive conversations with our existing and prospective users, it will also allow us to create marketing copy for our website and promotional materials that speaks directly to what our users value (making progress) and not only to what we value (our product\u2019s features). 5. Our competitors are not our competition \u201c  Competition is defined in the minds of customers, and they use progress as their criteria. \u201d \u2014  Alan Klement ,  \u201cWhen Coffee and Kale Compete\u201d When speaking with our users, I learnt a lot about the solutions they stopped hiring once they started using our product and the solutions they would fall back on when they struggled with our product. These are predominantly Excel and Google Sheets to keep track of the board orders and payments as well as pen and paper to log work (typically factory workers get paid \u201cpiece rates\u201d, i.e. by work step completed). Knowing our real competition, especially compensatory behaviour and existing habits, also helps us understand where our product falls short and where we need to improve. For example, scanning QR codes printed on the production order form, i.e. the A4 paper that details the surfboard\u2019s specification, is a smart technology solution, but if pen and paper do a better job for workers to record their completed work step so that they get paid, then they won\u2019t fire pen and paper. What\u2019s next: The interviews uncovered plenty of issues that our users have with our product because they simply cannot get some of their jobs done due to technical bugs and usability and workflow issues that stem from thinking with an IT mindset. However, I also learnt that our product is helping them getting some of their jobs done pretty well today. In fact, in some instances, our product has become business critical and is the de-facto solution used to run the business. Without our product, these businesses would fail. This knowledge gives us confidence in our product and boosts overall morale, especially at a time when all we seem to be doing is fire-fighting. My research is just the beginning of our JTBD journey, and there is still plenty to explore. For now though, we have gained invaluable insights into our users\u2019 lives, their struggles and motivations that can lead us in many ways. We must now incorporate this new knowledge into how we think and work if we want to deliver solutions that really help our users achieve their desired progress. Surf\u2019s up! Recommended resources to get started with JTBD: Masterclass on Jobs to be Done   \u2014  A fast-paced and collaborative masterclass on #JTBD best theories and practices. A combination of lectures, live customer interviews, and hands-on practicing that can equip you with an easy-to-understand perspective and a set of useful methods to build, market and sell products and services that people will buy. \u201cWhen Coffee and Kale compete \u201d \u2014 Free ebook (pdf) primer on Jobs-to-be-Done based on interviews with practitioners, including a short history, practical case studies and suggestions on how to get started with Jobs-to-be-Done Intercom on Jobs-to-be-Done  \u2014 Free ebook (ePub, mobi and pdf) compilation of lessons learnt from using Jobs-to-be-Done at Intercom JTBD.info  \u2014 A compilation of Jobs-to-be-Done articles on Medium Learning Jobs to Be Done From 5 Super Bowl Ads  \u2014 An explanation of Jobs-to-be-Done using 5 Superbowl ads (American Football championships final). Unpacking the progress making forces diagram  \u2014 Understanding the forces that are at play when a consumer seeks to make progress (by purchasing a product or service) Jobs-to-be-Done Quora feed This article was originally published on  fforward.me . About  Rene Bastijans Rene is a Product Leader and Innovator turned Consultant who helps software companies identify growth opportunities through JTBD research. Besides leading global Product teams, Rene and  Andrej Balaz , organize  Masterclasses on Jobs to be Done  in Lisbon, Portugal About  Productized Conference Since 2015 that we gather annually in sunny Lisbon thought-leaders from Product Thinking, Product Management, and all kinds of innovators to discuss how companies are using startup style innovation to create new products customers love. Experience the full experience of Productized on your own schedule. With over 5 hours of inspirational and training content. \n ","topic":"product, company, company growth, people management, branding, growth marketing, marketing, research"},{"title":" Is Your Startup Fundable?","url":"http:\/\/FI.co\/posts\/13491","body":"Have you ever wondered what qualities investors look for in a startup to consider it fundable? Benjamin Chong, a partner at Right Click Capital and a Co-Director of the Sydney Founder Institute, has created a three question test to help determine your answer in the article \u201cThree ways to test if your startup is fundable,\u201d on BRW.\n\nMany entrepreneurs feel their problems will be solved with funding, but being fundable is very different from being in need of funding. Being fundable is all about your startup\u2019s potential to attract financing so you can grow your business. All startup need some kind of funding to survive but not all are considered fundable.\n\nIs your startup fundable? Read on to see what Benjamin Chong has say on the matter.\n\n1. Are you solving a real problem?\n\nWhen launching a startup, keep in mind that your company has to offer a real value to the world, or at least a part of it, before you seek funding. Here are some questions for you to consider:\n\nWhat is the problem your startup is trying to solve?\n\nIs it a real problem or a perceived one?\n\nHave potential customers confirmed you\u2019re solving a real problem?\n\nWhat\u2019s the market size of the problem?\n\nLast week, I was presented with an idea for a personal electronic device that could help when paying for items at the cash register. While it was an interesting idea, I couldn\u2019t see a real problem that the device was solving.\u201d\n\n2. Do you have a killer team?\n\nGreat minds think alike, so building your startup team is extremely important. Investors look for teams of individuals with a combination of technical background, business skills, and industry experience that are driven to succeed.\n\nA great way to gain experience is by joining a startup and contributing to the success of a fledgling business. I\u2019ve previously employed-future entrepreneurs, who\u2019ve added immense value to our businesses. At the same time, they\u2019ve gained an understanding of the frenetic pace of an early-stage business and developed skills from financial modelling to phone sales to graphic design.\u201d\n\n3. Are you gaining traction?\n\nA startup with little to no traction will not pique the interest of investors. Make sure you are establishing a solid customer base and gaining traction over time. This will help investors determine if your startup is viable. Below are several questions that must be addressed before pushing your startup to the next level:\n\nDo you have users or customers?\n\nIs the rate of user growth increasing?\nHave you been able to charge customers for your product or service?","topic":"company growth, product growth, growth marketing, marketing, startup fundable, branding"},{"title":"10 Resources to Help You Grow a Lean Startup","url":"https:\/\/blog.producthunt.com\/10-resources-to-help-you-grow-a-lean-startup-aad02b2354c","body":"10 Resources to Help You Grow a Lean Startup - Product Hunt Sign in Get started Top Products LIVE Books Company Archive \ud83d\udc8c Newsletter 10 Resources to Help You Grow a Lean Startup Product Hunt Follow May 27, 2016     \u00b7       7    min read If you recently launched a startup\u2014or you\u2019re thinking about it\u2014you\u2019ll inevitably hit the \u201cI have no idea what I\u2019m doing\u201d stage (if not once, then multiple times). It seems that there are countless problems to solve that you don\u2019t necessarily have the tools or resources to answer, right? How do I gain early startup traction? How do I find a co-founder or build an early team? How do I come up with the cash to build an early team!? How do I know that my idea is even something people want?...And who in the world are those people, exactly? If you\u2019ve found yourself asking some of these questions, there\u2019s no better way to find the answers than by leaning on the knowledge of those who have already successfully navigated their way through the same entrepreneurial journey . Below, you\u2019ll find ten great books, courses, and other resources to help you build your startup effectively in those early, lean stages. We can\u2019t wait to see what comes out of the learning for you. :-) Startup Launch List Things you must read before launching a startup. There is such an overwhelming amount of content on the internet offering up advice on how to launch a startup. How do you weed through all of the noise? Thanks to  Startup Launch List , now you don\u2019t have to. Select from a list of pain points\u2014like coming up with an idea, building a team, raising money, and making money\u2013and then get a beautifully curated list of the  must-read  articles on each topic. You\u2019ll find great advice from some of tech\u2019s top thought leaders, including: Paul Graham, Mark Suster, Brad Feld, Derek Sivers, Seth Godin, Chris Dixon and more. Traction Course Free course with 7 marketing super-hacks. Justin Mares  and  Gabriel Weinberg  co-wrote a book in 2015 called  Traction . It has quickly become one of the most important startup books because it details out exactly how to think about growing your startup, which is the (potentially) billion dollar question all founders want an answer to. Justin and Gabriel created  Traction Course   to showcase super-tactics in seven different marketing channels, including: email marketing, content marketing, publicity, and display and social ads. This is not to be missed. Good Email Copy Email copy from great companies. Even if it seems like such an overdone marketing channel, email remains one of the most effective ways to build and engage your customer base. And, writing email copy remains one of the most tedious marketing tasks ever. If you don\u2019t want to reinvent the wheel completely, check out  Good Email Copy . Created by the  Front app  team, this is a collection of emails from great companies like Slack, Trello, Pinterest, Basecamp, Everlane, Eventbrite, Shopify, and more. You can sort by tag (e.g. welcome, thank you, new features, billing issue, invitation, upgrade, etc.), which makes it super easy to find sample copy related to the kind of email you\u2019re looking to write. Petit Hacks Acquisition, retention, & revenue hacks used by companies. Petit Hacks  is a truly useful resource. Head to the site, and you\u2019ll find countless examples of hacks various websites use to drive acquisition, revenue, referrals, retention, and activation. Each hack includes a screenshot and a short explanatory blurb. This is a fun site to browse if you\u2019re looking for new mini traction strategies to try as you grow your startup. Brick by Brick A free guide to building awesome communities. Building products comes with its own unique challenges. Building   communities around a product? That\u2019s another thing entirely.  Brick by Brick  is a comprehensive, free guide created by  Sacha Greif  that takes you through the various elements of community building. You\u2019ll learn more about: engagement, promotion, moderation, voice, value, and audience segmentation. This is a useful resource that includes tidbits of wisdom from incredible community builders, like: Pieter Levels, Justin Kan, Josh Owens, and more. Make This Year Grow your core business by launching side projects. When you subscribe to  Make This Year , you\u2019ll get a step-by-step lesson every month from an \u201cexperienced side project maker,\u201d who will teach you how to grow your business in the most efficient way possible by building tools that create value for your customers. This is as lean as it gets: build one side project at a time, and see what sticks with your audience. And, with only one lesson a month, you won\u2019t feel overwhelmed by the content. Traffic 1M Free lessons from the pros who\u2019ve built massive websites. In the words of  Traffic 1M  creator  Noah Kagan , \u201cIf you build it they will come. Just kidding.\u201d It is  hard  to drive an audience to your site\u2014especially in the very beginning. If you\u2019ve ever asked yourself the question, \u201cHow do I drive a ton of traffic to my site quickly and cheaply?,\u201d then this is for you. Noah, who has worked on Facebook, Mint, AppSumo, and SumoMe, along with 15 other traffic generation experts, share some of their best traffic generation tactics. You\u2019ll learn how to incentivize social sharing, own your SEO, test your content, create smart social ads. This is, without a doubt, some of the best advice in the online traffic game. Growth Hacker Course A short course on the future of PR, marketing, and advertising. The  Growth Hacker Course   was created by  Ryan Holiday  based on his popular book  Growth Hacker Marketing . He walks you through a four-step framework that begins with helping you find product-market fit, and ends with retention and optimization hacking. There\u2019s only so much you can learn about startup growth tactics from a book; at some point, the only thing left to do is start experimenting in real life. This course will guide you through that process with various exercises you can try as you learn about each step in the framework. Since taking action is the whole point (and also the hardest part) of learning, we\u2019re pumped about the design of this course. Business Model Kit Explore revenue models to make money with your idea. This kit makes business modeling fun again. If you aren\u2019t sure exactly what your startup\u2019s business model is yet, The  Business Model Kit  is a useful tool that will help you whiteboard what your company might look like in 5, 10, or 20 years. There are 16 different blocks to help you visualize your model (e.g. consumers, suppliers, government, product, service, experience, data money, exposure, etc.). When you\u2019re thinking about the bigger picture\u2014like multiple revenue streams, partnerships, and complex supplier transactions\u2014this will help you get your creative (and organizational) juices going. Lean Series Books The entire Lean Series, published by O\u2019Reilly, is packed with incredible insight and strategies for growing your startup\u2014especially in the early stages when there\u2019s often no other option but to run \u201clean.\u201d We highly recommend starting with Ash Maurya\u2019s  Running Lean , which is all about finding the right product-market fit. Effectively, it\u2019s a step-by-step blueprint for taking your ideas, turning them into experiments, and taking action quickly. Once you\u2019ve devoured that book, pick up some of the others based on your startup\u2019s most pressing needs. There are so many other incredible books, podcasts, and software tools designed to help you grow your company as effectively as possible\u2014particularly when you\u2019re first starting out. If you want even more resources to help you think through the best way to build your business, you can find them on Product Hunt, starting with  this collection of Lean Startup Tools : Product Hunt The place to discover your next favorite thing. \n ","topic":"branding, marketing, product growth, lean startup, people management, resources, company growth"},{"title":" From pipes to platforms: Leveraging the network effect","url":"https:\/\/inform.tmforum.org\/internet-of-everything\/2017\/04\/pipes-platforms-leveraging-network-effect\/","body":"From pipes to platforms: Leveraging the network effect \n  \n Annie Turner looks at network effects, which when a company gets them right, make platforms super successful \u2013 and faster than anything the business world has ever seen. How can network operators benefit from network effects and create new value? \n Look at the table below\u00a0and the first thing that shocks is how fast these platform-based companies grew, especially when compared to their venerable \u2018counterparts\u2019. No wonder so many long-established businesses are reeling. \n \n Professor Geoffrey G. Parker, who is widely recognized as a leading thinker on platform-based businesses and whose credentials span engineering and business, points out that the world\u2019s biggest five companies by market capitalization are all platform companies. Apple, Alphabet (Google\u2019s parent), Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook have displaced the oil companies and banks that held the top slots for decades. \n How do successful platforms grow so fast? Through network effects, which every business needs to understand and foster. This is how it works: the more people are on your network the more valuable the business and the more effective you are. \n What\u2019s going on? \n In the pipeline model, there is little in the way of network effects. Instead there is a supply chain, from raw materials to distribution. At every stage someone is paid for their contribution, and the value accrues as the process progresses. The sale price has to be bigger than the overall cost for everyone to make their margins, but there is little in the way of the network effect. \n The platform model collapses that process, creating what Parker calls a triangular platform (see graphic), whereby the platform provides a marketplace for interchanges between producers and consumers. It removes pain points for both and enables all kinds of companies to create new services and value \u2013 and especially small ones that could never afford the resources and upfront capital costs on their own. \n \n YouTube and Apple are both great examples of this. YouTube offers tools to help producers upload videos easily and quickly. On the consumption side, there is search, matching, filtering, playing and sharing. The platform deals with all the different standards and devices, to create markets that didn\u2019t previously exist and run various business models on one platform. \n In January 2017, Apple stated that in the previous year, app developers collectively earned over $20 billion. On average, the company gets about 30 percent of that as revenue share, according to  Business Insider . \n \u201cThe platform provides a marketplace for interchanges between producers and consumers. It removes pain points for both and enables all kinds of companies to create new services and value.\u201d \n Parker says, \u201cPlatforms drop transaction costs like a rock. Whereas you used to need an army of lawyers to get anything done, now it\u2019s plug and play.\u201d \n Who can play? \n Can any product or service become the basis of a platform business? Here\u2019s the Parker test: \u201cIf a firm can either use information or community to add value to what it sells, then there is the potential to create a platform. This means there is a huge amount of opportunity for a lot of companies.\u201d \n Simon Torrance, Advisor, BearingPoint, adds, \u201cIt\u2019s [already] a $4 trillion market. Today, no telco operates like this, yet we have all the assets and capabilities to do so.\u201d \n 8 things to consider \n Telcos inherently understand the network effect \u2013 the more people are on your network or you can connect to someone else via partners, the more valuable your business and the more effective you are. We created a global network for telegraphy then phone calls more than a century ago, we can replicate this for digital services. Here\u2019s how. \n \n Forget Facebook:  Parker comments, \u201cThe B2C market is largely done, we need to look towards the internet of things, smart cities and medical technologies \u2013 the B2B side. That is an $80 trillion global economy that is rapidly digitizing and the B2C stuff is an itty-bitty side show by comparison. There is huge opportunity to be there first.\u201d \n Don\u2019t customize, configure:  Be modular is the approach TM Forum enshrines in all its assets and activities. The mantra is build open, standardized, reconfigurable systems and avoid customization. Many telcos are moving towards this ideal to reduce costs, risk and time to market, and increase their business agility while leveraging assets.  George Glass, Chief Systems Architect, BT, explains  what his company has achieved on this front, to great effect. \n Gain global reach:  Telcos can exploit that modularity to scale by partnering with other telcos to gain geographical reach if everyone uses open APIs. As Parker says, \u201cPut the complexity behind the scenes and have something that\u2019s easy to attach to and pass data between\u201d. \n Look outside:  Shift attention from inside to outside the company because that\u2019s where your users and partners are who create transactions, which is how you monetize your network. To have an external focus you must have a community strategy. \n Cherish your community:  Design architecture to regulate participation \u2013 troublemakers are a fact of life, but control points in the analytics can detect them and prevent them driving others away. Put another way, promote positive interactions among partners in a multi-sided market. \n Design your business model carefully, around all your customers:  Don\u2019t introduce too many adverts, for instance. That killed MySpace stone dead because it spoiled the user experience. And don\u2019t introduce too many onerous steps to access the platform and services, it will repel users. \n Resource orchestration, not control:  In the platform world, not everything is counted nor appears on the balance sheet. Resources need orchestration as the aim is to provide a market for excess capacity that previously could not be traded. The question is, \u201cHow can we lower transaction costs so that the capacity we\u2019ve got sitting on our balance sheet can find a market?\u2026It\u2019s not about locking everything down, it\u2019s about opening it up, which is a completely different mindset.\u201d \n And finally:  Parker says, \u201cMove from focusing just on serving that one end customer\u2026and bargaining against a supply chain, [instead] look at the customer as an inside user and treat them as such. Thinking in terms of a dollar in the supply side\u2019s pocket is one less in yours doesn\u2019t work \u2013 it becomes meaningless. Rather invest in their ability to produce because that drives transactions, which is how you monetize your network. \n \n Geoffrey G. Parker is Professor, Thayer School Engineering, Dartmouth College and Director, Master of Engineering Management Program, and Research Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He is the co-author of  Platform Revolution  with Marshall W. Van Alstyne and Sangeet Paul Choudary. He has spoken at two TM Forum Digital Leadership\/BearingPoint Summits. \n Find out more about TM Forum\u2019s  platform strategy , its work on  platform architecture  and its  Open API program , then join in and help shape telecoms\u2019 future. \n \n ","topic":"platforms, company growth, network effect, branding, leveraging, marketing, product growth, growth marketing"},{"title":" Startup advice briefly","url":"http:\/\/blog.samaltman.com\/startup-advice-briefly","body":"\n\nYou should start with an idea, not a company. When it\u2019s just an idea or project, the stakes are lower and you\u2019re more willing to entertain outlandish-sounding but potentially huge ideas. The best way to start a company is to build interesting projects.\n\nOn the other hand, when you have a \u201ccompany\u201d that you feel pressure to commit to an idea too quickly. If it\u2019s just a project, you can spend more time finding something great to work on, which is important\u2014if the startup really works, you\u2019ll probably be working on it for a very long time.\n\nHave at least one technical founder on the team (i.e. someone who can build whatever the company is going to build).\n\nIn general, prefer a fast-growing market to a large but slow-growing one, especially if you have conviction the fast-growing market is going to be important but others dismiss it as unimportant.\n\nThe best startup ideas are the ones that seem like bad ideas but are good ideas.\n\nMake something people want. You can screw up most other things if you get this right; if you don\u2019t, nothing else will save you.\n\nOnce you\u2019ve shifted from \u201cinteresting project\u201d to \u201ccompany\u201d mode, be decisive and act quickly. Instead of thinking about making a decision over the course of week, think about making it in an hour, and getting it done in the next hour.\n\nBecome formidable. Also become tough\u2014the road ahead is going to be painful and make you doubt yourself many, many times.\n\nFigure out a way to get your product in front of users. Start manually (read this: http:\/\/www.paulgraham.com\/ds.html)\n\nListen to what your users tell you, improve your product, and then listen again. Keep doing this until you\u2019ve made something some users love (one of the many brilliant Paul Buchheit observations is that it\u2019s better to build something a small number of users love than something a lot of users like). Don\u2019t deceive yourself about whether or not your users actually love your product.\n\nKeep your burn rate very low until you\u2019re sure you\u2019ve built something people love. The easiest way to do this is hire slowly.\n\nHave a strategy. Most people don\u2019t. Occasionally take a little bit of time to think about how you\u2019re executing against your strategy. Specifically, remember that someday you need to have a monopoly (in the Peter Thiel sense).\n\nRead this before you raise money: http:\/\/paulgraham.com\/fr.html.\n\nLearn to ask for what you want.\n\nIgnore what the press says about you, especially if it\u2019s complimentary.\n\nGenerate revenue early in the life of your company.\n\nHire the best people you can. However much time you\u2019re spending on this, it\u2019s probably not enough. Give a lot of equity to your employees, and have very high expectations. Smart, effective people are critical to success. Read this: http:\/\/blog.samaltman.com\/how-to-hire.\n\nFire people quickly when you make hiring mistakes.\n\nDon\u2019t work with people you don\u2019t have a good feeling about\u2014this goes for employees (and cofounders), partners, investors, etc.\n\nFigure out a way to get users at scale (i.e. bite the bullet and learn how sales and marketing work). Incidentally, while it is currently in fashion, spending more than the lifetime value of your users to acquire them is not an acceptable strategy.\n\nObsess about your growth rate, and never stop. The company will build what the CEO measures. If you ever catch yourself saying \u201cwe\u2019re not really focused on growth right now\u201d, think very carefully about the possibility you\u2019re focused on the wrong thing. Also, don\u2019t let yourself be deceived by vanity metrics.\n\nEventually, the company needs to evolve to become a mission that everyone, but especially the founders, are exceptionally dedicated to. The \u201cmissionaries vs. mercenaries\u201d soundbite is overused but true.\n\nDon\u2019t waste your time on stuff that doesn\u2019t matter (i.e. things other than building your product, talking to your users, growing, etc.). In general, avoid the kind of stuff that might be in a movie about running a startup\u2014meeting with lawyers and accountants, going to lots of conferences, grabbing coffee with people, sitting in lots of meetings, etc. Become a Delaware C Corp (use Clerky or any well-known Silicon Valley law firm) and then get back to work on your product.\n\nFocus intensely on the things that do matter. Every day, figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things for you to do are. Do those and ignore other distractions. Be a relentless execution machine.\n\nDo what it takes and don\u2019t make up excuses.\n\nLearn to manage people. Make sure your employees are happy. Don\u2019t ignore this.\n\nIn addition to building a great product, if you want to be really successful, you also have to build a great company. So think a lot about your culture.\n\nDon\u2019t underestimate the importance of personal connections.\n\nIgnore acquisition interest until you are sure you want to sell. Don\u2019t \u201ccheck the market\u201d. There is an alternate universe somewhere full of companies that would have been great if they could have just avoided this one mistake. Unfortunately, in this universe, they\u2019re all dead.\n\nWork really hard. Everyone wants a secret to success other than this; if it exists, I haven\u2019t found it yet.\n\nKeep doing this for 10 years.","topic":"branding, product growth, marketing, company growth, startup advice briefly, growth marketing"},{"title":"CULTURE DEFINITION: IMPROVING YOUR ORGANIZATION\u2019S CULTURE TO GROW AND INNOVATE.","url":"https:\/\/www.corporateculturepros.com\/culture-definition-revolution-improve-business-innovation-growth\/","body":"What Is Organizational Culture\n Email Culture Definition:\u00a0Improving Your Organization\u2019s Culture to Grow and Innovate. In 2014, Merriam Webster named \u201cCulture\u201d the word of the year. Merriam-Webster chose  culture \u00a0 by analyzing their most popular words, and which experienced the biggest spike in look-ups during the year. \u201cCulture is a word that we seem to be relying on more and more. It allows us to identify and isolate an idea, issue, or group with seriousness,\u201d Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large for Merriam-Webster.\u201d  1 Why defining organizational culture is important, now more than ever. Culture definition is the starting point for any meaningful improvement in your corporate culture. Organizational culture is becoming an essential conversation for three reasons: The rapid pace of change demands  that organizations cultivate change as a capability, not an event. Culture is the fuel source of that capability. Emerging values among younger generations are creating a movement \u00a0to make the meaning and experience of work as important as results and effort. This is impacting ALL\u00a0people, not just Millennials. The work contract is no longer simply \u201ctime in exchange for a paycheck.\u201d Many smart, talented people are choosing to work for lower pay or extend their job search, rather than work for a\u00a0company with no heart. A conscious effort to build a great workplace culture grounded in modern habits pays off in attracting and retaining better talent, and ensures more dedication while they work for you. The fundamental metaphor of business  indicates how we view and treat people. It is not longer PC to view people as machines that can be switched on\/off or measured precisely (the Industrial Age metaphor for people). Or, \u201chuman capital\u201d \u2013 FTE numbers on a spreadsheet that produces ROI, or a cost-cutting opportunity. These metaphors and measures have value in a for-profit business. But they\u00a0do nothing to tap\u00a0 the inherent people\u00a0power  and human potential in your business. The question we should be asking is: How should the conversation about\u00a0corporate culture \u2013 and  culture\u00a0definition in your organization  \u2013 be at the forefront of strategic conversations in board rooms, lunchrooms, and even home offices? Human beings need connection, purpose\/meaning, freedom, and growth, to thrive. Yet, the\u00a0human qualities of free-thinking, possibility-seeking, empathy, collaboration are largely stifled and under-valued in corporate environments. Ironically, efficiency and productivity outcomes are MORE possible when you build the proper structure to cultivate and harness these very qualities. Whatever you sell or deliver, it\u2019s a good bet your marketing department is working hard to inspire and sell to your customers by tapping  their  innate desire for connection, purpose, meaning, freedom. And yet, most of your employees would say those qualities are not welcomed or rewarded effectively  inside  their company. Most of my work these days is helping leaders understand why (and how) the authentic and messy and unpredictable people stuff, is not a  barrier  to ROI, but a cornerstone of high performance. Learning how to befriend and harness the energy tapped through aligning people\u2019s communication, work habits, and\u00a0unique organization\u2019s mission\u00a0with\u00a0your customer needs. This IS corporate culture. And, it is\u00a0THE\u00a0revolution in business that is key to ongoing and sustainable innovation, growth, and performance. Because right now, employees at every level of most organizations are confused and disheartened by the  lack  of alignment. Tired of spending half of their life in a workplace environment that is confusing and stressful, just to feed their family. Most leaders at the top, have given little or no thought to what it\u2019s really like to be a Director or Manager in your organization: To receive two emails in the same  hour  \u2013 one about a planned company layoff  and \u00a0one saying \u201cwe\u2019re hiring in your\u00a0department.\u201d (Neither of which the person\u00a0knew about, who is now being asked to explain it to people who got the same email in her Department.) To motivate teams in meaningful ways when leaders are preaching excitedly about maximizing EBITDA and stock price \u2013 an abstraction that doesn\u2019t benefit them, their family or community directly. (Nor do they have a clue what it measures or how their effort impact it.) Trying to rally the troops below them, by translating a high level \u201csays-nothing\u201d vision into clear priorities for their people \u2013 while VP\u2019s and above do not act or speak with any alignment on those priorities, which seem to change monthly. These are commonly cited examples from\u00a0interviews I have done as part of my\u00a0 cultural assessment  work \u2013 based on real-world conversations with people in companies just like yours. This confusion is\u00a0the NORM in most companies today. \u00a0The\u00a0term \u201ccorporate culture\u201d \u2013 and the rising attention on the term\u00a0\u2013 is about companies trying to\u00a0make sense of what\u00a0has gone wrong in our \u201cstate of work.\u201d In 15 years of helping leaders and companies define and evolve their organizational culture, I can say with confidence, NOW is the time to explore\u00a0a meaningful definition of culture in your organization, as a basis to reinvent the way\u00a0work is done and what it means. Not as this year\u2019s initiative, but as a way to align with\u00a0the growing movement that is re-shaping the fundamental contract of worker and employer. Get on the wave, or be crushed by it. Your choice. What is Organizational\u00a0Culture \u2026 ? The definition of culture according to Merriam-Webster: : the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time : a particular society that has its own beliefs, ways of life, art, etc. : a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization (such as a business) Is Culture Definition the Answer or the Question? In business, the word Culture has become synonymous with \u201cThis is a good or bad place to work\u201d \u2013 especially in the minds of millennials. References to corporate culture have begun to make their way into TV and movie scripts, with the subtle nuance \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a corporate culture I like, I\u2019m outta here. \u201c A New Yorker article said this, about the Culture Word of the Year: \u201c\u2026 if words are tools for thinking, then [in 2014] \u201cculture\u201d has been used to think about the parts of our society that function poorly. That may even be a sign, in a way, of an improvement in our culture. If our increasingly analytical, sociological way of thinking about \u201cculture\u201d is helping us to improve the culture, that\u2019s a positive development. Confusion over its evolving meaning is a good reason to look up \u201cculture\u201d in the dictionary, but so is an interest in understanding the world and making it better.\u201d  3 This is the crux of the matter: The increasing desire for \u201cCulture Definition\u201d in business, signals a quest for meaning and making things better, more than a particular answer to \u201cWhat is culture.\u201d People (of all generations, not just Millennials) are demanding an opportunity to evolve, expand, and improve the quality of their life and work. (whether they say it out loud or not, the\u00a0desire grows\u00a0stronger every year.) The word \u201cculture\u201d is the collective expression of this quest. Work largely determines the quality of our life. Your people are increasingly reluctant to sacrifice one for the other. This is not simply a\u00a0demand \u201cLeaders please\u00a0fix this.\u201d It is a collective and conscious cry: \u201cHow can we work together to shift and evolve our workplaces, from this\u00a0fragile state of confusion, imbalance, constant hyper-drive? What is\u00a0culture to a business? When you define culture, you send a message \u201cHere, we care about people\u201d and \u201cWe get it.\u201d In reality, culture definition is only the beginning. Fostering a corporate\u00a0culture that drives growth, high performance, and collaborative teamwork requires more walk than talk. Clear intention and patience. The will power to develop and foster the alignment needed through: A vision that matters (more than \u201cbigger bonuses for executives\u201d) and\u00a0is communicated frequently. Daily work that is not over-shadowed by constant bureaucratic and political minutae. Real opportunities for employees to grow in their career (even if it\u2019s not climbing the ladder). Promoting and empowering people who live the values AND work hard. (Beware promoting that top performer who leaves a trail of dead bodies. You do BIG damage to your culture with this move.) Easier said than done, widespread adoption of new habits that build an open, collaborative corporate culture. \u00a0But, it pays off big in: Improving your ability to recruit talent. A stronger connection and loyalty to your organization. Greater willingness to accept ownership and responsibility. The subtle and important key is this: Do your\u00a0employees believe in what you\u2019re selling to your customers? BE the brand for your employees, that you want your customers to become loyal to\u2026 and watch the magic happen. Culture Definition Examples in Great Companies The best companies invest in their culture AS their brand.\u00a0 2 \u00a0It all begins\u00a0with changing how they think about, talk with, and treat people. Here are a few examples: Google  \u2013 a company that is synonymous with culture, Google\u2019s current Culture Definition challenge, is to maintain a unifying culture as they grow and spread out geographically \u2013 a quest that will require effort along with a willingness to allow sub-cultures to develop while maintaining the core spirit. REI  \u2013 Culture Definition at REI is \u201cwho we hire = who we are.\u201d With a mission to equip both customers and employees for the outdoors, to have fun and promote stewardship of the environment \u2013 hiring and empowering employees who can immerse themselves in REI\u2019s culture IS what makes it unique. REI says its\u00a0employees give \u201clife to their purpose\u201d and they give full credit to employees for their success. Employees can submit a proposal in the popular \u201cchallenge grants\u201d to get equipment for an outdoor adventure they find challenging. When employees of a company are aligned with its values and are fully immersed in what the organization sells (ie, customers and employees are similar), the culture propels itself forward almost on its own. Twitter  \u2013 Culture Definition at Twitter at its core is smart, dedicated people. Employees LOVE working at Twitter. Like many hi-tech companies, they offer culture perks like free meals, yoga, meetings on the roof. But more than anything, Tweeps (Twitter employees) will say \u201cI love working with other smart people.\u201d (The\u00a0hiring theme again). Workers rave about being part of a company that is doing something that matters in the world, and there is a sense that no one leaves until the work gets done. Adobe  \u2013 Adobe\u2019s Culture Definition might be summed up as Empowerment. Adobe products are synonymous with creativity, and only through the avoidance of micromanaging are the people who create those products truly free to create. They value how Adobe\u2019s\u00a0corporate culture is consistently shaping itself to \u201ctrust employees to do their best.\u201d\u00a0 Adobe\u00a0does not use performance ratings to establish employee capabilities, feeling it inhibits creativity and harms how teams work. Managers take on the role of a coach, letting employees set goals and determine how they should be assessed. What is culture to a CEO, President or executive team? Why are executives increasingly concerned with corporate culture? Simple: Culture issues are impacting their bottom line. This is more than a culture definition problem. The forces of technology and globalization demand increasingly complex strategies, with more rigorous analysis and data, while you maintain the constant ability to adjust, adapt, and course-correct. This is a people-centered task: We can build a computer that analyzes the best choice in a high-risk decision. But robots will never create a movement that inspires people to camp overnight to buy the latest Apple device. In the 2015 movie Martian (in which Matt Damon plays an astronaut stranded on Mars) the character Mark Watney launches himself (Iron Man style) into space in hopes to intercept with the Captain of his mother ship (or, be cast into space forever.) \u00a0The ship is a mere 63 kilometers away, yet traveling at HIGH speed. He has no steering mechanism, only the complex mathematic calculations of the team on-board the ship and the fierce intention of his Captain and himself to  make it happen . Your people are like Mark Watney in your business \u2013 often feeling\u00a0untethered from your\u00a0company, leaders\u2019 vision and strategies, but desiring connection. The paradox of succeeding at rapid-change-upon-change, while maintaining\u00a0a\u00a0stabilizing mission and connection, can only be solved by fully optimizing\u00a0BOTH scientific, dedicated\u00a0effort  and  heart. We see this in practical ways in business: Strategic planning and change management models are becoming more\u00a0\u00a0dynamic and responsive to the market, as are\u00a0tactics to\u00a0create alignment with shifting priorities and problem solving. It\u2019s tough enough to align 10 people to constant shifts, let alone 10,000 or 100,000. Organizational culture in today\u2019s global arena, is about combining the \u201csmarts and heart\u201d capability to\u00a0adapt and re-align teams quickly, while maintaining the\u00a0essence of harmony and connection with one another. Executives who understand this alchemy, increase the odds of success in rapid-change, high-risk conditions, when the\u00a0conditions themselves are unknown and uncertain. In years of assessing corporate cultures, I have come to see culture change work as addressing this paradox. Building specific (and new) habits to accomplish two important goals: Align with the desire for meaning AND Provide a stabilizing force in the face of constant change. (This is why I do\u00a0not believe in\u00a0one cookie-cutter culture for a global organization \u2013 people need consistency and unifying tribal identity, while being encouraged to\u00a0express their local culture and relationships in ways that honor their roots and make sense to them.) Sometimes I tell my clients: \u201cA Communication Overhaul is the primary work needed in organizations today.\u201d Employee communication are rarely aligned with\u00a0these two goals. They need to be shorter, more frequent, thematic, personal, and face-to-face. Just as communicating to your customers had to evolve, so does communicating with your internal customers \u2013 ie, employees. Your Culture Revolution: What do you choose? The rewarding but sometimes messy, complicated \u00a0work of building a modern corporate culture is not possible inside\u00a0the paradigm of a stressed-out, bottom-line-only world view. It takes leadership courage and focus. Neuroscience research has proven that our brain, flooded with adrenaline, does not \u201ccreate\u201d under stress. Stress triggers one thing: Take cover, or run. But most companies today run on\u00a0adrenaline-fueled productivity as their\u00a0default state. Changing this toxic and non-sustainable condition, means  choosing \u00a0the health and well-being of your people as a priority. Not only as the right thing to do (signalling a new, more human-centered metaphor for business), but as a strategy that\u00a0directly impacts your ROI. \u00a0As the quality of soil determines the quality of your crop, the well-being of your people will increasingly affect\u00a0your growth and profit. Which means not only  defining  the corporate culture you want and need to attract great employees and customers, but spending time, resources, and energy  building\u00a0 it. The revolution surrounding corporate cultures, is real and practical. Companies are filled with people wanting it, and hoping their CEO will support a  redesign the human experience of work . The task ahead is making it\u00a0the gold standard in\u00a0every company. As with any revolution in a society, the society  chooses  to either reinvent itself, or the revolution reinvents you. Here\u2019s hoping you choose to be out in front of your Culture Revolution. \u2014\u2014 REFERENCE ARTICLES 1  Time.com \u2013 \u201cMerriam Webster Names its Word of the Year.\u201d  Dec 15, 2014 2  Entrepreneur \u2013 10 Examples of Companies with Fantastic Cultures \u00a0  http:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/article\/249174 3  New Yorker \u2013 \u201cThe Meaning of Culture\u201d  \u2013 December 26, 2014 \u2013 http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/books\/joshua-rothman\/meaning-culture \n Lisa Jackson     Corporate Culture ,  Leadership and Culture ,  Organizational Culture Leave a Comment  Cancel reply     \n  ","topic":"culture, product growth, culture definition, growth marketing, branding, organization, company growth, improving, marketing"},{"title":"Product Management Explained in 3 Words","url":"http:\/\/spectechular.walkme.com\/product-management-explained-in-3-words\/","body":"Yes. Just, yes. One of the aspects of design that I must admit to loving, and I am really happy is finally catching on, is the aspect of modern simplicity. Open floor plans for houses, simple and sleek lines on sports cars, and products. The iPhone really started the trend, with a simple yet sleek phone. No need for flip phones with gimmicks. Personally I believe design should be simple and clean, and if you want to make it stand out you should add a subtle change.\n\nBelow is an infographic by Martin Eriksson that perfectly describes a product manager\u2019s position. As a product manager I need to be business minded, understand the user experience and understand technology. A good product manager understands the aspects of all three circles and must understand how to merge them together. What\u2019s important for you to understand is that product managers don\u2019t need to be the best. There\u2019s a reason that you\u2019re not one whole circle.\n\nAnother interpretation of the infographic is that you bind them all together. You are the meeting point of all three aspects of your company; you are the intersection in the road. Force all three aspects to look at each other and understand that other aspects exist. Don\u2019t let the circles drift apart but keep them together.","topic":"marketing, people management, branding, words, company growth, growth marketing, product management explained"},{"title":"Grow fast or die slow: The double-edged sword of M&A","url":"https:\/\/www.mckinsey.com\/industries\/high-tech\/our-insights\/grow-fast-or-die-slow-the-double-edged-sword-of-m-and-a","body":"Our latest research on growth in software and online-services companies has some surprising findings about the benefits and risks of buying growth.Downloadable ResourcesOpen interactive popupArticle (PDF-434KB)Acquisitions, done well, can be a powerful tool to accelerate revenue growth. And pushing for gains is vital in software and online services, where the rate of growth typically determines whether a company thrives, survives, or dies. While 20 percent revenue growth is enviable in most industries, companies in software and online services are expected to deliver numbers that are markedly higher. In fact, we\u2019ve found that software and online-services companies with revenue that grows by more than 60 percent annually when they hit $100 million in sales are eight times more likely to eventually pass $1 billion in annual revenue than players with revenue that grows by less than 20 percent annually.1However, acquisitions, done episodically, can also stifle growth. Our research shows that acquiring companies infrequently may actually disrupt organic growth and slow overall revenue gains. We examined the acquisition activity of 578 software and online-services companies that surpassed $100 million in annual revenue2 and identified three lessons:Low-volume acquisition programs disrupt growth; high-volume programs accelerate growth. The software and online-services companies whose revenue grew most rapidly had high-volume acquisition programs.Successful acquisition programs complement organic growth. Among software and online-services companies that reached $1 billion in annual revenue, acquisition efforts preserved or accelerated organic growth. These companies completed more deals, squeezed more growth out of each deal, and managed to preserve high organic growth while investing energy in finding and incorporating acquisitions.Successful acquisitions align with growth strategy. Companies that accelerate revenue growth through acquisitions don\u2019t treat deals as an opportunistic event to capture cost synergies. They use several different deal archetypes\u2014all linked to their fundamental growth strategy.Grow fast or die slowUnderstanding the unique management challenges facing fast-growing technology companies.See the collectionLow-volume acquisition programs disrupt growth; high-volume programs accelerate growthSome software companies rocket past $1 billion in annual revenue on organic growth alone. Yet for those that seek to supplement everyday growth with acquisitions, it\u2019s not enough to check the box with a deal here and there. Our research found that companies making less than one acquisition per year on average have worse revenue growth than those that did no deals. By contrast, companies undertaking one to two deals a year had double the revenue growth of those doing no deals, and companies acquiring two or more companies a year averaged significantly higher growth (Exhibit 1).Exhibit 1We strive to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to our website. If you would like information about this content we will be happy to work with you. Please email us at: McKinsey_Website_Accessibility@mckinsey.comSuccessful acquisition programs complement organic growthThe acquisition programs of companies that achieved $1 billion in annual revenue delivered organic growth superior to that of companies falling short of the $1 billion mark. As Exhibit 2 shows, companies that reached $1 billion in revenue had nearly twice as much growth from acquisitions as companies that did not, but they saw 31 times the organic-growth contribution. Successful companies drove results in three areas: preserving or enhancing business momentum (or organic growth), executing more deals, and translating each deal into more revenue growth.Exhibit 2We strive to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to our website. If you would like information about this content we will be happy to work with you. Please email us at: McKinsey_Website_Accessibility@mckinsey.comLet\u2019s look at each element. First, and most important, a company needs to preserve its business momentum. Software and online-services companies that used acquisitions and successfully moved from $100 million in annual revenue to $1 billion were able to maintain rapid organic-revenue growth (31 percent a year); companies that did not reach the $1 billion mark achieved just 1 percent organic-revenue growth each year. Acquisition activity can distract management and direct resources away from the existing business, or it can preserve and even enhance growth in the core business. Successful companies achieve the latter.Second, companies that reached $1 billion in annual revenue undertook more deals each year (1.5 deals on average) than those that did not (0.9 deals). We found that executing more deals delivered an additional seven percentage points of revenue growth annually. The bottom line is that executing a successful acquisition program is not as simple as buying more companies. It requires a systematic, disciplined approach to deal discovery and execution that is improved over time. Trying to jam more deals through a broken process will only compromise organic growth and the chance of success.3Third, companies that get to $1 billion in annual revenue can achieve more growth per deal\u2014a compound annual growth rate of 13 percent, compared with 11 percent for companies that do not reach this threshold. Although a difference of two percentage points is small, the ability to capture more growth from deals adds up when combined with a greater deal volume. This means the acquisition programs of successful companies deliver annual revenue growth of 19 percent on average, almost twice the 10 percent of companies that are unable to reach the $1 billion level.So do the fastest-growing software and online-services companies use acquisitions? Yes. When we examined the fastest-growing 10 percent of companies, we found that they all used acquisitions\u2014and that they all had high-volume acquisition programs, delivered the greatest average excess total return to shareholders,4 and achieved annual revenue growth of more than 100 percent (Exhibit 3).Exhibit 3We strive to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to our website. If you would like information about this content we will be happy to work with you. Please email us at: McKinsey_Website_Accessibility@mckinsey.comOur conclusion is that acquisition programs should be robust, and they must build on the core business. It\u2019s the combination of organic and inorganic growth that allows companies to survive and delivers excess total return to shareholders.Successful acquisitions align with growth strategyIt is no surprise that most deals in software and online services appear to be aligned with growth rather than costs. Yet this does not mean that all deals are the same. We identified four common deal archetypes and rationales aligned with accelerating growth:Audience expansion or consolidation. Once a company has established a successful offering, growth can be supplemented by acquiring a target with an applicable audience or customer base. This can improve the scale of the offering, allow the company to reach new geographies, enhance the credibility of a product or service, and improve the value proposition for products that benefit from greater market share. One example of this is the combination of several audiences for travel websites (Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire, and TripAdvisor) under the umbrella of IAC. However, executing acquisitions poorly may drive away acquired customers and yield diminishing returns. In such transactions, it\u2019s important to pay attention to both existing customers and new customer opportunities.Gap fills. A company may use acquisitions to fill gaps in its core product or service offering. For example, Salesforce.com\u2019s acquisition of Jigsaw allowed it to automate the way it acquired and maintained business-contact data and to improve the value proposition of its core customer-relationship-management offering. A deep technical understanding is critical to ensure that the gap is successfully addressed by the target\u2019s offering or intellectual property and that the target can be successfully integrated with the acquirer\u2019s existing solutions.Speed to adjacency. Companies looking beyond their core offering for growth typically pursue opportunities in adjacent markets. In the fast-paced realm of software and online services, organic entry may be too slow. In such cases, companies often use acquisitions to speed their entry. Synopsys, for example, acquired Coverity to expand into the software-testing market. Adobe, Oracle, and SAP are serial adjacency acquirers. The risk of this type of acquisition is that the adjacent market or target company is not as attractive as expected, or that the company does not have what it takes to win in the new market after the acquisition. To address this, companies need to understand their core differentiators and where they have the familiarity to succeed.5Acqui-hire. These deals are focused on securing distinctive talent that can enhance the acquirer\u2019s core offering, and the offerings of the target usually are discontinued. When Facebook bought FriendFeed, for instance, the deal brought on board several talented employees, including Bret Taylor, who went on to become Facebook\u2019s chief technology officer. The central risks with this type of acquisition are not surprising: the inability to retain employees of the company that has been acquired, and the potential for the acquiring company to overestimate the individual capabilities of the acquired company.6Would you like to learn more about our High Tech Practice?Visit our High Tech Practice pageThese archetypes illustrate the ways that acquisitions can accelerate revenue growth. Moreover, they show how opportunities could align with an acquirer\u2019s growth strategy rather than emanating from a target\u2019s current market price, a shared industry, or the opportunity to reduce overhead.Putting it all togetherSoftware and online-services companies thinking of doing one acquisition per year are actually better served doing no deals. To drive the type of growth required to thrive in the software and online-services sector, acquisitions must be done regularly and treated as a capability that fuels both organic and inorganic growth. Companies that successfully accelerate from $100 million to $1 billion in annual revenue typically undertake more than two deals per year, use acquisitions to accelerate their core organic growth, and deliberately align the deal rationale with their most pressing growth challenges. In short, what matters is not whether you do acquisitions. What counts is how you do them.\n","topic":"branding, company growth, edged sword, growth marketing, grow fast, marketing, product growth, die slow"},{"title":"Why lead generation is important for your business","url":"https:\/\/www.digitalmicdrop.com\/2017\/08\/31\/lead-generation-important-business\/","body":"Why lead generation is important for your business\n\nAugust 31, 2017 LEARN DIGITAL MARKETING\nLead generation important for businesses\nMathieu Picard, Anyleads\nMathieu Picard, Anyleads\n\nThis article on the importance of sales and marketing lead generation is a guest contribution by Mathieu Picard, CEO of Anyleads.\n\n \nWhat is lead generation infrastructure?\n\nWithin the scope of direct marketing strategy, lead generation describes the process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of increasing sales.\n\nFor most companies, finding potential customers and successfully reaching them is a long and difficult process. Lead generation combines the marketing actions businesses can take to create and build interest in a product or service to generate new customers.\n\nTechnologically based marketing actions that rely on computer programs, database collection and the internet to find and contact potential customers are the foundation of lead generation infrastructure solutions.\n\nHowever, lead generation can also mean direct contact through cold calling or events where sales representatives rouse interest and convert prospective customers into viable leads through face to face interactions.\n\nLead generation infrastructures are an example of SaaS (Software as a Service) which provides an API to automate the process of generating leads. The final result is a qualified and organized database of prospects (leads) that your business can use to target your message.\n\nAutomation can simplify the direct marketing actions of your business and allow you to focus your attention on less repetitive tasks. Using an email finder guarantees you a sustainable stream of prospects to contact every day and automated contact forms then allow you to identify which customers are the best to present your final sales pitch to.\n\nAs these technological processes change the marketing landscape, many marketing traditionalists may not have heard of these new approaches. Cutting-edge technology is making it possible to expand your customer base, multiply your growth and do so in a way that differentiates you from your competition.\nWhat are the advantages?\n\nThere are many different strategic directions to go with digital and direct marketing options. Lead generation infrastructure which automates the tedious processes involved makes your outbound marketing significantly more efficient, at an affordable price.\n\nWhen it comes to budget concerns email marketing is by far the cheapest direct marketing method. Although it has a low conversion rate it has the highest return on investment available.\n\nThere are many ways to increase the conversion rate and when you consider the expanded capabilities possible with lead generation SaaS it\u2019s clear that this option gives you the most bang for your buck! Email marketing is an effective way to enhance traffic, visibility and sales which is why this approach boasts the highest ROI compared to all other (much more expensive) methods.\n\nThe use of a lead generation infrastructure is a good way to guarantee a reliable and continuous stream of new leads for your company! Make the best use of your valuable time by automating the most tedious and repetitive tasks!\nHow does it work?\n\nThe advanced search features available within the lead generation infrastructures allows you to compile mass lists of contacts that fit your unique requirements. The large lists are highly targeted so with each entry you increase your chances of contacting interested customers and converting them into viable leads.\n\u201cYou can build massive, precisely targeted lists in only a few days\u201d \u2013 Mathieu Picard\n\nLead generation infrastructure is also very useful for B2B businesses who wish to target their prospects through their professional email addresses. Most of the time the relevant information (emails, names, job titles and position etc) is gathered through data available on social media networks but by searching the name of the company or the domain of its website the software can also find employee emails to include in the database.\nTrustworthy lead generation infrastructure:\n\nAnyleads is a good example of a lead generation infrastructure that provides trustworthy services to customers all over the world. Anyleads uses back-end technology to mine data and compile highly targeted databases of contacts and an integrated API crawls, extracts and verifies the email addresses of your prospects. Additionally, an integrated CRM allows you to launch drip mailing campaigns with powerful retargeting and funnel generation.\n   \n ","topic":"business, people management, product growth, lead generation, company growth, growth marketing, branding, important"},{"title":" The Story Behind How Pocket Hit 20M Users with 20 People | First Round Review","url":"http:\/\/firstround.com\/review\/the-story-behind-how-pocket-hit-20m-users-with-20-people\/","body":"If save-for-later service Pocket had a spirit animal, it\u2019d be the American field ant. Like the insect, the startup supports that which is many times its own size. It serves its 20 million registered users \u2014 who have saved over 2 billion articles and videos for later \u2014 with a team of just 20 employees.\n\nAt the center of this supernatural ability and efficiency is founder and CEO Nate Weiner. Pocket just celebrated its eighth birthday \u2014 but for roughly half of the company\u2019s existence, Weiner was the sole employee. On his own, he built and designed Pocket\u2019s website, API, iPhone app and iPad app, and fielded support requests from his first few million users.\n\nPocket is proof that size of team doesn\u2019t equal scale of impact. In this exclusive interview, Weiner explains why scaling a company doesn\u2019t always mean increasing headcount (and burn). Instead, he shares the two ways startups can grow a business without a marketing or sales team, and the incredible advantages of staying small for focus, culture and trust. Any early-stage company that seeks to punch above its weight can benefit from Weiner\u2019s exceptional (in more ways than one) experience with growth.\n\nNearly four years into Pocket, Weiner decided to raise money to turn his one-man-show into a team. How many people would he need? For someone who built the first version of Pocket on his own in a night, five people seemed like a lot. \u201cI asked myself, \u2018What the hell would five people do?\u2019\u201d Weiner says. \u201cEvernote (which had made a bid to buy Pocket in its early, early days) employed around 60 people when I first started talking to them. I couldn\u2019t fathom having a team that size. What would they work on? Why\u2019s a team of ten working on what one person can do?\u201d\n\nToday, Pocket is in the process of moving into a new office to fit its now quickly growing team (targeted at two dozen by year-end), so it\u2019s clear that success has shifted Weiner\u2019s perspective, at least a little. Still, he maintains how Pocket\u2019s sustained smaller size in its early years was formative to its long-standing winning streak. And even now, he doesn\u2019t want any sudden moves to lose or dilute the very traits that got the company where it is today: focus and trust. Below, he shares how keeping a team small can be an invaluable guiding principle.\n\nForce Focus with a Smaller Headcount \u2014 Either Real or Simulated\n\nManagement mantras harp on the importance of focus and staying nimble for startups. But they tend to leave practitioners to will clarity and agility into reality. Like any other startup, Pocket struggles with staying focused while prioritizing the many inbound or upcoming opportunities it\u2019s always juggling. Unlike most companies, it views its small headcount as a means \u2014 not a limitation \u2014 to focus.\n\nFor the first quarter of this year, Pocket had over 20 projects on the docket across the entire company \u2014 that is, more projects than employees. \u201cFocus is an enduring battle for a company of any size,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cIf we were a larger company, we might\u2019ve been tempted to elect a lead for each project, allocate engineers and push ahead on all fronts. But our limited resources prompt frequent reflection and rigorous prioritization.\u201d\n\nPocket only completed one-fourth of its projects slated for the first quarter. With so much in motion, the team felt dispersed and directionless. \u201cIt didn't feel good,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cThen we got word of a marquee project: Mozilla wanted to build Pocket into every version of Firefox that people downloaded. That integration caused the entire company to focus on one thing. It took me back to the early days when we were just five people, and how we attacked one goal at a time with all of us behind it. We rallied together to do the integration quickly, all while furthering Pocket\u2019s mission of giving more people access to the content they want for later enjoyment.\"\n\nIf you lead a small startup, ask yourself: restrictions aside, would I put the entire company behind this project? If the answer is yes, find a way to do it. \u201cWith everyone on the Firefox project, we moved so much faster, the quality of the product was way better and people were amped up,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cThen we went on to the next project \u2014 with more momentum, coordination and energy than if we decided to divide and conquer our list of projects.\u201d\n\nIf you\u2019re over 100 employees, find a way to manufacture the same scenario. Think back to the time when your company could fit into one room, and ask yourself if you\u2019d put everyone on the project if you could. If the answer is yes, consider deploying more reinforcements from your current team. \u201cEven at 20, 30 or even 50 people, you should really just be focused on that one thing that needs to happen right now,\u201d says Weiner.\n\n\u201cI understand that bigger companies cannot shift the same way startups can, but it\u2019s keeping that instinct sharp and active that\u2019s key,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cPersonally, I know I need that focus forced on me. The more people you add, the easier it is to keep doing what\u2019s not critically important. With a smaller team, it\u2019s very hard not to stay focused. You constantly need to avoid doing what you want to do in the future for that which has to be done now.\u201d\n\nFor companies of any size, Weiner suggests putting the full team on the most critical project every quarter. \u201cOver the next 90 days, what\u2019s going to be the project that makes the difference? Let\u2019s just make sure that we hit that goal the best we can and then we can move onto the next project.\u201d\n\nPocket is now shortening its project runway to under 30 days \u2014 especially for engineering sprints. \u201cI can tell you where we're going six months from now, but we try to focus a month at a time. A small team enables us to operate this way,\u201d says Weiner.\n\nCondense Your Culture But Expand Your Skillset\n\nAt larger companies, entire roles or departments are charged with defining and preserving culture in order to absorb hundreds of new hires. As Pocket\u2019s sole employee for its early years, Weiner was both the only creator and custodian of its culture. While he knew he eventually needed more than one person to scale the company, he didn\u2019t want to lose the drive and grit that had landed him early success.\n\nWith a small headcount, Weiner was able to keep Pocket\u2019s culture concentrated during its formative years. This was possible because its culture wasn\u2019t a fuzzy concept \u2014 it meant trust, scrappiness and ownership. Weiner had years to discover and refine founder-culture fit with the same rigor that most apply to find product-market fit for their companies. After all, there\u2019s a saying in tech that 80% of your eventual culture is your founder (literally their personality traits).\n\nThink stews not salads when it comes to company culture. Start by letting a few choice ingredients simmer together. Then taste. You\u2019ll have a better palate for what it delivers and lacks than if you toss it all together from the start.\n\nThis hard-earned clarity allows Weiner to confidently hire in his image while gradually growing the team and diversifying its skillset. \u201cAs with all startups, at some point you realize you can\u2019t do it all to completion or to a high standard. For example, I really needed help with design,\u201d said Weiner. \u201cNikki, our Head of Design, was the first hire. I had the engineering and product experience, but she brought the design chops that we needed to truly make a great product. She changed the black and yellow color scheme \u2014 that had somehow looked good to me at the time \u2014 to what Pocket looks like today. It's been vital to bring on people who own and value their part of Pocket as much as I have from the start. They\u2019ve made it better than I could have.\u201d\n\nKeeping Pocket around 20 employees has allowed Weiner to not only personally filter for those he can trust, but also assemble a group capable of making decisions and operating without him. With a small team, those bonds and common world view form more quickly without complex hierarchies in the way. \u201cAs a technical founder, engineering was the hardest area to let go,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cEarly on though, I remember when it finally clicked: We had an issue with our back-end. I suggested an idea on how to resolve it. The team noted it, and then went to another room to sort it out. The solution that they came up with was way better than mine. It was a great moment to realize how it was okay to let go, and that it often turns out better when there\u2019s acknowledged and mutual trust.\u201d\n\nA small startup can use its size to force focus and better preserve culture as it grows, but these benefits are just the fuel for the work the team has to do. Its output \u2014 the actual product \u2014 can also scale without increasing headcount, but only through two channels. \u201cThe only way a product can grow from a team of our size is if your platform carries you or your users carry you,\u201d says Weiner.\n\nThe advantage of being small is that you find ways to make people outside of your walls part of your company.\n\nHere\u2019s how Pocket develops, ships and publicizes its product through its platform and with the help of its loyal users:\n\nHere\u2019s How Your Platform Can Carry You\n\nIn the early days, Weiner made it his goal to embed Pocket in every corner of the web. The intent was to create an \u201camazing consumption experience\u201d for as many people as possible across all of their devices, which meant the app itself had to be extremely flexible and scalable.\n\nWithout a sales or marketing team, Pocket made its app as simple and straightforward for other companies to learn about and integrate its service \u2014 which, in turn, has exponentially grown Pocket\u2019s users. To date, the company has tallied over 2,000 integrations, among them Firefox, Twitter, Flipboard, and Kobo.\n\nWith strong partner feedback and enthusiasm, Pocket now seeks to grow as fast as it can through its platform. Weiner sees tons of opportunities, but there\u2019s more out there than Pocket could possibly build with its current team \u2014 even if headcount doubled instantly.\n\nAs a small, fast-growing company, you can go on a hiring spree or lean on your platform. If you opt for the latter, here\u2019s Weiner\u2019s advice:\n\nMake it dead simple and low-lift.\n\nThe team at Pocket relies on this question to make decisions: how can we make it simpler for all involved? For example, it\u2019s now commonplace for startups to share their APIs, but Pocket takes it a step further. \u201cYes, the APIs that we build on as a company are the exact same APIs we give to every partner publicly. But can you help them with just a few lines of code?\u201d asks Weiner.\n\nYears ago, Weiner took on this challenge with the help of ShareKit, an open source Software Development Kit (SDK) that people could drop into their iOS apps. \u201cI tried to make it literally one line of code for people to add Pocket and other popular services to what they were building.\u201d says Weiner. \u201cCompanies could drop the line of code in and their app could share to any service like Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. At the time, if you had to write the code from scratch on your own, it was weeks of work to set these things up. But I still wanted to make it simpler.\u201d This is the same philosophy that guides Pocket today.\n\nAs much as possible, make it truly plug-and-play for others who want to build in your product. \u201cIf Twitter comes to us and wants to integrate Pocket, we\u2019ve lost if it takes them a month to do it,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cThey\u2019re simply not going to do it. And I don\u2019t blame them.\u201d\n\nNot requiring people to reinvent the wheel means first making sure what you\u2019re working with is as simple as a wheel. If it is, they\u2019ll use it and there won\u2019t be much reinventing needed.\n\nStructure integration as self-help.\n\nPocket\u2019s platform mentality has been a huge part of its growth. Allowing companies to build on its platform easily has been the first step, but scale happens when they can do so independently. \u201cWe\u2019ve completed thousands of integrations without any business development \u2014 and the overwhelming majority without any support,\u201d says Weiner.\n\nSimplicity has made it easy for partners to integrate Pocket, but the startup\u2019s size has made it a necessity. \u201cThe deals with Kobo and Firefox only happened because we made it easy for them to self-serve,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cAt first, Kobo asked us to integrate Pocket in two months. If our team of a dozen people (at the time) had to build it from scratch, it would have never happened. But we said, \u2018Here\u2019s our API.' Kobo was able to integrate Pocket within 14 days.\u201d\n\nFor integration, the ideal is when companies can incorporate Pocket without ever reaching out to Weiner or his team. Pocket has found that its users typically request other apps to integrate the save-for-later service, which is what prompts new companies to learn about Pocket. \u201cWe\u2019ve heard a few times that the number one feature request for apps is integrating Pocket. When companies look into it, they\u2019re happy to check the request off the list on their own,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cThat\u2019s how Facebook Paper integrated Pocket. I had nothing to do with that \u2014 I just found out one day.\u201d\n\nWoo big partners tenaciously with your platform, then keep them with transparency.\n\nSimple platform integration and self-service doesn\u2019t mean that startups should go on autopilot. Pocket stays on the radar of strategic companies that it believes will benefit from its product. For example, the first time that Pocket reached out to Firefox it was still known as Read-it-Later. \u201cWe started as a Firefox extension and I was one of the extension app reviewers early on,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cWe\u2019ve built the type of culture where we share our story, data and updates early and along the way, so companies \u2014 from major content services to device manufacturers \u2014 understand what it\u2019s like to be our partner from the beginning. We want them to truly know \u2014 and be able to point to proof \u2014 that we\u2019re ready when they are. One day, it clicked and Mozilla called. It\u2019s now fully integrated Pocket as the save-for-later service for its Firefox browser.\u201d\n\nRemember: getting an app or company on your platform marks the end of a deal, but the beginning of an official working relationship. For Pocket, channeling \u201cgenerous transparency\u201d is the way it retains its partners and continues to improve its product with such a small team. \u201cWe try to share knowledge as much as possible. We don\u2019t try to hide anything. We tell Apple and Google what we\u2019re seeing in the market when they\u2019re working on their share sheets,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cAs a result, it's made it really easy for us to actually start getting these deals done as people want to solve their save-for-later needs. They know who to turn to.\u201d\n\nThe takeaway for lean startups is to construct a platform that can enable external parties to operate as extensions of your team: sales, engineering and business intelligence. In the case of Pocket, its platform is simple to integrate, built for self-service and brings with it an increasingly rich set of data, that when aggregated, benefits all its partnering companies. \u201cWhat\u2019s next is leveraging our user base. While we have a hundreds of companies integrating Pocket, we have millions of users,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cThe question now is: how can we serve them and also help them carry us even further?\u201d\n\nHere\u2019s How Your Users Can Carry You\n\n\u201cThink back to what it was like to watch television before DVR or streaming. Or what it felt like to hail a cab without Uber,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cWhenever you find a place that feels old, people get really passionate about it, because the new way has become so core to their experience and going back to the old way just feels broken. With Pocket, I think we\u2019ve hit upon a very different way of using content on the web. We have users that, when they go into another app where they can\u2019t save to Pocket, say, \u2018Is this an ancient time? What\u2019s going on here?\u2019\u201d\n\nSmall startups who have users expressing this degree of passion should not miss the opportunity to direct that energy from expression into creation for the benefit of the company. For Pocket, that\u2019s meant getting users to lend a helping hand to product development. Here are the two ways that Pocket\u2019s users are supporting its next generation of products.\n\nShift your Beta channel from delivery to conversation to co-creation.\n\nWhen Pocket started, its release philosophy was about pushing out an airtight product to its users. The team would perfect every pixel before launch. \u201cAt the beginning, Pocket was a very waterfall-like product,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cWe would deliver big releases about once a year. We\u2019d go underground for six months and build something big and then we'd launch it. The releases were well received, but we suspected we should have been getting more out of our process.\u2019\u201d\n\nYet, after product-market fit, perfect is not only the enemy of good, but of growth. \u201cPocket is known as a very well-designed experience and app,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cWhile we want to keep that up, our development debates shifted from every nitpicking detail to how we open up and solve growth problems. As a small team at a growing company, we needed to tap into our users as collaborators, not just as beneficiaries.\u201d\n\nThere comes a point for every startup when you\u2019ve got to decide between perfection and progression. The first is a stable characteristic and the second is a dynamic conversation. Choose wisely.\n\nOff the bat, that means having more frequent interactions with users. Getting them involved in product development isn\u2019t just about opening the floodgates \u2014 it requires restructuring the way your team works. Pocket has moved to a faster release cycle to have more touchpoints with its users. \u201cWe're moving to a much faster cadence. Our sprints are a few weeks long and we\u2019re closing in on a five to six week release cycle. For the team, it\u2019s a far cry \u2014 and a cultural shift \u2014 from trying to get everything perfect before the public sees it. Now, we know there are bugs in what we ship, but now we aren\u2019t the only ones squashing them.\u201d\n\nThis approach was especially critical to Pocket 6.0, a prototype that the company uses internally. The team estimated that a full, public-ready version would take nine months to put out. \u201cWe were delighted by the beta and didn\u2019t want our limitations to delay our users from experiencing it, too,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cSo we decided to break it all apart. We laid out the five to six different releases that\u2019d strategically get us there over a six week release cycle. So far, it\u2019s felt good to get it out there, even if it\u2019s piece by piece. We're getting feedback and signal back really fast. We listen, respond and incorporate it all. We also ship at the same time so users know they\u2019re being heard \u2014 they\u2019re like our remote team.\"\n\nIf you have one arrow and you shoot and miss, you're screwed. If you can continually re-aim until you get to the target, that gives you a much better look at the bullseye.\n\nUsed correctly, a Beta channel can give your team great feedback and allow your users to direct the product. Even if you haven\u2019t hired, you\u2019ll feel like you have more manpower to hit milestones and additional insights into fast-moving markets. \u201cAfter our last fundraise, we set a lot of important milestones, especially around getting additions to the platform built out,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cWe know that we want to get them out there to validate and prove them in the market. The sooner that we can do that, the better. The beta channel\u2019s the way forward for Pocket and the way in for our users.\u201d\n\nUse surveys to learn from \"the PMs\" among your users.\n\nFrom the beginning, Weiner was struck by the enthusiasm and loyalty of Pocket users. \u201cOur users love this product. I'm always blown away by how avid and vocal our fans can be,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cWe get emails all the time from people writing in to say, \u2018Hey. I don't have a bug. I just wanted to tell you guys that you\u2019re awesome.\u2019\u201d\n\nTo fully engage this type of fanbase, use tools to solicit and leverage their support. Pocket has used surveys to not only collect feedback but also to directly guide its product roadmap. \u201cWe\u2019re actually just reviewing 600 responses from a survey that we put out in our beta version of Pocket,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cOur support team is having conversations with people directly inside the product. We\u2019ve actually received more feedback than ever through this channel.\u201d\n\nMany startups use surveys as an engagement tool, and casually treat the results as a byproduct. Don\u2019t just listen, really hear what\u2019s being said and how. \u201cI always remind the team to look past the basic gist of the results,\u201d says Weiner.\n\nWhen users give you feedback on an obstacle, they almost always give you an idea on how to solve it.\n\n\"They don\u2019t just say, 'I hate that this is the case.' If you keep reading, they\u2019ll often include, 'You should let me pin this or swipe it away.' It may not be the solution in the end, but it will better define the challenge, which gets you closer to a solution.\u201d\n\nFor example, Pocket now has two tabs, \u201cMy List\u201d and \u201cRecommendations,\u201d at the top of the app. Results from the survey indicated that people wanted to swipe between the two lists, but that many users couldn\u2019t reach their finger all the way to the top. \u201cThat was insightful, but it was also just one solution,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cThe other option may be a standard UI convention on iOS, where you can bring the tab bar down to the bottom. All of sudden now, that's within reach of your thumb. But then, you also have to think about Facebook or other places where the new functionality may not be discoverable for a lot of users and many will have the same problem. If you jump to the first, second or tenth solution, you\u2019re missing the point of fully grasping the need of implementing swipeable tabs.\u201d\n\nLastly, when running surveys, keep in mind these three tips from Weiner:\n\nSegment your users into buckets . Pocket has divided its user base into \u201ccasual,\u201d \u201ccore,\u201d and \u201cinactive.\u201d The team makes sure to send surveys to a group within each category to ensure they\u2019re learning from a representative sample.\n\nLower the bar for participation . Pocket makes sure its surveys are easy to complete, which means they are less than five minutes long. Oftentimes, they\u2019re even shorter. For the most part, the team prefers releasing two-questions surveys frequently than a ten-question survey released occasionally.\n\nDrop in surveys at multiple junctures. Pocket continues to experiment with where and how it surveys users. Like most apps, there\u2019s a send feedback button (in beta for Pocket) that is a passive channel. Or an email will capture those who may not open the app every day. Also, after five minutes of inactivity in the app, Pocket may pop up with a live chat and ask: \u201cHey. Everything OK?\u201d\n\nUsing tools to engage users, like surveys and Beta channels, and creating easy, low-lift ways for partners to extend and build on your platform are ways to scale your company without growing your headcount. That\u2019s how Pocket continues to deliver despite its size. However, now that Pocket\u2019s partners and users are becoming more active in shaping the future, they\u2019re also influencing the startup\u2019s definition of success.\n\n\u201cBack before we raised money, I kept saying that save for later is a system-level feature that needs to built into browsers and operating systems. People told me that would never happen. Years later we\u2019re built into Firefox,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cOur strategy has been to first create a way to capture anything you find and want to save \u2014 regardless of the app or service \u2014 and get embedded with the partners to make that universal. Then it\u2019s to create an amazing set of tools to consume content. This has given us incredible insights on information consumption and, soon, how to solve its challenges. There\u2019s always a next goal, but it\u2019s the same question that drives us: How do we help people get all the great stuff that\u2019s out there?\u201d\n\nThe key for Pocket \u2014 or any startup \u2014 is to tackle a colossal and ambitious goal with leverage. \u201cRight now, we really want to get our platform to scale even more and reach as many people as possible,\u201d says Weiner. \u201cWe want them to not only enjoy what we create, but help us build it. If for each Pocket employee, there\u2019s a hundred partners and millions of users to help, we\u2019ll have the muscle to make it all happen.\u201d","topic":"branding, marketing, product growth, company growth, first round review, growth marketing, people"},{"title":"How to Distinguish Between Your Product Roadmap Product Strategy and Product Vision","url":"https:\/\/community.uservoice.com\/blog\/how-to-distinguish-between-your-product-roadmap-product-strategy-and-product-vision\/","body":"4How to Distinguish Between Your Product Roadmap, Product Strategy, and Product Vision\nCliff Gilley\n\nBy Cliff Gilley of The Clever PM\n\n08\/16\/2016\n\nWhile you might \u201cown\u201d the product, your product\u2019s vision should be coming from the top of the house. It should be driving everything in your organization, not just product development. Sales, operations, technology\u2026 all of it should be working toward a common vision.\n\nSo, if the vision isn\u2019t the responsibility of the product team, what is? Let\u2019s use a hypothetical example \u2014 a space travel company \u2014 to break this down:\n\nThe vision for the company is affordable and repeatable space travel. You do not own the vision, but you should have a clear sense of what it is as you help carry it out. If the vision isn\u2019t clear enough to build a strategy and roadmap around it, you should (diplomatically) communicate that.\n\nThe product strategy is to build vehicles capable of going to space multiple times, along with the supporting infrastructure to make that possible. It might be a single rocketship, or it could be a fleet full of spaceships with various capabilities. You have some ownership over strategy.\n\nThe product roadmap is (for each spaceship) the high-level steps required to build a spaceship that meets the requirements of the product strategy, which in turn is fulfilling the company vision. You own this.\nSo what do they look like?\n\nThere are no absolutes on the perfect format for a product vision, product strategy, or product roadmap, but here are some general guidelines:\nProduct Vision\na clear product vision keeps your product roadmap on track\n\nYour vision should max out at one to two sentences \u2014 just enough to clearly and concisely convey your high-level purpose. This should be aspirational, not just descriptive.\n\n\u201cThe vision statement is not an opportunity to use creative, colorful language to describe the operations or activities of the organization,\u201d says Shaun Spearmon of Kotter International. \u201cIt should describe the resultant experience or outcome. Too many organizations get caught up explaining how they work. Instead, focus on the subsequent outcomes after the work is done.\u201d\n\nHere are a few examples of great vision statements:\n\n    LinkedIn: \u201cTo connect the world\u2019s professionals to make them more productive and successful.\u201d\n    Warby Parker: \u201cOffer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price, while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses.\u201d\n    Amazon: \u201cOur vision is to be earth\u2019s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.\u201d\n\nYou should be proud of your vision statement and happy \u2014 not embarrassed \u2014 to share it with customers. It should resonate with you and your fellow employees and not just sound good to investors.\n\nYour company's vision statement should be something you\u2019re proud to share with the public.\nTweet This\n\n\u201cI find that a vision focused on creating a benefit for others provides a particularly deep motivation and a lasting inspiration. It guides me when I am feeling doubtful much more than a money- or self-centric vision can,\u201d says Roman Pichler of Pichler Consulting. \u201cI find that people excel because they believe that they are doing something meaningful and beneficial.\u201d\nProduct Strategy\n\nProduct strategies should be a little more specific than the vision, but not so specific that you\u2019re delving into the details of implementation.\n\nYour product strategy should cover the fundamentals:\n\n    Who are we trying to serve?\n    What problem(s) are we trying to address?\n    How are we planning to address the problem(s)?\n    How are we going to monetize our product?\n\nYou\u2019ve now defined a target market, created a value proposition, and laid the groundwork for a business plan. You can certainly be a little more specific, but trying to nail down the details at this level can create assumptions that lead your product roadmaps and product releases down narrowly-defined paths that may limit your options and miss opportunities in the future.\n\nYour product strategy should be more specific than your product vision, but light on details.\nTweet This\n\n\u201cWhen we are building products, we have a threshold of knowledge. We cannot start on Day 1 and exactly plan to reach our vision. There are too many unknowns and variables,\u201d says Melissa Perri of ProdUXLabs. \u201cInstead, we set goals along the way, then remove obstacles through experimentation until we reach our vision.\u201d\nProduct Roadmap\n\nWe\u2019ve written plenty about product roadmaps at UserVoice, so instead of recreating the wheel here I will direct you to a couple of our favorites on this subject:\n\n    How To Prepare an Executive-Level Product Roadmap Presentation\n    How to Hold an Interactive Product Roadmapping Meeting\n\nIn the context of this piece, the fundamental idea to grasp is that roadmaps are tactical. They\u2019re a set of plans and instructions that get you close to achieving the goals laid out in your product strategy. They\u2019re the only of these three items that should dictate specific behavior or tasks.\nKeep teams on the same page\n\nWhile your company may not be trying to go to space (at least not literally), you likely have some ambitious goals at the corporate level. Your product team then needs to figure out the strategy that will work toward those goals, and the individual product managers will define their product roadmaps to build products supporting that strategy.\n\n\u201cIn order for a product team to actually be empowered and act with any meaningful degree of autonomy, the team must have a deep understanding of the broader context,\u201d says Marty Cagan of the Silicon Valley Product Group. \u201cThe more product teams you have, the more essential it is to have this unifying vision and strategy in order for each team to be able to make good choices.\u201d\n\nThat is why it\u2019s incredibly important to have a clear product strategy when your organization has more than one product manager. While a lone wolf may always know why things are happening when, it\u2019s a lot murkier when you add some cooks to the kitchen.\n\n\u201cWhen you know exactly where you\u2019re going, it\u2019s much easier to get there,\u201d says John Mansour of Proficientz. \u201cFor product managers specifically, they no longer have to go it alone for their products and compete with one another for resources. It\u2019s a divide-and-conquer scenario across the product management team.\u201d\nKeep Product Strategy changes to a minimum\n\nOne way you know you\u2019re operating a strategic level? Things aren\u2019t actually changing very often.\n\n\u201cProduct Vision specifies the What and Why of the product, while Product Strategy elaborates how to realize the vision with a specific approach, and provides a roadmap showing a timeline for executing the strategy. Product vision is the guiding North Star, and does not change much, if at all,\u201d says Satish Thatte of VersionOne. \u201cOnce the product strategy is prepared, it may undergo adjustments and refinements over a period of time, but not too frequently.\u201d\n\nUnlike the vision and the strategy, product roadmaps will change somewhat frequently as market intelligence comes in, users request new capabilities and technical considerations are factored in. As the roadmap is a tactical plan, these changes should be welcomed (as long as it\u2019s not for the release your engineering team is already working on), as it shows you\u2019re being responsive to the changing dynamics of your industry.\nBe positive about the negatives\n\nWhile most people think of product strategy as everything your company will build to achieve its goals, just as important are all of the things you won\u2019t be building.\n\n\u201cProviding a solid product strategy will help focus activities, establish a direct link between the product and the company strategy, and clearly identify to everyone involved the high-level steps currently being taken to achieve the vision,\u201d says Greg Geracie of Actuation Consulting, adding that it \u201cnot only defines the boundaries of the actions you intend to take to achieve the desired future state, perhaps most importantly, it also articulates those activities that lie outside of the scope of the strategy that will not be pursued.\u201d\n\nDefining the scope is essential to creating an achievable strategy, and this is vital downstream information to the specific roadmaps being created and implemented.\nTie Your Product Roadmap to Your Product Strategy\nproduct roadmap should align with your product strategy\n\nThe tiered system of defining goals and planning products enables a series of checkpoints for everything that uses your organization\u2019s precious resources. If what you\u2019re doing on the roadmap doesn\u2019t directly tie back to something specific in the strategy, then you have to question why you\u2019re doing it at all.\n\nTweet this: Everything on your product roadmap should tie back to your product strategy.\n\nA helpful exercise is to actually go through every item and see how it fits.\n\nFor example, let\u2019s say your strategy is to:\n\n1) Aggregate the best gluten-free recipes on the planet\n2) Make it easy to discover and share them with others and\n3) Create a critical mass of users so the platform can be monetized with premium content and product sales.\n\nIf you\u2019re putting a recipe ranking feature into your roadmap, great: it connects with strategic goal #2.\n\nBut let\u2019s say you propose a calorie counter. Sounds like a good idea, yes? Think again. At present, your calorie counter doesn\u2019t link with any of your three strategic goals, so you need to put that on hold unless you want to proactively change your strategy.\n\nWhether you\u2019re color-coding your roadmap, labeling features accordingly or just running a quick comparison check, you can now be sure that everything you\u2019re building is strategic.\n ","topic":"growth marketing, marketing, branding, distinguish, product vision, company growth, people management"},{"title":" Classification \/ Types of Mergers","url":"https:\/\/efinancemanagement.com\/mergers-and-acquisitions\/classification-types-of-mergers","body":"Classification \/ Types of Mergers \n Classification \/ Types of Mergers\n\nMergers and acquisitions are the ways in which businesses get combined. They can be little intricate to understand all the legal and tax issues surrounding the deals. Mergers and acquisitions are two different business combinations, although they are thought of as a generic term. Let us look at the types of mergers and acquisitions, the ways the companies can do business combinations.\n\nTable of Contents [show]\nDefinition of Merger\n\nA merger is a business transaction where an acquiring company takeovers the target company as a whole. This results in only one company remaining after the merger. The smaller target company loses its existence and becomes a part of the bigger acquiring company.\nBasis of Classifications \/ Types of Mergers:\n\nMergers can be differentiated into various types depending on the following:\nIntegration Form\n\nMergers can be classified depending on how both the companies physically combine themselves in the transaction to form one entity.\nRelatedness of Business Activities\n\nMergers can be classified depending on how the business activities of both companies relate to each other. The economic function and the purpose of the transaction define the types of mergers.\n\ntypes of Merger\n\nClassification by the Form of Integration:\n\nThe mergers can be classified as follows on the basis of forms of integration:\nStatutory Merger\n\nA statutory merger is one in which all the assets and liabilities of the smaller company is acquired by the bigger (acquiring) company. As a result, the smaller target company loses its existence as a separate entity.\n\nCompany A + Company B = Company A\nSubsidiary Merger\n\nA subsidiary merger is one in which the target company becomes a subsidiary of the bigger acquiring company. This happens because the target company may have a known brand or a strong image which would make sense for the acquiring company to retain.\n\nCompany A + Company B = (Company A + Company B)\nConsolidation Merger\n\nA consolidation merger is one in which both the companies lose their identity as separate entities and become a part of a bigger new company. This is generally the case with both the companies being of the same size.\n\nCompany A + Company B = Company C\n\nClassification on the Basis of Relatedness of the Business Activities:\n\nThe mergers can be classified as follows on the basis of relatedness of the business activities:\n\nHorizontal Merger\n\nA merger that happens between companies belonging to the same industry. The companies have businesses in the same space and are generally competitors to each other. A horizontal merger is a feature of an industry which consists of a large number of small firms \/ fragmented industry. The level of competition is high and the post-merger synergies and gains are much higher for companies in such industries. The motivation behind such merger is economies of scale and control of bigger market share.\nVertical Merger\n\nA vertical merger is a merger between companies that produce different goods or offer different services for one common finished product. The companies operate at different levels in the supply chain of the same industry. The motivation behind such mergers is cost efficiency, operational efficiency, increased margins and more control over the production or the distribution process. There are two types of vertical mergers:\nBackward Integration\n\nA vertical integration where a company acquires the suppliers of its raw materials.\nForward Integration\n\nA vertical integration where a company acquires the distribution channels of its products.\nConglomerate Merger\n\nA merger between companies that operate in completely different and unrelated industries. A pure conglomerate merger is between companies with totally nothing in common. A mixed conglomerate merger is between companies looking for a market or product extensions.\nMarket Extension Mergers\n\nA merger between companies that have same products to offer but the markets are different. The reason behind such mergers is access to bigger markets and an increase in client base.\nProduct Extension Mergers\n\nA merger between companies that have different but related products but the markets are same. Such mergers allow the companies to bundle their product offerings and approach more consumers.\n\nOther Classifications:\n\nBesides the above classifications, there are other characteristics of the deals also, that may further define the types of mergers:\nComplementary or Supplementary Merger\n\nA complementary merger aims at compensating for some limitation of the acquiring company. The acquisition of target company may be an attempt to strengthen a \u2018process\u2019 or enter a new market. A supplementary merger is one in which the target company further strengthens the acquiring company. The target may be similar to the acquiring company in this case.\n\nHostile or Friendly Merger\n\nA merger can be hostile or friendly depending on the approval of its directors. If the board of directors and the managers of the company are against the merger, it is a hostile merger. If the merger is approved by them, it is a friendly merger.\nArm\u2019s Length Merger\n\nThis type of a merger is a merger that is approved both by the disinterested directors and the disinterested stockholders.\nStrategic Merger\n\nA merger of a target company with an aim of strategic holding over a longer term. An acquirer may pay a premium to target in this case.\n\nConclusion:\n\nA business combination gets complex not only with the legal issues but also with the type of a merger. A merger can vary according to the way companies come together or their economic functions. It is important to understand the type of merger to appreciate the intricacies involved.\n ","topic":"company growth, growth marketing, product growth, mergers, classification types, marketing, branding"},{"title":" Hiring the Single Most Important Skill as a Founder","url":"https:\/\/www.techstars.com\/content\/accelerators\/boston\/hiring-the-single-most-important-skill-as-a-founder\/","body":"\nHiring, the Single Most Important Skill as a Founder\nOctober 3, 2017 in Boston, Founder Friday Posted by Moritz Plassnig Moritz Plassnig\n\nToday\u2019s post comes from Moritz Plassnig, founder and CEO of Codeship (Techstars Class 22).\n\nThe longer I\u2019m involved in Codeship (the company I co-founded), the more other founders I mentor, the more I\u2019m convinced that people and a great team is the lifeblood of a fast growing startup. I would even go so far as to say that people are the foundation of every organization, big or small, high-tech startup or huge corporate juggernaut. But the startup world is unique in its constraints and also in its opportunities and thus, the emphasis on building a great team is more important at a startup than in any other organization.\n\nThere\u2019s no such thing as overnight success, as much as countless books and movies try to portray well-known entrepreneurs as geniuses. Success is the product of a variety of factors, hard work as much as great and unique skills, the perfect timing and elements outside your control, such as luck. The more you as a founder, CEO or leader can remove the latter from the equation, the better off you and your team will be.\n\n    Building a great culture, hiring skilled individuals and forming an amazing team out of it allows you to make your own luck. It\u2019s a lot of hard work but it\u2019s within your control.\n\nInvestors Invest in People, Not Ideas\n\nAs much as you like your idea and believe that the market conditions are perfect, the truth is that most companies will change and adapt their product down the road. The founding vision of Slack was to build a game, Instagram started out as a Foursquare-like check-in app called \u2018Burbn\u2019 and you all know the story of Twitter being a side product of a podcast platform. What all those companies had in common was a strong team that was able to take new ideas and build new products until they were the success they are today. The people working at those companies were able to adapt and change and build a great product. Maybe your company won\u2019t pivot completely, but you will learn, adapt and improve, as you gather feedback from your customers. And the more feedback you incorporate, the better you get.\n\nThe ability to do that, to listen to the small feedback between the lines, knowing when to stay stubborn and when to adapt is one of the most important and hardest to learn skills for a founder.\n\n    Great investors, angels and VCs, know that and despite the importance of a potential big market, an important enough to be solved problem, the team is the key reason why they will eventually invest.\n\nEarly On, Every Hire is Crucial\n\nSummarizing a successful startup in one sentence is simple: Great people build great products, get great customers and eventually will build a great company. As simple as it sounds, doing it right is incredibly difficult. You will face a lot of challenges in the early days of your company and the more successful you are, the bigger your team gets, the harder it gets to keep your team members aligned and your company on track. The one thing that you should keep in mind is that at the end of the day, everything, good or bad is caused by the people in your team. Empowering your team and getting out of the way is key but it\u2019s only possible if you hire the right people.\n\nSmall companies don\u2019t have the luxury of making a lot of mistakes. You are always resource constrained, both money and people, and despite not having enough you have to build a great product, nail the distribution and find a viable business model. This can all work out great if you did your job well and found great co-workers, but it can also go sideways instantly if you did a poor job. Nothing is more dangerous for an early-stage startup than one bad hire, one person who isn\u2019t a culture fit or who is simply not good enough at their job. Even if you together resolve the situation fast, you will get distracted, most probably won\u2019t build a great product during that time and lose a lot of time.\n\n    Bad hiring is one of the most risky and costly mistakes you can make in a startup.\n\nGreat People Attract Great People\n\nNothing is more attractive for talented job seeker than a team full of really skilled co-workers. Despite all the potential problems of a bad hire, the huge upside if you do it right is tremendous. With every great person that you can convince to join your team, your team gets better and it will also get easier to attract the next person. Hiring is a self-fulfilling prophecy and therefore gets simpler over time. The hard part obviously is to get everything started. How to hire the first employee if you don\u2019t have an amazing team that everybody is talking about?\n\nSolving this chicken-egg problem is crucial for getting your company off the ground. The good news is that you already have a team, even before your first hire. You and your co-founder(s) are already a team (which is one of a countless long list of reasons why you shouldn\u2019t found a company alone). You found your first follower, you did the hard first step already. Maybe, you even managed to get a small investment or you convinced somebody to be your advisor. You will have a team long before you have hired for first employee, although it might not feel like that.\nCulture is More Than the Sum of Every Team Member\n\nEven if you hire only smart individuals, despite their respective skill sets you won\u2019t automatically create a high-performing team. Great teams are generally a group of amazing individuals mixed together in the right way. The glue between the outstanding senior engineer and the young up and coming designer, the magic that makes sales work well with product is having the right culture.\n\nCulture is not about free food, nice X-mas parties or other perks. It\u2019s about shared values and beliefs, the common ground of every discussion and the bigger reason why you are all working on the same idea.\n\n    Great culture makes you win, great culture will help tremendously to survive tough times. Having a great culture will simply make you feel that it\u2019s easy to build a successful company.\n\nThe importance of culture heavily impacts your hiring. Every single person you bring on in the early days changes your culture, in a good or bad way. Figuring out if somebody is a culture fit, if somebody is the right person for your team instead of finding the best person is crucial. Although culture is defined by your team, by every single individual, you still have to work hard on it and you won\u2019t get it automatically by hiring right.\n\n    Your job as a leader is to facilitate discussions, offer a vision and set the guard rails. Nothing defines culture more than actions and your team can\u2019t take any actions if you don\u2019t provide the guidance they need.\n\nCultural fit is really important for every new hire but it\u2019s only working if your culture is great. That won\u2019t be the case all the time. You will face times where your culture starts getting sideways, where you can\u2019t be as proud of your company as you wish you could be. Especially in those moments it\u2019s important that you critically challenge the status quo. What\u2019s great, what\u2019s broken? If your culture is broken and you\u2019re blindly hiring with an emphasis of culture fit, your culture will actually get worse. You can\u2019t use your culture as a safeguard if it\u2019s broken.\n\n    As much as great people, a great culture attract more great people and can result in a better culture, as much as it can go into the opposite direction. Be aware of your own bias.\n\nHiring is a Skill and It Should Be Your Most Important One\n\nHiring is not magic, it\u2019s not luck, it\u2019s a skill. Some people are better with it from their first job on, others not. Maybe you are but if not, you can learn it and even if you do great right now you should still work hard every day to improve. The faster you figure out if somebody fits into your team, the faster you can evaluate the skills of an applicant, the better it\u2019s for you and your company. Even more important in today\u2019s hiring market, the better you are in convincing people to join your team, in selling your vision, the better people will eventually work for you. Again, it gets easier over time to more great people are working for you.\n\nIt\u2019s important to understand that it\u2019s not just about you interviewing a candidate. You have to design a hiring process that involves your team, that gives the candidate a lot of opportunity to evaluate you as well. Every growing company faced the same challenge and you can learn a lot from the best practises of the industry, from companies that did a great job with hiring and also from companies who failed. Luckily, now more than ever, startups are willing to share their journey starting with small insights and some tactical advice as far as being completely transparent like Buffer. Take the opportunity and learn from those companies and their failures and successes.\n\nDon\u2019t forget that you are always hiring. It doesn\u2019t matter if you are doing a job interview in your office or if you are at a friends party. You are always leaving an impression, if you want or not. Maybe you aren\u2019t looking for anybody right now but you surely will in the future. Or at your next job or company.\n\nMaking sure that you always have a big pool of great people to work with will set you up for success \u2014 and since it\u2019s all about the people, it will make the difference between being successful or not. Always be hiring.\n ","topic":"founder, company growth, branding, important skill, marketing, product growth, people management"},{"title":" Porter\u2019s Five Forces of Competitive Position Analysis","url":"https:\/\/www.cgma.org\/resources\/tools\/essential-tools\/porters-five-forces.html","body":"Porter\u2019s Five Forces of Competitive Position Analysis \n \n What is it? \n Framework\/theory \n Porter's Five Forces of Competitive Position Analysis were developed in 1979 by Michael E Porter of Harvard Business School as a simple framework for assessing and evaluating the competitive strength and position of a business organisation. \n This theory is based on the concept that there are five forces that determine the competitive intensity and attractiveness of a market. Porter\u2019s five forces help to identify where power lies in a business situation. This is useful both in understanding the strength of an organisation\u2019s current competitive position, and the strength of a position that an organisation may look to move into. \n Strategic analysts often use Porter\u2019s five forces to understand whether new products or services are potentially profitable. By understanding where power lies, the theory can also be used to identify areas of strength, to improve weaknesses and to avoid mistakes. \n Porter\u2019s five forces of competitive position analysis: \n \n \n \u00a0 \n The five forces are: \n 1. Supplier power.  An assessment of how easy it is for suppliers to drive up prices. This is driven by the: number of suppliers of each essential input; uniqueness of their product or service; relative size and strength of the supplier; and cost of switching from one supplier to another. \n 2. Buyer power.  An assessment of how easy it is for buyers to drive prices down. This is driven by the: number of buyers in the market; importance of each individual buyer to the organisation; and cost to the buyer of switching from one supplier to another. If a business has just a few powerful buyers, they are often able to dictate terms. \n 3. Competitive rivalry . The main driver is the number and capability of competitors in the market. Many competitors, offering undifferentiated products and services, will reduce market attractiveness. \n 4. Threat of substitution.  Where close substitute products exist in a market, it increases the likelihood of customers switching to alternatives in response to price increases. This reduces both the power of suppliers and the attractiveness of the market. \n 5. Threat of new entry.  Profitable markets attract new entrants, which erodes profitability. Unless incumbents have strong and durable barriers to entry, for example, patents, economies of scale, capital requirements or government policies, then profitability will decline to a competitive rate. \n Arguably, regulation, taxation and trade policies make government a sixth force for many industries. \n What benefits does Porter\u2019s Five Forces analysis provide? \n Five forces analysis helps organisations to understand the factors affecting profitability in a specific industry, and can help to inform decisions relating to: whether to enter a specific industry; whether to increase capacity in a specific industry; and developing competitive strategies. \n \n Actions to take \/ Dos \n Actions to Avoid \/ Don'ts \n \n Use this model where there are at least three competitors in the market \n Consider the impact that government has or may have on the industry \n Consider the industry lifecycle stage \u2013 earlier stages will be more turbulent \n Consider the dynamic\/changing characteristics of the industry \n \n Avoid using the model for an individual firm; it is designed for use on an industry basis \n \n In practice: \nPorter's Five Forces of Competitive Position Analysis \n \n Analysis of the Indian business environment \n Download full case study \n In the June 2010 issue of Financial Management magazine, the Five Forces model was applied to the emerging Indian business environment in comparison with more developed markets. The analysis found that factors such as state protectionism and a lack of infrastructure are greater barriers to entry in India than they are in more developed nations, where market forces are more powerful. \n The analysis highlighted many issues affecting competition in emerging economies and compared them to those that are more prevalent in more developed markets. \n One factor that could play a crucial role in India is public opinion, which exerts a considerable influence on the government. A good example of this is a campaign by local retailers against Walmart, who feel that the arrival of the US retail giant could put them out of business. Walmart has made huge investments in India, but is having to find ways around stringent regulations that prevent it from doing things as basic as putting its brand name on stores. \n \u00a0 \n Related and similar practices \n \n PEST analysis \n \n Additional resources for Porter's Five Forces \n \u00a0 \n Quiz: \u00a0\u00a0 How well do you know Porter\u2019s Five Forces? \n \n Tools :\u00a0\u00a0 Strategic Planning Tools \n \n Tool :\u00a0\u00a0 Balanced Scorecard \n \n Tool :\u00a0\u00a0 Strategy Mapping \n \n Article :\u00a0\u00a0 Porter\u2019s Five Forces\u00a0-\u00a0Understanding Competitive Forces to Maximize Profitability \n \n Article :\u00a0\u00a0 Porter\u2019s Five Forces - A model for industry analysis \n \n \n TOPICS \n \n Strategy and innovation \n ","topic":"growth marketing, company growth, people management, branding, competitive position analysis, product growth"},{"title":" 5 insights for improving product development cycle success","url":"https:\/\/www.cooper.com\/journal\/2017\/1\/5_insights_for_improving_produ","body":"5 insights for improving product development cycle success\nAvatar\nPat Fleck\n\n    Twitter\n    Facebook\n    LinkedIn\n\nIn my article last month, Innovate, one step at a time, I discussed how the process of innovation easily derails during difficult economic times, such as today\u2019s. When creating software and digital products, innovation typically spans many months, and it can become disrupted by unobservable or frequently changing business conditions that make it extremely difficult to form and evaluate viable options. When people can\u2019t see where they\u2019re going, they typically just stop. This is tragic with respect to innovation, since it is innovation that propels business and society forward.\n\nTo help explain why tough times make it difficult to keep innovating, I introduced Air Force Colonel John Boyd\u2019s decision-making model called the OODA Loop:\n    \n\n    Observation: observing your landscape, identifying the variables\n    Orientation: making sense of the variables, formulating options\n    Decision: analyzing the options, making a decision\n    Action: executing the decision\n\nSource: MindSim Corporation\n\nBoyd\u2019s articulation through the OODA Loop model of how decisions are influenced and made\u2014and of how to disrupt an opponent\u2019s loop\u2014is very helpful in understanding the different reasons for what is commonly called \"analysis paralysis.\" The gist of the model is that if one cannot make clear observations and form viable options, then the ability to make sound decisions and carry them out effectively crumbles.\nSome tough love: Don\u2019t accept the notion of failure\n\nManaging just about any process in tough times is difficult. Nonetheless, I believe we have become much too accepting of product failure. Excuses come easily, since statistically only 1 product idea out of 11 emerges into a new product. It would therefore seem OK to fail since the odds were against success all along. Clearly, this is flawed thinking that simply perpetuates failure.\n\nProducts fail for many different reasons. The roots of failure can be found at any point in the product development cycle. Failures happen because information is overlooked, taken for granted, misinterpreted, or acted upon inappropriately or with insufficient resources. Every one of these causes of failure can be tied directly into a failing in one of the OODA Loop steps. Properly navigating the product development cycle always comes down to obtaining solid information, accurately interpreting it, developing viable options, and forming the right conclusions to facilitate one\u2019s own actions, or to favorably influence those of another.\n\nAnalysis paralysis is the obvious sign that the product development cycle is off track. Unfortunately, by the time th effects of analysis paralysis catch an executive\u2019s eye, the situation is usually too far out of control to easily rectify. Try to be preemptive. Perform a mid-day check with y ourself every day. Ask yourself, \"Am I moving forward decisively and effectively?\" If you are not, make solving that problem your top priority.\n\nInstead of focusing this article on the product development cycle from the perspective of how to create a great product, it will focus on ways by which product managers can increase their success in navigating the cycle itself. A great product follows naturally by extension.\nAnalyzing the product development cycle\n\nThe graphic above illustrates the product development cycle as we typically refer to it at Cooper. Other practitioners and academics have their own variations, but our version is indicative of the core elements that are widely recognized.\n\nThe cycle begins with an impetus: the discovery of a new technology, with or without clarity in advance as to how it might be commercialized\u2014a great market opportunity identified through some form of market research, an obvious need to retire an existing product that has been eclipsed by the competition, etc.\n\nThe Ideation phase focuses on stating the problem and setting a general direction, including identifying plausible options. Concept Development involves converting one or more options into a high-level product concept, describing the product\u2019s purpose, its general use, and its value proposition.\n\nProduct Definition clarifies product requirements, which are the base-level functional elements necessary for the product to deliver its intended results. Ideally, ethnographic research and customer modeling inform and support the identification of the key functional elements. This eliminates the waste associated with developing unimportant or quality-compromising features by showing everyone the solid reasons for incorporating the key functions.\n\nMoving forward into Product Design, scenarios are modeled and design principles are applied to generate exact specifications, which are not unlike an architect\u2019s blueprint\u2014they provide all the detail necessary to begin construction. Construction is followed by the Product Launch, in which the product is released for consumption.\n\nOnce a product has been in the market for a while, a variety of techniques can be used to assess if the product is measuring up to expectations, or if opportunities exist to take the product in new directions. Executives and product managers can then determine whether to stand pat, perform minor design refinements, commence a major renovation, or move forward to Ideation, beginning the cycle for a new product. The ability to determine the right time to make the leap from an old product to a new one is an important skill. Design consultancies can help at this stage using their diagnostic and research capabilities.\nDecision-making within the product development cycle\n\nFollowing each step in the product development cycle through the Product Design phase, a decision is made to move forward to the next step, terminate the project, or move back to the previous step to bolster research and to iterate previous conceptual or design work. The cycle is deliberately staged to permit verification of the work to date, to validate previous assumptions, and to potentially avoid disaster by rejecting a flawed concept before additional resources are committed. Thus, these decision points are import risk management safety valves.\n\nAlthough carefully traversing decision points can be tedious, doing so ensures the integrity of the product and the well-being of the company. Note that OODA Loop theory can be applied to any decision point, and can be very helpful in gaining advantage over someone else whose loop is intersecting yours. A relevant example of such a loop owner would be an executive with approval authority over your project. You can boost the success of your project by helping that executive negotiate his or her loop. To do so, you should provide clear information, viable options, and reasonable projections of the likely results of exercising those options.\n\nLet\u2019s take a closer look at the final \"go\/iterate\/terminate\" decision, which is made following the Product Design phase. It is implied that if all stages through Product Design are traversed successfully, then no further go\/no-go decisions are needed. Through the end of Product Design, all work has been limited to paper or other inexpensive media. The enormous expense of actual construction has not yet begun. By addressing all concerns before entering Product Development, the risk of expensive and time-consuming iteration, second-guessing, and changes of course are eliminated. Hence, this final decision point is arguably the most important, since it represents the last chance to avoid spending the lion\u2019s share of the cycle budget on a flawed product.\n5 insights\n\nNow that we\u2019ve examined the product development cycle, let\u2019s move from observation into analysis and draw some strategic conclusions.\n1. Plan to avoid analysis paralysis.\n\nAlthough it is possible to iterate at each step in the product development cycle, doing so contradicts the objective of moving quickly to save time and money, and to preserve executive commitment. In OODA Loop terms, the worst-case scenario is when any step, particularly the early steps, in the product development cycle degenerate into a war of attrition, in which time, money and patience are exhausted in an endless loop of iteration and indecision. So the big question is, how can one obtain assurance that observations are clear and comprehensive, that acquired information is properly interpreted, and that the best options are formulated to ensure sound decisions at every critical juncture?\n\nTo obtain such assurance, product managers must examine the composition of their teams to ensure that all essential skill sets are present. Additionally, all internal and external team members should be involved throughout the entire cycle, especially in the early stages of Ideation and Concept Development, which are about charting a course, unifying vision, generating project participant enthusiasm, and winning initial executive buy-in. Moreover, a collaborative approach should be followed to establish consensus and to make sure all opportunities and constraints are properly identified before the course is set.\n2. It\u2019s not always easy to know what step of the product development cycle you\u2019re in.\n\nConsidering whether to retire an existing product or begin developing a new one is a critical juncture. Probably 60% of Cooper\u2019s involvement with companies is at this important decision point. Companies sometimes conclude that they need a new product, when in fact their circumstances really warrant a renovation of their existing product. Obviously, the converse can also be true. It is imperative to bring well-honed skills in requirements gathering and analysis to bear at this decision point\u2014the Observation and Orientation steps in the OODA Loop.\n\nAt the highest level of triage, product opportunities tend to fall into two categories: 1) making the right product, or 2) making the product right. Making the right product relates to properly defining the very essence of the product; i.e., the purpose it is intended to serve, and the functionality required to best provide that service. Making the product right relates to properly initially designing, or later improving, the usability of a correctly defined product. It is important to know which challenge you face, since this will impact how you build your work plan and how you structure your project team. Determining functionality requires ethnographic and other research methods, coupled with design methods that enable a smooth transition from needs to concepts to requirements to detailed design. Optimizing usability, on the other hand, requires diagnostic skills coupled with a surgical ability to apply very specific design principles to very specific problems.\n\nWhen addressing usability issues, some user and domain research is helpful, but much less is required than when designing a new product. Generally speaking, the broader the usability problem, the more research will be required. For example, more research may be needed when reexamining an entire navigation schema for a broadly used e-brokerage site than when refining a single-user interface for a network management application. When usability problems are both abundant and serious, the line between design refinement and new product design becomes blurred.\n3. Avoid fuzzy terms and clearly articulate your objectives and constraints.\n\nThe words \"new\" and \"innovative\" have their places at the philosophical or conceptual level, but they are very loaded terms when it comes to establishing work plans. Both terms imply that ideation and conceptualization are needed, meaning that a heavy application of research methods will likely be required. In fact, depending on a product manager\u2019s frame of reference, achieving his or her definition of \"new\" or \"innovative\" may actually involve making only minor usability refinements, which typically require little research. Clearly, avoiding confusing terms is a great help when performing the OODA Loop processes of observation and orientation.\n\nIn order to form viable options, it\u2019s very important early on to clearly identify your time, financial, and technical constraints. You must avoid fuzzy terms and be direct about just how much of a clean slate you want to begin with, how much of your legacy you\u2019re able and willing to jettison, and how many previous notions you want to challenge about your customers and the purpose of your product. This will determine if you\u2019re really going to develop a new product, or whether you\u2019ll just be refining what you already have. The distinction is important, since there is no point spending valuable resources questioning the fundamental nature of a product in Concept Development and\/or Product Definition if constraints dictate that any ideas that would emerge from those stages would not be actionable anyway.\n4. It takes persuasion as well as great product ideas to keep advancing through the cycle.\n\nAs noted previously, there are many decision points in the product development cycle. Typically, these critical decisions are made by an executive who is not particularly intimate with the project, yet who cares deeply about managing risk and properly allocating resources across multiple initiatives. In OODA Loop terms, the executive\u2019s approval represents a separate loop. Drawing from OODA Loop theory, when someone else has the upper hand, yet is favorably inclined toward you, you win them over through education and coaching; i.e., making it easy for them to provide a favorable decision. Hence, focusing on communicating status, recommending obviously sensible options, and clarifying next steps allows an executive to complete his or her loop with favorable results as quickly as possible.\n\nProduct managers can become consumed with detailed product creation tasks, but they need to periodically remind themselves that their project is just one of many potential options to the corporation, and that their project becomes more discretionary the higher up one must go to obtain approval. For example, a million-dollar project may seem like an absolutely critical corporate initiative to an individual product manager, but to the CEO of his or her corporation, it is just one of many options vying for attention and financial resources, many of which will never be granted approval to go full-cycle. Therefore, the product manager needs to be persuasive, which means that he or she must build a project team with all the skills needed to communicate project vision, status, results and next steps. This requires diverse, expert skills from day 1, which may need to be supplemented by outside help.\n5. Build separate teams for new product innovation and existing product improvement.\n\nThe OODA Loop reminds us that one can only observe and interpret so much at once. This helps us understand why product managers frequently feel conflicted. When focused on day-to-day customer satisfaction problems, they often go into overload and miss long-term opportunities. Issues concerning extending the life of a product or improving its usability to alleviate customer complaints, for example, can become all-consuming. Hence, organizations should give serious consideration to formally separating new product development from the process of refining existing products. By doing so, parallel cycles can be kept in motion for purposes of maintaining user satisfaction and market share during the lengthy period of time needed to run the circuit on a new product cycle. The financial benefits of not losing customers between releases are obvious.\n\nIt is important to recognize that product managers are as much in the risk management business as they are in the new products business. Accordingly, they should not underestimate the complexity of the product development cycle. Realistic expectations should be set, and constraints should be clearly communicated. Product teams should be prepared to win executive approval every step of the way in order to keep moving forward in the cycle. Design consultancies should not be overlooked as valuable resources in providing both decision-support tools and expert product recommendations. Brilliant ideas are great, but brilliant results are better.\n\n ","topic":"marketing, insights, growth marketing, branding, people management, company growth"},{"title":" TOP 10 MUST-HAVE SKILLS FOR STARTUP SUCCESS","url":"https:\/\/evoma.com\/business-centre\/top-10-must-have-skills-for-startup-success\/","body":"Top 10 Must-Have Skills for Startup Success \u2013 EVOMA \n\n Top 10 Must-Have Skills for Startup Success \n \n Take a look at the  evoma.com  home page. It\u2019s a resource page for businesses, divided into sections \u2013  thinking of starting a business ,  starting a business ,  running a business , and  growing a business . Each category requires a different set of skills and has its own set of business challenges.  \n But what are the skills you need, as a startup founder, to go from the first section to the last one? How do you get from thinking about starting a business to a stage where you are figuring out how to grow a successful business?  \n This is the topic of this post \u2013 the 10 must-have skills you need for startup success. It\u2019s a top 10 list for sure, but more importantly, it\u2019s a logical sequence of the skills you need. \n 1. Conceptualise ideas and turn them into commercially viable products. \n Everyone has ideas, but the hard part is converting them into a real business with a commercially viable product.  \n By far the easiest and best way to test the viability of your idea as a business is to come up with a product demonstration and try to raise funding for it. Bankers and venture capitalists are shrewd enough to tell you if your idea and product is any good. \n 2. Build and test your product \/ service. \n You don\u2019t necessarily need to have the skills to build a demonstration piece by yourself if you have an idea. You can make do with the skill to find interested collaborators on startup and entrepreneur communities such as Quirky that can help you do it.  \n 3. Raise funding to go to market. \n We have a huge collection of posts on the skills you need to have to raise  startup funding . \n 4.\u00a0Hiring skills to bring the skills you don\u2019t have to your startup. \n Startup founders are expected to do everything from opening the office to product demonstration, sales and accounting. But if you don\u2019t have certain skills that are required or the time to do it all by yourself, you need to have the hiring skills to find people who can do it for you. This may be a partner or partners. You can also hire employees if you have raised enough funding to cover their wages.  \n 5. Inspire your employees to walk on coals for you.  \n A startup that has enough cash is, by definition, not a startup anymore. You have to burn cash and do it all a lot faster than your established competitors to grow. There are never enough employees to handle all aspects of a newly launched startup, so you need to inspire your employees to work all hours of the day and night to get things done. If you can\u2019t do this, and your employees are clocking in and out on time, then your startup has a less than stelllar chance of growing into a success. \n 6. Selling skills to get your first customers. \n As a new startup, the only sales team you have is you. You have to learn to sell your own product and find customers willing to pay for it. Once you have that first set of customers, it becomes easier to build on that, and you can even start hiring salespeople. \n 7. Networking skills to meet clients and business partners. \n Startup founders, especially in metros like Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai, have to rely on their networking skills at events and conferences in order to connect with large new clients and business partners. If you don\u2019t attend these events on a weekly basis, you risk being left out of the startup ecosystem that works so well to help startups grow faster than in smaller cities. \n 8. Delegating skills to get work done on time. \n Your startup is your entire life, and you are expected to work every waking hour. But even that\u2019s not enough if you try to do it all by yourself.  \n Get partners, hire talent, and learn to delegate in order to get the work done on time. \n 9. Scale your startup to reach new markets. \n Once you have built a sustainable business that is generating a steady stream of revenue, the next step is to scale your startup to reach other markets. This may be another branch in your own city, or expansion to other cities. If you are an Internet or tech startup with a virtual product, it\u2019s time to start scaling your marketing and sales team.  \n 10. Skill to start all over again if you fail. \n The 9 skills mentioned above are surely necessary for growing a startup from an idea to a success story. But the one last thing you need, above all else, is the ability to get up and start all over again \u2013\u00a0if you fail. \n The most successful startup founders are usually serial entrepreneurs, who have tried many times before. Sometimes they fail, but they start learning how to win. That\u2019s the most essential skill you need to have for startup success. \n \n  ","topic":"branding, startup success, people management, company growth, brand development, product growth"},{"title":"  What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and Why Is It Important?","url":"https:\/\/www.invespcro.com\/blog\/what-is-conversion-rate-optimization\/","body":"What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and Why Is It Important? | The Invesp Blog: Conversion Rate Optimization Blog           Toggle navigation         Home Blog About Guest Post Guidelines Contact     Toggle navigation                 Four ways to share 86 SHARES Linkedin Twitter Facebook Chapter 1         What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and Why Is It Important?         Written By : Ayat Shukairy 86 SHARES Linkedin Twitter Facebook   Editor Note:  We highly recommend that you implement the different ideas in this blog post through  AB testing . Use the guide to conduct AB testing and figure out which of these ideas in the article works for your website visitors and which don\u2019t. \u00a0Download Invesp\u2019s \u201c The Essentials of Multivariate & AB Testing \u201d now to start your testing program on the right foot. \u201cInstant 20% boost in online sales and revenue, after changing the color of a button.\u201d This type of quote may be misleading about the true magical powers of  website conversion rate optimization . The right CRO methodology can provide incredible results, but you\u2019ll be just as amazed by the process to achieve these results through the fact-based, data-driven scientific approach we will bring to you in this guide. Let\u2019s start with basic definitions for  online conversion rate  and  conversion rate optimization . What is Online Conversion Rate? Conversion rate  is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action on a website, during a time period. Any valuable engagement your visitors make may count as a desired action, as long as it fulfills your webpage\u2019s goal. Remember, every page should have a primary goal. You can choose to measure the number of visitors who: purchase a product sign up for a newsletter subscribe to a software hire a service download a free e-book fill out a \u2018contact\u2019 us form answer a survey give a feedback take any action a page is designed to encourage. By measuring conversion rates, you find out if your pages are persuading visitors to take the action you want them to take on the page. The higher the conversion rates, the better your design and copy are reaching out to qualified prospects. There are many goals, thus conversions rates, that you can track on your website. If you are an ecommerce website, your website conversion rate is the number of monthly orders your receive divided by the number of visitors that come to your website. At the same time, each page on your website has at least two conversion rates (if not more). Let\u2019s take your product pages on an ecommerce website, the goal from these pages it get visitors\u00a0to click on \u201cthe add to cart\u201d button. And of course, the final goal is to get these visitors to place an order (convert on the website). So, product pages have two conversion goals: Micro conversion rate for product pages  is total clicks on the \u201cadd to cart\u201d button divided by the number of visitors who visit the product pages. Macro conversion rate for product pages  is total orders for the website\u00a0divided by the number of visitors who visit the product pages. In numbers, you need to determine a period and account for the total numbers of visitors and desired actions they took in this same period. Let\u2019s say your e-commerce receives 200,000 visitors in one month and processes 20,000 orders in the same period. Your website conversion rate \u00a0 = 20,000\/200,000 = 10%. Of those 200,000 visitors, only 50,000 make it all the way to the product pages. Of these 50,000 visitors, 10,000 visitors click on the \u201cadd to cart\u201d button. Product pages micro conversion rate  \u00a0= 10,000\/50,000 = 20%. Product pages macro conversion rate  \u00a0= 20,000\/50,000 = 40% The same concept applies if you are SaaS website. Your website conversion rate is the total number of monthly subscriptions divided by the total website monthly visitors. The SaaS pricing page, where you list the different plans for your product, has two conversion rates: SaaS pricing page micro conversion rate:  total number of visitors to click on the \u201csubscribe\u201d button on the page divided by the number of visitors who visit the pricing\u00a0page. SaaS pricing page macro conversion rate: \u00a0total number of visitors who\u00a0\u201csubscribe\u201d \u00a0divided by the number of visitors who visit the pricing\u00a0page. Let\u2019s say that your SaaS website gets 20,000 visitors per month and generates 500 subscriptions. Your website conversion rate  \u00a0= 500\/20,000 = 2.5%. Of those 20,000 visitors, only 1,000 make it to the pricing page and of these 1,000 visitors, 750 click on the subscribe button. Your pricing page\u00a0conversion rate is = 750\/1,000 = 75%.\u00a0 SaaS pricing page micro conversion rate =\u00a0  750\/1,000 = 75%. SaaS pricing page macro conversion rate = \u00a0500\/1,000 = 50% What is Conversion Rate Optimization? Conversion rate optimization  is a marketing optimization process that follows a framework to increase the percentage of visitors who complete a website\u2019s goal. Conversion optimization analyzes the behavior of visitors and focuses on what motivates a particular market segment to engage in a certain way with specific marketing elements. Conversion Rate Optimization is focused on persuading\u00a0more of your website\u00a0visitors\u00a0to take the desired action you want them to take on a webpage, website or within a campaign. At a very high level, the CRO process involves: Conducting a  heuristic evaluation  for the site Conducting  qualitative research  and  user\u00a0 behavior analysis Conducting  quantitative research Conducting\u00a0 competitive analysis Prioritizing\u00a0problem areas on the site and\u00a0 creating a conversion roadmap  for your website (what pages need to be fixed) Creating a testing hypothesis Creating new designs based on the\u00a0testing hypothesis Conducting  AB testing  (or  multivariate testing ) Analyzing the testing results As you read through the different chapters in this guide, you will learn about each of these steps in depth. So, what is Conversion Testing? Conversion Testing is the process of conducting an  AB or multivariate test  to increase the website conversion rate. An iterative process by nature, CRO helps you in making assumptions about your website visitors and then testing these assumptions to measure how your market actually responds. As a long-term process, CRO achieves sustainable, repeatable, and consistent increases on conversion rates through researching, testing, and analyzing visitors\u2019 behaviors on your website. A good CRO program increases your site\u2019s revenue month to month, reaching significant cumulative annual growth. The best part? This result optimizes your current website traffic. More conversions, without the need of increasing site traffic. The annual uplift in profits alone  could  should justify a CRO program implementation. But conversion optimization goes beyond the metrics and profits. When performed correctly, CRO becomes a way of discovering more about your visitors and customers as well as your website and your company. A good program can give you precious insights to apply to other areas of your organization. CRO is a new mindset. If you think you know  everything  about your customers, then CRO is not for you. CRO is also not for you if you don\u2019t set the  right expectations . Don\u2019t expect to change the color of a button and instantly receive more orders, forever. It is not going to happen overnight. You won\u2019t set up a test or two and immediately achieve a permanent monthly uplift. CRO is a process to enable data-driven choices to increase conversions. No guesswork. No magic. CRO is a culminating feature to your overall marketing strategy. Summing up, CRO is a system to increase the percentage of visitors who take the desired actions of a webpage data-driven and focused on results researching, testing, and analyzing visitors\u2019 behaviors on your website a way of discovering more about your visitors and customers a new mindset a long-term commitment CRO is not guesswork magic for you, if you think you know everything about your customers for you, if you don\u2019t set the right expectations What is a Long-term Commitment in a CRO Program? If \u2018long-term\u2019 has been mentioned too many times already and started haunting your plans of increasing conversions, check the short video below. You\u2019ll understand that you may see initial uplifts, but the long-term commitment to CRO will help you continue to gain increases overtime, never missing a beat with your visitors. In this video, we talk about long-term commitment in CRO programs, during one of our webinars, and provide a timeframe to kick start projects. Video Source \u2013  How to Run a Successful Conversion Rate Optimization Program by Invesp What is More Important: Increasing Website Traffic or Converting Its Existing Traffic? So, you are looking for ways to improve the revenue your website brings in every month. It sounds all too familiar: limited budget, limited resources and a website that does not generate enough revenue. What marketing budgeting meeting hasn\u2019t suffered through figuring it all out? But where does all that place CRO in the hierarchy? Some things to consider: If your online conversions are low, conventional wisdom tells you to bring more people to your site. It is a numbers game. The more visitors your website has, the greater the revenue it generates. Companies that provide  conversion optimization services  would disagree with this premise. But, just like many other realities online, the truth is somewhere in between. Though bringing more traffic works as well to improve your  website revenue , this chapter of our guide explains why  converting  current traffic is a better option and lists five reasons many online companies still neglect increasing website conversion rates. Needing help to decide whether increasing traffic or  site conversion rates  is the best option to improve your bottom line at this point in your business? This chapter will also explain the four rules of thumb to help you make the best decision. Why Bringing More Traffic Works? There is no disputing the fact. Assume your current site only converts 2% of its traffic to customers or leads. If you are able to keep the same conversion rate when more potential customers visit your site, doubling your current site traffic will double your revenue. At least, that is the theory. You need to keep a couple of things in mind when trying to acquire new traffic. You must maintain the same  quality  of traffic when bringing new visitors to your website. If you just attract any traffic to your site, you can severely  lower your conversion rate . Are you able to maintain the same quality traffic? That will depend on what you are currently doing in terms of traffic generation. If you are already ranking in the top three for most of your key terms, both organically and in paid, acquiring new traffic  may  require your focus on possible broader new terms. In that case, you run the risk of spending money in SEO and PPC and not seeing immediate results from that investment (lots of trial and error involved). How About Bringing More Social Media Visitors to the Website? Would bringing in more visitors from  social media channels help increase conversions  on your site? \u201cSocial media traffic is junk traffic. It simply does not convert,\u201d you might have heard. Social media brings a different  type  of traffic that represents lower conversion rates compared to other traffic sources. But it still is a relevant marketing commitment. Social media users are surfing websites and interacting socially on these websites. They are not thinking about converting. When they click on your ad or post, they are rarely in the mindset that allows them to convert. The browsing mindset does not make them less valuable. They are just in a different stage of the buying funnel. As valuable as  social media is for your business , in terms of effective, sustainable and consistent increase in sales, you should focus on an approach to convert current visitors, not on bringing in more browsers. Why Converting Current Traffic is a Better Option? Invesp research indicates that 70% of your site visitors are interested in your product or service. The remaining 30% either landed on your website by mistake or are merely looking for information and not interested in converting. If 70% of your visitors are interested in converting, it is just a matter of persuading them to become actual customers instead of mere browsers. In traditional brick-and-mortar stores, the primary focus is on converting current traffic. Why?  Increasing conversion rates  for an offline store usually involves salesforce training, incentives, merchandising, and store design. It would not make sense to suggest that the store should try to generate more foot traffic because sales are too low for the current levels of traffic. Online, the story is quite different. Over the last fifteen years, most online marketing has focused on increasing website traffic as opposed to converting existing traffic. That does not make it the right thing to do. And it actually remains as a perplexing paradox for the CRO industry. As companies try to acquire new traffic and bring more visitors to their website, they find themselves expanding their targeting. They either: Target untested new traffic sources or Target more general terms In both cases, they are driving more visitors to their website, but they are doing so at the expense of the quality of these visitors. So, as the traffic increases, their conversion rate drops. 10 Reasons Why Converting Current Traffic is Better Than Acquiring More Traffic 1.  Learn more about yours visitors\u2019 behavior.  Hypotheses and testings give you a better panorama about customers\u2019 behavior on your page. 2.  Discover more about your customers.  Deeper than recognizing just the activities on one page, you can develop insights on how to address customers\u2019 needs in multiple touch points. 3.  Keep track of user\u2019s\u2019 behavior.  You can gather important data on all stages of the buyer\u2019s journey. 4.  Provide to customers what they want.  From de-cluttered design to clear copy, you can find how to offer the best experience to customers and visitors. 5.  Improve your website.  With all the information you gather, you can update your site. 6.  Position your brand on the market.  Strengthen your brand with sharp design, effective copy, and higher conversion rates. 7.  Get more qualified leads.  Reach the right prospects, not random browsers. 8.  Spend less.  To increase traffic, you need to invest more money in your campaigns. 9.  Increase in profit.  Increase revenue with more conversions. 10.  Continue growing.  The right CRO approach can bring sustainable, repeatable, and consistent increases. So, Where Should You Start? Increase Traffic Or Increase Website Conversion Rates? Simple answer:  what has a better impact on your bottom line? If you have the budget, do both for maximum benefit and growth. However, we are not going to leave you hanging. Here are some good rules of thumb that you should consider: 1st Rule:  If your website, landing page or campaign gets less than 200 conversions per month, you should focus on increasing your visitors. Why is that? As you see in the steps we outlined above, conducting split testing (AB testing) is a critical step to determine if your new website designs increase conversion rates or not. With less than 200 conversions a month, you will not be able to conduct an effective split testing program. 2nd Rule:  If your website, landing page or campaign gets more than 200 conversions but less than 500 conversions per month, you should start with a conversion rate optimization program. Why is that? Because, with that many conversions, you will be able to start A\/B testing, by introducing one to two challengers against the original design. 3rd Rule:  If your website, landing page or campaign gets more than 500 conversions but less than 1,000 conversions per month, you should definitely focus on increasing your website conversion rate. Why is that? With more than 500 conversions, you are able to start a solid A\/B testing program introducing four to seven challengers against the original design. 4th Rule:  If your website, landing page or campaign gets more than 1,000 conversions per month and you have not done any conversion optimization, then you have made a huge mistake! Remember, a whopping 70% of your visitor\u2019s come to your site with some sort of intent to purchase. You\u2019re missing out on a lot of convertible, targeted traffic. Why is that? With more than 1,000 conversions, you are able to start a solid  A\/B or MVT testing  program. Every month you do not focus on CRO, you are leaving money on the table. It is money that will never come back. As I wrote this article with the different recommendations, one of our junior staff members came to ask me if the recommendations above are correct or not. I told him, yes these are the recommendations we have been giving companies for over 10 years. He says, \u201cbut that is not the industry standard.\u201d I ask, \u201cwhy?\u201d He says,\u201d There are many of our competitors who publish case studies showing clients with less than 200 conversions per month\u201d Does my recommendation mean that if you have less than 200 conversions per month, you should never consider CRO? No, you can still do CRO. However, you must understand that you will not be able to run AB testing at a fast scale. Most of your testing will be done to optimize micro conversions. That is not necessarily a bad thing. But, you must have the right mindset. Why Don\u2019t Many Online Companies Focus On Increasing Website Conversion Rates? These are the five main reasons many online companies do not focus on increasing their conversions: 1. Increasing website traffic is easier than increasing website conversion rates:  To increase your offline sales, you train your staff, re-organize the store, run incentives, and conduct customer surveys. In contrast, it is a lot easier to increase your PPC campaign budget or daily spend; thus increasing the traffic to your site. Setting up paid campaigns requires little effort for most companies. Converting the new traffic these campaigns bring is much more challenging and requires a person or team to put together all the pieces. 2. Many companies failed at conversion optimization:  We see it all the time. Companies launch a new conversion rate program hoping to increase their online revenue. They jump into testing right away. They do NOT follow a methodology in optimization. They randomly select pages to test, randomly test elements on these pages and do not analyze the results of their testing program. A few months later, after a few failed experiments, they shut down the program. If you think about it, there is not a problem with optimization in this scenario. There is a problem with the way these companies approach conversion optimization. Random marketing does not work in any campaign. Good results require consistent and repeatable methodology. 3. Increasing conversion rates is complex:  Increasing your website revenue requires you to anticipate and understand visitors\u2019 cognitive progression (what information your visitors are expecting to see) as well as to provide them with that information. It requires you to focus on human behavior on your website, which is not an easy task. Many companies shy away from addressing this problem. However, would you stop doing something you know can help your business just because you think it is complex? Wouldn\u2019t it make more sense to put the time and effort to understand it and reap the benefits from it? 4. Increasing conversion rates requires commitment : Just like any other type of marketing program, conversion optimization is a long-term commitment. No shortcuts here. CRO is not a light switch you turn on and off. Many companies fear pursuing a new activity unknown to them, but, ultimately, this is a numbers game. It is about calculating how much money CRO will require you to invest and what return you should expect. And that\u2019s why every company should ask themselves: does the return justify the investment? 5. The Ego problem:  CRO gives your visitors a voice in the design process of your website. The more analysis and testing you conduct, the larger the voice of the visitor will be on your website. That is a good thing. Well, most of the time. Someone in your team (might be you, your designer, your CEO) may discover the vast contrast between his ideas of what works best and the visitors\u2019 actual interests. That is not always an easy pill to swallow. What\u2019s worse is when the visitor\u2019s voice points to solutions that go against the current trends.","topic":"company growth, growth marketing, branding, important, people management, product growth, conversion rate optimization"},{"title":"My Muses for Brainstorming Startup Ideas","url":"http:\/\/www.sachinrekhi.com\/my-muses-for-brainstorming-startup-ideas","body":"As today marks my first day as an Entrepreneur -in- Residence at Trinity Ventures , I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how to formalize my process for starting a new venture. Every startup goes through phases including brainstorming ideas, selecting evaluation criteria, performing due diligence on top ideas, picking a winner, deciding on a corporate structure , putting together the team, evaluating funding options, and more. While the popular press often glamorizes the startup story as an epiphany moment from an opportunistic individual that grows to a successful corporate behemoth, I prefer a much more systematic approach to entrepreneurship (and life in general, for that matter). As I begin this journey myself, I thought I'd document my new venture process along the way, share it with all of you, and hopefully hear from you on your own thoughts.Often one of the earliest steps in forming a new venture is coming up with the idea. I won't argue that this should necessarily be the first step though, since in my previous venture Anywhere.FM we picked the team before the idea and that was the right choice for us. I also won't argue that it is necessarily the most important step, because while a startup needs a great idea, it's not without great execution that an idea can become a successful endeavor.I'm often asked where I come up with all my ideas, as I'm typically chock-full of potential ideas percolating in my head. I have a variety of sources of inspiration that help me put together laundry lists of potential startup opportunities. Before I dive into my muses though, I think what's important to realize is that the best idea brainstorming happens outside of any specific brainstorming phase. Good idea generation is like a muscle that you are constantly flexing. It's a mindset and attitude towards the problems you face everyday and your ability to effect change. While some people are innately curious and problem solvers, I still think like any muscle, this skill is something that can exercised and improved.I'm personally innately curious. But what has been a huge boon for me was learning to program on my first computer, an Apple IIc , when I was in middle school. I quickly learned BASIC and fell in love with the idea that I could make things. In the early days it was often games to amuse myself (which is what typically attracts many young boys to programming), but as time passed I started making more useful applications. One of the issues I had early on was quizzing myself on vocabulary words. I quickly wrote a program I called Vocabulary Master to provide me random word definitions, give me three attempts to guess the word correctly, and tell me the word if I failed to remember it. It was a very simple application, but was the foundation for my strong belief that I can solve real world problems through software. Ever since then I've constantly had a list of potential ideas. Oftentimes when something bothers me or I think that something can be improved, I add it to a list of potential projects (and I have to say that I love the fact that now I have an iPhone always in my pocket to record my ideas ). It's this critical lens of looking for ways to improve what you see every day and having the attitude that you can do something about it that I think makes for a great base of idea generation.Beyond that, there are specific muses I've used to help jump start my creative juices:I think often the best source of ideas comes from your area of expertise and the problems you face on a day-to-day basis in your career. You probably find yourself saying \"Why is this so hard? There has got to be an easier way\" every so often. It may be a product extension to your existing business's core products, or may be unrelated to the business, but a pain point you feel trying to get your job done. From my experience at imeem focusing on monetization, I've come up with countless pain points in trying to monetize social media and large publisher sites that could be fruitful startup opportunities.I think another very important exercise is analyzing macroeconomic trends and thinking about the opportunities it creates. What obviously comes to mind first these days is the recession, and I think a lot of startup opportunities will come out of that. Anywhere from helping people save money, find jobs, or tapping into the funds made available through the stimulus bill. But beyond the recession, I think there are a lot of other exciting market trends that are creating countless opportunities. Anywhere from the proliferation of APIs , to the rise of cloud platforms , to the opening up of mobile devices I believe there remains significant inefficiency in applying new technologies across multiple vertical applications. It behooves a startup to focus at least initially on a very specific application to prove out the model and to provide the best experience. But this creates significant opportunity for other startups to bring that existing technology innovation to new verticals and thus becomes a fruitful source of startup ideas. I often think about how trends in certain spaces can be applied to new segments. For example, can we bring the viral spreading of applications native to Facebook apps to iPhone applications? Or can we bring the successful virtual goods monetization model from social games to non-gaming sites If you have a specific area of interest or vertical segment that excites you, I think its hugely valuable to constantly keep up with the latest news in that area. These days its so easy to use Google Alerts to subscribe to daily feeds of the latest news, blogs, and search results of your topic of choice. I have these setup for various areas of interest, including open platforms and personal productivity.I think it's also very important to constantly be exposed to new startup ideas. When you hear people's ideas and their take on solving them, it definitely helps to get your own mind thinking about related opportunities in the space or at least helps to think critically about how they may have come up with such a solution. I daily skim TechCrunch as a great source of startup ideas. I think Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work was also a great case study of many different startup ideas.As I said, great entrepreneurs have this ability to constantly come up with ideas and potential solutions. I've been spending the last month catching up with a lot of my fellow entrepreneurs to not only chat about their business, but more importantly, interesting things that they have seen outside of their own startup. When an entrepreneur is busy executing against a specific idea, he is knee deep in one specific space. That doesn't mean though that he doesn't think about other ideas or have other ideas percolating in his head. I think its often great to tap into this creative thinking to spur some of your own ideas.","topic":"marketing, company growth, growth marketing, branding, product growth, brainstorming startup ideas"},{"title":"Agile Is The New Waterfall\u200a\u2014\u200aA Followup","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/swlh\/agile-is-the-new-waterfall-a-followup-f1c0bcd2162e","body":"Agile Is The New Waterfall \u2014 A Followup - The Startup - Medium Sign in Get started Medium Things Submit Agile Is The New Waterfall \u2014 A Followup ayasin Follow Mar 22, 2016     \u00b7       5    min read Several months ago I wrote an article  lamenting the fetishization of Agile  in place of the practice of  actually being  agile (aka process minimalism focused on production). It got a lot of traction (nearly 100K people bothered to take a look), a lot of misunderstanding, and even raised the ire of luminaries such as  Uncle Bob . People come from different backgrounds and different cultures. As a result, not all literary devices translate equally. This is my response to all the responses I received. Response: You Don\u2019t Understand Agile; Agile isn\u2019t Waterfall Of course Agile isn\u2019t Waterfall. They\u2019re very different processes that look almost nothing alike. Agile is waterfall in the way that it\u2019s been incorrectly embraced as the hammer for every problem, without ever really thinking it through. People embracing it in this manner use Agile and often Scrum as a  cargo cult engineering process . They embrace the ceremonies (and they actually call them ceremonies) of Agile for the purpose of conducting the ceremonies. They assume that if they conduct the ceremonies, the gods of good software will reward them with good software. There\u2019s no substitute for actually doing the work. Ceremonies for the sake of having ceremonies because \u201cthat\u2019s what it means to be Agile\u201d actively hinder getting work done. Response: You\u2019re Picking on Consultants Guilty. I am picking on Agile consultancies. Why? Because they generally don\u2019t work. Do some actually try to make your process better? Sure, I\u2019d go as far as to say most act from a place of honesty. The problem is that they often introduce rules and process without understanding what actually needs to be done in your specific case. They want to be Agile. They want to hit the right words. While they understand how to run an \u201cAgile shop\u201d they often assume that making software is all the same. It\u2019s not. A company that builds dating sites isn\u2019t the same as a company that builds software for insulin pumps. That difference is huge in what it means to be agile. In order to accurately determine what the right process should be you need a good understanding of the problem space. This is something an Agile consultancy will never have. You\u2019re  far  better off hiring a team lead that understands lean processes  as well as  your specific problem space. Response: Engineers Shouldn\u2019t Be In Charge of Business Decisions True (for the most part). That\u2019s not what \u201cengineer driven development\u201d means. By engineer driven development I mean engineers decide how long things will take and what resources need to be allocated to make an engineering project successful. They\u2019re the only ones qualified to do so. Imagine you want to build a bridge across a river. You don\u2019t say \u201cwe have 3 bags of concrete and 2 hours\u201d then get a civil engineer to do the design. You get the civil engineer to do analyze the issue, and that informs how much time and how many materials you need. The engineer didn\u2019t dictate where the bridge goes, how the city should grow or where businesses should be located relative to the bridge, but he did drive decisions related to the building of the bridge. Of course we shouldn\u2019t exclude the civil engineer from all decisions about where the bridge should go either. For example if we want to build a bridge across the Pacific, we might want to engage the engineer early so he can say \u201cthat\u2019s not a reasonable request\u201d before we spend lots of money and time to determine if the populace will love it. In the same way, developers need to drive development decisions, but obviously these come with the constraints of how the business needs to grow. These constraints are defined by, or preferably, defined in conjunction with others. Compare this to \u201cbusiness driven development\u201d where your resources and time constraints are made based exclusively on what\u2019s ideal for the business and you\u2019re expected to \u201cget it done\u201d in those constraints. Would you cross a bridge built under those conditions? Then why would you build software that way? Response: You Don\u2019t Understand Story Points Fair enough, but I would argue that no one \u201cunderstands\u201d story points because they have no fixed lexical meaning. They end up meaning whatever is convenient in the moment, and often changing their meaning later (though you\u2019re stuck with the number). I was in a planning meeting for a client where the following statements were all made inside of 30 minutes (naturally there was an Agile consultant running the meeting): Story points aren\u2019t time, don\u2019t try to estimate how long something will take. If a story is over 13, we need to break it down because it means it\u2019s going to take more than a [2 week] sprint. Story points should be a single number that encompasses both effort and complexity. What? How does any of that make any sense? Points 1 and 2 are contradictory (and by the way, often used in this manner) and 3 tries to take 2 completely unrelated things and mash them into a single unitless measure (to which we\u2019ll silently add a unit in our heads, normally time). If you insist on doing story points, use 2 numbers. One for complexity, and one for effort. Better yet, just guesstimate time in days. If you\u2019re wrong, that\u2019s OK, just roll with the punches. Response: You\u2019re Just Bitter Because You\u2019ve Never Seen Agile Done Right Capital A Agile can\u2019t be done right because it\u2019s more concerned with ceremony than advancement. There are shops doing minimal process right, if you work at one, great, Agile is the New Waterfall isn\u2019t about you. The article was designed to give voice and perhaps offer some solutions to those suffering under  flaccid scrum  and other abuses of the buzzwords surrounding Agile. Response: You Suck and You\u2019re Dumb Probably. \n ","topic":"waterfall, marketing, branding, product growth, growth marketing, followup, company growth"},{"title":" DIVERSITY VS. INCLUSION: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM \u2026 AND WHY BUSINESSES NEED BOTH","url":"https:\/\/www.paycom.com\/resources\/blog\/difference-between-diversity-and-inclusion-and-why-you-need-both\/","body":"Difference between Diversity and Inclusion and why you need both \n      Blog Content        \n While \u201cDiversity\u201d and \u201cInclusion\u201d often are used interchangeably, the difference between the two concepts is vitally important. \n According to the  Society for Human Resource Management  (SHRM), studies show that teams or organizations with diverse qualities, experiences and work styles bring more ideas, perspectives and approaches to the table. On top of efforts to diversify their employee base, businesses may want to take note of the organizational success associated with the move toward inclusion. \n \n \n When interviewers without standardized questions are left to decide which candidate to hire, their decisions tend to be subjective and unconsciously influenced by fixed thoughts on race, gender and ethnicity. \n \n Read more \n \n \u00a0Defining the difference \n As defined by SHRM, diversity references the similarities and differences between individuals, accounting for all aspects of one\u2019s personality and individual identity. It implies variety in characteristics like race, sex or  age . \n Inclusion, however, refers to the efforts used to  embrace  those differences. It describes how much each person feels welcomed, respected, supported and valued. Inclusion is about seeing employees\u2019 whole selves, recognizing that their differences make them uniquely qualified to contribute to the organization. \n As  diversity and inclusion  expert Vern\u0101 Myers explains,  \u201cDiversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.\u201d \n \u00a0How inclusion leads to organizational success \n \u00a0 Consider this: According to the  McKinsey & Company  report  Delivering Through Diversity , ethnically and racially diverse companies are 33% more likely to outperform industry norms, while gender-diverse companies are 21% more likely to earn more revenue. Released in January 2018, the report suggests that gender, ethnic and cultural diversity correlate to financial performance, particularly when the diversity is within executive teams. \n These high-performing companies acknowledge that commitment to an inclusive environment starts at the top. The McKinsey report\u2019s authors note that progress on representation is a start and can be done relatively quickly, with the right initiatives (such as targeted recruiting), while embedding inclusion within the organization can take time to develop. \n Inclusion stretches far beyond hiring employees with different backgrounds and ethnicities. It is a mindset in which employers actively provide each member of the workforce with equal access to opportunities. Organizations can begin to transition from diversity efforts to those of inclusion, to create an environment in which all employees can thrive and contribute their best work. \n ","topic":"company growth, people management, growth marketing, difference, diversity, product growth, branding, businesses"},{"title":"Key Legal Documents for a Startup Company","url":"https:\/\/www.startupdecisions.com.sg\/startups\/launch-and-growth\/key-legal-company-documents\/","body":"\nKey Legal Documents for a Startup Company\n\nIn order to legally incorporate your company, you are required to draft and maintain a series of legal documents. These documents are necessary so that the government, customers and members of the public can see basic information about your company and confirm that you are a properly organized business that follows the law. In addition to government-mandated documents, a few other legal documents are commonly used to protect your business from legal disputes with shareholders, employees or competitors. This article will introduce you to these documents and the need to keep them up to date in order to comply with governmental regulation of corporations.\nReady to setup your company?\nIncorporate Online\n\n    Home\n    Startups\n    Launch and Growth\n    Key Legal Documents for a Startup Company\n\nNearly all jurisdictions require that as part of the incorporation process, you provide the statutory authorities with the Constitution of your Company (previously known as Memorandum and Articles of Association). The constitution defines that rules by which your organization will be run, the company\u2019s structure and the aims and the rules that govern it. In order to minimise the probability of disputes between shareholders, it is prudent to also draw up a Shareholder\u2019s Agreement.\n\nThe set of documents that are needed by every company to comply with the laws of a jurisdiction is called the company register which is kept at either the registered office, or principal place of business. Over the life of your business, you may modify the rules by which you run your company. You are legally obligated to keep a record of these changes and update the documents that are part of the company register. If the business is ever sold, these statutory books (i.e. the company register) must be handed over to the new owner.\n\nIf your business produces or uses new technology or other intellectual property (IP) assets, it is essential to agree on who owns that IP, as it is the IP which will provide much of the long-term value to investors and other shareholders. Business owners also need to keep meticulous records of the employment agreements they enter into with individual staff members in order to avoid any confusion later on.\nThe Constitution of a Company\n\nOnce an entrepreneur has made the decision to incorporate, the first document he or she will have to draw up is typically the Constitution of the Company (previously known as Memorandum and Articles of Association). Once signed by initial shareholders, the Constitution can be thought of as your company\u2019s charter. It is a publicly-accessible record of your company\u2019s objectives and structure.\n\nAs part of the Constitution, you are required to state your business\u2019s address and legal name. The name of your business should be distinct so as to avoid legal troubles with companies with similar names. Your Constitution should also summarize the main objectives of your business and any ancillary objectives that are required to achieve the main ones.\n\nThe Constitution also records important initial financial information about your business and defines its relationship with shareholders. Typically, a liability clause will state that the shareholders are only liable for the business\u2019s debts to the extent to which they are invested in the venture. Additionally, the Constitution lists a company\u2019s assets, the amount of share capital and how it is divided up between shareholders. For larger companies with multiple categories of shares, the Constitution also sets out the types of shares initially offered by the company and their nominal value.\n\nIn most jurisdictions, the Constitution must be lodged with the local company registrar as part of the incorporation process, with the notable exception of the USA. In Singapore, you are required to provide the Constitution to the registration authority and Singapore provides a model Constitution that can be used by most companies.\n\nThe Constitution outlines the regulations of the company and contains provisions relating to how the company is to be governed. They are a contract between shareholders and the organisation.\n\nThe Constitution is required by law to set out the rights and duties of shareholders. There must be an agreed procedure for the allotment, transfer and forfeiture of shares. The extent to which shareholders can expect to receive dividends and enjoy voting rights is specified. The former is of particular interest to investors, as dividends are often a major long-term incentive for share ownership. In the event that all shares are cancelled and the company is shut down, the Constitution will detail the procedure that will be followed by stakeholders.\n\nIn addition to setting out the rules governing shareholders\u2019 involvement in the company, the Constitution regulates the behaviour of the Board of Directors. This might include how directors and the chairperson should be elected, how frequently the board should meet and the quorum required for decision-making. The board is typically legally obliged to meet at least once per year for an Annual General Meeting (AGM). Any special rights held by the chairperson should also be specified at this point.\nStatutory Books\n\nOver the course of your business\u2019 life, you are required by law to keep an ongoing record of changes to the legal structure of the company in your statutory books. This includes changes to shareholding, directors, company secretary, registered office, AoA, company name, etc. Also known as the company register or company books, these records must be given to the new owner in the event that you sell your business. Statutory books are usually kept at the company\u2019s registered office and are available for public viewing within office hours.\n\nThe requirements for statutory books vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but companies are typically required to keep a copy of the Constitution, as well as the certificate they receive from the local authority proving that the business is a properly incorporated legal entity.\nShareholders\u2019 Agreement\n\nShareholders\u2019 agreements are not required by law, nor are they publicly accessible, but they can be extremely valuable in ensuring that shareholders are treated fairly, particularly when multiple shareholders are involved. Such agreements can be unanimous or involve only a small group of shareholders, such as the founding team. As new shareholders join the business, they may want to add additional terms to ensure return on their investment; thus shareholders\u2019 agreements tend to become more complex over time. Once a company has hundreds of shareholders or becomes a public company, the need for this document disappears and the applicable securities regulations then take over.\n\nYou can review a template shareholders\u2019 agreement here.\n\nPerhaps the most important part of an agreement like this is a capitalisation table that shows who owns how many shares of different types. Shareholders access to financial reports for a company can also be controlled through this agreement. Entrepreneurs should also specify the criteria under which a shareholder can be bought out and how any disagreements should be dealt with. These clauses can have quite a few bells and whistles; such as shotgun clause, the right of first refusal, or, most simply, a voluntary sale.\n\nAgreements often allow shareholders to pledge their shares, issue them to family or give them over to a trust to manage. Each of these possibilities may have tax ramifications which are beyond the scope of this article and should be discussed with a tax professional. Agreements should also set out a procedure to be followed in the event that a member dies.\nIP Assignment Agreement\n\nDuring incorporation, it is best practice to assign all relevant intellectual property created by the founders to the newly-formed company. This is not a legal requirement, but it is absolutely critical for technology businesses. If your product depends on key IP assets, understanding your right to use such assets will be a central part of any investor\u2019s due diligence. Most investors will not invest in the absence of this document. As such, it is essential to speak to a qualified IP lawyer in the early stages of your company\u2019s life.\nEmployment Agreement\n\nAs your business expands, it will need to hire employees. In order to provide evidence that an employment relationship exists, it is essential to record these agreements in writing. Failure to do so could have unforeseen consequences at a later stage.\n\nEmployment contracts set out the obligations that employers and employees have towards each other and the benefits they will receive from mutual association. In particular, they stipulate the material terms of employment, such as how much the employee can expect to get paid and by when. If employees are entitled to stock or stock options, this should be made clear in their contract. Each agreement must be tailored to suit the individual employment relationship in question.\n\nIn many instances, the content of employment contracts will be affected by the employment law in your local jurisdiction. For example, it would be illegal to force workers to be in the office for 18 hours per day every day of the week. Employees are entitled to national holidays, as well as a certain amount of paid holiday which may depend on how long they have worked for your company.\n\nAnother crucial part of an employment agreement is the section on duration. Businesses and employees are legally obliged to give each other a certain amount of notice before the employee is either fired or voluntarily quits. This provides both parties with a degree of financial security. For cases where termination is necessary, the contract will stipulate the grounds on which the owner is able to fire the worker. This might include anything from constant lateness to providing competitors with sensitive information, although many employment agreements allow managers to fire workers at will, without giving a substantive reason. Some businesses lock their senior hires into their operations for months or even years after the end of the contract by including a non-compete clause.\nConclusion\n\nIn summary, the important documents you need to understand as a business owner fall into three broad categories. The Constitution of the company is a legal requirement when you incorporate; you have no choice about whether you draw them up or not. Creating a shareholders\u2019 agreement and IP assignment agreement are not legally mandatory, but highly advisable, particularly if your company plans on acquiring a large number of shareholders or selling globally. As your business develops, you will have to enter into employment contracts with staff. You must also keep your company books up-to-date so that they can be given to a buyer in the event that your business is acquired.\n","topic":"branding, marketing, company growth, product growth, key legal documents, startup company, growth marketing"},{"title":"Debugging Recruiting","url":"https:\/\/news.greylock.com\/debugging-recruiting-9e711654fddb","body":"Debugging Recruiting\n\nRecruiting great people is a priority for any company at any stage of their growth. In the early stages, finding and hiring your initial team is core to instilling the right company culture. To hire effectively, founders and managers need to be thoughtful and organized about their recruiting process \u2014 from the first screening until delivering an offer. A sloppy and inconsistent process reflects poorly on the company, and can be the difference between a \u201cYes, I want to join\u201d and \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think this is the right fit.\u201d\n\n\n\nAs a Talent Partner at Greylock, I work with our portfolio and advise them on refining their recruiting processes. As such, I\u2019ve become familiar with many of the common problems that both new and experienced teams face when recruiting.\n\n\n\nRecently, I gave a talk that addresses some of these frequent \u201cbugs\u201d in the recruiting process, and want to share my presentation here more broadly. I go over the three stages of recruiting \u2014 sourcing, evaluation, and conversion \u2014 covering common mistakes made at each level as well as the questions you need to answer to avoid them.\n","topic":"people management, product growth, branding, growth marketing, debugging recruiting, company growth"},{"title":"Market Entry Strategy: Definition & Example","url":"https:\/\/www.mbaskool.com\/business-concepts\/marketing-and-strategy-terms\/7313-market-entry.html","body":" Market Entry\nPosted in Marketing and Strategy Terms, Total Reads: 3960\nDefinition: Market Entry\n\nMarket entry is the bringing in of products or associated products into the target market. While considering market entry, any business will consider the following:\nRead Next\n\n    Market Value\n    Market Capitalization\n    Market Value Added (MVA)\n    Market\n    Market Build-up\n\n    -          Size of the opportunity\n\n    -          Barriers to entry\n\n    -          Industry structure\n\n    -          Competition\n\n    -          Projected and historical  growth\n\n    -          Environment analysis\n\n    -          Initial investment\n\n\nSometimes a market entry strategy has to be defined, if there is import\/export and a lot of regulations get involved as well.\n\n\nSometimes, companies consider entering crowded markets, where many factors need to be analysed to differentiate their products, and many times niche markets are created by companies for market entry.\n\n\nSome of the market entry strategies used are as follows:\n\n    Franchising\n    Licensing\n    Alliances\n    Mergers and Acquisitions\n    Exporting\n    Joint ventures\n\n\nMarket entry strategy also depends on time of market entry. The two models\/ strategies generally followed are:\n\n    -  Waterfall Model: This model refers to entering different markets at different times, in some sequential order.\n\n\n    -  Sprinkler Model: The sprinkler model aims at entering as many markets as possible, within a limited period of time.\n\n\nExample:\n\nRecently Starbucks, the international coffee house giant made an entry into India. For ensuring better and smoother market entry, they formed an alliance with the TATA Group, which helped them in setting up the business more seamlessly in India.\n\n\nHence, this concludes the definition of Market Entry along with its overview.\n ","topic":"definition, people management, company growth, product discovery, branding, product growth, market entry strategy"},{"title":" [Pt 2] Selling \u2018Jobs to be Done\u2019: Who\u2019s the Customer?","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/frameplay\/pt-2-selling-jobs-to-be-done-who-s-the-customer-e3a5f80ba527","body":"[Pt 2] Selling \u2018Jobs to be Done\u2019: Who\u2019s the Customer? Sign in Get started Frameplay Jobs to be Done About Frameplay Frameplay - Innovation Consultancy [Pt 2] Selling \u2018Jobs to be Done\u2019: Who\u2019s the Customer? Andrea F Hill Follow Nov 29, 2017     \u00b7       3    min read This is a 5 part series on understanding the different flavors of JTBD and how to decide which is most appropriate to help you meet your innovation goals. Background:  Approaches and People Part 1:  What Methodology Should you Hire to Help You Apply \u201cJobs to be Done\u201d? The Jobs to be Done theory \u2014 that \u201ccustomers want to make progress in their lives and they hire products to help them get that job done\u201d \u2014 can revolutionize a company. Rather than focusing on how to compete in a feature war against other competitors based on \u2018industry standards\u2019, you have the ability to break away as a result of unique customer insights. But great potential can lead to great confusion. Customer insights can ripple across an organization, and be interpreted differently by different parties. That\u2019s why understanding the context and circumstance that leads to JTBD research is so important. Over the past few weeks, I\u2019ve talked about JTBD with three prospects. Each came to me already thinking JTBD could solve a problem in their business. But each had a different problem to be solved; a different Job to be Done. Each wanted to learn about their customers\u2019 Jobs, but held a different vision of the progress they were trying to make. Change how sales and marketing communicate value to our prospects so we can close more deals faster (Digital Marketing Manager) Improve the product for our customers so they will churn less (UX Director) Cultivate a shared understanding of our customer across the organization so we are more effective in creating and selling products (CEO) Identify adjacent areas where our customers are dissatisfied to introduce new products to our portfolio so we can improve our ARPU and stickiness (Intrapreneur) Not only did each of these customers have a different view of the progress they were trying to make, each one had a different target object he planned to act on. Sales and marketing will change. The product will change. The entire organization will change. Our product portfolio will change. Remember, Jobs to be Done is just a theory about how any why customers and \u2018hire\u2019 products into their lives. Even as you learn about and accept the theory, how it\u2019s applied to your organization to meet your specific goals will be unique to you. If you\u2019re part of a team eager to bring Jobs to be Done into your organization, great! You can (hopefully) see how understanding your customers\u2019 progress and struggles can transform your business, and what target objects you have to work with. If you\u2019re a consultant, things may be a little less clear for you. You\u2019re staring down the eye of a powerful weapon, and not sure yet how you want to use it. That\u2019s ok, too. Just be aware that you\u2019re going to be much more successful if you take the time to figure out where you want to shoot it before you pull the trigger with a client :-) Now we have much more information about the customer, his desired progress, and the target object he plans to act on. Soon we can start digging into his struggles and identify a way to move him forward. But first, we need to Define the \u2018Job\u2019 in Jobs to be Done [Pt 3]. ","topic":"brand development, branding, people management, investment cycle, customer, selling jobs, company growth"},{"title":"The right type of customer conversations","url":"https:\/\/blog.intercom.com\/the-right-type-of-customer-conversations\/","body":"\nThe right type of customer conversations\n\nDes Traynor \n\nCo-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Intercom\nDes Traynor\n\n@destraynor\nAugust 14, 2013\n\n    Share this article\n\nShare this page on Twitter - this link opens in a new window\nShare this page on Twitter - this link opens in a new window\n\n    Share this page on Twitter - this link opens in a new window\n\nConversations with customers are valuable, but they have to be the right type of conversations \u2013 not merely questions about forgotten passwords and the like. They have to add value, for you, and them.\nGood Conversation, Good Customer\n\nIn Intercom, we encourage businesses to talk to their customers. It\u2019s how you grow a business; it\u2019s how you keep customers happy, loyal, and evangelical about your product.\n\nBut talking to your customers isn\u2019t about blindly spitting out messages to everyone, or counting every customer contact as a \u2018good thing\u2019. Not all customers \u2013 nor all contacts \u2013 are of equal importance. Get this wrong, and you\u2019ll drown your team in a wave of valueless communications.\n\nLet\u2019s talk about Internet Scale.\nYou can\u2019t talk to everyone about everything\n\nIf you have 1,000,000 monthly active users, and 0.1% contact you each day, you have 1,000 contacts to deal with every day. If each issue takes 10 minutes to solve, that\u2019s 7 full days worth of work generated every day. If your team works in 8 hour shifts, you need a team of 20 staff just to keep up, which means even on modest salaries you\u2019re dropping a few grand a day. You can see how this becomes a problem, right?\nEliminating Dumb Contacts\n\nMost web companies are on the defensive. They fight to beat down their support channels. It\u2019s like a game of Whac-A-Mole, except your mallet doesn\u2019t work. So the idea that you should talk to customers more is often met with derision by lots of businesses. \u201cBut what if they talk back?\u201d is the common reply.\n\nTo reduce your volume, you have to reduce your dumb contacts. Every customer communication is either irritating, or valuable, for your company and your customer alike. Dumb contacts are the ones that are irritating for both.\n\nFor each type of contact, there\u2019s an appropriate action you should follow\u2026\n\nThe next step is simple, quantify each type of dumb contact and how long it takes to resolve. This lets you prioritise your customer service conversations.\nPrioritising Your Work\n\nThe knee-jerk reaction here is to solve the most frequently occurring issues first. This is often the best way to tackle your volume initially, as it gets rid of the low-hanging fruit.\n\nYou can\u2019t stop there though. You need to understand which issues take most time. This is usually called average handle time, AHT for short.\n\nCombining the volume with AHT gives you a sense of where the biggest opportunity is.\n\nEvery category then needs to be thoroughly understood so it can be tackled appropriately. Solving the problem can involve redesign, better copy, faster performances, more robust error handling, broader file support, or plain old bug fixing.\nGetting on The Front Foot\n\nAs dumb contacts decrease, you have bought yourself capacity to have meaningful interactions with your customers. Ones where you help them get the most from your product, and ones where you learn lots about how it is used, and how it could be improved. These are the communications that grow loyalty and create evangelists.\n\nGo ahead, start talking to your customers. If you don\u2019t, your competitor will.\n","topic":"product growth, branding, marketing, people management, brand development, customer conversations"},{"title":"4 Ways to Leverage Marketing Trends for Viral Growth","url":"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/article\/297435","body":"Ever since the founding of Facebook in February of 2004 and Twitter in March of 2006, marketing has completely changed. Brands that once built campaigns to push market awareness through standardized marketing channels are now using social media to drive brand awareness and sales.A prime example is the streetwear industry, which does a great job of using social media to control supply and demand. Instead of focusing on pushing a lot of low-priced items, these brands sell out a limited number of extremely marked-up items, which are fueled by social media hype and promotion. Combining social media trends and viral content allows them to leverage the hype and causes the demand to far exceed the quantity available.I absolutely love this business model, which led to me connecting with Elie Neufeld, founder of DHTK. After identifying streetwear as a major trend in fashion, he launched the brand to merge a variety of major trends, creating one lifestyle brand. By leveraging trends in sports, fashion and other facets of youth lifestyles, DHTK demonstrates the end result of correctly executing on marketing trends. While talking to Neufeld about his growth strategy for DHTK, he shared his gameplan for viral growth, which is universal and can be applied to any industry.Related: 8 Reasons a Powerful Personal Brand Will Make You Successful1. Identify influential trends on social media.Being active on social media gives you a glimpse at what\u2019s popular in today\u2019s society. In recent years, LeBron James has grown from being one of the top basketball players, into a worldwide cultural icon. Between appearances in blockbuster films, brand alignments and switching from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat and back again, James has become a larger than life on and off the court.DHTK accurately identified sports as a cultural trend with a number of top performers -- LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry all push culture forward with their massive following and influence. Turning to social media can provide you with the insight to clearly identify the major trends that people are talking about.2. Understand and identify the \u201ccool factor.\u201dMany brands and entrepreneurs are able to spot major trends, but simply following them is not enough. You need to be able to understand what the \u201ccool factor\u201d is and leverage it to grow your brand. If you are able to associate your brand with a trending \u201ccool factor,\u201d you ride that wave, drawing attention to your company, which is fueled entirely by that trend.For example, when Drake\u2019s album If You Are Reading This It Is Too Late dropped, DHTK combined hip-hop trends, Drake\u2019s growth, unique album design and typeface styles, which resulted in the release of the first It Is Too Late-inspired designs. It was a success because it combined the unique album design with the company's own brand style.Related: 5 Habits of the Wealthy That Helped Them Get Rich3. Build social media awareness.Building brand awareness requires you to identify content that will work with the specific trend you are going after. It doesn\u2019t matter if we are talking about a brand in the fashion, music or sports industry -- each requires a unique style of content the consumer demographic wants to consume.DHTK understands it fits into both sports and fashion, so it creates social media posts that work with both niches. Determine relevant trend niches, identify the prominent hashtags, and spend time determining what content styles your target audience enjoys interacting with. When you do this correctly, the outcome is more engagement and more potential customers discovering your brand.4. Associate with influencers.Influencer marketing is one of the most promising trends -- consumers want to be able to relate to the people they follow on social media. Associating your brand with influencers can result in consumers automatically relating with you, based solely on that relationship with someone they follow on social media. It\u2019s important to make sure an influencer\u2019s brand story aligns perfectly with your brand\u2019s narrative.You do not need to necessarily establish a paid relationship with influencers in order to associate with them. DHTK, which stands for Don\u2019t Hate The King, has clear associations with the common phrase people recite when referencing LeBron James (also known as \"King James\" in basketball circles). This association combines the respect and power of LeBron with the power and aesthetic of the DHTK brand story without any formal partnership.Related: 22 Qualities That Make a Great LeaderFinal thoughtsNo matter what industry you are in, leveraging marketing trends can help you boost viral engagement and increase brand awareness and revenue. Pay attention to what people are talking about, then figure out how to do something interesting to get people talking about your brand.","topic":"company growth, viral growth, branding, leverage marketing trends, growth marketing, product growth, people management"},{"title":"Year-Over-Year Explained With Its Pros and Cons","url":"https:\/\/www.thebalance.com\/year-over-year-yoy-growth-calculation-definition-3305970","body":"A year-over-year calculation compares a statistic for one period to the same period the previous year. The period is for a month or quarter basis. The year-over-year growth rate calculates the percentage change during the past twelve months.Year-over-year (YOY) is an effective way of looking at growth for two reasons. \u200bFirst, it removes the effects of seasons. For example, say your business revenue rose 20 percent last month. Before you break out the bubbly, check it against the income from the same month last year. Maybe your sales always rise this time of year. If sales typically rise 35 percent this month, then your revenue is down year-over-year. Your business is doing worse, not better.Second, it discerns long-term trends. Say a business is growing at a nice, steady 2 percent a month. But if it grew 3 percent a month last year, it will be down when compared year-over-year.For these reasons, make sure you check what comparisons a financial report is using. Are the authors comparing the data to the previous full year, such as 12 months of accumulated revenue, or to a statistic's value as of the last period of the quarter, month, week, or day? Also, check to see if they are using the calendar year or fiscal year.If you're thinking about using the YOY statistic, the following snapshot of the pros and cons can help you apply the metric more effectively.ProsNegates seasonality because it compares specific points in timeSmoothes out volatility throughout the year to compare net resultsEasy to calculate; no need for spreadsheet or financial calculatorStates results in percentage terms for an easy comparison across different-sized companiesConsOffers meaningless results if one time period had negative growthProvides more meaning when trends are observed over several calculated periodsCan hide problems in a given month if only comparing full-year metrics YOYDoesn't offer much information unless used with other metricsPros and ConsThe biggest advantage of year-over-year comparisons is that they automatically negate the effect of seasonality. For example, retail statistics rise each November and December because of the holiday shopping season. It's the most critical time of the year as the season accounts for almost 20 percent of retail sales. Another advantage is that the metric is stated in percentage terms, making it easy to compare different-sized companies when doing industry, competitor or peer-company analysis.Year-over-year analysis helps smooth out any volatility in the month-to-month numbers. For example, investors should have used a year-over-year comparison in June 2011. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy only added 18,000 jobs. They panicked because it was less than the 25,000 jobs added in May and the 217,000 jobs added in April. The unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent. The stock market dropped. The prices of safe haven investments like Treasuries and gold sky-rocketed. Thanks to that panic, gold hit an all-time high of $1,895 an ounce a few months later.In this case, the calculation seemed misleading when using individual months YOY, but when using full-year results, the calculation showed that the total number of employed people had increased by 1.8 million between June 2010 and June 2011. The economy\u2019s recovery had not derailed. There are more examples like these in the current jobs report and the current unemployment report.Don\u2019t rely on year-over-year alone. It's a good idea to look at month-to-month as well to get the full picture.A few issues can arise with the YOY calculation, especially if a company experiences a period of negative growth. The resulting growth rate won't make sense. Also, as with many other business metrics, the YOY statistic provides much more information when calculated for a few time periods to reveal trends, and doesn't really explain enough of a company's growth story unless used along with other metrics.If you rely only on the YOY metric, calculated with full-year values, you may also miss problems such as abnormally low growth in one month, which gets smoothed out if using a full-year number for the calculation.Most business news reports monthly trends. You usually have to seek out the year-over-year number yourself, but you can find the formula inputs on a company's financial statements and easily calculate the statistic with a standard calculator.How to Calculate the Year-Over-Year Growth Rate\u00a9 The Balance, 2018To calculate the year-over-year growth rate, you need two numbers and a calculator. Then take these three steps.Subtract last year's number from this year's number. That gives you the total difference for the year. If it's positive, it indicates a year-over-year gain, not a loss. For example, this year you sold 115 paintings. Last year you sold 110. You sold 5 more paintings this year.Then, divide the difference by last year's number. That's 5 paintings divided by 110 paintings. That gives you the year-over-year growth rate.Now simply put it into percent format. You find 5 \/ 110 = 0.045 or 4.5 percent.Let\u2019s return to the employment example. In June 2011, total employment was 131.017 million. Total employment in June 2010 was 130.021 million. Here's how to calculate the year-over-year growth rate.Subtract 130.021 million from 131.017 million. The difference is 0.996 million or 996,000.Divide 0.996 million by 130.021 million, last year's employment number.The answer is 0.00766 or 0.766 percent. That's the year-over-year growth rate.ExamplesMost government statistics are month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter. You'll need to calculate the year-over-year numbers yourself to get the full picture. Here are three leading economic indicators where it's important to do year-over-year calculations:Durable Goods: The Commerce Department reports this statistic month-to-month. But YOY calculations warned of the Great Recession as early as October 2006.Manufacturing Jobs: America had been losing manufacturing jobs on a monthly basis for years. But when jobs started declining YOY in 2007, it was a sign of the pending recession.Gross Domestic Product: It says how fast the economy grew in the most recent quarter. The Bureau of Economic Analysis annualizes the GDP growth rate. It reports how much the economy would produce for the entire year if it continued growing at the same rate. The BEA does that so it\u2019s easier for you to do a YOY comparison with previous years of GDP growth.","topic":"product growth, marketing, branding, growth marketing, company growth, year explained"},{"title":"Get to know your user: personas & jobs to be done.","url":"https:\/\/blog.prototypr.io\/30dayuxchallenge-day-5-get-to-know-your-user-personas-jobs-to-be-done-d0c272ffed58","body":"Get to know your user: personas & jobs to be done. - Prototypr Sign in Get started UX Design 101 The Interaction Review en espa\u00f1ol \ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddf8 Prototyping Tools  Get to know your user: personas & jobs to be done. #30dayUXchallenge [Day 5] UX Boot Camp Follow Nov 5, 2017     \u00b7       5    min read Personas template On  day 3 , we talked about how Design Thinking can help our team in keeping the user at the center of the conversation and how Empathy Maps are a great way to start consolidating the team\u2019s knowledge about the users. We all know that really understanding our users is fundamental to UX design. So today we will cover how  Personas  and  Jobs to be done  complement each other and are ~actually~ useful :P Personas Personas are one of the best ways to empathize with our users. Giving them a name, a face and knowing details about their life helps you and the team to connect and design for them. do. Summing it up: A photo or illustration that visually represents that persona A quote, that best summarizes their motivation\/relationship with your product Demographics: age, family status & occupation (because it ties to their motivations) Their feelings: main point points & frustrations, motivations and goals (also somehow related to your product) Context: when and how they would be using your product. Persona template Together, these data-points should summarize \u201cwho\u201d that group of user represents, \u201cwhy\u201d they use the product and \u201chow\u201d they are using it. However, working with personas as the main resource to deeply understand our user\u2019s motivation has proven more and more challenging over time, mainly because personas often overlap each other or have multiple motivations. It\u2019s confusing, I know. That\u2019s why Jobs to be done are becoming another popular resource. Jobs to be done If you are not familiar with the concept, \u2018Jobs to be done\u2019 is used to focus on the key high-level tasks the user wants to achieve when using our product(s). By understanding what is the overarching goals we can focus on creating the best user experience for this. It aligns the team to solve the most important tasks. For example, Marktplaats works on Customer Journey teams, and Rochelle works on the \u2018Placing Journey Team\u2019, which is the end to end experience from creating an advertisement online, managing ads to removing. This is a simplified version of what a Job to be Done on Marktplaats placing team could be:  \u201cAs an occasional seller, I need a way to create a successful ad so that I can sell my product as quick as possible\u201d. As you can see in this, the team identified the persona which is an occasional seller. They want to create a successful ad, and we know their motivation is to sell as fast as possible, maybe they are moving house. We can use this high-level Job to be done to guide us in everything we do in the project. How can we help them to create a successful ad? How can we help them to sell fast? At Marketplaats, Jobs to be done are phrased in the way of : And, the same user (aka, the same persona), could be using our product for different reasons, in different situations. But yes, it is still the same persona. Another brief example would be: At Envato, users can purchase digital assets that help them with their own projects. The assets could be CMS themes, After Effects templates or even an illustration. Let\u2019s use as an example a user that is a freelancer developer, and often purchases templates for his clients: he would be a frequent buyer and he would probably have specific budget and requirements for his client\u2019s projects. But then let\u2019s assume he decides to work on a side project and he is creating a website to talk about a personal hobby. So our same \u201cfreelancer developer persona\u201d hires us for two different jobs. In this context, if we ask: What job is the freelancer developer trying to get done?, we could get two different conclusions: \u201c delivering my client\u2019s projects in time\u201d  and the secondary one being  \u201cCreating a website for my hobby\u201d. Both jobs above will have different needs, different deadlines and specific budgets. And why is it important for us to understand both? Because these insights will actually help us understanding, in more detail than the persona sheets,  why  that user is cultivating a relationship with our product and  what  they are using it for. After defining the main jobs to be done, some teams also break it down by \u201cfunctional\u201d and \u201cemotional\u201d criteria \u2014 that way you can understand what is the user\u2019s rationale behind that purchase, but also what is their emotional motivations to engage with our product\/service. Jobs to be done template The findings above are just useful if the team is aware of them and use it as their north-star. Make sure it\u2019s well shared, repeated and used! :) Ps.: Day 12 will be covering \u201ccreative ways to playback research findings to your team\u201d. So hang in there \u2014 we will come back to this topic pretty soon! What about you? What are your means to keep the user at the center of the conversation? If you are new to UX, jump in and create your first persona. Don\u2019t forget to tag it with #30dayUXchallenge so we can see it too! The templates used in this article can be purchased  here . Gabi Braga \u2014 UX Designer at Envato Elements, freelancer at Toptal & beer enthusiast in her spare time Rochelle Carr \u2014 UX Designer, Placing customer journey team, Marktplaats, Ebay. Soft spot for red wine & tries to learn Dutch in her spare time. This post is part of the #30dayUXchallenge: you can read more about why we started it  here , and don\u2019t forget to follow us on  Twitter  and  Instagram ! Prototypr Prototyping, UX Design, Front-end Development and Beyond \ud83d\udc7e Follow 585  UX User Research User Experience Design 30 Day Challenge 585 claps Written by UX Boot Camp Follow We are 3 UX Designers from 3 different countries, working for another 3 different companies (!), who got together to start a global UX sharing-movement online! Follow Prototypr Follow Prototyping, UX Design, Front-end Development and Beyond \ud83d\udc7e  \n ","topic":"branding, marketing, product growth, personas jobs, growth marketing, company growth"},{"title":"Do NOT raise VC funding\u200a\u2014\u200aThe 3 main reasons against it.","url":"https:\/\/hackernoon.com\/do-not-raise-vc-funding-3-reasons-against-it-7c5f6d4efbec","body":"We  all follow the tech news closely. At the time of writing this post,  Techcrunch\u2019s  front page has 6 stories about startups raising VC funding, 1 story about a later stage company starting to invest in startups, and 1 story about a VC firm having raised a new fund. The headlines about money are mixed with a couple of articles around recent developments for well-known companies, a smartphone review and (ironically) a story around a recent partner promotion at a VC firm. It\u2019s clear that the combination of startups + $ generates interest within our community. \ud83e\udd11 And a lot of the time, as a small unknown startup, getting VC funding is one of the few tactics around to gain some journalistic interest for your business. Since a lot of the startup media bandwidth is dedicated to financing, amongst entrepreneurs there also seems to be an over-indexed belief that the path to success = venture funding. This. Is. Not. The. Case. Most companies should never ever consider raising capital. Here are my 3 top reasons why you should NOT raise VC funding. 1. Entrepreneurial success takes many\u00a0forms Success can be articulated in many ways. Most often it has to do with a sense of accomplishment, living according to your values, and freedom to pursue a life where you control your destiny. Very rarely is it defined by financial outcome. Such is very much the case with entrepreneurship. Surely, if you founded Uber you would feel an amazing pride in having created a company with a global footprint which impacts people all over the world, and the financial upside is insane. However, a tiny  satoshi  of all companies ever make it into becoming 100 MUSD value range, not even considering the multi BUSD stratosphere. But as an entrepreneur, you may just as well feel endless success and satisfaction by creating the professional freedom gained from having a 3-person team profitably delivering a product or service to a small part of the world. If that lean team also manages the business efficiently you may be able to collect annual dividends and live a financially comfortable life. When you bootstrap or organically grow a company you have all the options in the world. You decide the speed, professional lifestyle, and how to reinvest or pocket any excess profits generated. But at the time a company raises VC funding you suddenly limit your company\u2019s path into something where success is defined by large value creation. Expectations of rapid growth will overshadow most other things. In some cases you may also give up a bunch of control and freedom to your investors who suddenly can make a decision which goes against you around the strategic direction of the company and even your own job and function within the organization. Understand your own drivers behind your entrepreneurial ambition and why you are choosing to create a new company, and recognize there are other paths and rewards to entrepreneurial success than raising VC funding. 2. Your market is simply not big\u00a0enough If you\u2019re willing to give up control to pursue your opportunity, and you believe external capital will get you there faster, in order to be a likely candidate for VC funding you need to make sure your market (and ambition) is big enough. VCs invest with the potential of outside returns from companies who are true outliers when it comes to value creation. Fund economics is based upon  power law distribution , where often one single company in a whole portfolio represents the vast amount of returns generated. The difficult thing for a VC is that it\u2019s hard to know and predict which one that will be at the time of investing. Hence, most VCs invests on the basis that every single investment must have a theoretical likelihood of becoming a huge outlier. The analysis done on how large a company could become (i.e. how much it can be valued at) is therefore often anchored in the underlying market opportunity. This comes down to answering basic questions like how many people or companies suffer from the problem the startup is trying to solve, and how much is the willingness to pay for such a solution. Unless the underlying market is multi-BUSD it\u2019s unlikely VCs would invest in you. Keep in mind that often times  your market is also smaller than you think it is . To put this into perspective, at  Creandum  when I\u2019m analyzing market opportunities, at a minimum I would like a single company to have a theoretical chance of returning a quarter of our fund. For a VC with a $200M fund, our investment would need to generate $50M proceeds for us. For simplicity of math, say the fund owns 10% at the time of exit, the company need to exit at a $500M valuation. This is the floor of the opportunity and most of the time we aspire to look for companies who pursue an opportunity sized far north from that. The reality is that most companies are not going after large enough markets to generate this kind of value creation. We fairly quickly rule out companies which are pursuing a local, whether it\u2019s a Swedish, or Nordic, or even European version of a well-known company category. Even if you do everything correct and win the market, a Swedish Netflix will not create enough value to generate the above returns. Do the math, and in case you are not pursuing a large enough opportunity don\u2019t pursue raising venture capital from institutional funds. There can still be local angels and alternative sources of financing which can be useful, if you really need money, but the VCs you read about on Techcrunch will shy away from you unless you can show a truly sizable upside potential. 3. You\u2019re the superstar. Not the\u00a0VC. The VC industry is amazing at marketing. The story which is portrayed over and over is that from us you get \u201csmart money\u201d. Together with cash to invest into building out your company we also bring valuable advice, connections, and sometimes functional expert resources in areas like growth marketing, recruiting, sales development, etc. VCs are superheroes who have proprietary skills and resources entrepreneurs desperately need. But let\u2019s set the record straight. VCs will not make your business a success. And  VCs oversell their value-add to entrepreneurs . In reality what VCs provide in ranking order is: Cash: The abilities for you (not the VC) to access financial resources which you can spend wisely in order to make your company grow faster and stronger. Quality validation: By securing VC funding you have had an independent professional investor evaluating your company\u2019s product, team, and market and deemed it attractive enough to back. This third party validation creates a halo effect which will help you (not the VC) to easier hire talent, land customers, and (as we know from the intro of this article) get press coverage. Advice\/connections\/resources: Any good VC will surely give you valuable advice where they can reflect on previous experiences from companies overcoming similar challenges as you\u2019re facing. And they may even have a network through which you eventually land a key client and\/or hire. I\u2019d like to think that me and my colleagues, in fact, do provide this to the companies we work with. This is all great but\u2026 \u2026the ultimate outcome of the company weighs on your shoulders and your abilities (not the VC\u2019s). Successful companies are made because the entrepreneur is fantastic\u200a\u2014\u200anot the VC. Successful companies are made because of amazing execution by the people who are deep in the trenches. Successful companies are made by entrepreneurs making the right micro-decisions every day, every hour, every minute. Strategic advice is easy. Execution is hard. So don\u2019t feel you need a VC in order to be successful. You are the superstar! Own it! Final words The only path of entrepreneurship is not what you read about on Techcrunch. Building your company independent gives you unlimited options. Don\u2019t rush into the path of VC funding too soon, if you treasure your entrepreneurial freedom. And if you choose to still raise capital, make sure the opportunity is massive and have realistic expectations of what your investors can do for you. If you fit this script, feel free to  reach out to me ! \ud83d\udcaa \ud83d\udc4a \n \n Venture Capital \n Entrepreneurship \n Startup \n Funding \n Bootstrap","topic":"branding, product growth, company growth, main reasons, growth marketing, marketing"},{"title":" Creative Ways To Identify New Market Segments","url":"https:\/\/www.quicktapsurvey.com\/blog\/creative-ways-to-identify-new-market-segments\/","body":"\nCreative Ways To Identify New Market Segments\n\nIdentify New Market SegmentsRegardless of your company size it\u2019s important to constantly evaluate your market segments in relation to your competitors.\n\nIdentifying segments that either your competitors have missed or are untapped opportunities for you is challenging and requires a wholistic approach that uses both right-brain and left-brain thinking.\n\nTo do this, it\u2019s best to gather a team of employees who work in different departments with different expertise and conduct a few exercises. Below are three team exercises that might help your business identify new market segments.\nMind Map\n\nGet your team to think of the various uses of your product and write them down on a white board. Once they come up with an initial list, branch out into even more specific uses and brainstorm every possible scenario one could use your product, even if it seems absurd. Remind everyone that they aren\u2019t looking for viable segments at this point, just fun ideas.\n\nIf you keep doing this and further soliciting ideas, you will eventually come up with some niche segments. Now it\u2019s just a matter of conducting research to see if those segments are A) already customers of your competitors and B) part of an available market. An available market simply means that you can realistically compete to get those customers. Do you have the right resources, expertise and location to go after that segment? If not, scrap that segment and move onto the next.\nValue Proposition Analysis\n\nDetermine who your competitor\u2019s customers are and create customer profiles according to demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioral characteristics. Then write down your competitor\u2019s value proposition according to cost, service and technology. Now look at your value proposition according to the same categories. Does either company\u2019s value proposition address the needs of the niche segments identified in the Mind Map exercise? If not, you have a viable segment to target.\nBig Wig Matching\n\nGet everyone to shout out big brands that are familiar to everyone. Brainstorm words and attributes associated with each brand. Now get the team to say which brand they feel is closely associated with your company, products and services and then do the same for your competitors. Are you positioned where you\u2019d like to be? Or are your competitors associated with brands that you want to be associated with? If so, do an analysis of their customers and target those segments in your campaigns.","topic":"marketing, growth marketing, market segments, identify, branding, product growth, creative ways, company growth"},{"title":"What is the Product-Market Fit and How to Measure It","url":"https:\/\/uxplanet.org\/what-is-the-product-market-fit-and-how-to-measure-it-b5bb3db07dae","body":"What is the Product-Market Fit and How to Measure It Sign in Get started UX Planet User Experience UX for Beginners User Research Career Publish on UX Planet Espa\u00f1ol Arabic What is the Product-Market Fit and How to Measure It inapptics Follow Jan 11, 2018     \u00b7       4    min read If you are here reading this, then you might be struggling to understand whether your startup is on the right path or not. Your understanding of product market fit can give you a lot of useful answers. But the hardest part here is that few people have any idea of this and few people can provide you with specific metrics to measure product-market fit. So, in this article, I will try to give you at least some insights into product-market fit. Let\u2019s get started with the definition. While a lot of people have come with definitions of product market fit, the most cited one by far is Marc Andreessen\u2019s definition: \u201cProduct market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.\u201d Sounds too broad, right? This definition along with the term itself was coined back in 2007. And although it might have some blank spaces in between, it is still being circulated as one of the best definitions of product market fit. But what is \u201ca good market?\u201d Isn\u2019t this something a bit vague? Markets can be different and categorizing them as roughly good or bad might not be the best strategy so far. Andrew Chen has an interesting  article  on this topic. He also discusses what a market is and how to know if it\u2019s real. In fact, according to Chen, there are three things that are characteristic of a great market: a large number of potential users high growth in the number of potential users ease of user acquisition Accordingly, you can always feel when product market fit is present and when it is not. Let\u2019s discuss the two scenarios one by one. Scenario #1 Your customers aren\u2019t getting a lot of value out of your product. They do not tell their friends\/family members about it: word of mouth advertising does not work. What is worse, customer reviews do not seem very positive. The usage of your product is not growing, and the sales cycle takes way longer than at the beginning. In addition, a whole lot of deals never close. Conclusion If this is the case, then most probably, product market fit is not present. Scenario #2 Your customers are buying your product\/new features as fast as they can. The usage is growing rapidly. You are hiring sales and support staff as fast as you can. Customer reviews are all or mainly positive. Reporters are knocking on all your doors and windows to get an interview with you. Your customers\/users are real brand ambassadors for you. They are selling the product for you through word of mouth. Conclusion If this is the case, then most probably, product market fit is present. How can you measure product market fit? There are a few tactics you can use to see whether you have reached PMF or not. More concretely, if you want to reach product-market fit, you need to set proper goals. So, below are a few metrics that help understand your progress and see how near you are to the completion of your goal. Net Promoter Score Image source By this, you will be measuring how likely your users are to recommend your product to a friend. This test is all about measuring how much people love your product. The more they love it, the more prone to sharing it they will be. Constant engagement Engagement is the  metric  that shows how much a user interacts with your product in a given timeframe. If a certain amount of new users starts using your product, and then they never stop, then you have nailed the engagement. Paying users Is a significant amount of your users paying money to buy your product or a feature of your product? If you are solving a big problem for them, then they are sure to pay you money. In addition, if you do not solve a big problem well enough, you won\u2019t be paid. Note that this \u201cwell enough\u201d does not only relate to great design. Take Reddit, it has an awful design, but it does solve the problem of knowledge sharing for its users. Organic user base Do you get your users through lots of paid ads and sales efforts or you get them through word of mouth? If your existing users are so happy with your product as to tell everyone else about it, then organic growth is ensured. Fin Now you have at least some idea on how to reach product-market fit. No one said it will be an easy journey. But it\u2019s definitely worth a try! \n ","topic":"measure, marketing, company growth, people management, branding, brand development, market fit, product"},{"title":"How Industry Leading Brands Use Content To Drive Lead Generation","url":"https:\/\/hub.uberflip.com\/lead-generation\/how-industry-leading-brands-use-content-to-drive-lead-generation","body":"How Industry Leading Brands Use Content To Drive Lead GenerationAuthorJordan Lorelead generationDid you know that only 44% of B2B content marketers know what successful or effective content marketing looks like?Let that sink in.That means that 56% of content marketers are aimlessly creating content without any direction or end goal. This content is not generating traffic, leads, or sales.So what does proper or effective content marketing look like?For businesses that rely on quality leads, effective content marketing is a massive opportunity for growth. The right strategies and tactics can have your content working overtime for you.That's why I'd like to share with you 3 of the primary ways industry-leading brands use content to drive lead generation.Content Lead Generation Tip #1: Source-specific landing pages and CTAsContent is as much about promotion and distribution as it is creation. So while you're busy getting your content out into the world, you'll be receiving traffic from many different sources.Outbound activities, like content syndication and guest posting on websites with large audiences, are a big opportunity for site personalization.According to CrazyEgg, landing pages with personalized content convert more than four times better than ones without.Take a look below at how Groove greets their visitors with source specific messages and content. For a guest post on Copyblogger, Groove set up a landing page filled with targeted content for Copyblogger readers. It includes popular blog posts, testimonials, and a personalized message from Groove CEO Alex Turnbull at the bottom PLUS an exclusive offer only for Copyblogger readers.It's one powerful example of how you can combine your content with source-specific tactics and drive lead generation.A landing page building tool can help you get landing pages built and published quickly for all of the specific traffic being sent back to your website. It's an easy way to add personalization and audiences appreciate it (and are more likely to convert as a result).Copyblogger landing pageCopyblogger landing pageContent Lead Generation Tip #2: Content upgradesContent upgrades are bonuses attached to a piece of content to incentivize lead generation.In exchange for lead information, readers could receive\u2026Bonus ideas or tacticsA downloadable infographicA worksheet or checklistA downloadable PDF for offline readingAn audio readout of your blog articleA free starter templateSupplementing your content with content upgrades ranks high as an effective lead generation tactic by many marketing pros. The great thing about content upgrades is that they're flexible and can be applied to almost any type of content.Brian Dean of Backlinko is a big believer in content upgrades and is sure to include them in all of his blog posts.In the example below, he includes an encapsulated call-to-action after the intro and lets his readers know that this post is 3,142 words long and can be downloaded in PDF format for easy reading.infographic blogCreate a list of content upgrade ideas that you could insert into every blog post. Even something as simple as a PDF download can contribute to your lead generation efforts.Content Lead Generation Tip #3: Inline CTAsContinuing on with the theme of targeting your audience with content to generate leads, inline calls-to-action consistently rank as one of the most effective conversion tactics.Why inline CTAs?Inline CTAs convert much better than others because they directly relate to the content at hand. They're placed within a piece of content so as to mesh naturally with whatever topic you're touching on.A blog post on \"10 Instagram Best Practices\", for example, could include a mention of your new eBook called \"Instagram Images Done Right.\" After being primed with excellent Instagram tips, your reader is more likely to convert on an eBook that is related to the topic they've just read.In the example blog post from EnchantingMarketing below, the author is elaborating on the most effective copywriting formulas.After detailing a few of the formulas the author makes sure to insert a CTA for her book \"How to Write Seductive Web Copy\" for the reader to convert on. If the reader has read most of the post already and arrived here, they'd be much more eager to learn more writing skills.FABLook for ways to insert relatable offers\/content upgrades into your content for an instant spike in conversions. Remember that the more it relates to the content you're producing the more impact it will have.Wrapping upIf you're one of the 56% of marketers out there aimlessly creating content without goals or measurable metrics, you need to stop and reassess your strategy.The right content strategies, approached in the correct way, can effectively drive lead generation.To recap these top three ways leading brands use content to drive lead generation, they were.","topic":"product growth, drive lead generation, content, industry leading brands, branding, company growth, marketing, growth marketing"},{"title":"How to Pick a Co-Founder","url":"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2011\/02\/how-to-pick-a-co-founder","body":"You\u2019ve decided to start a business but believe that you\u2019d be (much) better off with co-founders. Not a bad idea, of course. How do you pick the right person? This decision may be the most important of your company\u2019s entire history. Most early-stage startups fail due to founder disputes, not the substance of the business. And founders spend so much time together that the business relationship is the closest some of them will ever get to marriage. This is a high-octane, high-consequence, long-term date. \n Here are the most important things to look for in your entrepreneurial other half. \n 1. A complementary temperament.   If you tend to run a little hot in a tense moment, get yourself a Cool Hand Luke. If you\u2019re the staid type, the ideal partner is likely someone more charismatic. The point is not that oil should seek water or that opposites must attract. The point is instead to find someone who will fill in the gaps around your personality strengths so that employees, partners, and investors will see and benefit from the balance. You\u2019ll discover that different people will cotton to each of you, and that pattern will have more to do with the third parties\u2019 personalities than anything else. Diversity on your founding team will give you strength. \n 2. Different operational skills.   If you\u2019re a product guru, maybe you need a business development or sales-oriented leader to get your vision to market. If you are great at the finances, an early-stage Excel ninja partner probably isn\u2019t be the top priority. Even within a discipline there are differences in core operational strengths: often highly technical businesses will have more than one highly technical co-founder, but one of them will, for example, be a terrific architect while the other will be excellent at R&D or engineering. A common tactical error here is for a product- or technology-focused entrepreneur to look for someone with top shelf management consulting experience: it\u2019s not a bad instinct, since management consultants are polished and smart, but they rarely have core executive chops apart from project management or some general \u201coperations\u201d background. \n 3. Similar work habits.  You should find someone who shares your expectations on work-life balance. Mismatches on hours or effort quickly and reliably lead to resentments. You don\u2019t need to be in the office at exactly the same times, unless for some reason your business actually requires it (as, for example, in a securities trading house). But you do need to share a view as to how much you will work. \n 4. Self-sufficiency.  Your co-founder isn\u2019t like any other colleague or employee. She must be fully reliable and self-sufficient, someone who functions on auto-pilot with virtually no input from you. Of course, this is the ideal description of any person at your company. But for a co-founder this is an absolute requirement. \n 5. A history of working together.   If possible, it\u2019s best to work with someone you\u2019ve known for a while or with whom you\u2019ve collaborated before. Easy familiarity helps conversations move quickly and allows trustworthy cooperation. This does not mean you need to work with your best friend of many years. Doing so presents its own risks. But a long-term relationship can help you leapfrog the learning curve of the close collaboration, which can sometimes take years to develop. That means that selecting a business school section-mate as your partner just because you\u2019re currently in your second MBA year together is an extremely bad idea. There\u2019s an important caveat here: in a co-founding relationship, you don\u2019t really know the other person till the worm turns. That means you won\u2019t see the full color of your partner until something in the business or one of your personal lives goes (very) badly. If you haven\u2019t been through the crucible together before, be prepared for what she may be like when you do. \n 6. Emotional buoyancy.   Things always get tough at one stage or another in a startup or small company. There are bad days, bad moments, bad deals, bad quarters, etc. Even if you\u2019re a passionate and relentless person, now and again you\u2019ll have a tough, \u201cdown\u201d day. It\u2019s excellent if the things that make you feel low aren\u2019t the same as those that get to your partner. As a founder, you can\u2019t always show your colleagues when you\u2019re having a tough day, but you should be able to show your co-founder, and she should be able to buoy you when needed. Ideally, you\u2019ll be there for her when she needs it, because whatever is making her down won\u2019t faze you as much. \n 7. Total honesty.   You and your partner must be committed to telling each other the truth all the time, even if it\u2019s tough to say or hear. This requires practice and emotional investment. You can\u2019t pick a partner who is afraid to tell you what you need to hear. \n 8. Comfort in her own skin.  Insecurity and ego, like fear, can kill your partnership. The best co-founders are those who know themselves well and are comfortable in their own skins. This will save you from having (too frequent) difficult arguments about roles and responsibilities. \n 9. A personality you like.   I\u2019m surprised at how often this one gets missed. At the end of the day, if you don\u2019t like your partner, all the other great qualities she possesses won\u2019t be enough to sustain you through the long haul of building a business. You\u2019re going to spend a lot of time with each other, probably more than you do with your spouses. \n 10. The same overall vision.  Your co-founder should buy into the central vision for the business you are starting. Even after all the many other pieces of the puzzle come together, it is essential that your partner\u2019s main motivations for joining your venture include a passion for the project you are pursuing. There are so many reasons a small business or startup won\u2019t succeed. A mismatch between the founders\u2019 visions should not be one. ","topic":"marketing, company growth, founder, product growth, branding, growth marketing"},{"title":" Fun is the best driver of viral growth.","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/lightspeed-venture-partners\/fun-is-the-best-driver-of-viral-growth-664424a41ff7","body":"Fun is the best driver of viral growth. - Lightspeed Venture Partners - Medium Sign in Get started Fun is the best driver of viral growth. Jeremy Liew Follow Nov 28, 2017     \u00b7       2    min read I love having fun. So do you. None of us have enough delight in our lives. When we find it, we want to evangelize it. We want to spread the joy around. This leads to word-of-mouth viral growth. Snapchat*, from the beginning, is deliberately fun, not functional. We use iMessage to tell someone you\u2019re running late but we use Snapchat to send someone a funny selfie that will make them smile. Instagram from its infancy is all about delivering joy through beautiful images. It\u2019s a highlight reel and the filters are designed to make everything look perfect. Musical.ly was originally an education social network before the founders realized that lipsynching is  much more fun than instructional videos.  It grew through word of mouth too. SoulCycle transformed indoor cycling from a grind into a dance party on a bike. Their devotees love sharing, posting and talking  about all things SoulCycle. The growth of HQ Trivia* has been similarly explosive. via Amit Shafarir People play together, in person and remotely, because playing is fun. They are adding the game times to their calendar and inviting their friends because they want to share the excitement. If you\u2019re building experiences and looking for word of mouth vitality ask yourself, is your product genuinely fun? It\u2019s the best way to grow. * Snapchat and HQ Trivia are Lightspeed portfolio companies Lightspeed Venture Partners Lightspeed is a VC firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the enterprise and consumer sectors.\n ","topic":"people management, company culture, product discovery, company growth, product growth"},{"title":" The 6 Key Traits of Highly Effective Account Managers","url":"https:\/\/blog.hubspot.com\/agency\/traits-account-managers","body":"The 6 Key Traits of Highly Effective Account ManagersJami OettingWritten by Jami Oetting@jamioettingaccount-manager-2.pngWhy working as an account manager is no easy taskAn account manager focuses on maintaining the agency-client relationship by working with the client to develop a business strategy that will fulfill their needs. Everybody wants something from them -- now. Some account managers are analytical geniuses. Others are charming extroverts. Regardless of style, there are effective skills account managers should possess. The most effective account managers possess a wide variety of skills.Get discovered by clients with a free listing on HubSpot's Agency DirectoryAccording to the Marketing Agency Growth Report 2018, 12% of agencies feel one of their greatest struggles is retaining employees. One reason for a high turnover rate is lack of faith in management. Here are six key strengths we believe every effective account manager should have:6 Key Strengths of an Account ManagerRecognizes their ConstituenciesCommunicates WellSees the Forest from the TreesGets Their Hands DirtyAvoids A Cookie Cutter ApproachEarns Respect1) Recognizes all their constituenciesServing clients is important. Critical. But the top-notch account managers get that clients are merely one of their constituencies. First among equals perhaps, but still only one group of stakeholders. Account managers also have to meet the expectations of the agency's senior management. Then of course, there are the agency's team members -- those folks we call the \"revenue generators.\"That's a lot of people, expectations, and needs for an account manager to balance, which is why we list this trait first. Effective account managers apply every other trait listed here on all the communities they serve.Why this matters: Think of clients, senior management, and team members as legs of a stool. If any single leg is getting short shrift, the entire enterprise is thrown off balance.2) Communicates wellCommunication is sharing and listening. Top notch account managers constantly and consistently share the important information, whether that's campaign updates to clients, client insights to team members to use in campaigns, or the state of account health to senior management.They also listen more than they talk. They ask questions to learn what's really going on. And they don't just wait for someone to decide to talk to them. Account managers are genuinely concerned with everyone's success. They pro-actively dig into issues and get people to share with them.Why this matters: No one likes surprises. Constant communication means expectations, priorities, and goals are clear to everyone.3) Sees the Forest from the TreesEffective account managers hold a breadth of meaningful information, regarding both the big picture and the minutiae. They understand all their clients' different marketing and business goals. They also know where teams are in executing those campaigns and how campaigns are performing, down to key metrics. They can quantify the value their agency is providing the client, as well as the value of the client to the agency.Even if the account manager can't hold each data point in her head -- she knows where to find it quickly.Why this matters: Knowledge is power. Productive, persuasive account managers identify leading metrics to head off challenges before they become problems. They can share successes in real time. Knowing in detail what's going on really helps with the whole communicating well thing.4) Gets their hands dirtyThe best account managers didn't just jump into the client and project management side of agency work. They spent years on the front lines, creating and executing marketing campaigns. They have a track record that gives them credibility and perspective.They \"keep\" their hands dirty by staying current in marketing trends and their clients' industries. They get into the trenches with team members to understand how they're working and where their challenges are.Why this matters: Account managers can't speak with authority without first having earned trust and confidence. Any account manager who wants to be taken seriously can't helicopter in and out.5) Avoids a cookie-cutter approachBecause the effective account managers have deep knowledge and experience, they don't retread the same campaigns for every client. They take the time to learn about each client individually, their industry, the pain points, personas, messages, and goals. They lead, rather than manage, their clients.And since they work to maintain their level of expertise in the constantly changing world of marketing, they're well positioned to get creative so their clients stand out in a crowded field.Why this matters: Because your agency has to stand out as well. A creative account manager validates your agency as a source of expertise that isn't restricted to re-running the same campaigns each quarter.6) Earns RespectRespect is the foundation of a good relationship. Account managers who can move people to action first take the time to get know them in an authentic and personal way.An account manager who builds strong, genuine relationships with people can protect a team from getting committed beyond capacity. He understands the internal concerns and motivations of different people on the client side.Why this matters: When an account manager has rapport and trust, he has more influence with teams and clients. This can translate into anything from keeping the client happy with a realistic production schedule to securing needed resources for the team.Effective Account Managers Grow AccountsThese traits are especially valuable because they do more than help an account manager successfully manage the day to day.When combined, these account managers are valued partners who see the opportunities where your agency can provide more value to clients. In turn, they are able to then coax more budget from clients to expand the exisiting relationships.","topic":"key traits, branding, product discovery, product growth, company growth, people management"},{"title":" What Is Lean Startup Methodology \u2013 And How Can It Help You?","url":"https:\/\/www.startups.co\/articles\/lean-startup-methodology-can-help","body":"If you\u2019re involved in the startup world, you\u2019ve probably heard the term \u201clean startup\u201d thrown around. No, it\u2019s not a new weight loss plan \u2014 although I wouldn\u2019t doubt that there are health and fitness apps out there who have used lean startup methodology.It\u2019s a system for creating a business that was first introduced by entrepreneur Eric Ries in 2008 and then outlined in his 2011 book The Lean Startup: How Today\u2019s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Business.In our article 19 Startup Books Every Founder Should Read, Lauren Foundos, Founder & CEO, FORT\u00cb said the following:\u201cThe Lean Startup is an incredible book because it recounts the experience of Eric Ries. He highlights his mistakes in an effort to help you avoid making the same mistakes. He discusses the importance of understanding your target audience, creating an MVP, focusing on actionable metrics, and knowing when to adapt and iterate without wasting too much time. All of his advice is extremely valuable, and helpful in order to avoid common founder mistakes.\u201dFor the entire lean startup methodology and philosophy, you should definitely go read that book. Seriously \u2014 it will change your approach to business.But for a quick overview \u2014 maybe just to pique your interest and see if this is a model you\u2019re interested in \u2014 keep reading.Where Did \u201cLean Startup\u201d Come From?lean startup methodology 1It started with risk.Risk is the characteristic that distinguishes a startup from any other type of business. Imagine the experience of quitting a stable, secure job to venture into the unknown. It\u2019s terrifying, and if you\u2019re reading this blog post, you know how terrifying this experience is \u2014 because you\u2019ve probably done it.That\u2019s why Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup \u2014 to help companies navigate and minimize these risks through minimum viable products (MVP\u2019s), rigorous experimentation, and a commitment to learning.At its core, adhering to the lean startup methodology is all about creating a sustainable business with minimal waste of both time and money.This concept grew out of two things:Two failed businesses in Ries\u2019 own portfolio and,The streamlined process of creating cars that was developed in Japan after World War II.In the case of Ries\u2019 failures, he saw that he\u2019d spent a lot of time and money building products, without ever confirming that those products were solving a real problem. Guess what happened?You got it \u2014 they flopped.In the Japanese model of building cars, which involves reducing and eliminating waste in order to get the end product to the customer at the lowest cost for highest value, Ries\u2019 saw a system that could be applied to entrepreneurship.As Eric puts it, \u201cwe have to change our notion of what a modern company looks like.\u201d Disruptive innovation comes from cross-functional teams, comfort with failure, and a rigorous commitment to learning. Every company, large or small, can become a startup. Entrepreneurship is a crucial function for almost any type of organization.Lean Startup Methodology:Build \u2013 Measure \u2013 Learnlean startup methodology 2Entrepreneurs that practice the lean startup methodology are encouraged to question everything \u2014 from their initial idea, to their design choices, to any features they\u2019re considering adding.In following this process, entrepreneurs discover their minimal viable product (MVP), which Ries encourages to release to a select group of test customers to determine what improvements need to be made.A good example of an MVP that fits within lean startup philosophy is a \u201csmoke test site,\u201d which can be used to validate interest in your product or service while offering a low barrier to entry.A smoke test site is one that is just a facade. It looks like it\u2019s a real service, but it\u2019s really just a flat site with no back-end, nothing built out, and no real actions. They can be used easily to track and estimate demand for your business idea, and to help gather contact information for people who may be interested. The point of this site is to see if anyone tries to buy.While the MVP is often extremely minimalistic, the feedback from the initial group of test customers helps entrepreneurs learn what\u2019s working, understand what isn\u2019t, and figure out what direction they should go.The general idea is that startup founders should follow the model \u2014 which Ries\u2019 has named \u201cbuild-measure-learn\u201d \u2014 repeatedly, with the goal of turning that MVP into a sustainable business. Oftentimes, that feedback leads founders to pivot from one idea, market, or niche to another in their quest for a great product.Innovation is a high risk sport on an idea by idea basis, but you can dramatically increase the quality and reliability of your outcomes in the way you manage new concepts.Creating structured ideas and then figuring out creative ways to test them is central to the lean startup movement, not to mention the scientific method itself. And it turns out it\u2019s a great way to innovative, even if you\u2019re short on resources.Build-measure-learn is a research-intensive process that can be emotionally fraught, as creators have to be willing to not only put their creations out into the world before they\u2019re \u201cfinished\u201d but also take feedback and implement it.However, if done properly, the lean startup methodology can lead to a company that serves its client\u2019s needs, is sustainable, and is verified before the founder even starts looking for funding. Ries\u2019 website cites Dropbox as a prime example of a big company that used his methodology to get where they are today.Why \u201cBuild \u2013 Measure \u2013 Learn\u201d Isn\u2019t Just Throwing Things Against the Wall to See If They WorkThe goal of Build-Measure-Learn is not to build a final product to ship or even to build a prototype of a product, but to maximize learning through incremental and iterative engineering. (Learning could be about product features, customer needs, the right pricing and distribution channel, etc.) The \u201cbuild\u201d step refers to building a minimal viable product (an MVP.) It\u2019s critical to understand that an MVP is not the product with fewer features. Rather it is the simplest thing that you can show to customers to get the most learning at that point in time.This five-part version of the Build-Measure-Learn diagram helps us see that the real intent of building is to test \u201cideas\u201d \u2013 not just to build blindly without an objective.Build, Measure, LearnThe circle labeled \u201ccode\u201d could easily be labeled \u201cbuild hardware\u201d or \u201cbuild artificial genome.\u201d The circle labeled \u201cdata\u201d indicates that after we measure our experiments we\u2019ll use the data to further refine our learning. And the new learning will influence our next ideas. So we can see that the goal of Build-Measure-Learn isn\u2019t just to build things, the goal is to build things to validate or invalidate the initial idea.The focus on testing specific ideas counters the concern that Build-Measure-Learn is just throwing things against the wall and see if they work.What Build-Measure-Learn misses is that new ventures (both startups and new ideas in existing companies) don\u2019t start with \u201cideas\u201d \u2013 they start with hypotheses (a fancy word for guesses).It\u2019s important to understand that the words \u201cidea \u201d and \u201chypotheses\u201d mean two very different things. For most innovators the word \u201cidea\u201d conjures up an insight that immediately requires a plan to bring it to fruition. In contrast, a hypothesis means we have an educated guess that requires experimentation and data to validate or invalidate.That the lean startup begins with acknowledging that your idea is simply a series of untested hypotheses is a big idea. It\u2019s a really big idea because what you build needs to match the hypothesis you want to test.The minimum viable product you\u2019ll need to build to find the right customers is different from the minimum viable product you need for testing pricing, which is different from an MVP you would build to test specific product features. And all of these hypotheses (and minimal viable products) change over time as you learn more.So instead of Build-Measure-Learn, the diagram for building minimal viable products in a lean startup looks like Hypotheses \u2013 Experiments \u2013 Tests \u2013 Insights.Hypothesis, Design Experiments, Test, InsightsLean Startup Methodology Pushbacklean startup methodology 3Since the release of Ries\u2019 book in 2011, there has been some pushback against the lean startup methodology. One criticism is that it\u2019s too easy to oversimplify \u2014 a valid criticism. There have been thousands of blog posts written about lean startup (including, obviously, this one) and blogs tend toward simplification.That\u2019s just the nature of the beast.But, while lean startup might seem simple \u2014 and the basic elements certainly are \u2014 it\u2019s a complex system. And like any system, you can\u2019t just pick and choose the parts that you like and leave the rest.If you\u2019re interested in using the lean startup methodology to build your next venture, do the research. Read the books. Really study the methodology.It\u2019s a research-intensive process, so consider this initial step a test to see if you\u2019re up for the challenge. If you find yourself faltering, you might want to consider another approach.And while its popularity might make it seem ubiquitous, lean startup also isn\u2019t the only model out there for launching a company. Check out the Lean Analytics model, the Effectuation model, and the Timmons model for other examples of possible ways to build a successful startup.","topic":"growth marketing, product growth, company growth, people management, lean startup methodology, branding"},{"title":" 5 Must-Have Skills Startup Founders Can't Live Without","url":"https:\/\/www.inc.com\/sangram-vajre\/5-must-have-skills-startup-founders-cant-live-without.html","body":"5 Must-Have Skills Startup Founders Can't Live Without. The to-do list is never-ending, especially if you're running a startup. Here are five key areas for entrepreneurs to focus on when rapidly trying to grow a business.   By    Sangram Vajre Co-founder and CMO, Terminus @   sangramvajre     Getty Images In a world where we are constantly checking  the to-do list  and racing from one meeting to another, how do successful startup founders, entrepreneurs, and CEOs manage to  stay focused  and rapidly grow a business? It's about\u00a0knowing where to start by  defining what the matters most  to grow the business as quickly as possible, and center your efforts there.\u00a0 Here are the\u00a0five must-have skills every startup founder should hone: 1. Vision If you don't have a vision for what you want your organization to achieve, it's going to take a miracle for your team to\u00a0follow along on your journey. The vision must extend to every aspect of the company, from the branding and messaging to the product and team you hire. Most importantly, the startup leader must live the vision. This starts with being crystal clear about the problem you're solving with your investors, customers and staff at every level. Embody the vision and your team will follow.  Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is a great example of living out his vision . He's done a fabulous job building not only a transformational company\u00a0but a category, too. 2. Funding Once you have a vision for what you want to achieve, knowing how--and when--to raise money is critical to business-building. One of the biggest traps a startup leader can fall into is failing to recognize when their company is running out of money. A CEO  has to understand his company's burn rate  in order to determine when it's going to need an influx of capital. Startup leaders should be checking their burn rates weekly, at least. This is key: You do not want to raise money when you're broke because you lose your negotiating leverage with investors. CEOs who miss this point will burn out before they can extend their runways. 3. Hiring No one said this better than Jim Collins: Get the right people on the bus first. People is what companies are made of, not technology or processes. Your people define your culture, and great people can be the difference between great companies and good companies.  Wrong hires can literally be the death of certain companies  as they could be a drain. The biggest consideration when hiring is always fit. I've made the mistake of hiring people who look great on paper but didn't fit our culture. In retrospect, it would've been better to not hire those people at all. Startup CEOs must emphasize culture first, and job title second. The reverse can be costly. 4. Experience Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of  HubSpot , wrote a thought-provoking post on how  the CEO should be the Chief Experience Officer  and it makes sense. This is especially true for startup CEOs. You're being pulled in a hundred directions. Failing to recognize the importance of delighting rather than satisfying customers can be a death knell. Selling product is crucial of course, but if the customer isn't successful, he or she will churn eventually. It's the responsibility of the startup CEO to ensure that the sales team understands not just what they're selling but how. Are they selling features or value? Are they delighting customers? Are they proactive with them? It's not about features and functions. Creating a meaningful experience can be a company's most important differentiator. 5. Leadership One of the key parts of being a startup leader is being fired up--so much so that because you're fired up, everyone around you feels your energy. This should come across every time you shake someone's hand, share a story, talk to a customer, meet a new employee or even send an email. What matters is how much you believe in what you do. You can't fake inspiration. Amazing leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali spent enormous amounts of time perfecting every word in their speeches and how they spoke those words\u00a0because they knew they wanted to inspire people. Just remember:  You can't fake leadership . You have to have it in you, or you won't be respected or trusted as a leader. To recap these five key areas of focus for startup leaders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs: 1. Vision\u00a0 - dream big, and share your dream with your team, investors, and customers 2. Funding\u00a0 - watch that burn rate! Know when to raise funds, or reign in spending 3. Hiring  - \u00a0bring on new team based on who they are, and not just job titles 4. Experience  - surprise and delight all your customers (both internal and external) 5. Leadership  - believe in what you do and others will\u00a0too By paying attention to these core skills, startup CEOs will be more prepared to weather the storms of competition, product issues, and unpredictable customer demand. \n ","topic":"branding, people management, skills startup founders, company growth, growth marketing, product growth"},{"title":" What Is Employee Experience?","url":"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jacobmorgan\/2016\/04\/22\/what-is-employee-experience\/#3297f1e7386c","body":"What Is Employee Experience?\n\nAs we shift to the future of work, where organizations are focusing on the reasons why employees want to work versus need to work, it is important to understand employee experience. A lot of organizations historically have focused only on one aspect of organizational change and that is culture. This is how employees feel when they are inside of an organization, the vibe that they get, the organizational structure, leadership style, compensation and benefits, etc. While culture is a part of the employee experience, it is only a third.\n\nEmployee experience is the combination of three distinct things that exist within any organization regardless of industry, size, and location. The other parts of employee experience are the technological environment and the physical environment. The technological environment is the tools an employee needs to do their job, including the user interface, mobile devices, and desktop computers. An organization should provide relevant and modern tools that allow employees to get their job done. The physical environment includes anything that can be seen, heard, touched, and tasted like the desks, chairs, art, and meals. This is crucial because employees spend most of their time inside the organization so it should have a positive effect on them. All three of these aspects should be focused on to create an environment where people want to show up!\n","topic":"employee experience, growth marketing, branding, company growth, marketing, product growth"},{"title":"What Is a Product Manager, Actually?","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/@Alex.Valaitis\/what-is-a-product-manager-actually-f328f05575","body":"What Is a Product Manager, Actually? - Alex Valaitis - Medium Visual Design  What Is a Product Manager, Actually? Alex Valaitis Follow Oct 2, 2017     \u00b7       8    min read While my company has certainly influenced a lot of my thinking in this area, it is important to note that the contents below reflect my opinion and not that of my employer. Background In many ways, the role of a Product Manager remains an enigma. Many companies have only begun inserting the role into their organizations in recent years, and very few companies incorporate the role correctly. As a result, the role of a Product Manager has been misconstrued and practiced incorrectly by many in the industry. I am fortunate to be working for a company in Intuit that has truly mastered the art of Product Management over the years, and I wish to share my learnings so that others may improve their craft as well. After all, better Product Managers leads to better products, and we all win when we have better products in our lives. I also want to clarify that the type of Product Manager I will be describing is one that generally works in the technology space, but more specifically, works with software products. What a Product Manager Is Not Before diving into what a Product Manager is, I think it is important to start by laying out what a PM is not. I see many people label themselves as PM\u2019s, but when they describe their role to me it is far from being that of a PM. I cringe when this happens, because it further contorts the perception of the role in the industry. Here are a list of incorrect PM descriptions I commonly encounter: A Product Manager is NOT a Software Developer or Engineer If you spend most of your day writing code or building product, then you are a developer\/engineer not a PM. You should rarely (if ever) be doing these tasks. The reason is that there are far too many other tasks that you need to be doing with your time, and they will not get completed if a PM does not own them. A Product Manager Is NOT a Designer Similar to engineering or development, design is a separate function of its own. While it never hurts to churn out some high fidelity mock-ups as a PM, this is a space that should ideally be owned by experience designers (XD). In some small organizations there may be exceptions, however in an ideal scenario this work should not be owned exclusively by a PM. A Product Manager Is NOT a Software Architect The how is not decided by a PM. It never hurts to have the technical expertise to keep up and make suggestions, however the high-level software design choices and technical standards should be driven by someone who is completely dedicated to this area. A Product Manager Is NOT an Analyst or a Consultant If you\u2019re not driving a team that\u2019s building product, then you are not a PM. Period. While there may be stretches of time where you do hands off research and analysis (say in the discovery stages of a product), this should not be the nature of your work for extended periods of time. A Product Manager Is NOT Any of These Things Either: Customer Support, Marketing, Project\/Program Manager, Data Scientist, Sales, etc. For various reasons, a Product Manager is not any of the things listed above either. While a solid PM will interact with many of these functions, no single one of these areas should be commanding the majority of your time in the long run. One last example\u2026 A Product Manager Is NOT an Authoritarian Figure As a Product Manager you have no authority over other people . While you do drive decisions and the product vision, you can\u2019t force others to follow it.  As a PM, you must lead through influence.  One of my biggest triggers is when I see a PM trying to lead with authority instead of influence. Attempting to strong-arm developers or designers into doing what you want will always lead to poor products in the long run. So what is a Product Manager, Actually? Now that we have a solid understanding of all of the things that a Product Manager is not, let\u2019s deep dive into what a Product Manager actually is. I\u2019ve heard a lot of people try to describe the role in different ways, but perhaps the best analogy I have heard is the following: A Product Manager is the Quarterback of a product. source:  http:\/\/legacy.wbur.org I\u2019ve heard the phrase \u201cCEO of the product\u201d tossed around, but I think it is a poor analogy. A Product Manager does not have authoritative control over a team, similar to how a quarterback does not control the football team. She can\u2019t bench any of her teammates if they don\u2019t execute the plays she calls, only the coach can do that. Another major difference is that unlike CEO\u2019s, Product Managers are down in the trenches executing with the team. It is not merely a strategic role for setting high-level vision, since you have to get your hands dirty on a daily basis. Another correlation between a PM and a quarterback, is that you need to be able to work with and have the trust of the entire team. Each drive, a quarterback may interact with the running back, offensive line, tight ends, and wide-receivers. It is not an isolated position that only has one focus. Similarly, a PM must gain the trust of the entire team and be able to work cross-functionally in order to guarantee the success of a product. Ultimately, a quarterback is responsible for calling plays based on the information they see in front of them, and are required to make quick decisions on the fly to ensure that a drive is successful. In a nutshell, that is what a product manager is expected to do for a product. What Does a Product Manager Do? I\u2019m sure there are some people reading this that are rolling their eyes right now, so I want to conclude by giving a rundown of what a Product Manager actually does. This isn\u2019t a simple explanation, since a PM\u2019s daily work activities can morph depending on what stage of the product development life cycle they are in. Generally speaking there are 3 different phases that PM\u2019s will find themselves in: Discovery, Planning and Execution. Discovery Phase Before a team can begin building product, someone must go out and discover what needs to be built. A Product Manager is tasked with finding the most important problems and defining which of them should be solved. Generally speaking, there are two sources that PM\u2019s can use during the discovery phase: Data and Customers. If you already have an existing product and are looking to build out new features or capabilities, data can give you clues as to where the product opportunities will be. Great PM\u2019s know how to use analytics tools to access fingertip data and how to enlist the support of data scientists or analytics teams for deeper data dives. Often times data is too muddy or small in order to draw product conclusions. That is why it is important to supplement quantitative insights with feedback from customers. Customer interviews are a great way to gain qualitative feedback from current or prospective users. Product Managers should seek to to spend a significant amount of time with customers during the discovery phase of the product life cycle. Planning Phase After pouring through data and spending time with customers, it is up to a Product Manager to help prioritize which products or features are worth pursuing. Unfortunately, all companies have limited time and resources, so it is essential that PM\u2019s define the right priorities for the company to pursue. The larger the company a PM operates in, the more involved the planning phase will be. Because there are so many moving pieces, it is not always as straight-forward as picking the most data or customer-backed projects to pursue. Organizations must factor in other internal projects, technical requirements, time of year, budgets, risk factors, etc. Due to the importance of the planning stage, PM\u2019s will most likely find themselves in numerous meetings with leadership and other relevant stakeholders. During these meetings PM\u2019s will present their findings and suggestions for the road map, while working towards gaining approval from leadership. More often than not, these meetings are taking place while the rest of the team continues to execute on the current initiatives. Execution Phase Image Credit:  Sean O'Connor Outside of discovery and planning, a Product Manager will spend the majority of her time in the execution phase. I borrowed the graphic above from a fellow PM at Intuit, because I think it does a great job of laying out where a PM sits during the execution phase of a product. Starting with the build section, a PM is expected to work closely with the development and design functions. At Intuit we refer to this as the \u201cproduct triad\u201d. A PM will complete a number of activities while working with the triad including: working with designers to craft mock ups, defining requirements for developers, tracking development processes , and running usability tests with customers. The build cycle should never really end for a product, since teams should constantly be seeking to improve their products. Once a product is built, it is important that a PM works with marketing and design to ensure that the product gets the right exposure in the marketplace. A PM is important to this phase as he will understand what aspects of the product need to be emphasized in order to excite potential users. Lastly, a PM should be in close contact with Support\/Operations to ensure that the product is functioning well at all times. Service outages, crashes, and bugs are all issues that inevitably arise with any software product. A PM must closely track these issues and ensure that they do not get in the way of a great user experience. Conclusion Unlike many other functions, if a PM were to stop coming in to work one day, the team probably wouldn\u2019t feel the effects right away. However, over time the lack of PM expertise would shine through in the products that are delivered to market. The truth is that almost any person can be a Product Manager, however very few people can become great Product Managers. The job is 90% effort & discipline and 10% raw talent. If you think you have what it takes, I encourage you to try! Bonus read :  Good Product Manager\/Bad Product Manager 7K  Product Management Software Development Startup Agile Product Development 7K claps Written by Alex Valaitis Follow Product Manager.","topic":"company growth, branding, marketing, product manager, growth marketing, people management"},{"title":"Boxology: The Mythical Science of Organizational Change","url":"http:\/\/alignorg.com\/library\/resource\/boxology-the-mythical-science-of-organizational-change\/","body":"Boxology: The Mythical Science of Organizational ChangeMay 22, 2014 by AlignOrgAltering the organization\u2019s structure might be necessary, but approaching change by changing the organization chart alone is insufficient in most cases. Over the years, a pseudo-science has emerged that focuses on finding the perfect organization chart. We call this boxology. Even if a perfect organization chart did exist (with the right spans of control, optimal layers of management, proper placement of talent, clear decision rights, etc.), structure is just one aspect of organization design.Organizations are complex systems, with changes in one area cascading and sometimes setting off changes throughout the entire system. Moreover, organizations operate in complex environments with market forces, competitors\u2019 behaviors, and regulatory requirements demanding that an organization continually change and adapt.One risk of boxology is that it ignores the interdependency of organizational components like work, culture, structure, metrics, rewards, etc. It ignores the deep connections of those components to forces at play in the organization\u2019s environment. It also ignores the reality of how work is done, who makes decisions, and how resources are allocated. Truly effective organization design is about finding the optimal alignment of all of these components\u2014not simply trying to optimize the structure of the organization. Indeed, structure only enables or disables strategy. In and of itself, structure doesn\u2019t create or deliver value to the customer.Companies don\u2019t usually transform themselves into their aspirations unless leaders have thoughtfully considered the dynamics of their business environment, the changing needs of customers, and the degree to which their current capabilities and talent can successfully meet those conditions. Leaders need to make fundamental strategic choices and then align the org structure and the many systems of the organization (technological systems, reward and compensation systems, recruiting and talent management systems, etc.) to that strategy. They need to align decision-making rights, resource allocation, even assess the culture of an organization in order to reach the new desired state. It\u2019s a little more complicated than moving boxes.","topic":"people management, brand development, product growth, branding, company growth, boxology, organizational change, mythical science"},{"title":"The Power of Bad Product Ideas","url":"http:\/\/www.mindtheproduct.com\/2017\/03\/power-bad-product-ideas","body":"The Power of Bad Product Ideas\n\nBY CHRIS MASSEY ON MARCH 6, 2017\n\nSteve Portigal challenges product managers to re-think the idea-generation process by inviting in bad ideas.\n\nIn brain-storming sessions, we frequently see two surges in ideas. The first is where the low hanging fruit is identified. The second surge is where more innovative ideas are frequently found. Welcoming bad ideas can be an effective strategy for fast tracking past the low hanging fruit and into innovation.\n\nSteve\u2019s interactive talk encourages product managers to come up with the worst product ideas possible. Not the ideas that are just not that good, but ones that are really, truly terrible. By starting with a bad idea, Steve opens a safe, creative space for ideas sharing. He helps product people to unpack what is good and bad, why and who gets to decide. He encourages us to step away from the binary of good and bad to move around the problem space in a different way. His bad ideas approach also breaks the idea-generation ice \u2013 by starting with something terrible, space is opened for all ideas, allowing creativity to flow.\n\nSharing Terrible Ideas\n\nSteve identifies two types of bad idea sharing, proactive disruption vs tentative unfinished ideas \u2013 and encourages us to recognise and support those who share both. The first type of sharing breaks open space for a different approach to your problem or market. The second invites you to listen, collaborate and make a bad thing good.\n\nBad ideas expose our own beliefs about what the criteria are for good and bad and force us to reassess. Bad ideas can go good, context is everything and ultimately bad can only be judged by the marketplace. If an idea is stupid but it works, its not stupid.\n\nSteve\u2019s talk encourages you to be open to surprises and to capture new energy in your team by being playful with the ideas generation process and laughing as you go.","topic":"bad product ideas, marketing, company growth, people management, branding, product growth"},{"title":"[Pt. 1] Which Methodology Should You \u2018Hire\u2019 to Apply Jobs to be Done?","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/frameplay\/which-methodology-should-you-hire-to-apply-jobs-to-be-done-pt-1-f24baff27b21","body":"[Pt. 1] Which Methodology Should You \u2018Hire\u2019 to Apply Jobs to be Done? Sign in Get started Frameplay Jobs to be Done About Frameplay Frameplay - Innovation Consultancy [Pt. 1] Which Methodology Should You \u2018Hire\u2019 to Apply Jobs to be Done? Andrea F Hill Follow Nov 28, 2017     \u00b7       2    min read \u201cOne day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. \u2018Which road do I take?\u2019 she asked. \u2018Where do you want to go?\u2019 was his response. \u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 Alice answered. \u2018Then,\u2019 said the cat, \u2018it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d Heard about Jobs to be Done? Maybe you picked up Clay Christensen\u2019s 2016 book \u201cCompeting Against Luck\u201d or you\u2019ve seen the #jtbd hashtag on Twitter. You\u2019re interested in this idea that \u201ccustomers want to make progress in their lives and they hire products to help them get that job done\u201d and how it can help  you  make progress. Unfortunately, this seemingly simple little theory has amassed a daytime-television-worthy level of intrigue and drama. Little JTBD has (at least) two men who can lay claim to have originated the approach, and others who have raised it as their own and expect some credit too. The irony of course is what the argument is over. Laying claim to the belief that: Customers don\u2019t care about your product. They care about what it helps them do. The product in question? The \u2018right\u2019 approach to surfacing and applying JTBD insights. As an innovation and strategy consultant, my goal is to help my clients consistently create winning products. I\u2019m purposely methodology-agnostic. That being said, I see a lot of value in looking at problems through the \u201cJobs to be Done\u201d lens. Over the next few days, I\u2019ll be releasing a series of posts on the different flavors of JTBD and how to decide which is most appropriate to help you meet your innovation goals.  I\u2019m open to feedback, suggestions and criticisms to make this series content more accurate.  My goal is to help others pick up on the nuances of these approaches so they can make focus on making progress on their own innovation journey.  \n ","topic":"brand development, methodology, apply jobs, branding, marketing, people management, product growth"},{"title":"Generating Startup Ideas","url":"http:\/\/marcbarros.com\/generating-startup-ideas\/","body":" \u201cI want to start a company, but I haven\u2019t found a great idea.\u201d\n \n I hear this a lot. Even among entrepreneurs who have started companies, many of them focus on the novelty of the idea. Which is understandable, especially within the 140 character attention span we now live in. \n Able to be summarized into elevator sized pitches, the misplaced emphasis on the idea results in entrepreneurs spending too many hours rewriting a handful of words, hoping people will \u2018get it.\u2019 Wanting the listener to acknowledge the huge potential, its easy to get paralyzed trying to justify why their idea is smarter than the next. \n This is the wrong way to think about it. \n The reality is that initial ideas are often irrelevant. Like clay being sculpted on a spinning wheel, it takes a lot of trying, learning, and adjusting to turn initial instincts into a masterpiece. It can even require starting over along the way, until you really understand the potential of what you are building. \n As @benhorowitz reminds us,  \u201cthe trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time.\u201c \n So how do you generate an \u2018idea\u2019 that is strong enough to start a company? \n Forget About Your Idea \nThe hardest part is to begin with an unbiased opinion. Starting this process with a pre determined idea shuts out your ability to really understand the essence of the problem. It becomes so personal that you can\u2019t separate the true opportunity from your own desire to be right. \n Being stuck to an idea results in mistakes like these\u2026 \n \n Your customer research is tainted with questions like, \u201cwould you use a service that does blah.\u201d A yes makes you feel good, but doesn\u2019t actually help you understand the customer\u2019s problem. \n Your pricing is based on asking people if they would pay X for your imaginary product. A question that doesn\u2019t truly gets answered until people pay you money. \n \n You raise too much money before your product sticks. Investor interest doesn\u2019t necessarily mean customers will love what you build. \n \n You brand your company \u2018the product\u2019, wanting to make no mistake that people will know what your service does. Except when you have to change your product you then realize the name you spent months driving awareness for now has nothing to do with the final direction of the company. \n Start With The Problem \nUltimately you want to  understand the problem better than anyone else.  Having a distinct advantage in customer understanding, enables you to deliver a solution that no one else would conclude. Peter Thiel calls this  developing a secret. There are a variety of ways to discover an interesting problem. Personally I first list what I\u2019m passionate about and second explore problems within these passions. Starting with a pen and paper, I start building lists. 1.What Are You Passionate About? \nThese can be activities (i.e. being active), experiences (i.e. listening to music), tools (i.e. cameras), efficiencies (i.e. ways to save time). utilities (i.e. clothing), interactions (i.e. meeting new people), or even consumables (i.e. food). I find there are about 5-6 areas everyone is super passionate about and if they pick a problem to solve in one of these arenas they will be significantly more motivated. The last list I personally built\u2026 \n * enabling people to start their own business \n * music \n * staying active \n * photography \n * traveling \n * local food experiences Moment  began from my passion for taking pictures. 2.A Day In The Life \nA second way is to walking through your day, listing out all the things you do, where you do them, and what tools you use. If you want to solve a problem that every one has, likely the problem will be associated with one of these key parts of your life. As you build a list you can start brainstorming things that frustrate you, that you find broken, or that you would love to make better within each of these areas. Map The Customer Journey \nPicking one item from the list, you can start to explore the problems through the entire journey. Thinking about what happens before, during, and after you begin to identify interesting problems to solve. As an example, my wife and I are passionate about traveling. We have found that discovering new places brings us closer together. Always trying to find local, off the beaten path locations, we have spent a lot of time in other countries. Mapping out our typical travel experience, I list out the interactions before we travel, while we travel, and what happens afterwards. Starting with a longer list I\u2019d reduce our travel routine down\u2026 \n * Discover: finding new, inspiring places to visit. \n * Travel: from coordinating to experiencing adventures. \n * Remember: enabling us and loved ones to remember the trip. Starting with \u2018how\u2019 we accomplish these tasks today, I can begin to find dozens of interesting problems to solve. Thinking about what is broken, frustrating, or a poor experience, I start sketching out potential solutions. This cycle can continue for weeks until I have a concentric circle that represents what I would build before, during, and after. And within that framework will be an initial problem that I believe I can solve better than anyone. If I was to build a startup in the travel space it would probably be around enabling travelers with better tools to discover local, authentic experiences. Getting people excited about the vision of \u2018enabling\u2019, is a much easier than trying to convince everyone why my travel idea and its key features, are genius enough to join. Frequency vs Pain \nIf you are building consumer based products I use a matrix that compares the frequency people have this problem (daily to never) against the type of pain (physical to emotional) that customers feel. The more frequent the problem occurs, the more important your product will become. Here is how I break down the quadrants: \n * Upper Left: a physical pain that doesn\u2019t happen very often \u2013 i.e. a heart attack. \n * Upper Right: a physical pain that happens daily \u2013 i.e. taking insulin. \n * Lower Left: an emotional pain that doesn\u2019t happen often \u2013 i.e. buying a car. \n * Lower Right: an emotional pain that happens often \u2013 i.e. too many emails. Most of the products that startups build fall into the bottom half of this quadrant. These solutions provide emotional and\/or mental benefit to the customers. Personal travel would fall in the lower left quadrant. Although personal traveling makes people happy, it happens so infrequently that its hard to build a sustainable business. Unless you focus on business travelers, the average person is lucky to take a handful of trips in a year. Find A Passionate Niche \nI\u2019m a big believer in finding a passionate niche that you can own. Even though investors will want to know when your idea is mass market, it\u2019s important to build creditability with an avid user base. Creating  1,000 true fans  is really hard and if you try to move past this group too early, your company has the risk of becoming irrelevant. Just look at\u2026 \n *  Apple with creatives. \n * Sportscenter with tis 24 hour sports fans. \n *  GrabCad  with engineers. \n * Firefox with the  open source community. \n * Twitter with the tech community. \n * Instagram with photographers. These companies anchored their brand and initial products within a passionate group of users, which were obsessed with using their product on a daily basis. Look For A Wave \nHow big can this be, is the first question that investors will ask you.  Even more important than team, hitting a market with avid customers at the right time is critical. As  Marc Andreesen says , \u201cYou can obviously screw up a great market \u2014 and that has been done, and not infrequently \u2014 but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most.\u201d But trying to predict how big your company is going to be, especially early on, is a self actualizing process. Searching google for random market numbers doesn\u2019t actually give you confidence that you have hit the opportunity at the right time. Instead I believe what Chris Dixon wrote a few years ago about  sizing the market based on a narrative. Being in front of a rising wave is the right place to be. The action camera market is a great example. When Contour and GoPro started there was no wave behind action video. Myspace was just beginning, YouTube didn\u2019t exists, and consumers weren\u2019t carrying computers in their pockets. The initial market was reserved for adrenaline junkies who were willing to strap a lens on their helmet and spend countless hours downloading their footage on expensive computers. All of that changed with the arrival of social media. The need to prove status, likes, and audience size created a tidal wave of demand for designated cameras that could capture the most amazing adventures. The more interesting the content, the more popular the users could become. Without social, it\u2019s questionable if GoPro would be the $B company that it is today. Examples of other waves\u2026 \n *  Stance Socks : differentiating ourselves continues to drive shopping decisions. \n * Beats by Dre: the continued growth in mobile music and  the subsequent need for better consumption tools. \n * Box: the  once in a lifetime shift  in how people work. \n * Instagram: the 1.2B consumers with cameras in their pockets need a place to share their pictures. Start With Projects \nIt\u2019s very hard to sit down and come up with a world changing, job quitting idea. The journey to what you ultimately build is an organic path that shapes over time. Even the tools to understand the customer, their needs, and the right market are merely guides. Ultimately you learn the most when you put a product in someone\u2019s hands. If you have a day job, start working on side projects with people you like. And if you don\u2019t have friends who want to work on side projects, attend a  Startup Weekend  and meet dozens of people that share your same passion to build. At some point this journey will lead you to an interesting problem that aligns your passion with a need that millions of people share. Focus on the problem, not the idea.","topic":"growth marketing, generating startup ideas, product growth, company growth, branding, marketing"},{"title":"How Marketing Research Can Benefit A Small Business","url":"https:\/\/smallbiztrends.com\/2006\/01\/how-marketing-research-can-benefit-a-small-business.html","body":"Small businesses often find themselves in a challenging situation. These businesses have a great need for reliable answers to important questions that all organizations face: \n \n How are market trends impacting my business? \n \n \n How does our target market make buying decisions? \n \n \n What is our market share and how can we increase it? \n \n \n How does customer satisfaction with our products or services measure up to that of the competition? \n \n \n How will our existing customers respond to a new product or service? \n \n \n How can we attract new customer segments? \n \n \n What marketing strategies will work best? \n \n  placeholder 155 blocked.  Reason : no sizes  In order to get answers to these questions, companies conduct marketing research using a variety of methods. This article will outline some of these methods and illustrate how they can benefit a small business. All have some value, but it is important to know the limitations of each technique. \n I. SECONDARY RESEARCH \n This type of research involves looking at information that has already been conducted and published, by exploring a few different types of resources: \n 1. Demographics and Statistics \n This information can be helpful to businesses when trying to learn more about the geographic areas in which they operate, or those into which it would make sense to expand. Where are other people like my current customers? Where are there people who are a little different from my customer base but might find my product valuable? I\u2019m introducing a new product to an entirely new market \u2014 where do these prospects live? Is the size of the potential market big enough to make the investment into a new product worthwhile?  placeholder 156 blocked.  Reason : no sizes  \n Similarly, this type of research, called statistical profiling, also benefits business to business marketers. For example, if you are selling to businesses locally, you can expand your base by finding other areas where there is a high concentration of similar businesses. Or, you may have been selling to one type of industry, but you think companies in a different industry will also buy your product. \n Here are some free online  resources  that can help you find these businesses and get relevant statistics: \n  placeholder 157 blocked.  Reason : no sizes  Bureau of Labor Statistics  \nInternet Public Library \nFed Stats \nAmerican Marketing Association \u2013 Demographic Statistics \nDemographic data by zip code for every U.S. state \n 2. Existing Research Reports \n Often, businesses have questions that involve trends in their markets. For example, which customers are adapting the lastest technology? How is internet usage changing among mature adults? \n There may already be a report that was conducted that can give you some general information into your industry and specific market. By doing a search on \u201conline research reports,\u201d you can find a listing of companies that provide these reports. Usually they do come at a cost, but may be less expensive than doing a study from scratch. A good idea is to first peruse the table of contents that often comes with these reports before buying, in order to get an idea as to whether the purchase would be justified. \n 3. Marketing Researcher tools \n Why not go where the pros do? By utilizing these sites, you can ask questions of marketing professionals and use the tools they do. There are some excellent resources available, again some of which require a fee, but others do not. \n \n Marketing Sherpa \n @ResearchInfo.com \n MarketingProfs.com \n \n \u00a0 \n II. PRIMARY RESEARCH  \n At some point, all businesses need to ask specific questions of their customers, as well as those individuals who are not their customers, in order to make decisions regarding their business and marketing strategy. This is where research can get expensive, though. Many small businesses do not have resources required for studies that deliver the most unbiased, accurate data. However, there are ways that companies can get guidance and direction for marketing strategy, based on customer feedback. \n 1. Talk to Your Customers \n Is there any more direct, less expensive way to go? Ask your customers questions when they purchase from you, if you can do so in a way that is not cumbersome for them and doesn\u2019t take a lot of their time. What made them purchase from you? How did they hear about you? \n Make it worth their time to give you feedback \u2014 perhaps a discount on their next order. And let them know that their feedback will help you serve them better in the future \u2014 which it should. And many small businesses overlook or discount input from their direct salesforce, a resource that can generate some of the best ideas for new products due to close customer contact. \n 2. Web Logs or Blogs \n This is a great way to get customer feedback. Start a blog on your company website, tell your customers about it, and post information about your products and services. I know what you\u2019re thinking, though \u2013 what if my customers have negative reactions about what I post? Won\u2019t my warts be available for all to see? \n Marketing diva, Toby Bloomberg,\u00a0 recently had a post on her own blog about just this issue . As she points out, your customers talk anyway \u2014 isn\u2019t it better to see what they\u2019re saying so you can respond? And Toby makes a great point \u2014 negative comments are an excellent way of showing how you respond to customer concerns. \n 3. Yahoo Groups \n Start a group for your customers. This is a great way for them to talk to each other and exchange information. At the same time, you get to see what they\u2019re saying without them necessarily knowing that you\u2019re peeking. \n Additionally, some customers can start conversations that allow you to get insights into their interests \u2014 more valuable information that can help you in your product\/service development efforts. These groups can also exchange tips about using the product or service \u2013 some which may have never occurred to you. \n 4. In-person forums\/ conferences \n This is a great way to educate and entertain your customers and provide them value for their attendance at an offline function. While the methods above can often limit the amount of information you get from your customers, these forums and conferences allow you to explore various issues in a more in-depth way. \n User conferences also can give you a great opportunity to introduce your customers to new uses for your product or service, by highlighting customer success stories and case studies for presentation. \n However, as noted above, these resources usually do not provide completely accurate and unbiased information, and to get this type of customer data, you\u2019ll need to use more structured and traditional methods. Unbiased, quantifiable information can be very powerful in planning your marketing strategy. And every successful business needs to, and will get to this stage at some point. The trick is not to wait very long, because your competitors can start getting the answers before you do. \n In general, there are two main types of traditional primary research studies, each with its own benefits: \n 5. Qualitative \n These studies, also often called exploratory research, allow you to research issues with customers in an in-depth manner. While qualitative studies usually aren\u2019t designed to give you precise answers, they can give you great insight into the behavior of your customers, their rationale for making decisions, and factors that can motivate them to purchase. \n There are various forms of qualitative studies, including focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and newer techniques called ethnography. What sets these apart from the user conferences mentioned above, are several factors: \n \n They are typically led by an objective moderator, so participants often will provide more honest and less biased feedback. \n A trained professional can also handle different types of respondents, from those who tend to be very vocal to those who are less likely to speak. \n They are in a controlled setting, and the moderator has a pre-defined script so that the most important issues at hand are addressed. \n A variety of techniques can be used, in order to get at the thinking behind customer discussions and behavior. \n These studies can be done both on the internet and in person. A qualified professional can help you to determine the right method to use, and the costs for your particular situation. \n \n 6. Quantitative \n Often businesses need guidance on a set of marketing issues that require clearly defined measures, for example, advertising spending, distribution channel usage, pricing decisions, segmentation sizes, and the product or service message that should be launched first. \n Surveys and questionnaires can give you a great deal of accuracy when asking marketing questions that require this level of detail for sound decision-making. For example, which product will generate the highest level of interest? Are there differences between different segments and how are these differences are best defined? What price should you set? How often will people purchase? There are some great online tools you can use to develop your own surveys \u2014 here are just a few that offer free versions: \n Survey Monkey \nZoomerang \n Cool Surveys \n However, it is important to note that according to the Small Business Administration website, much primary research, particularly \u201c\u2026 surveys, interviews, and questionnaires, is best left to marketing professionals, as they can usually get more objective and sophisticated results.\u201d \n CONCLUSION \n Every organization needs to conduct research, and small budgets are no excuse for lack of a research plan. By starting out with some easily accessible resources, you can begin to develop better marketing strategies that can position you for market growth. \n About the Author:   Joy Levin is the President of  Allium Research and Analytics , a marketing research consulting firm. With 14 years of experience, she works with companies of all sizes in various industries to develop and implement research solutions that give them answers to their marketing challenges and provide strategic direction. ","topic":"people management, small business, branding, growth marketing, benefit, product growth, company growth, marketing research"},{"title":" Growth Hacking: How to Implement an A\/B Testing Model","url":"http:\/\/www.coxblue.com\/growth-hacking-how-to-implement-an-ab-testing-model\/","body":"Growth Hacking: How to Implement an A\/B Testing Modelby Chelsea SegalGrowth Hacking: How to Implement an A\/B Testing Model105SHARESFacebookTwitterLinkedinRedditPrintBufferPocketAs a growth hacker, you need to cultivate a sense of scientific curiosity. Almost every element of your marketing strategy or business plan can\u2014and should\u2014be viewed as an experiment, with the data guiding your next move. Even lackluster or failed experiments tell you a lot about what\u2019s working, what\u2019s not, and what direction to try next.The epitome of a growth hacker\u2019s scientific mindset is A\/B testing (or \u201csplit testing\u201d). In this model, you divide your audience or customer base into two groups, with one acting as a control group. Each group receives a distinct version of your email campaign, landing page, discount offer, or the like, and you carefully track each version\u2019s performance. By looking at the results, you can tweak your strategy as needed, then go on to test another element.Optimization TestingA\/B optimization testing is used to try out how changes to a minor element of an existing process affect customer engagement. The goal is to optimize the impact of that process,  getting the best results with the lowest cost to your company. Most frequently, A\/B testing is used to test how different versions of one digital marketing campaign perform; for example, the two groups see two different designs of a website, or receive two variants of the same email blast.Typically, optimization tests compare the results\u2014measured in click-throughs, email opens, social engagement, conversions, or by some other metric\u2014of minute changes to design, wording, or visual elements. Does a long email subject or a shorter one result in more opens? Does a green button or a red button get more clicks? Does a Facebook post with an image get more likes than one without?Because the tests measure audience engagement or other results based on very small changes, with little or no cost for each test, companies may perform many thousands of A\/B tests per year. The data from testing then informs the next campaign.Structuring an A\/B TestLike any good experiment, A\/B testing is rooted in the scientific method. A refresher course on the scientific method: ask a question based on observation and research. Make a hypothesis about the answer to this question. Next, formulate testable predictions, collect data, and use the data to measure the accuracy of your hypothesis. Growth hacking (and any digital marketing) has an added step here: tweak your test based on results. Then retest, retest, retest.Once you have come up with come up with a question and a hypothesis\u2014and done some background research into your audience\u2019s current behaviors using analytics\u2014it\u2019s time to design your test. Some factors to consider:Changes Per VariationHow much will version B differ from the control group\u2019s? You can make many changes from the A version to B, or (more typically) just one. Single changes may take longer to see results, or may not show results as dramatic as a total overhaul, but it\u2019s easier to track responses and the causes of responses. When making many changes, any one of them could be prompting the result you\u2019re seeing.Metric for DataHow will you measure your results? If you are testing the effectiveness of an email campaign\u2019s subject line, for example, it makes sense to use the metric of number of email opens. If you\u2019re testing a change to an onboarding procedure, on the other hand, sign-ups or other forms of conversion provide your data.Test ScopeWhat is the scale and timeline of your test? When testing something small like a change in the wording of email copy, results will be evident very quickly. Use a tool like VWO\u2019s A\/B Split and Multivariate Test Duration Calculator or Evan Miller\u2019s sample size calculator to determine either how many days you will run the test, or how many audience members you will include in your sample.SegmentationWho will be the subjects of your test? If you have a good sense of how your audience is segmented, you can run A\/B tests on one specific part of your audience, or set up one portion as your A group and one as the B group.Strategic A\/B TestingStrategic testing applies the same principles of optimization testing to larger, more important elements of your marketing strategy, or even your entire business philosophy. If you are launching a new product, offering new pricing, or changing your branding strategy, the stakes of such a change are high. It makes sense to test this kind of big move with a small part of your audience first before deploying it across the board.Strategic tests tend to be run much less frequently than optimization testing: the stakes in terms of profits and marketing budget are much higher, the moving pieces are bigger (a new brand strategy takes a long time to change, and then to see results), and more people are involved. But there are definite benefits to testing a strategic change on a small target audience: it gives you a sense of whether the initiative will succeed with your entire consumer base, and helps you refine your approach if it\u2019s not quite ready for prime time.What You Can Do Right NowA\/B testing is a valuable tool for getting the most out of your strategy, whether on a small scale optimizing an email campaign) or on a large one (a wide-spread sales promotion). Ready to give it a shot? Here\u2019s how to get going.Start small. For your first A\/B test, choose something low-cost and low-risk: a minimal change to your email blasts, social media postings, or website. Starting with one small change has the added benefit of showing definitive cause-and-effect results.Be very clear about the goal of your testing and about how you will measure results.Set a defined test period or number of subjects. Keep the scale appropriate to your experience with A\/B testing, your resources, and the type of initiative you\u2019re testing (bigger changes often take longer to show results).\n ","topic":"growth hacking, company growth, product growth, people management, product discovery, implement, testing model, branding"},{"title":" Searching for Product\/Market Fit","url":"http:\/\/www.mindtheproduct.com\/2016\/06\/searching-product-market-fit","body":"Searching for Product\/Market Fit\n\nBY CHRIS MASSEY ON JUNE 7, 2016\n\nRodrigo Madanes has got 25 years of experience designing and developing successful web and mobile products at companies such as Skype and eBay. Rodrigo will talk about exploring product\/market Fit, sharing his lessons learned about first focusing on the needs of a specific user segment. Rodrigo dives into what it means to find product\/market fit, some techniques for finding it, and how long it can take. By way of example: At Skype, in their early-adopter phase, they still had 40-50 million registered users. The wave can take 10-15 years, and it\u2019s not about size of user base.\n\nHow Do You Recognise Product\/Market Fit?\n\nIf you\u2019re sensible, after launching your product you\u2019ll spend some time searching for product\/market Fit before you try and aggressively take what you believe your market to be. But working out when you have product\/market fit is a tricky thing. Having a growing user base doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that you\u2019re solving a real problem for a defined market, or that you\u2019ve built something that people actually want \u2013 it might just mean that you have great marketing.\n\nSize of user-base isn\u2019t actually that helpful, so you need to try and look for other behaviours and, more importantly, more specific segments of your audience. Do you get a lot of return visitors? Do you have good Net Promoter Scores? Are your users giving you money? Do you have stable cohort retention curves? These are the signs that indicate a potential product\/market fit!\n\nOnce you\u2019ve found that fit, then you should go out and find all the people who make up that audience, and finally take the market. As observed by Marc Andreessen, a startup really has two very different phases of existence \u2013 Before Fit and After Fit \u2013 and thus two different sets of goals and behaviours. Don\u2019t get those two mixed up.\n\nWhat Next?\n\nTaking this a step further, you need to find the specific set of features that matters to a specific, defined market, then work out exactly how to reach that market (i.e. which channels to use) and invest just in those! However, you\u2019ll likely find, as most startups do, that although you\u2019ll get a ramp-up in users when you hit product\/market fit, your growth will gradually plateau. It\u2019s important to remember that growth is bumpy, and as your first product\/market fit growth spurt starts to slow, you should already be looking into the next set of features that will trigger another round of fit-based growth.\n\nNext, it\u2019s important to focus on the intensity of NPS (or some other measure of user love for your product). Put simply, if you try and build something for everyone, you\u2019ll build something that\u2019s great for nobody. Focus on the users who really love your product, and build for them, as they\u2019re more likely to be a defined market, and they\u2019re more likely to help you grow.\n\nAnd finally, on the topic of defined markets, focus on specific segments of your potential audience. Realistically, your audience is a complex and multi-faceted mess of different types of people, so you need to investigate (using things like cohort analysis and segmentation) to work out exactly what defines your market (e.g. what mobile platform they\u2019re using, location, wealth, life stages\u2026), and then work out how to reach them.","topic":"company growth, searching, branding, product market fit, product growth, marketing, growth marketing"},{"title":"How Does Whatsapp Make Money? Whatsapp\u2019s Revenue Model","url":"https:\/\/www.feedough.com\/how-does-whatsapp-make-money\/","body":"How Does WhatsApp Make Money? | WhatsApp's Revenue Model      Last updated on October 3rd, 2019, WhatsApp was developed by Jan Koum and Brian Acton in early months of 2009 as a  status update application  (hence the name WhatsApp). It was further updated to Whatsapp 2.0 which transformed it into an Instant Messaging Application and started the real story. This Facebook-owned IM Application now provides service to more than 1 Billion users all over the world. But the question of how does Whatsapp make money has been in the minds of everyone ever since the beginning as WhatsApp proudly expresses its views against native advertisements and hasn\u2019t been charging its users for a long time. There surely are some big plans in the minds of developers (and Facebook) regarding its  revenue model . Table of Contents 1  How does WhatsApp Make Money? 1.1  Initial Revenue Generation Strategy 2  WhatsApp\u2019s Revenue Model (Facebook\u2019s Strategy) 2.1  WhatsApp Business 2.1.1  WhatsApp for Business API 2.2  Payments 2.3  Future Revenue Earning Strategies How does WhatsApp Make Money? WhatsApp doesn\u2019t earn revenue through advertisements. The founders hated advertisements and created this ad-free platform focusing just on great user experience and interface. They wanted to create an instant messaging platform for the users and\u00a0 not for the big companies to place ads . But at the same time, they had to pay their bills too. So they decided to come up with the paid version of the application where they charged an annual fee of $1 from the users. Initial Revenue Generation Strategy WhatsApp got its first round of funding of $250k by five ex-Yahoo! friends who were granted a co-founder status. The second and third round of funding was carried by\u00a0Sequoia Capital\u00a0which\u00a0 invested  a total amount of $60 million ($8 million in 2011 and $52 million in 2013) in WhatsApp Inc. This was the only source of income for the 50 staff members of WhatsApp. There wasn\u2019t much expenditure involved in running the application; the primary cost included sending a verification code to the users. This is why WhatsApp waved off the $1 subscription fees. The strategy of the founders was to  position  the brand as a synonym for an instant messaging application. This required them to capitalize on\u00a0 the network effect . Also Read: \u00a0  Dropshipping Business Model | How To Start A Dropshipping Business? This strategy of creating a network first and money after proved to be fruitful. After two long years of being wooed by Facebook\u2019s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook on February \u00a02014 \u00a0for $19 billion and all the  employees were put to Facebook payrolls  including Koum, who is now a part of Facebook\u2019s board. WhatsApp\u2019s Revenue Model (Facebook\u2019s Strategy) Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion and this opened many new doors for the application. Even the answer to \u2018How does WhatsApp make money?\u2019 changed after the acquisition Facebook not only uses WhatsApp as a  user data generation factory  but also has introduced some really strategic plans for WhatsApp\u2019s  revenue model . WhatsApp Business Facebook  had new plans for WhatsApp. The company launched  WhatsApp Business application  which lets users build their business profile and become a verified business on WhatsApp. The verified businesses can create their business profile along with certain important links to their website or facebook page, set up autoresponders, can even link their landline numbers with WhatsApp and can even integrate the WhatsApp for Business API with their product offering. The WhatsApp Business application is currently free to download and use for all businesses.  WhatsApp, however, makes money through WhatsApp for Business API . \u00a0 WhatsApp for Business API The company extended its  business\u00a0 functionality by launching its first revenue-earning product \u2013 WhatsApp Business API. Now, if you don\u2019t know what an API is and how it works, I\u2019d suggest you read our article on  API economy  first. WhatsApp API  lets the businesses integrate  WhatsApp for Business with their systems to reach out to customers through notifications and deal with their queries  automatically . To prevent ad spam, the company restricted the ability to send messages. Businesses can only send messages to people who have contacted them first, but the API will also help them programmatically send shipping confirmations, appointment reminders or event tickets to their customers. The company is already working successfully with clients like Booking.com, Wish, etc. Now, how does WhatsApp makes money through API? Also Read: \u00a0  How Does PayPal Make Money? Paypal Revenue Model Well, WhatsApp has developed a really strategic revenue generation plan for this product. It charges businesses for slow replies. This means that the businesses will be able to respond to messages from users  for free for up to 24 hours , but will have to pay a  fee for every message sent after 24 hours . The charge is fixed but is different for different countries. The businesses can also choose to reply manually through their own tool or apps like Zendesk, MessageBird or Twilio. Now, most of you must be thinking that the businesses can always use their WhatsApp for Business application to reply late to the customer inquiries. No matter how simple this solution sounds, this technique doesn\u2019t suite businesses dealing with millions of users (airline tickets, travel tickets, movie tickets, banks, etc.). Moreover, you cannot use API on any number already associated with WhatsApp. you need a fresh number to install the API. Payments WhatsApp has introduced a payments option (P2P payments) within the application for Indian users which will further boost its position in the market and will make it a preferred application for sending money (just like  Venmo  in the USA). This will further benefit WhatsApp business in the  company\u2019s biggest market . During the recent F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg also  disclosed his future plans  to release the WhatsApp payments feature to the rest of the world pretty soon. This will open gates to many more businesses relying on the platform the company capitalising on the  network effect . Future Revenue Earning Strategies It looks like copying Snapchat\u2019s features wasn\u2019t just to steal its consumer base, WhatsApp is now planning to copy its  revenue-earning strategies  as well. According to the  Economic Times , the company has plans to let businesses use the status feature, where text, photos, videos and animated GIFs can be shared for 24 hours, to advertise and promote their business. Go On, Tell Us What You Think! Did we miss something? \u00a0Come on! Tell us what you think of this article on  how does WhatsApp make money  in the comments section.    How useful was this post?  Click on a star to rate it!           Submit Rating  Average rating   \/ 5. Vote count:    How Does WhatsApp Make Money? WhatsApp\u2019s Revenue Model      4.5   \/   5     ( 164 )  As you found this post useful...  Follow us on social media!            We are sorry that this post was not useful for you!  Let us improve this post!  Tell us how we can improve this post?    Submit Feedback Thanks for your feedback!  About Aashish  Recent Posts     Aashish Pahwa  A marketer, a dreamer, a traveller and a philomath. I prefer stargazing to spending nights in clubs.                                   Brand Management \u2013 Definition, Functions, & Process     The 3 Big Causes Of Debt & Its Impact On Your Business     The History Of WhatsApp     Value Proposition Canvas \u2013 How To Fill It? (With Template)     WhatsApp Marketing \u2013 An Actionable Guide [2019]     Work Flexibility \u2013 What Is It & Why Is It Important?   You may also like...         0   How To Become An Entrepreneur?         0   How GoFundMe Works & Makes Money? | GoFundMe Business Model         0   What Is Gig Economy? \u2013 Your Guide To Gig Market           Rajesh negi   says:  August 10, 2017 at 5:34 pm  All bull shit revenue can be generated by charging from mobile manufactures and ISP Reply     Aashish Pahwa   says:  August 11, 2017 at 5:46 am  It\u2019s true that the revenue \u2018can be\u2019 generated, but it isn\u2019t at the moment. Reply     Luna Williams   says:  December 26, 2018 at 6:25 pm  You are Right Aashish, We can see Sponsor page and Post on Instagram and Facebook but In WhatsApp, we won\u2019t see anything like this. That\u2019s why reason why this question comes in our mind how did they make money Reply     Rahul   says:  April 1, 2019 at 8:16 pm  I think that whatsapp doesn\u2019t only pay for verification code but also it has to spend a amount of money on the storage too as it has to keep its users msgs until they are read by someone\u2026 Reply     Teja   says:  April 7, 2019 at 9:25 pm  I think WhatsApp,since it is owned by facebook uses user data and makes good use of it. Reply     Mohamed Ibrahim   says:  April 14, 2019 at 2:50 pm  You\u2019re right Teja!! They sell users data to big companies  For ex : if me and my friend talk about Nike shoes in watsapp about their new shoes in the market The positives and negatives of that shoes we talk is collected by watsapp and its sold to the NIKE company\u2026 Reply     MSG   says:  June 7, 2019 at 2:35 pm  There is nothing for free in this material world except, unwanted advice. We are bargain enthusiast and freebee specialists. Result: \u2018JUGGAD\u2019 culture get buzzed when they get something for nothing. Reply     Jaswanth Reddy   says:  August 18, 2019 at 12:39 am  good Reply   Next story   What is a Brand? What Are Brand Elements? 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So far we have served over 5M+ satisfied users and counting. What are you waiting for? Start your search now on this startup guide.   Navigate Submit Your Startup Startup Reviews The Comprehensive Guide To Generation Z What Is A Business Model? 24 Types Of Business Models A Beginner\u2019s Guide To Product Management Disclaimer We spend a lot of time researching and writing our articles and strive to provide accurate, up-to-date content. However, our research is meant to aid your own, and we are not acting as licensed professionals. We recommend that you use your own judgement and consult with your own consultant, lawyer, accountant, or other licensed professional for relevant business decisions. ","topic":"marketing, branding, company growth, growth marketing, make money, product growth, revenue model"},{"title":"Killing the Product Development Assembly Line","url":"https:\/\/hackernoon.com\/killing-the-product-development-assembly-line-2176bde2a4d9","body":"A PM\u2019s Guide to Empowering Design and Engineering \u201cYou will hammer those nails into these widgets, Bob, and you will learn to enjoy\u00a0it!\u201d The Before Several years ago, at one of the previous places where I worked, we had major issues with product designer turnover and engineer engagement. Even though the company paid generously and had a good reputation, our software engineers would sit in sprint planning meetings, saying little and bolting out the door as soon as the meeting ended. New designers lost interest within a matter of months, and were usually gone before the year was up. One of the main causes for this team-wide dissatisfaction was our  product development  process, which at the time looked like this: The Executive team made new feature requests; PMs helped prioritize these ideas and fleshed these out into requirements. We then sent requirements to the designers, who then cranked out designs. Exec-approved designs then went to the engineering team, who built the feature according to spec and tested it. Once everything was working correctly, we launched it to users. Rinse and repeat. This approach (let\u2019s call it the Product Development Assembly Line) created a few serious problems: Churn and delays during design and implementation : Because we didn\u2019t loop in Engineering and  Design  together from the beginning of the project, we wandered far down paths that were too technically challenging to implement. For example, designers would spend weeks building pixel-perfect Invision prototypes, complete with animations and hover states, only to discover that their solution required a refactoring of the entire underlying data model. When that happened, we had to go back to the drawing board in order to come up with a more feasible solution, wasting precious time and slowing down the overall project. Total lack of investment in the features we worked on : With the assembly line approach, team members had no impact on the preceding step in the process. Designers had limited input on the requirements, and engineers had little say on either the requirements or the designs. Almost nobody (including PMs) bothered to contribute new feature ideas because we had little faith they\u2019d make it into the roadmap. We treated our team members like pixel pushers and code monkeys, and unsurprisingly, they ended up not caring about the product. Uninformed feature suggestions : Without contributions from designers and engineers to the product roadmap, we often ended up working on the wrong set of features. At the time, our feature suggestions came largely from our Executive team as opposed to the people who spent the most time with our product and our users. Ensuing problems included delaying critical tech debt issues until our backend was on the verge of falling over, and failing to take user testing feedback into account when prioritizing features. Stunted professional development and personal growth : For many engineers and designers, progressing along their respective career tracks means participating more deeply in the product development process. For a senior engineer, this may include advocating for tech-driven initiatives like speeding up performance, while senior designers might want to emphasize recurring themes from user interviews. From this perspective, the Product Assembly Line does all team members a disservice; when everyone is just supposed to keep their heads down and stay in their lane, no one gets the experience they need to advance in their careers. Us 4 years ago The After Luckily, we eventually came to the realization that our product development approach was broken, and we overhauled it completely. Instead of ideas moving linearly from one functional role to the next, we adopted a much more collaborative approach. Let\u2019s call this process the Product Development Loop. Cross-functional squads The foundation of the Product Development Loop is the the  Cross-functional Squad , which consists of a product manager, engineers, designers, and even business stakeholders (depending on the circumstances). Squads have an overarching goal that may vary from quarter to quarter\u200a\u2014\u200aan example goal may be to increase monthly active users by 15%. All squad members play an active role in coming up with ideas for how to hit those goals, prioritizing what to work on first, and executing on high-impact ideas. (Best practices on this topic will be the subject of an entire standalone post, soon to come.) Feature Development Loops The process diagram for the Product Development Loop looks way more complicated than the Assembly Line, but it\u2019s actually fairly simple. Basically, it just involves circling back with the cross-functional squad and checking after every major step in the process. In practice, the steps break down as follows: Project Kickoffs : Begin each project with a group discussion around the user problems you\u2019re trying to solve and aligning on a high-level approach. Product Briefs & PRDs : PMs then flesh out more detailed user stories and requirements based off the approach, and then check in again with the squad. Wireframes, User Testing, & Technical Designs : From there, design and engineering work in parallel\u200a\u2014\u200adesigners build low-fidelity wireframes and conduct usability tests (if applicable), while engineers write a technical design document and solicit feedback from peers. Alignment : Cross-functional squad reviews wireframes, asks questions, and confirms that they satisfy the requirements without presenting a major technical challenge. High-Fidelity Designs & Implementation : Designers turn the wireframes into high-fidelity designs and present them in a developer-friendly format (think Invision Inspect or Zeplin), while engineers break down the technical design into discrete tasks and start working on the backend and preliminary frontend. Once high fidelity designs are complete, engineers can finish with styling and polish, collaborating closely with design to reduce iteration and churn. Pre-Launch Checks : Business stakeholders receive an end-to-end walkthrough of the feature, especially if their team has to use it post-launch (think a CMS or other internal tool). The cross-functional squad thoroughly dogfoods the feature, and everyone signs off on launch. Post-Launch Analysis : PMs work with data teams to make sure that reporting is in place and conducts analysis (both qualitative and quantitative) X days post-launch to measure impact. Debrief & Reflect : PM shares findings on impact with the rest of the squad and the team reflects on what areas of the feature are working well, and what areas can be improved. While this approach may not work for every team\u200a\u2014\u200asome product teams may not have any designers, for instance\u200a\u2014\u200athe general process and philosophy hold true for most organizations. At its core, the Product Development Loop seeks to give everyone on the team a seat at the table and a chance to make their voice heard. Epilogue A few months after we introduced the new process, employee turnover decreased and we noticed ourselves wasting less time on preventable churn in our work. In addition, we received a lot of great feedback from the team that they felt more ownership over the product as a whole. Us now (not an exaggeration) However, the Product Development Loop is not a perfect solution. There will always be times where an assumption turned out to be incorrect after we started working on a feature that required us to go back and change things. But as a whole, teams are a lot more forgiving of mistakes when they feel like they\u2019re appreciated and doing meaningful work. And ultimately as a PM, you\u2019re only as effective as your team, so the more you can empower them and make them feel invested in the outcome, the more successful you will be. \n \n Product Management \n Startup \n Software Development \n Agile \n Leadership ","topic":"branding, killing, marketing, company growth, product growth, growth marketing"},{"title":" HOW SMART LEADERS USE STORYTELLING","url":"http:\/\/templaradvisors.com\/blog\/how-smart-leaders-use-storytelling","body":"How smart leaders use storytellingA consultant friend told me a story about the power of storytelling during the financial crisis.He was working for one of the big financial services firms and as the economy worsened, so did the stock price. As anxiety rose in the office, there were two reactions: he noticed one manager lock himself in his office and refuse to take calls. He could be seen through the glass, slumped at his desk, head in his hands, a dark, desperate look on his face.Another manager, on the other hand, walked the floor. She told reassuring stories about how she\u2019d been through these things before, it was part of the business cycle and that they would all get through it.During lunch she pulled everyone together and said, \u201cWe\u2019ve had a great year and worked really hard. I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019ve really enjoyed it \u2026 up until now.\u201d (She used humour to help get her point across.)She continued, \u201cAs a team we now have two choices. We can let this get us down and give up. Or we could fight back. Let me tell you the story of my brave son, Ben \u2026\u201dShe then shared a powerful personal experience. Her son, Ben, had been diagnosed with a rare form of childhood cancer.Though he faced a challenging diagnosis it hadn\u2019t gotten him down. \u201cMy son is a fighter. Just like us.\u201d Everyone left the office that day a bit more reassured: If this kid could make it, so could they.We all love stories. They are a huge part of what makes us human. Think about the prehistoric cave drawings of Lascaux, for example. Anthropologists theorize that these paintings of large animals are a depiction of successful hunts. In other words, they\u2019re stories.Stories harness the same power you use when watching a great movie, writing a Facebook post about your holiday or telling your child a story before going to sleep. They enable us to link our experience with meaning for our own self and a sense of shared meaning with others.We all need to find out what comes next.THE NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCHRecent neuroscience research tells us more about how storytelling works. When you tell a story, a chemical called oxytocin is produced by the brain.It generates trust in the listener. (The same principle works when you show someone an unexpected kindness.)The chemical motivates cooperation with others, and does this by enhancing the sense of empathy, our ability to experience others\u2019 emotions.This is important for social creatures because it allows us to understand how others are likely to react to a situation, including those with whom we work.STORY CONSTRUCTIONInstinctively, from a young age we know how stories are constructed: There\u2019s a beginning, a middle and an end. The American writer Kurt Vonnegut, discussing one of the oldest stories in the book (\u201cboy gets girl\u201d), put it this way:Notice how the story starts on a bit of a high \u2014 boy meets girl and falls in love, usually \u201clove at first sight\u201d \u2014 but then \u2026 the girl meets another guy and the boy wonders if he\u2019ll be able to compete and keep her. But he does in the end, of course! But still we wonder how it\u2019s going to happen, and that wonder is tension.How are the obstacles going to be overcome? If the story you tell is able to create that tension then it is likely that attentive viewers\/listeners will come to share your emotions and continue mimicking your feelings and behaviours.This explains the feeling of dominance you have after James Bond saves the world, and your motivation to work out after watching the Spartans fight in the film 300.WHEN TO USE LEADERSHIP STORIESYou don\u2019t have to wait for a \u201cbig event\u201d to use a story. Less dramatic opportunities appear all the time in the workplace. As Jim Laughlin points out on his story blog, here are three common opportunities to share your leadership story with others:1. When taking on a new positionA new manager has a great opportunity to use a story to make a great first impression. Often the early period is filled with one-on-one meetings as well as multiple team meetings as the new manager does fact-finding and rapport-building while learning their new area of responsibility and establishing priorities.Look to include stories into these meetings. Help people understand who you are and what motivates you by telling a brief story about yourself or by sharing one of your formative experiences.2. When orienting a new reportThere is much to talk about with a new employee as we seek to clarify their goals and responsibilities as well as help them understand the resources, tools and processes they need to rely on to accomplish their work. But don\u2019t miss the opportunity to create a personal connection by sharing your story.The number one predictor of job satisfaction for an employee is their relationship with their immediate supervisor. Why not start out on a good, productive personal note that creates rapport and clarifies what\u2019s most important to you? And encourage their stories too.Find out about the unique person who has joined your team and what shaping experiences they have had. They will value your personal interest in them and be more engaged in their work as a result.3. When launching a projectBig projects and difficult undertakings often begin with great anxiety. Can we pull it off? Will we be successful? How are we going to accomplish this new thing?Smart leaders use stories to remind their group that teams can accomplish great things together, that they have been part of successes in the past under challenging circumstances, and that they can\u2019t wait to experience success again with this team.BUILDING THE STORYBut how do you do this in practicality \u2013 particularly if you are on the quieter side.Let\u2019s say that you, the team leader, need to get your team to \u201cwillingly\u201d work over the weekend to get out an important client project. You can use the following four steps to build your leadership story:Storytelling is ultimately about delivering important business messages. Decide what is the message you need to get across and the feeling you want the receivers of the communication to have. Get it clearly, succinctly in your head.How can your points be supported by stories or a narrative? For instance, you could get buy-in for a new initiative, by talking about individual clients you know and how this new initiative will positively affect them.Rehearse delivering the story. If you don\u2019t feel comfortable with storytelling, rehearse it.  Don\u2019t worry about being perfect the first time. That\u2019s why it\u2019s called rehearsal. Each time you repeat it, it will be smoother and help build your confidence.Memorise the opening. This will help you begin with confidence that will grow as you continue.As Andy Raskin, a leadership guru says, \u201cstorytelling isn\u2019t a fashion accessory that leaders can decide to wear or not. Very literally, leadership is storytelling and leaders are storytellers.\u201dNow try it out \u2014 whether it\u2019s at your weekly team meeting, a town hall or a crucial 1:1, stories can help you deliver key messages and demonstrate your leadership chops.","topic":"storytelling, people management, marketing, company growth, smart leaders, branding, product growth"},{"title":"Customer Development","url":"https:\/\/www.agilealliance.org\/glossary\/customer-development\/","body":"DefinitionCustomer development is a four-step framework, originally identified by Steve Blank, to discover and validate that you have identified a need(s) that customers have, built the right product to satisfy that customer\u2019s need(s), tested the correct methods for acquiring and converting customers, and deployed the right resources in the organization to meet the demand for the product. The framework provides a way to use a scientific approach to validate assumptions about your product and business.The four steps of the framework are:Customer discovery \u2013 Understand customers and their needs that you may be able to satisfy.Customer validation \u2013 You have a product that will satisfy your customer\u2019s needs.Company creation \u2013 You determine whether your product will satisfy all the customers needsCompany building \u2013 You can grow your organization in order to support the demand for your product.The Lean Startup approach combines customer development, which is helpful when you don\u2019t know the problem, and agile development, which is helpful when you don\u2019t know the solution. Both approaches provide ways to iteratively validate assumptions and learn through feedback.The first step of customer development, customer discovery, is the part of the framework that plays the biggest part in Lean Startup, and has also been shortened to \u201cdiscovery\u201d by some in the agile community. Customer discovery helps you determine whether you understand the need you are trying to satisfy and whether you are satisfying the right need.Customer discovery can be described as:1. Identify the need.You may not always immediately know the actual need you are trying to satisfy. In some cases you start with a solution (product idea), at which point you need to work backward to figure out the need you are really trying to satisfy.2. Hypothesize potential solutions.Once you have an understanding of the true need, hypothesize a potential solution. If you were initially handed a solution to deliver, you can include that as a candidate, but you may find that the need you\u2019re satisfying requires a completely different solution.3. Identify assumptions.Identify assumptions that are central to your hypothesized solution, including assumptions aboutBusiness environmentDependenciesMinimum requirements for a solutionChange management requiredA helpful way to identify assumptions is to ask, \u201cWhat must be true for this solution to be effective?\u201d4. Validate assumptions.Talk to customers and gather data to validate your assumptions and test your solution. There are many different ways you can go about validating assumptions.5. Start delivering.Once you feel you have validated a sufficient number of assumptions, start delivering a minimal, yet viable, solution and get frequent feedback from your customers on whether the solution meets their needs.6. Constantly reevaluate your solution.Constantly reevaluate your solution to make sure it is still worthwhile based on new information that comes to light. Regularly ask whether you should commit to, transform, or kill the solution.Also Known AsWhile not completely interchangeable as terms, close analogs to customer development at least with respect to intended outcome, are the ideas of discovery, and Lean UX.Expected BenefitsThe primary benefits to customer development is that it provides a team with an approach to take to validate assumptions, and it provides a way to go about determining whether the team is delivering the right thing.Common PitfallsThe most common pitfall related with customer development is that teams do not use it. Instead they fall in love with their product (the solution) without understanding which, if any, needs it satisfies. The result is a product without a market, or with a smaller market than anticipated and potential business issues.When ApplicableCustomer development was initially described in the context of technology startups, however the idea of building a shared understanding about customers and their needs prior to creating a product is applicable to all businesses and can even be applied to more established organizations that seek to introduce new products.The approach to validating assumptions described as customer development can also be used in internal product situations, however the team in those cases knows there is a problem to solve, they just may not have clearly stated it or fully assessed whether the problem is worth solving.In new product development settings, customer development is especially helpful to determine if there is a problem that needs to be solved and whether there is a product idea that can solve that problem in a valuable manner.Origins2005: Steve Blank introduces the concept of customer development in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. This book is based on actions he saw several start ups take to launch products.2011: Customer development sees a much broader audience when Eric Ries describes it as a key piece of Lean Startup (in conjunction with agile software development) in his book The Lean Startup","topic":"people management, marketing, company growth, branding, growth marketing, customer development"},{"title":"5 huge mistakes startups make when choosing board members","url":"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2013\/02\/10\/5-huge-mistakes-startups-make-when-choosing-board-members\/","body":"Has this happened to you? You needed to consult with a friend about an important matter, but when you finally met, you realized that he was hardly interested in your problem. Even worse, he half-heartedly gave you vague and remotely related advice. Could it get more frustrating?Similarly, a CEO may feel that the board of directors does not help the company. She may be right \u2014 board meetings could be a waste of time; board members may be unproductive or burdensome; in the worst cases, lack of board cooperation may prevent a successful exit. Kevin Rose got an offer to sell Digg for $60 million a few years ago, but his board rejected it. Digg was sold for mere $500,000 back in July 2012.Board ineffectiveness often stems from board nomination mistakes. Here are five big mistakes that are often made when choosing board members \u2014 and, maybe more importantly, tips on avoiding them.1. Wrong People on the BoardBoard members can be great resources who provide support, knowledge, and access to unique professional networks. Unfortunately, not all board members offer such value.For example, some board members prioritize the interests of the investors or founders whom they represent far above those of the startup.Scott Kurnik, an experienced entrepreneur and investor, advises not to nominate to the board anyone reporting to the CEO. Interestingly enough, he also suggests putting the founder\u2019s best friend on the board.Additionally, one should be careful of five types of dysfunctional board members as defined by Jack and Suzy Welch: The Do-Nothing; The White Flag (will do anything to avoid confrontation); The Cabalist (driven by personal agenda); The Meddler (dwells incessantly on details); and The Pontificator (only enjoys hearing himself speak).How to avoid this mistake:Carefully consider board nominees and ask for feedback from people who have worked with them.Appoint at least one independent director, loyal to the company only.2. Misalignment Regarding the Board\u2019s RoleBoards of directors have many fiduciary and legal responsibilities. Still, boards often have additional roles, correlated with the venture\u2019s stage.At early-stage startups, members should support the management (without micro-managing it). For example, they may help guide product decisions or provide access to recruits, customers, and investors. Ideally, board members could also mentor founders. More established startups, however, may need a different type of assistance related to scaling sales, engineering, logistics, and other functions that no longer fit into a garage.The above roles differ from those at publicly traded companies, where board members extensively monitor the firm\u2019s performance and confirm that the management does not put its interests before the company\u2019s (\u201cthe agent problem\u201d).Matt Blumberg, the CEO of Return Path, provides a useful summary of what makes awesome board members.How to avoid this mistake:Check whether the candidate has board experience with firms of similar stages and needs.Discuss with the candidate expectations of the board\u2019s role and responsibilities.3. A Homogeneous BoardIt is important not to form a board of too similar profiles (e.g., all are engineers or all have similar VC backgrounds) and to diversify your startup to confirm that the various required skills are in place.David Roth, the co-founder of AppFirst, described recently how the need to balance the board guided his startup\u2019s decisions.Aileen Lee of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has an interesting argument, that the next board member should be a woman, especially if women compose a significant portion of the venture\u2019s users.How to avoid this mistake:List the skills and experience needed from the board (Product design? Customer acquisition? Partnerships? User experience? A great rolodex?).Consider rejecting solid candidates whose skills and experience are common within the board in favor of candidates who possess the missing skills and attributes.4. Too Many Board MembersAn entrepreneur once complained, \u201cMy board keeps on growing.\u201d VC-backed startups often encounter this problem when a new round of financing entitles investors to board seats. Sometimes, \u201cobserver rights\u201d increase the number of attendants even more.At some point, a board\u2019s growth has diminishing returns. For a startup, a ten-person board will rarely be as engaged and helpful as a smaller one will. Further, the logistics (assembling everyone, arranging one-on-one time with the CEO before board meetings, etc.) become exponentially more complex. Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures thinks a board of five members is ideal. He recommends no more than 7 board members (two founders, one to three VCs, and one to two other industry professionals).How to avoid this mistake:Negotiate the number of future board seats entitled with investors in the shareholders agreement.Prefer nominees who will agree to leave the board when it grows or when their skill sets become less relevant.Consider building a board of advisors to access additional experience without increasing the size of the board of directors.5. Poor Organizational FitSome board relationship problems can harm the company severely. For example, board members who get involved in day-to-day decisions instead of supporting the management (or replacing the CEO, when necessary) can inhibit the CEO\u2019s ability to lead.Another problem occurs when board members accustomed to aggressive corporate cultures meet a CEO for whom \u201caggressive\u201d equals \u201crude.\u201dFurthermore, pushy board members can cause CEOs to commit to unrealistic plans. It\u2019s true that CEOs are responsible for their own decisions, but they can still be unduly pressured, especially when the board member is an investor (whom an inexperienced CEO may feel obligated to please).Last, some board members may be professionally adept, but they do not show interest in mentoring the management, nor can they successfully interact with other members, bond, or build team spirit.Steve Blank provides a painful example of poor relationships between one of his ex-students and the chair of his startup.How to avoid this mistake:Check each candidate\u2019s track record (tenure, reasons for leaving, relationships developed) as board member at other firms.Replace board members who negatively impact the board\u2019s internal relationships. This is not easy, but in extreme cases, it is necessary.","topic":"marketing, product growth, growth marketing, branding, choosing board members, company growth"},{"title":"Distribution Channel","url":"https:\/\/www.shopify.com\/encyclopedia\/distribution-channel","body":"What is a Distribution Channel?Distribution channel refers to the network used to get a product from the manufacturer or creator to the end user.When a distribution channel is \u201cdirect,\u201d the manufacturer is selling directly to the end user without a middleman. When the distribution channel is \u201cindirect,\u201d the product changes hands several times before reaching the ultimate consumer. Intermediaries between the manufacturer and the consumer in an indirect distribution channel might include:Wholesaler\/distributorDealerRetailerConsultantManufacturer\u2019s representativeCatalogThere might be just one intermediary; there might be many.Direct vs. Indirect Distribution ChannelsA company that sells directly to consumers through direct mail, a catalog of its own products, or its own ecommerce site represents a business that uses a direct distribution channel. For example, entrepreneurs who create and sell digital products that include workbooks, audio training, and online courses from their own websites are using a direct distribution channel. The digital products go directly from the creator to the customer.On a larger scale, the beverage alcohol industry uses a multi-tier, indirect distribution channel. Distillers and wineries sell to distributors, who sell to retailers, who sell to consumers. But while wineries must use indirect distribution channels to get their wines into retail outlets where consumers can buy them, many also sell directly to consumers onsite at wineries. Using both approaches lets wineries reach a mass market through an indirect distribution channel and a smaller market through direct distribution via on-site retail operations that they own.Distribution Channel ConsiderationsBusinesses with products should ask a number of questions before determining a distribution program. Those questions include:How does the end-user like to purchase these types of products? Does the consumer want to touch and examine the product or is it a product that the target audience likes to buy online?What, if any, are the local, regional, or national regulations regarding the product category\u2019s distribution channels?Does the customer need personalized service?Does the product itself need to be serviced?Does the product need to be installed?How is the product typically distributed and sold in your industry?The distribution channel will have an impact on pricing. With indirect distribution, a product that goes from the manufacturer to a distributor before it goes to a retail outlet needs to be priced at wholesale so that both the distributor and retailer can mark up the price. With a multi-tier distribution channel, it looks like this:The manufacturer\u2019s customer is the distributor.The distributor\u2019s customer is the retailer.The retailer\u2019s customer is the consumer.The manufacturer, distributor, and retailer all need to make money on that product.The direct-to-consumer price is often the same as the price of a product that has been marked up several times through indirect distribution. Not offering a \u201cdirect to you\u201d discount protects retailer relationships and offers the manufacturer or creator a higher profit on the product.","topic":"marketing, distribution channel, company growth, branding, growth marketing, people management"},{"title":"Design Systems Sprint 0: The Silver Bullet of Product Development.","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/@marcintreder\/design-systems-sprint-0-the-silver-bullet-of-product-development-8c0ed83bf00d","body":"Design Systems Sprint 0: The Silver Bullet of Product Development.  Design Systems Sprint 0: The Silver Bullet of Product Development. Marcin Treder Follow Apr 5, 2017     \u00b7       7    min read A brief introduction:  I\u2019m Marcin: a former UX manager and now co-founder and CEO at  UXPin \u2014 the full stack UX design platform . In this series of posts, I\u2019m reporting on UXPin\u2019s journey of creating our own design system. We\u2019re starting by discussing the fundamentals of design systems (why? what?) and then we\u2019re moving sprint, by sprint, through the entire process of building and maintaining a complete system. If you\u2019re wondering why or how to build a design system, this series is for you. Like with every project at UXPin, our design system journey started with a series of user interviews. Between July and August 2016, I interviewed 40+ enterprise designers, developers and product leaders about their most pressing challenges. I wanted a clearer picture of where design and development was heading. Nothing paints a clearer vision of tomorrow than the pains of today. While these generative interviews are meant to inform our product roadmap, they also improve our own product development process. That\u2019s an added benefit when you\u2019re working on a platform for design and development teams. We can learn a ton from our own customers. This time, the end result led us to an unexpected revelation. Every interview revealed a problem we\u2019d faced ourselves as we grew over the years. A problem so big and powerful that it can cripple product development at feisty startups, weigh down user experience at mid-size companies and completely prevent the scaling of design and development in enterprises. That problem is the lack of  design   consistency . The menace of every great product. Lack of design consistency: the biggest issue in product design? Design consistency was clearly a prevalent issue. And our interviewees were very vocal about what that meant for their teams and users: User confusion . Different patterns responsible for the same action confuse users, Slow design process.  Lack of reusable design assets slows down designers (\u2018everything is created from scratch\u2019) Slow development.  Low number of fully reusable components bogs down development. Difficult onboarding.  Introducing new designers and developers to an undocumented \u2018system\u2019 is impossibly difficult. We wanted to learn more. We also wanted to validate the findings. So a couple of weeks after our interviews, we ran a large-scale survey on the state of enterprise design. Of the  3,175  respondents, 59% pointed at \u2018improving UX consistency\u2019 as the challenge they currently face in the UX process: Results of UXPin State of the Enterprise UX Survey The verdict was unmistakeable: the lack of consistency is constantly on designers\u2019 minds \u2014 and rightfully so. Good design, by its nature, is systematic, yet growth of the team and of processes, unless meticulously managed, inevitably seem to lead to inconsistencies.  Karri Saarinen , Lead Designer on Airbnb\u2019s design system, probably  put it best : \u201cSoftware is often built by incredibly large teams of people. The challenge to create coherent experiences multiplies exponentially as more people are added to the mix. Over time, no matter how consistent or small a team is, different people will contribute new solutions and styles, causing experiences to diverge.\u201d The more inconsistent the user experience, the slower product development becomes and vice versa. In my past experience as a UX manager in the enterprise, teams unable to identify design standards eventually default to building everything from scratch. And so the situation worsens. It\u2019s a vicious cycle. Of course, users suffer the most. A Google Research  study from 2012  showed that users prefer simple interfaces, which seem familiar. They seek out experiences consistent with other experiences on the platform. We crave familiarity. Every new pattern responsible for the same action, or visual inconsistency, creates an unnecessary pause and an eventual burden. Consistency introduces feelings of safety and familiarity. Inconsistency creates chaos and confusion. Governing the chaos So how are these teams working to minimize inconsistencies? Participants of our study were very  consistent  in their answers: building and maintaining a design system. The enterprise segment (B2B products) of the design market seems to already be there: Results of UXPin State of the Enterprise UX Survey 69% of enterprises either have a design system or are currently working on one. Companies such as  Saleforce ,  IBM ,  Airbnb  and  Atlassian  lead the crowd with very mature implementations of living design systems. It certainly makes sense. At that size and scale, the problem of inconsistency is too painful and expensive to ignore. Deconstructing design systems So far in this short post I\u2019ve mentioned the term \u2018design system\u2019 over 20 times. So what exactly is a design system? After all, it\u2019s not a self-explanatory term. And it\u2019s easily confused with style guides or UI pattern libraries. Let\u2019s build our definition off why companies decide to build a design system in the first place. Design systems increase design consistency and code consistency (every reusable design pattern should have a corresponding reusable piece of code). With a design system, pieces of the system are reusable across multiple parts of a product and even across multiple products. By approaching product development with a LEGO-like process, we get more time back in our day to focus on bigger product problems. We minimize the redundant conversations and the one-off solutions. So if this is why companies build systems, than the following can serve as our working definition: A design system is the architectural core of a product(s) for ensuring design and code consistency and product development efficiency. It\u2019s a little bit easier to understand if you\u2019d take a look at the typical structure of a design system. What is a typical structure? To find out, we analyzed 39 publicly available design systems. Result of UXPin research Design systems are quite consistent in structure. We definitely see a lot of similarities across different systems. Typically, we have a library of interface patterns with corresponding code references, a definition of high level styling or structural elements (grid, colors, typography) and a set of design principles. If you\u2019d like to further structurize it, here\u2019s something I found really useful in explaining design systems to others: The design system is truly a gold standard \u2014 from the general building blocks of every piece of design, through the UI patterns, and building up the high-level rules defining the future of the product. A design system isn\u2019t set in stone however. It should evolve with the product and always reflect the truth. Building and maintaining a design system is definitely a big challenge, but one worth facing. After all, it can break us out of the vicious cycle of unscalable design. To me, it sounded like a dream \u2014 one that we really needed to realize at UXPin. Design consistency at UXPin: why we really needed a design system Our own research hit us right in the face. We\u2019ve tried to fight inconsistency in our interface with a set of design principles and rudimentary libraries, but we\u2019d never moved into a full design system. While I wouldn\u2019t call our experience fractured or completely inconsistent, we definitely had quirks which needed standardizing. Take these primary buttons: They\u2019re visually different, yet hierarchically identical. Both buttons are responsible for the most important action in a given context. It might seem like a small thing, but great experiences are built out of small things. After doing some spot-checks of our own product and marking up the inconsistencies, we decided to do a complete audit as part of building out our design system. We needed to build a scaffolding for future product and team growth. Interestingly enough, a certain  modular  environment already existed in UXPin. Our development team moved to React.js over a year ago and the web development team started to build and maintain their Less files in a highly structured and modular way. UXPin Stylesheets Repository shows a good level of modularity Meanwhile, design needed to play some catch up. Together with development, we\u2019d need to expand this approach for both disciplines to scale in harmony. The journey ahead By the time you\u2019re reading these words, our Design Operations team (led by yours truly) is already multiple sprints ahead. It gives me time to reflect on what we\u2019ve accomplished, so I can share all the hard lessons with you. Parts of the system already exist, parts are gradually being worked on. Here\u2019s our current roadmap: In the next post, I\u2019ll share how we created an inventory of UXPin design and how that helped create our design system. Stay tuned! Are you looking for all the articles in this series? Here they are: Design Systems Sprint 0: The Silver Bullet of Product Development. Design Systems Sprint 1: The Interface Inventory Design System Sprint 2: One Color Palette to Rule them All Design System Sprint 3: Managing the Basics Design System Sprint 4: Design Principles Design System Sprint 5: Managing Typography Design System Sprint 6: The Fastest Icons on Earth And you\u2019re into more in-depth thoughts on Design Systems: The Minimum Viable Design System Design Systems are a language. \n ","topic":"company growth, product growth, marketing, silver bullet, branding, growth marketing"},{"title":"Why Company Culture Is More Important Than Ever","url":"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/article\/247522","body":"Company culture is more important than ever. It\u2019s not that company culture was ever unimportant, but it\u2019s quickly proving to be a \u201cmust-have\u201d rather than a \u201cnice-to-have.\u201d For the first time in history,\u00a0 millennials have become the largest generational cohort in the U.S. workforce ,\u00a0with almost 54 million making up the labor force.\u00a0Millennials aren\u2019t from outer space, but they did grow up in a different setting from previous generations, which contributes to the shifting priorities that we\u2019re seeing in the workforce today. Consider my grandfather, who presented me a gold watch that signified his 25 years of service at the same company. His generation and my parents\u2019 generation had to navigate the labor force in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II. Therefore, I, along with the majority of my peers, was told that job security was the most important element when considering a career. Related:\u00a0 Entrepreneur and CultureIQ Are Searching for the Top Company Cultures Millennials, by contrast, grew up in a time of financial prosperity and rapid technological advancements. A career means much more than a stable place to work for 25 years and employees are looking at company values, meaning, community, and culture. This leads us to today\u2019s workplace landscape, in which HR leaders consider culture and engagement their\u00a0 number-one challenge,\u00a0 according to a\u00a0 recent study by Deloitte University Press . It\u2019s clear that in order to attract, retain and engage the modern workforce, we need to focus on company culture. It\u2019s a tall order, and we should start by looking at what employees (millennials and non-millennials alike) value in their job. Here are three priorities of today\u2019s workforce to consider when developing your company culture: Flexibility on the job According to a study by PWC,\u00a0 employees of all generations are prioritizing flexibility in their jobs , whether that be in the form of scheduling, location or even office setup. In fact, for many employees, flexibility in a job is more important than compensation and promotion. As a father of two, I work from home from time to time so that I can attend school plays and soccer games. Providing this flexibility in my company allows me to be there for my family while running a growing business. My employees know they can do the same to achieve that balance in their life. Luckily, we live in an age of technology innovations, and there are plenty of solutions that help employees collaborate, learn and be productive, regardless of their hours or location. Related:\u00a0 The 10 Company Culture Metrics You Should Be Tracking Right Now Professional development Like flexibility,\u00a0 professional development is even more important \u00a0to millennials than financial rewards when selecting an employer. This means that you should think about the potential for advancement within your company and also how you are presenting job opportunities to prospective employees. There are many interesting professional development initiatives you can explore to make sure employees are learning and developing on the job, like connecting employees to MOOCs (massive open online courses), building out a mentorship program or promoting passion projects. Be good, do good Prospective and current employees care about your reputation as a company. This reputation encompasses your employer brand and also your company\u2019s social responsibility efforts, such as corporate giving, volunteerism and sustainability. What your company does and says needs to align with what employees believe. A powerful example of making this part of your company culture is Whole Foods, who incorporates social responsibility as a core value:\u00a0 \u201cWe serve and support our local and global communities .\u201d However, it doesn\u2019t need to be that drastic, and there are plenty of smaller things you can do as a company. For example, at my company\u00a0 CultureIQ , we volunteered together as one of our monthly culture events. Some companies even allocate a designated amount of time for off-site volunteer activities. While millennials have brought these topics to the forefront of our minds, your company culture should be designed for and built by all employees. These priorities give you a place to start, but the strongest company cultures develop from input and feedback from employees. Related:\u00a0 Entrepreneurs Need to Focus on Culture, Not Perks ","topic":"product growth, company growth, important, growth marketing, marketing, branding, company culture"},{"title":"What Is Jobs-to-be-Done?","url":"https:\/\/jobs-to-be-done.com\/what-is-jobs-to-be-done-fea59c8e39eb","body":"What Is Jobs-to-be-Done? -  What is Jobs-to-be-Done Theory? What is a job-to-be-done? A desired outcome? It\u2019s all explained in this article. Tony Ulwick Follow Feb 28, 2017     \u00b7     JOBS-TO-BE-DONE is best defined as a perspective \u2014  a lens through which you can observe markets, customers, needs, competitors, and customer segments differently, and by doing so, make innovation far more predictable and profitable. When Einstein engaged in his thought experiments, he pictured himself riding on a beam of light and traveling through the universe. From this perspective he was able to view the universe through a new lens, enabling him to see things in a different and meaningful way and to develop a theory that others could not. Similarly,  when you look at marketing and innovation through a  Jobs-to-be-Done lens , everything looks different : The unit of analysis is no longer the customer or the product, it\u2019s the core functional \u201cjob\u201d the customer is trying to get done. Markets aren\u2019t defined around products, they are defined as groups of people trying to get a job done. Customers aren\u2019t buyers, they are job executors. Needs aren\u2019t vague, latent and unknowable, they are the metrics customers use to measure success when getting a job done. Competitors aren\u2019t companies that make products like yours, they are any solution being used to get the job done. Customer segments aren\u2019t based on demographics or psychographics, they are based on how customers struggle differently to get a job done. When a company thinks about a market from this perspective, it is much more likely to create and deliver extraordinary products and services. Why? While products come and go, the customer\u2019s job-to-be-done is stable over time. With a focus on a stable unit of analysis, it becomes possible to define customer needs that are stable over time as well, giving companies unique, robust targets for value creation.  In short, jobs-to-be-done offers a new framework and lens through which a company can take its understanding of customer needs to the next level \u2014 and bring predictability to innovation. The first documented success achieved by a company applying this thinking was detailed in the 2002 Harvard Business Review article:  Turn Customer Input into Innovation . The article describes how in 1993 Cordis Corporation used this thinking to increase its angioplasty balloon market share from 1 percent to over 20 percent. Jobs-to-be-Done is best defined as a perspective \u2014 a lens through which customer needs can be effectively defined and communicated, making marketing more effective and innovation far more predictable. When looking at marketing and innovation through a jobs-to-be-done lens, a  theory  begins to emerge. JOBS-TO-BE-DONE THEORY is comprised of a group of principles or tenets that form a foundation for making marketing more effective and innovation more predictable by focusing on the customer\u2019s job-to-be-done. The theory is based on the notion that people buy products and services to get a \u201cjob\u201d done.  Jobs Theory goes on to say that by understanding in detail what that \u201cjob\u201d entails, companies are far more likely to create and market solutions that will win in the marketplace. The core tenets of  Jobs-to-be-Done Theory  are summarized as follows: People buy products and services to get a \u201cjob\u201d done. Jobs are functional, with emotional and social components. A Job-to-be-Done is stable over time. A Job-to-be-Done is solution agnostic. Success comes from making the \u201cjob\u201d, rather than the product or the customer, the unit of analysis. A deep understanding of the customer\u2019s \u201cjob\u201d makes marketing more effective and innovation far more predictable. People want products and services that wil help them get a job done better and\/or more cheaply People seek out products and services that enable them to get the entire job done on a single platform Customer needs, when tied to the job-to-be-done, make innovation predictable To learn more about these tenets, see the Medium article,  The Core Tenets of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory . For a more comprehensive understanding of the theory and its evolution, see  What Customers Want  (2005), the first book written on this subject. In order to study a job-to-be-done, the job must be correctly defined: A JOB-TO-BE-DONE is a statement that describes, with precision, what a group of people are trying to achieve or accomplish in a given situation. A job-to-be-done could be a task that people are trying to accomplish, a goal or objective they are trying to achieve, a problem they are trying to resolve, something they are trying to avoid, or anything else they are trying to accomplish. A job statement is written as [verb] + [object of the verb] + [contextual clarifier] (optionally). For example, pass on life lessons to children, repair a torn rotator cuff and prevent a shooter from entering a school, are all jobs-to-be-done. To gain a deep understanding of the customer\u2019s job-to-be-done, a company must be able to discover the customer\u2019s \u201cneeds\u201d associated with getting that job done. When looking at a market through a jobs-to-be-done lens, customer needs can be discovered by studying the customer\u2019s core functional job  as a process . Tactically, the core functional job can be broken down into steps using what we call a job map as described in the 2008 Harvard Business Review article,  The Customer-Centered Innovation Map . With the job map in place, companies can then seek to discover the metrics customers use to measure success as they try to get each step in the job done.  These metrics are the perfect way to think about and define the customer\u2019s \u201cneeds.\u201d  These need statements, which we call \u201cdesired outcomes,\u201d bring predictability to innovation. A DESIRED OUTCOME STATEMENT is a specially constructed need statement that has a unique set of characteristics: desired outcomes are devoid of solutions, stable over time, measureable, controllable, structured for reliable prioritization in a quantitative customer survey, and are   tied to the underlying process (or job) the customer is trying to get done  (see the Medium article,  Inventing the Perfect Customer Need Statement  and the 2008 MIT Sloan article,  Giving Customers a Fair Hearing ). Since the customer\u2019s job-to-be-done is stable over time, the customer\u2019s needs, when defined as desired outcome statements, are also stable over time. (See the Medium article,  Define Customer Needs As Constants ). With a stable set of \u201cneeds\u201d in hand, a company is able to: Quantify which needs are underserved and overserved. Discover segments of customers with different unmet needs. Use the metrics as a baseline against which they can test product ideas and concepts  before they are developed . Knowing which product or service concept will get the job done best early in the product planning stages ( prior to development),  is the key to predictable and profitable innovation. This case study  shows how Bosch applied Jobs Theory to  product innovation . This case study  shows how Arm & Hammer applied Jobs Theory to  marketing innovation . This case study  shows how AMO applied Jobs Theory to  service innovation . Jobs-to-be-Done Theory is applicable along many fronts To explain how to put Jobs-to-be-Done Theory into practice, let\u2019s start by asking, \u201cWho are the potential users of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory and what are the jobs they are trying to get done?\u201d Four jobs are of particular interest: (1) market selection (deciding what markets to enter), (2) product planning (deciding what products to create), (3) product development (deciding how to best design a product), and (4) buying process (deciding how to improve the customer\u2019s buying process). 1. Market Selection: deciding what markets to enter.  First, Jobs-to-be-Done Theory is being embraced by entrepreneurs in startups and managers in corporations and corporate venturing units who are trying to discover, evaluate and select markets that are attractive for them to enter\/pursue. When looking through a jobs-to-be-done lens, a market is defined as a group of people (job executors) and the job they are trying to get done. As entrepreneurs and managers engage in the market discovery and selection process, they start by trying to discover a number of unique jobs that job executors are struggling to get done. Their goal is to discover and define the jobs at a level of abstraction that makes the job a uniquely attractive target. To learn how to define jobs at the right level of abstraction, see  JOBS TO BE DONE: Theory to Practice  (Ulwick, 2016). Once a number of markets are identified, the next step in the market selection process is to determine which is the most attractive to pursue. A job, for example, that is executed by many people, frequently, and is highly underserved would be a more attractive target than one that is executed by fewer people, infrequently and is already appropriately served. Strategyn\u2019s clients use a market evaluation tool that includes 42 criteria to help make the market selection decision (see Figure 2). This worksheet can be downloaded from  Strategyn\u2019s home page . Figure 2: Jobs-to-be-Done Market Evaluation and Selection Template 2. Product Planning: deciding what products to create.  Second, Jobs-to-be-Done Theory has been embraced by product, marketing and innovation managers in established companies who are trying to grow and expand their core markets. Their goals are to typically (i) create a value proposition that resonates with customers, (ii) improve existing products, and (iii) conceptualize altogether new products that will address core or adjacent market opportunities. These activities, executed by the product planner, comprise the innovation process. To apply Jobs-to-be-Done Theory to assist in marketing and innovation, Strategyn developed  Outcome-Driven Innovation\u00ae (ODI).  The  innovation process  originated in 1991 and has been simplified and improved through hundreds of applications within Fortune 500 companies since. Strategyn introduced ODI to Clayton Christensen in 1999. Six successes arising from the process are described in detail in a book recently released,  JOBS TO BE DONE: Theory to Practice  (Ulwick, 2016). The ODI process is comprised of the following 6 steps (Figure 3): Figure 3: The Outcome-Driven Innovation Process While the first step overlaps a step in the market selection process (market discovery and definition) the remaining steps in the process are different and so are the tools required to execute them. To win at innovation a company must know what a customer need is, what the customer\u2019s needs are, which are unmet and if segments of customers exist with unique sets of unmet needs. With the target well defined, creating a winning solution becomes far more likely. ODI reveals the required insights using unconventional qualitative and quantitative market research techniques. The process uniquely employs predictive data and a sophisticated market segmentation methodology that helps companies discover and prioritize hidden market opportunities. Strategyn has developed a comprehensive set of tools to help its clients execute each step in the process. Additional information on the ODI  innovation process  can be found here. 3. Product Development: deciding how to best design a product.  The third application involves developers and UI and UX designers who are trying to develop products that have been approved for development (their job-to-be-done). These developers may work in lean or agile environments. Their goal is to ensure that the products they create and the code they write not only delivers on the product specifications, but also guarantees a positive user experience. Those trying to apply Jobs-to-be-Done Theory to the product development process typically have the benefit of knowing what product they are trying to create: the product is already conceptualized and defined as part of the innovation process. What developers and UI and UX designers struggle with are design issues and understanding the customer\u2019s needs that relate to what we call consumption chain jobs, such as learning how to use and interfacing with the product (see Figure 4). Figure 4: Consumption Chain Jobs and Outcomes As an extension of the ODI process, our clients apply steps 2 and 3 of the ODI process (outcome gathering and prioritization) to better understand the outcomes of users as they learn how to use, interface with the product and engage in the remaining consumption chain jobs that must be considered in the design phase. We have collected outcomes in all consumption chain jobs multiple times over the years. If a company uses ODI for the innovation process, developers will have the prioritized outcomes associated with the core functional job. These inputs are needed for development\/design as well. These insights can then be communicated to developers or UX and UI designers in the following Job\/Outcome Story format: Figure 1: The Job\/Outcome Story for Developers\/Designers If a developer does not have access to the customer outcomes associated with the core functional job-to-be-done, then they tend to want to execute the innovation process in conjunction with the development process \u2014 learning more about the required product function as they create the product. Combining the development process with the innovation process creates confusion when using and implementing Jobs-to-be-Done Theory. A product concept should be well defined and proven to win in the marketplace  before  it is approved for development. The ODI process makes this possible. 4. Buying Process: deciding how to improve the customer\u2019s buying process.  The forth application of the theory involves marketing team members who are trying to understand the process that customer\u2019s go through when buying a product so they can enhance the customer\u2019s buying experience. Confusion over Jobs-to-be-Done theory results from thinking that understanding the customer purchase decision will somehow inform the innovation and development processes as well, but it does not. The purchase \u201cprocess\u201d is an altogether unique job the customer is trying to get done, and is best studied as a separate job. We have studied the purchase \u201cjob\u201d on a number of occasions over the years, most recently with Harte Hanks where we studied customers of retailers who were engaged in the purchase process. The results of that work can be seen in this article:  Can Bricks and Mortar Compete With On-Line Retailing . The article shows that the purchase process involves the customer working to understand the problem they are trying to solve and then researching and evaluating possible solutions, selecting the best solution, deciding where to buy it, and finally, engaging in the physical transaction required to acquire the product. Gaining customer insights across this job at the desired outcome level can lead to improvements in the customer\u2019s purchase experience. While each of these four jobs is clearly different, they can all benefit from Jobs-to-be-Done Theory. It\u2019s just a matter of picking the right tool for the job. You can obtain additional resources at  Strategyn . Learn more:  download a FREE PDF  version of my latest  Jobs-To-Be-Done book ,  JOBS TO BE DONE: Theory to Practice . Download a FREE PDF Jobs-to-be-Done + Outcome-Driven Innovation Jobs-to-be-Done.com, by Tony Ulwick, is a place where people can come to (i) learn how to put Jobs-to-be-Done Theory (JTBD) into practice with proven frameworks and templates, and (ii) read case studies and examples of success using the Outcome-Driven Innovation process. Follow 643  Jobs To Be Done Innovation Marketing Startup Framework 643 claps Written by Tony Ulwick Follow Founder of the innovation consulting firm Strategyn, pioneer of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory, creator of Outcome-Driven Innovation. \n ","topic":"growth marketing, branding, marketing, company growth, product growth"},{"title":" User Research vs Market Research","url":"https:\/\/community.uservoice.com\/blog\/user-research-vs-market-research\/","body":"Most great products don\u2019t happen on accident. They\u2019re the result of creativity, innovative thinking, and in the majority of cases, a lot of research. Two critical pieces of the research puzzle include market research and user research, each with its own distinctive purpose.Product managers need both, but at different points and for different purposes over a product\u2019s development and lifecycle. In this article we\u2019ll address the differences between user research and market research and explain when you would want to use each.What is market research?Market research is a way for businesses to get a realistic snapshot of a potential market. In its most basic form, it provides a broad, high-level understanding of a market or industry in order to help determine a product\u2019s potential.Market research seeks to answer questions like:Does a market exist for this product?Who are our target customers and what challenges do they have?How large is the total addressable market (TAM)?What does the competitive landscape look like in the space?Conducting careful, detailed research early on can save organizations a lot of headaches by identifying risks before too much is invested in a product. Some of these risks can be overcome through smart design, while others can be part of the decision to shelve an idea. That said, market research can also identify new opportunities and real gaps waiting to be filled.When to conduct market researchGenerally, market research is used in the earliest stages of a product\u2019s development to verify whether there is sufficient potential demand. But that\u2019s not the only time it makes sense to use market research.Market research can help with any of the following:When confirming potential demand for s product during new product developmentWhen seeking to improve an existing product to strengthen competitive differentiation and\/or increase market shareWhen expanding an existing product\u2019s reach into new marketsMarket research is absolutely essential for new products. Otherwise, the product is set up for failure. A product idea has to be researched before anyone will invest in it. There has to be an unanswered need out there for it. This is why the industry and competition review side of market research is so important.Market research can also find new customers for redesigned products. Or the same product can be expanded into other markets if market research bears this out.Market research methodsThe vast majority of market research focuses on collecting quantitative insight, but some market research methods also gather qualitative data.Common market research methods include:Literature reviews, often with trade and industry journals.Large-scale surveysInterviews with experts in the industry.Market research isn\u2019t so much about asking people questions as it\u2019s about seeking information to justify investing in or passing up on a product\u2019s development. For most companies, it\u2019s about measuring the potential to make money.What is user research?User research often overlaps with market research, particularly for products that compete with others already on the market or which are undergoing an upgrade or redesign. But, the two are not the same. User research generally looks at narrower populations than those in market research and focuses on learning about user behaviors. User research can be broadly defined as a way to gain insights into user behaviors, needs, and motivations.User research can help answer questions like:How are potential users currently solving the problem we want to solve?How well do those solutions work for them?How are current users using the product?What do users wish they could do differently with the product?How could we change the product to make users happier?When to conduct user researchUser research is typically only necessary after market research has determined \u201cyes there is a market out there.\u201d User research is useful at various stages in a product\u2019s development cycle.Here are a few situations where you\u2019d want to conduct user research:When deciding what to build nextWhen validating a problem and possible solutionDuring the design process to make sure potential designs are intuitiveProduct managers\u2019 time is better spent in user research than market research. They know how the product is intended to be used and should be open to new information that can lead to improvements. They often identify with users, or at least understand their motivations, which helps them notice and capture more subtle clues about how a product is used and how it can be enhanced.User research methodsThere are countless different user research methods out there. User research usually focuses on gathering qualitative information.User research methods commonly include:Usability testsFocus groups and customer interviewsUser surveysAnalyzing user feedback elsewhere online (i.e. in forums, on social media, on review sites)Face to face user research is often cited as the \u201cgold standard\u201d in this type of research. But it is not always easy to arrange a face to face meeting with users and it can get expensive if there\u2019s a lot of travel involved. For that reason, Jakob Nielsen suggests using other methods to \u201capproximate\u201d focus groups, such as email surveys and assessing comments on websites and in newsgroups. He doesn\u2019t necessarily suggest replacing focus groups, but perhaps balancing them against these less expensive methodsCombining user research and market researchBoth market and user research should be ongoing throughout a product\u2019s lifecycle, Elisabeth Mischel writes in MediaPost.Mischel, who is vice president of the digital marketing platform Insights, urges product development teams to keep a close eye on what the competition is doing. She also urges them to look at new products that come to market and how customers react to them, a kind of distance version of user research. New products from competitors should be evaluated to see advantages that can be addressed in upcoming product redesigns.In truth, market and user research overlap a lot as a product ages on the market. Christian Rohrer, writing about user research methods for the Nielsen Norman Group blog, offers a useful model that demonstrates different approaches to user research that also serves as a way to understand where it differs and overlaps with market research. The further \u201cout\u201d you take user research and look at qualitative (why and how to fix) and quantitative (how many and how much) data, the closer you get to market research. Bring it in closer, and there\u2019s more of a mix of user research.Case Study: Combining user and market research to expand into new marketsLet\u2019s take a look at a real-life example of these two types of research working together for one market in particular.A decade ago, the market for gluten-free food was pretty sparse; limited to people with Celiac disease, who are unable to process gluten. Gluten-free diets typically bar products that also have high carbohydrate content and food manufacturers spotted this (no doubt through market research) as another entryway into the very lucrative diet food market.They were right: sales for gluten-free foods rose 34% each year from 2009 \u2013 2014, ending close to the $1 billion mark, according to market research from the firm Packaged Facts and as reported in Food Navigator. By 2019, sales for the baked goods segment of the gluten free market alone were well over $2 billion. It\u2019s now estimated that by 2025, annual sales of gluten free products will exceed $9 billion.How did food manufacturers grow this market? They conducted customer research (user research) to find out what people new to the gluten-free diet missed most.This is the kind of user research that fine-tunes new markets and products.User and Market Research: Better togetherLet\u2019s review. While there are some similarities between user research and market research, it\u2019s important to understand how the two differ.Market research provides a scope, a \u201cbig picture\u201d of who will use a product. It can also help identify additional customer segments and markets.User research helps product managers and their teams see where a product\u2019s appeal can be strengthened. For new products, it\u2019s most useful in the prototype stage and in the after-market stage.Think about the people pitching their products on Shark Tank. Those who\u2019ve conducted both market and user research thoroughly are the ones who get offers. Insufficient market research? You\u2019re dead to Mr. Wonderful and probably Mark Cuban. User research lacking? You\u2019ve lost Mark Herjavec and Barbara Corcoran. Damond John and Lori Greiner rarely jump in alone.Join over 6,000 poeple who receive bi-weekly product feedback tips.\n ","topic":"people management, market research, branding, user research, growth marketing, marketing, company growth"},{"title":" What is Jobs to be Done (JTBD)?","url":"https:\/\/jtbd.info\/2-what-is-jobs-to-be-done-jtbd-796b82081cca","body":"What is Jobs to be Done (JTBD)? - Jobs to be Done Sign in Get started Concepts FAQ Finding Jobs Designing for Jobs Examples Resources What is Jobs to be Done (JTBD)? Alan Klement Follow Oct 9, 2016     \u00b7       12    min read The designers at intercom (intercom.com) use this illustration to show what is, and isn\u2019t, important to customers. Upgrade your user, not your product. Don\u2019t build better cameras \u2014 build better photographers. \u2014 Kathy Sierra Ten thousand years ago, we were hunter gatherers and used our feet to roam the earth. Today, we have fast food restaurants and autonomous cars. Why did we change? Because we have an intrinsic desire to evolve ourselves. We do this by remaking and adapting to the world around us. The desire to evolve is in our DNA. It\u2019s what makes us human. Moreover, we do this evolution with purpose. We purposefully use the arts to evolve ourselves emotionally; the sciences to evolve ourselves intellectually; and engineering to evolve how we interact with the world. Purposeful evolution is why we are different from animals: A bear trying to catch food by the river may think,  I wish fishing could be made better, faster, or easier . But only a human will think,  Fishing is no good. If I could transform that lagoon over there into a place where I can breed fish, then I\u2019d never have to go fishing again . The bear thinks only about  what is . Today, it may come up with a better, faster, or easier way to fish. But tomorrow, it is still a bear that fishes. The human, on the other hand, thinks about  what ought to be . Today, she fishes, but tomorrow that can change. If she could figure out a way to no longer fish, then she can focus on improving herself in other ways \u2014 like building a hut so she could move out of that dank cave. The bear does not think about evolving itself and its world. It never has a Job to be Done. The human, on the other hand, does think about evolving herself. And every time she begins the process of evolving herself, she has a Job to be Done. Improve your life-situation; become more than you are Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, perfectly encapsulates a JTBD when he said: In the factory we make cosmetics; in the drugstore we sell hope. With these words, Revson marks the difference between what customers buy, and why they buy it. This thinking was also carried over into Revlon\u2019s advertising. In 1952, Revlon\u2019s breakout advertising campaign was Fire and Ice (figure 4). The advertising campaign makes it clear: Revlon isn\u2019t selling a product, it\u2019s selling a \u201cnew me.\u201d In fact, there\u2019s barely any mention of any product. One whole page is a check list of provocative questions; the other features a picture of model Dorian Leigh. Only on further investigation do you notice the lipstick and nail polish at the bottom of the page. Figure 4. What is being sold here \u2014 lipstick and nail polish or a \u201cnew me\u201d? A Job to be Done is neither found nor spontaneously created. Rather, it is designed. The checklist of provocative questions such as, \u201cHave you ever wanted to wear an ankle bracelet?\u201d exists to help customers imagine (i.e., design) what new me will be created when they buy Revlon\u2019s products. Then there\u2019s the picture of Dorian Leigh. Upon seeing that, consumers continue to design a new version of myself in my mind. For some, the new me looks like her. For others, the new me is with her. Whatever the case, if this new me is something I want, I begin desiring it. In other words, I have a Job to be Done. Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. \u2014 Herbert A. Simon A Job to be Done defined Jobs to be Done is a theory of consumer action. It describes  the mechanisms  that cause a consumer to adopt an innovation. The theory states that markets grow, evolve, and renew whenever customers have a Job to be Done, and then buy a product to complete it (get the Job Done). This makes a Job to be Done a process: it starts, it runs, and it ends. The key difference, however, is that a JTBD describes how a customer changes or wishes to change. With this in mind, we define a JTBD as follows: A Job to be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to change her existing life-situation into a preferred one, but cannot because there are constraints that stop her. Products enable customers to get a Job Done FIGURE 6. SAMUEL HULICK USES THIS ILLUSTRATION TO SHOW HOW CUSTOMERS USE PRODUCTS TO DESIGN A \u201cNEW ME\u201d. Humans are limited in our abilities. We can\u2019t create a new me by ourselves. A snap of our fingers cannot create a world where a morning commute is an enjoyable experience. Realizing such a change requires innovation on the part of oneself or someone else. Progress can only happen when we attach and integrate new ideas and new products into our lives. An example of constructing (i.e., designing) a Job to be Done comes from a research project I led to understand what Job or Jobs customers were hoping to get Done (i.e., what new me customers were hoping to create) with a project management software. Here is a synopsis of one interview. Notice how the hero of our story comes to realize a new me is possible, and how he must attach a product to himself to attain that new me. Andreas began a business around medical tourism. Over time, he grew his business to include five employees. One day, he was out with a friend of his, Jamie, at a coffee shop. During their conversation, Jamie mentioned a product called Basecamp to Andreas. Andreas had never heard of it. He was curious to learn more. Jamie explained to Andreas that Basecamp was a project management tool that helped small businesses become better at organizing themselves. Andreas was surprised by this. He knew about complicated project management products like Microsoft Project, but those were for big companies only, not smaller ones like his. Currently, Andreas was using Google Sheets, Google Docs, and e-mail to run his company. He just assumed that, well, that\u2019s how companies his size operated. Jamie further explained that Basecamp was made specifically to help companies his size. As Jamie spoke, Andreas\u2019s mind began racing:  Basecamp could help my company stay organized as it adds more customers and employees . Up until this point, he had just assumed that his company had hit its growth limit. Andreas and Jamie enjoyed their coffee and parted ways. During his train ride home, Andreas looked up Basecamp on his mobile device. He also learned about and investigated similar products to Basecamp. In the end, he decided to go with Basecamp. He signed up for it, began using it, and grew his company beyond five employees for the first time. This is what a Job to be Done looks like. A consumer goes along his life as he\u2019s come to know it. Then things change. He is presented with an opportunity for self-betterment \u2014 that is, make changes so he can grow. When or if he finds a product that helps him realize that growth opportunity, he can evolve to that better version of himself he had imagined. Besides demonstrating a JTBD well, Andreas\u2019s story also demonstrates that creating a new me (i.e., having a JTBD) is a  process . It\u2019s not something that consumers have; it\u2019s something consumers participate in. That\u2019s why it\u2019s called a Job to be Done. A comparable example is falling in love. Falling in love isn\u2019t something you have; it\u2019s something you participate in. And just as you can\u2019t complete the fall-in-love process by yourself, a customer can\u2019t complete a JTBD by himself. He needs a product to help him design, construct, and complete it. What isn\u2019t a Job to be Done Figure 6. Don Norman\u2019s 1988 Book,  The Design Of Everyday Things , features Activity-Centered-Design and the Seven stages of Actions seen here. This theory formed the basis of methods such as Task Analysis and Human-computer Interaction. While many of us have been applying Customer Jobs for a while \u2014 Rick Pedi and John Palmer have been developing Customer Jobs since the 1990s \u2014 it has gained popularity only recently. And like so many things that spread quickly, many people have distorted and misinterpreted it. The biggest mistake I see is thinking of a Job to be Done as an activity or task . Examples include  store and retrieve music  or  listen to music . These are not Jobs; rather, they are tasks and activities \u2014 which means they describe how you use a product or what you do with it. For example, music streaming products such as Pandora and Spotify were designed specifically so customers didn\u2019t have to  store and retrieve music  like when they used CDs or MP3s. As far as  listen to music , that is a broad activity that varies wildly depending on the context. Someone  listening to music  so he can maintain his motivation during a workout is engaging in a very different activity than someone going to the opera to  listen to music . I gave a business partner a watch to show my appreciation for his hard work. What was my Job to be Done? How can my JTBD be functional if I never directly use it? Besides, there are already brilliant design methods out there to help you design for tasks and activities. Examples include activity theory, Don Norman\u2019s activity-centered design (figure 6), and human-computer interaction (HCI). If you want to learn more about how to design for activities, go there. There are not different types of Jobs.  Another common mistake is to think that there are types of Jobs. In particular, some may think there are emotional, function, and social Jobs. I\u2019ll describe why it\u2019s a bad idea from both a practical and theoretical perspective. Practically , you\u2019ll be more successful when you think of every Customer Job as unique. We\u2019ve learned that while many Jobs share the same core emotional desires (e.g., belonging, self-expression, control, etc.), each Job is a unique combination of these desires. That is why each product should deliver on these core emotional desires in its own way. A good example is Facebook. A lot of people use Facebook because it taps into desires such as control, self-expression, and belonging \u2014 but it does so in its own unique way. So instead of saying that there are types of Jobs, you\u2019ll be much better off thinking that each Job is unique. Theoretically  \u2014 that is, from an ontological and epistemological perspective \u2014 Customer Jobs are design (artificial) problems, not natural problems. Natural problems are falsifiable. This means they can be objectively measured and determined as either true or false: Q: Is argon (Ar) a noble gas? A: If under conditions X it reacts, then yes; otherwise, no. Design problems, on the other hand, are not falsifiable and cannot be objectively measured: Q: Is this painting any good? Person 1: \u201cYes.\u201d Person 2: \u201cNo.\u201d With respect to Jobs, then, no objective test can be created to say, \u201cThis is a social Job. That is not a social Job.\u201d If I buy a Ferrari to impress other people, is it a \u201csocial\u201d Job because I reference other people? Or should we rephrase it as an insecurity, making it a \u201cpersonal\u201d or \u201cemotional\u201d Job? And because there\u2019s no way to objectively define each type of Job, every person on the team will have his or her own opinion of what type of Job it should be. Moreover, even if\/when you do get consensus, so what? Isn\u2019t knowing that I bought a Ferrari because I want to \u201cfit in\u201d good enough? What do you gain by labeling it a social or personal Job? I\u2019ll tell you: absolutely nothing. Take it from me, don\u2019t waste your time trying to dissect Jobs into different types. It\u2019s about as productive as trying to answer, \u201cHow many angels can dance on the head of a pin?\u201d Is it a Customer Job? Does it describe a \u201cnew\u201d me or something else?  When presented with a possible description of a Customer Job, the best framework of thinking I can offer you is the decision tree in figure 7. Figure 7. is it a customer job or something else? Keep in mind that a Job to be Done describe the \u201cbetter me.\u201d It answers the question, \u201cHow are you better since you started using [product]?\u201d Renowned psychologist Albert Bandura described humans as \u201cproactive, aspiring organisms\u201d. Customer Jobs carries this idea into markets, making the claim that we buy and use things to improve ourselves, to make progress. If you\u2019re not describing a Customer Job in terms of progress, you\u2019re probably describing something else. Where does JTBD theory come from? The greatest \u2014 and most helpful \u2014 theories are not created by one person but are the result of many people over a long period (figure 8). This is certainly the case with JTBD. Its principles have emerged from the work of a long lineage of researchers and innovators. Here are the most notable. Figure 8. A genealogy of customer jobs. Joseph Schumpeter and creative destruction.  The roots of JTBD go back at least seventy-five years to Joseph Schumpeter and his introduction of creative destruction. Schumpeter observed that new innovations steal customers from incumbent offerings and then eventually go on to replace them. At one time, horses and ships were our primary methods of personal transportation. Eventually, trains replaced horses, but then cars and airplanes replaced those trains and ships. Customer Jobs incorporates Schumpeter\u2019s insights as it seeks to understand why customers pick one way of doing things over another. Yes, innovators create new solutions, but the wheels of creative destruction turn only through the interaction between customers and innovators. Customer Jobs also incorporates another one of Schumpeter\u2019s brilliant insights that is almost always overlooked. Schumpeter argued that competition should not be measured only among products of the same \u201ctype.\u201d He insisted that competition can come from anywhere. You might think you\u2019re alone in a market or have market superiority, but some competitor unknown to you could be stealing away your customers. Your only sign that something is wrong is decreasing sales. In chapter 8, we take a close look at Customer Jobs, creative destruction, and competition. W. Edwards Deming and systems thinking.  Schumpeter\u2019s influence on Customer Jobs is restricted mostly to factors of market dynamics and competition; however, W. Edwards Deming has influenced Customer Jobs the most. Those who are familiar with his nearly sixty years of contribution to theories of management and innovation will recognize his fingerprints throughout this book. Deming\u2019s most notable influence comes from his development of systems thinking, which I discuss in chapter 13. Throughout Deming\u2019s career, he frequently reminded businesses that producers and customers are connected by systems: The customer and producer must work together as a system. The consumer is the most important part of the production line. Deming often challenged companies to remember creative destruction. He impressed on business leadership that simply making a product better and better \u2014 improving what already exists \u2014 wasn\u2019t enough. Sooner or later, someone will invent something new. He would tell businesses the following: Makers of vacuum tubes improved year by year the power of vacuum tubes. Customers were happy. But then transistor radios came along. Happy customers of vacuum tubes deserted vacuum tubes and ran for the pocket radio. A dissatisfied customer does not complain; he just switches. Deming understood that improving products of today continually isn\u2019t enough: \u201cWe must keep asking, what new product or service would help our customers more? What will we be making five years from now? Ten years from now?\u201d For Deming, the process of innovation should never stop.11 Psychology.  On the psychology front, you\u2019ll run into influences from Gary Klein, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, George Loewenstein, and Ann Graybiel. These are psychologists and scientists whose work forms the foundations of behavioral economics and naturalistic decision making (NDM). Their work helps us understand how and why customers don\u2019t make rational decisions when buying and using products, are inconsistent in their opinions of products, and don\u2019t always act in their best interest. Customer Jobs understands that if you want to make a great product and to develop a message that connects with customers, you have to understand the emotional forces that shape their motivation. Bringing it all together.  Then, you arrive at John B. Palmer, Rick Pedi, and Bob Moesta. In the 1990s, they began working together to combine their respective experiences into the first Customer Jobs principles. They are the ones who came up with the idea and language that customers have \u201cJobs\u201d that they are trying to get \u201cDone.\u201d  \n ","topic":"company growth, branding, product growth, people management, growth marketing"},{"title":" How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 8 Easy Steps","url":"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/how-to-create-a-social-media-marketing-plan\/","body":"A social media marketing strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. It guides your actions and lets you know whether you\u2019re succeeding or failing. Every post, reply, like, and comment should serve a purpose.The more specific your strategy is, the more effective the execution will be. Keep it concise. Don\u2019t make your plan so lofty and broad that it\u2019s unattainable or impossible to measure.In this post, we\u2019ll walk you through an eight-step plan to create a winning social media marketing plan of your own.Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.How to create a social media strategyStep 1. Set social media marketing goals that align to business objectivesSet S.M.A.R.T. goalsThe first step to creating a winning strategy is to establish your objectives and goals. Without goals, you have no way to measure success or return on investment (ROI).Each of your goals should be:SpecificMeasurableAttainableRelevantTime-boundThis is the S.M.A.R.T. goal framework. It will guide your actions and ensure they lead to real business results.Track meaningful metricsVanity metrics like retweets and likes are easy to track, but it\u2019s hard to prove their real value. Instead, focus instead on targets such as leads generated, web referrals, and conversion rate.For inspiration, take a look at these 19 essential social media metrics.You may want to track different goals for different channels, or even different uses of each channel. For example, Benefit Cosmetics drives brand awareness with its paid social campaigns, but measures acquisition and engagement for organic social posts.View this post on InstagramCAPTION THIS!???????????? Best answers might just win a #benefit package! #hoolaA post shared by Benefit Cosmetics US (@benefitcosmetics) on Mar 11, 2019 at 8:40pm PDTMake sure to align your social media goals with your overall marketing strategy. This will make it easier for you to show the value of your work and get executive buy-in and investment.Table showing how social media goals can align to over business objectives.Start developing your social media marketing plan by writing down at least three goals for social media.Step 2. Learn everything you can about your audienceCreate audience personasKnowing who your audience\u2014and ideal customer\u2014is and what they want to see on social is key to creating content that they will like, comment on, and share. It\u2019s also critical if you want to turn social media followers into customers for your business.Try creating audience\/buyer personas. These allow you to think of your potential fans, followers, and customers as real people with real wants and needs. And that will allow you to think more clearly about what to offer them.Gather real-world dataDon\u2019t make assumptions. Think Facebook is a better network for reaching Baby Boomers than Millennials? Well, the numbers show that Millennials still outnumber Boomers on the platform.social marketing demographic dataSocial media analytics can also provide a ton of valuable information about who your followers are, where they live, which languages they speak, and how they interact with your brand on social. These insights allow you to refine your strategy and better target your social ads.Jugnoo, an Uber-like service for auto-rickshaws in India, used Facebook Analytics to learn that 90 percent of their users who referred other customers were between 18- and 34-years-old, and 65 percent of that group was using Android. They used that information to target their ads, resulting in a 40 percent lower cost per referral.Check out our guide to using social media analytics and the tools you need to track them.Step 3. Research the competitionOdds are, your competitors are already using social media\u2014and that means you can learn from what they\u2019re already doing.Conduct a competitive analysisA competitive analysis allows you to understand who the competition is and what they\u2019re doing well (and not so well). You\u2019ll get a good sense of what\u2019s expected in your industry, which will help you set social media targets of your own.This analysis will also help you spot opportunities. For example, maybe one of your competitors is dominant on Facebook, but has put little effort into Twitter or Instagram. You might want to focus on the networks where your audience is underserved, rather than trying to win fans away from a dominant player.Engage in social listeningSocial listening is another way to keep an eye on the competition. Here\u2019s how to use Hootsuite streams for social listening and monitoring competitors:As you track competitor accounts and relevant industry keywords, you may notice shifts in the way these channels are used. Or, you might spot a specific post or campaign that really hits the mark\u2014or totally bombs. Keep an eye on this information and use to it evaluate your own goals and plans.Step 4. Conduct a social media auditExamine your current effortsIf you\u2019re already using social media tools, you need to take a step back and look at what you\u2019ve already done and accomplished. Ask yourself the following questions:What\u2019s working, and what\u2019s not?Who is connecting with you on social?Which networks does your target audience use?How does your social media presence compare to that of your competitors?Once you gather all this information in one place, you\u2019ll have a good starting point for planning how to improve your results.We\u2019ve created a social media audit template that you can follow for each step of the process.Screenshot of the social media audit templateYour audit should give you a clear picture of what purpose each of your social accounts serves. If the purpose of an account isn\u2019t clear, think about whether it\u2019s worth keeping.To help you decide, ask yourself the following questions:Is my audience here?If so, how are they using this platform?Can I use this account to help achieve meaningful business goalsAsking these tough questions will help keep your strategy on track and focused.Look for impostor accountsDuring the audit you may discover fraudulent accounts using your business name or the names of your products.These imposters can be harmful to your brand, never mind capturing followers that should be yours. Report them. You may want to get your Facebook and Twitter accounts verified to ensure your fans and followers know they are dealing with the real you.Step 5. Set up accounts and improve existing profilesDetermine which networks to use (and how to use them)As you decide which social channels to use, you will also need to define your strategy for each network.For example, Benefit Cosmetics\u2019 social media manager, Angela Purcaro, told eMarketer: \u201cFor our makeup tutorials \u2026 we\u2019re all about Snapchat and Instagram Stories. Twitter, on the other hand, is designated for customer service.\u201dFor reference, here\u2019s how other small and medium-sized businesses are using social tools to communicate with customers. Notice that Facebook and Instagram outrank even email for this purpose.social media marketingIt\u2019s a good exercise to create mission statements for each network. These one-sentence declarations will help you focus on a very specific goal for each account on each social network.Example: \u201cWe will use Facebook advertising to target a specific audience in order to increase sales.\u201d One more: \u201cWe will use Instagram for promoting and sharing our company culture to help with recruitment and employee advocacy.\u201dIf you can\u2019t create a solid mission statement for a particular social network, you may want to reconsider whether that network is worth it.Set up (and optimize) your accountsOnce you\u2019ve decided which networks to focus on, it\u2019s time to create your profiles\u2014or improve existing profiles so they align with your strategic plan.Make sure you fill out all profile fieldsUse keywords people will use to search for your businessUse images that are correctly sized for each network Don\u2019t let this list overwhelm you. Remember, it\u2019s better to use fewer channels well than to stretch yourself thin trying to maintain a presence on every network.Step 6. Find inspirationWhile it\u2019s important that your brand be unique, you can still draw inspiration from other businesses that are great on social.Social network success storiesYou can usually find these on the business section of the social network\u2019s website. (Here\u2019s Facebook\u2019s, for example.)These case studies can offer valuable insights you can apply to your own goals for each social network.Award-winning accounts and campaignsYou could also check out the winners of The Facebook Awards or The Shorty Awards for examples of brands that are at the top of their social media game.Your favorite brands on social media.Who do you enjoy following on social media? What do they do that compels people to engage and share their content?National Geographic, for example, is one of the best on Instagram, combining stunning visuals with compelling captions.View this post on InstagramPhoto by @ladzinski | Sunset casts down rays of light onto the endless karst formations of the Getu Valley, China. This humid part of the country is primarily an agricultural area where rice, wheat, corn, and soy beans are grown, all pressed against a backdrop of pure beauty.A post shared by National Geographic (@natgeo) on Mar 10, 2019 at 6:03pm PDTThen there\u2019s Shopify. The ecommerce brand uses Facebook to sell themselves by showcasing customer stories and case studies.And IKEA is a great example of superior customer service on Twitter. They use their 280 characters to solve problems and answer questions\u2014often with a bit of humor.That's not the right type of smashing delivery service that we like to see\u2026 Please DM us your order number, full name, address and contact info so we can assist you. \u2013 CB https:\/\/t.co\/XBb8cj5asL\u2014 IKEAIESupport (@IKEAIESupport) March 12, 2019Notice that each of these accounts has a consistent voice, tone, and style. Consistency is key to helping your followers understand what to expect from your brand. They\u2019ll know why they should continue to follow you and what value they will get from doing so. It also helps keep your branding consistent even when you have multiple people working on your social team.For more on this, read our guide on establishing a compelling brand \u2018voice\u2019 on social media.Ask your followersConsumers can also offer social media inspiration. What are your target customers talking about online? What can you learn about their wants and needs? If you have existing social channels, you could also ask your existing followers what they want from you. Just make sure that you follow through and deliver what they ask for.Step 7. Create a social media content calendarSharing great content is essential, of course, but it\u2019s equally important to have a plan in place for when you\u2019ll share content to get the maximum impact. Your social media content calendar also needs to account for the time you\u2019ll spend interacting with the audience (although you need to allow for some spontaneous engagement as well).Create a posting scheduleYour social media content calendar lists the dates and times at which you will publish types of content on each channel. It\u2019s the perfect place to plan all of your social media activities\u2014from images and link sharing to blog posts and videos. It includes both your day-to-day posting and content for social media campaigns. Your calendar ensures your posts are spaced out appropriately and published at the optimal times.Plot your content mixMake sure your calendar reflects the mission statement you\u2019ve assigned to each social profile, so that everything you post is working to support your business goals. For example, you might decide that:50 percent of content will drive traffic back to your blog25 percent of content will be curated from other sources20 percent of content will support enterprise goals (selling, lead generation, etc.)5 percent of content will be about HR and company culturePlacing these different post types in your content calendar will help ensure you maintain the ratio you\u2019ve planned. If you\u2019re starting from scratch and you\u2019re simply not sure what types of content to post, try the 80-20 rule:80 percent of your posts should inform, educate, or entertain your audience20 percent can directly promote your brand.You could also try the social media rule of thirds:One-third of your social content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit.One-third of your social content shares ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded businesses.One-third of your social content involves personal interactions with your audience.Once you have your calendar set, use scheduling tools or bulk scheduling to prepare your messaging in advance rather than updating constantly throughout the day. This allows you to craft the language and format of your posts rather than writing them on the fly whenever you have time.Step 8. Test, evaluate, and adjust your strategyYour social media strategy is a hugely important document for your business, and you can\u2019t assume you\u2019ll get it exactly right on the first try. As you start to implement your plan and track your results, you may find that some strategies don\u2019t work as well as you\u2019d anticipated, while others are working even better than expected.Track your dataIn addition to the analytics within each social network (see Step 2), you can use UTM parameters to track social visitors as they move through your website, so you can see exactly which social posts drive the most traffic to your website.Re-evaluate, test, and do it all againOnce this data starts coming in, use it to re-evaluate your strategy regularly. You can also use this information to test different posts, campaigns, and strategies against one another. Constant testing allows you to understand what works and what doesn\u2019t, so you can refine your strategy in real time.Surveys can also be a great way to find out how well your strategy is working. Ask your followers, email list, and website visitors whether you\u2019re meeting their needs and expectations, and what they\u2019d like to see more of. Then make sure to deliver on what they tell you.In the social sphere, things change fast. New networks emerge, while others go through significant demographic shifts. Your business will go through periods of change as well. All of this means that your social media strategy should be a living document that you look at regularly and adjust as needed. Refer to it often to keep you on track, but don\u2019t be afraid to make changes so that it better reflects new goals, tools, or plans.When you update your social strategy, make sure to let everyone on your team know. That way they can all work together to help your business make the most of your social media accounts.Social media strategy template","topic":"company growth, product growth, marketing, branding, people management, easy steps"},{"title":" How to come up with startup ideas that are worth your time","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/startup-grind\/how-to-come-up-with-startup-ideas-that-are-worth-your-time-36cc54b53b5","body":"How to come up with startup ideas that are worth your time Sign in Get started Founder Stories VC Corner Find a Startup Grind Near You  How to come up with startup ideas that are worth your time \u201cExecution is worth more than the idea.\u201d This is a Silicon Valley adage that\u2019s been repeated millions of times. And there\u2019s a valid reason why people repeat it so often. New entrepreneurs often cling zealously to their ideas. In the most extreme cases, they\u2019ll ask you to sign an NDA before telling you what it is. Any \u201cstartup expert\u201d would jump at the chance to inform them their idea is worth nothing. But this response is being taken too far. Sure, an idea remains just an idea if it\u2019s not realized. But in the hands of capable people, it morphs into a compelling mission. Venture capitalists often look for mission-driven founders. What does this mean? It means they want to fund entrepreneurs who are passionate about their ideas. This passion will enable them to overcome tremendous hurdles and make others around them care about their mission. \u201cSo how do you come up with good startup ideas?\u201d If that\u2019s what you\u2019re wondering in your head, take a step back. Trying to pluck good ideas out of thin air is a wasted effort. Instead, you want to look for problems first. A better question is:  How do you find problems worth solving? 1. Turn off autopilot and be aware of what\u2019s going on around you. Inefficiencies in the world and problems you and your friends face daily are potential opportunities. Most people hit these obstacles, groan internally, and move on. They don\u2019t think about why these obstacles exist and whether they can be solved. Becoming aware is much easier said than done because it requires a fundamental change in being. The way I remember to do this is reminding myself as often as possible. I put \u201cbe aware\u201d on my to-do list, calendar, and post-it notes. I also use  Papier  to remind myself every time I open a new tab. But if your schedule is filled to capacity every single day, you won\u2019t have the time or energy to reflect on the world. Always set aside some empty space in your day for you to think about what\u2019s happening around you. 2. Replay your day in your head and think about what problems you faced. Turning off autopilot will help you generate great ideas over time, but what if you want to come up with new ideas right now? One way is to hack the first approach by replaying your day in your head. Think of what you did and the problems you faced as you went about your life. Some of these problems may be valuable business pursuits. Try to revisit unique events. For example, the problems you face while traveling in a foreign country or attending a concert will be very different from those you face in your regular 9\u20135. 3. Read sci-fi books and watch sci-fi movies. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk have often credited sci-fi for inspiring them to tackle ambitious ideas. The best sci-fi books and movies capture audacious visions of the future. Some of these visions are a little crazy in their scope, but the current tech world needs some of that lunacy. These days, Silicon Valley is obsessed with small, frivolous things that will make a quick buck. For every company like SpaceX and Magic Leap, there are dozens working on trivial things. I\u2019m not saying things like social networking and messaging aren\u2019t important. If nobody worked on them, we wouldn\u2019t have Facebook and WhatsApp, which connect billions of people. But wouldn\u2019t it be amazing if more people dedicated themselves to scarier problems instead of walking paths tread millions of times before? Read and watch sci-fi, then build yourself a future beyond your wildest dreams. 4. Branch out and try new things. Inspiration strikes at the intersection of different things. Whether it\u2019s taking up a new hobby or traveling to another continent, you expose yourself to more problems and more possible solutions. Scott Kaufman, a psychology researcher, has stated that  \u201cthe drive for exploration, in its many forms, may be the single most important personal factor predicting creative achievement.\u201d If you take a look at successful startups today, you\u2019ll find that many of them deal with fields that aren\u2019t tech-based. For example, Stitch Fix solves problems in fashion, ClassPass in fitness, Soylent in food \u2014 I can go on and on. A one-trick pony will never be able to make novel connections that lead to new solutions. So go out there and try new things! Trying new things is intrinsically linked to the first approach of turning off autopilot. Deviating from your regular routine jolts your mind out of its default setting. And when your mind is actively making connections, finding problems worth solving is a breeze. 5. Talk to people around you\u2026 but not too much. Talking to people doesn\u2019t mean conducting formal interviews or brainstorming sessions. Just be a curious and empathetic friend. Get to know more people on a personal level, learn about their passions, and understand what problems they face in their lives. The more people you talk to, the greater the pool of shared experience and expertise you\u2019ll have access to, which will stimulate your mind to make new connections. Plus, the ultimate goal is to make a product that solves problems for people. Going out there and understanding how different people live their lives is instrumental to realizing that goal. But you should also give yourself alone time to think. Researchers have proven that when you tune out the outside world, your brain improves at making novel connections. 6. Take care of yourself. To succeed at anything in life, you need to be in good physical and mental condition. Coming up with startup problems is no different. Creativity is built on a healthy body and a healthy mind, so don\u2019t mistreat yourself. This is a popular piece of advice, but many entrepreneurs don\u2019t following it. It has something to do with the cult of overwork, where entrepreneurs pride themselves on how many hours they spend on their venture. It\u2019s a twisted way of thinking, but it\u2019s easy to succumb to \u2014 especially if many people around you are doing the same thing. Resist the peer pressure. when you\u2019re trying to find and solve problems, quality of time spent matters way more than quantity. Don\u2019t neglect eating well and exercising. Final thoughts There\u2019s no right way to come up with startup ideas. You might find something worth solving in the shower or at the end of an intense brainstorming session. You can\u2019t predict when inspiration will strike, but you can do things to help you generate good ideas. A lot of online startup advice nowadays will tell you not to rush into a startup because the best idea is one that occurs naturally. But this isn\u2019t an excuse for you to be lazy. Be proactive in looking for problems and ideas. Discovering an initial idea is like unearthing a strain of gold. If you\u2019re a miner, would you pat yourself on the back and then move on? No! You want to find out how deep that strain goes. So take your mental pickaxe and keep digging until you collect all the gold. Keep going long enough, you just might find a diamond.\n ","topic":"startup ideas, product growth, growth marketing, marketing, branding, company growth"},{"title":" How to Calculate the Percent Sales Growth on an Income Statement","url":"https:\/\/smallbusiness.chron.com\/calculate-percent-sales-growth-income-statement-67997.html","body":"Whether it's a stock investment or your own company's financial records that you're evaluating, the percent sales growth is one of many financial analysis tools used to assess a company's overall strength in the marketplace. In order to calculate the percent sales growth, you'll need current and historical sales revenue information from each company's income statement. Note, however, that sales growth is just one measure of a company's performance \u2013 there are other factors to consider as well.Sales Growth EquationTo arrive at the percent sales growth from one financial period to another, you'll first need the ratio's equation so that you know which figures from the income statement to plug in.The equation is: (Current Period Net Sales - Prior Period Net Sales) \/ Prior Period Net Sales * 100.Net sales is equal to gross, or total, sales revenue minus discounts, customer returns and allowances for damaged and defective merchandise.Income Statement InformationFrom the income statement of the company you're evaluating sales growth for, plug the relevant net sales figures for the relevant periods into the equation and compute to arrive at the percent sales growth. When reviewing income statements, note that it's common practice for companies to report net sales as just \u201csales.\u201dSince the percent sales growth equation requires historical financial results, a comparative income statement that reports net sales for the current period, as well as for recent prior periods, is essential. If you're unable to obtain a comparative income statement, it may be necessary to locate the separate income statements for each year.Calculating Percent GrowthSuppose you wanted to know what a company's percent sales growth is from its fiscal year ending on Jan. 31, 2017 to the year ending Jan. 31, 2018. In the earlier year, net sales totaled $444 million, but in the next fiscal year, net sales increased to $466 million. Subtracting the prior period from the current one ($466 - 444) results in a $22 million difference. You then divide this difference by prior period net sales ($22 \/ 444), which equals approximately .05. To express this as a percent, multiply the result by 100 to arrive at a 5 percent sales growth.Things to ConsiderA single percent sales growth figure has limited usefulness if other relevant factors, such as the industry a company operates in, the sales growth of competitors and even trends of decreasing rates of growth are ignored. For example, one company's 5 percent sales growth may initially seem admirable, but when compared to a competitor's 6 percent growth between the same two fiscal periods, 5 percent may start to seem average. And despite a company's consistent growth, a decrease in the rate of growth over a number of fiscal periods may offer deeper insight into a company's future strength. ","topic":"calculate, percent sales growth, product growth, branding, marketing, company growth, growth marketing, income statement"},{"title":" What is Product Strategy? How to develop a product strategy?","url":"https:\/\/www.marketing91.com\/product-strategy\/","body":"What is Product Strategy? How to develop a product strategy. Marketing management articlesWhenever a new product launches in the market, it is difficult for the company or brand to forecast where the product will reach or how it will shape up. At such times, brands design the Product strategy.The product strategy determines all the steps which a brand will have to take to make the product a success. Alternatively, because this is how a strategy works, the brand also has to decide what to do if the product is a failure of it is not gaining traction in the market.Page ContentsSo What is a Product Strategy?You can call a product strategy to be the vision of the product. If a company launches a product, then it has a vision of where the product will reach. The product strategy is the bare bone planning of the steps to ensure the product reaches the desired space. Such a strategy helps in setting the right direction for the product.Product strategy helps in deciding the basic elements of a product such as its marketing mix and its design. At the same time, it also helps in targeting the product to the right segment, product line stretching etc. All this will be discussed in the steps to develop a product strategy.A common terminology used in product strategy is the product roadmap which means the sequential step of events which need to take place to ensure maximum penetration of the product and maximum product adoption in the market. Product strategy helps the formation of the product roadmap.Importance of Product StrategyIt helps decide the exact steps to be taken in any event to make the product a success.It prepares the company for response by competitors or towards changing market conditions.It helps the company decide the target market and in market penetration.A product vision is formed thereby setting the product on an independent path with a time to time intervention allowing the company to focus on multiple products in a short time.7 Steps to Develop a product strategy \u2013 How to develop a product strategy?A lot of product analysis is needed to develop a strategy. Besides product, you need to analyze your competitors, the market and various segments so that you can come up with the right product strategy. Here are the steps of Product Strategy.Related:   Organizational BuyingProduct Strategy 11) Marketing mixThe product is the most important element of the marketing mix. If you have decided on a market segment to target, then product design plays a crucial role. This is because a change in the product brings a change in all the other elements of the marketing mix. Be it a service or a product, the marketing mix majorly depends on the product for other aspects like promotions, place and price.You need to consider the marketing mix while deciding on the product strategy. You also need to consider various aspects of the product such as product line and length, what would be the packaging of the product and what kind of labelling will be involved. In essence, the core aspects of the product and its contribution to the marketing mix is decided in this step.Example \u2013 While deciding on an electronics product strategy, you need to decide the various product line and length that a single model will have. You also need to decide the packaging and labelling to use besides considering the effect of all these expenses on the marketing mix.2) Levels of a productA product has various levels. One of the articles on this site discusses the three levels of a product which includes the core product, the actual product, and the augmented product. The article also discusses examples of the same so if you want to know the three levels of a product then click here.A marketer needs to assume the various levels of a product while deciding the product strategy. Example \u2013 An automobile manufacturer or an equipment manufacturer needs to give service along with the product to the end customer.If the manufacturer does not give service, then the product will not sell. Hence at such a time, the manufacturer has to understand the important role of the augmented product in the product strategy. Without the various levels of the product and their proper implementation, the product strategy can fail.3) Type of productsThe product that you are designing will be of which type? There are various types of products. 4 of these types are discussed in this article. However, while deciding the product strategy you need to consider what is the type you want to target? Some of them areDurable products \/ Nondurable productsShopping goods \/ Specialty goods \/ Convenience goodsIndustrial goods\/consumer goodsService productsDeciding on the type of product can help you in determining how to penetrate your target market. STP is an important step in strategy but this step will clear your mind on which segment you are going to target because the product is restricted to that segment only.Related:   Quantitative market research4) DifferentiationThere are various possibilities to differentiate a product or to differentiate services. We have detailed articles on each which you can find by clicking the links above. However, to make it simpler, here are the features which you can use to differentiate a product or a service.Product Form and Product featuresProduct performance levelsReliability \/ Repairability \/ DurabilityStyle and DesignOrdering ease \/ Ease of installationCustomer service \/ Warranties and GuaranteeAs can be seen above, these are critical decision-making elements for any consumer and by creating differentiation at the product level, the product strategy becomes a sound strategy to compete on even grounds with the competitor.Example \u2013 American Tourister is known for its durable luggage. The same goes for Woodland shoes. These are brands which have targeted product reliability and durability as a differentiating factor right from the product strategy stage. As a result, their complete marketing strategy is focused towards one direction \u2013 Promoting their products as far superior then competition due to the differentiating factors.Product Strategy 25) Brand elementsBrand identity and Brand image are important considerations for the success of any company. Naturally, when deciding on the product strategy, you need to decide the brand elements for the product. There can be numerous branding elements involved thereby giving more recognition for the product and accumulating more respect in the market.Example \u2013 Victorinox as a brand has several elements which can help differentiate between the genuine products vs a fake one. It has a spring in its swiss knife which makes a distinct sound thereby confirming that the knife is genuine. Similarly, it has symbols on the top of the knife as well as in smaller tools within the knife to differentiate the genuine from the fake. The symbols are unique too thereby clearly helping the customers pick the right product.Such brand elements are important for the recognition and adoption of the product in the market and they need to be created at the product strategy and product design stage itself.6) Product DesignQuite simply, a computer is a generic product name whereas desktops & laptops are all variants of a computer. The only difference between laptops and desktops is the product design. Both of them have CPU and both have monitors. Thus, product design plays a crucial role in the success of a product and should be given due consideration while designing the product strategy.The technology market is built on product design. This is why smartphones have become a major crowd puller because of their differing aesthetics. If we want to talk about product design, we just cannot ignore the fashion industry which is completely dependent on the design of the product to built its brand identity. Fashion labels like Gucci, Armani and others spend a fortune getting the design right.Related:   What is Cycle Count & What is Cycle Count ProcessHere is an article on Product design and its influence on the marketing of a product.Product Strategy7) Product MixSometimes a single product might not make the cut but its product variant might be an instant hit. Take shampoos for example. Most in demand shampoo are the Anti-dandruff shampoo. However, besides this, most of the top shampoo brands have a variety of products on offer with minor differences in ingredients. These are nothing but a combination of the product mix.This article explains best what Product mix is and how to analyze it. Various concepts are explained such as the product line length, product line width, product line depth, product line consistency etc.In essence, to cater to all the various types of customers out there, a company can come up with a complete product mix so that each customer is satisfied with different variants of the same product. Because a huge market share is covered with almost the same product, product mix needs to be considered strongly in the product strategy stage.When all this information is in hand, then the timeline matters. At the launch of the product, you need your marketing mix in place. Once you notice the rise of the product, you can decide on the type of product mix you want to introduce in the market to encourage further purchases and to improve brand equity of the product.As said before, a product strategy helps you prepare for the future of the product and to give the right targeted direction to the product. When you have a combination of multiple products and various product mix\u2019s, the product strategy becomes very critical to make sense and to have the right tactics up your sleeve for each product.","topic":"product strategy, sales growth, develop, product strategy, branding, marketing, growth marketing, people management"},{"title":"The All-in-One Startup Funding Guide","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/startup-grind\/the-startup-funding-guide-pitch-deck-term-sheets-investors-equity-crowdfunding-a212ba9cdab7","body":"The All-in-One Startup Funding Guide - Startup Grind - Medium Sign in Get started Founder Stories VC Corner Find a Startup Grind Near You  The All-in-One Startup Funding Guide Pitch Deck, Term Sheets, Investors & Equity Crowdfunding. There is a proven process to successfully raising startup funding. I\u2019ve learned about the process over the years by getting to know a few of the worlds most successful serial entrepreneurs, by raising millions myself from angels & VCs, by investing as an angel, and as CEO of the VC fund + equity investment platform  Crowdfunder.com . Across all this investment and fundraising activity, I\u2019ve seen that the most successful fundraises have a several key elements in common. Below are five parts to successful fundraising for your startup \u2014 with specific examples, templates, and resources. The Pitch Deck Every great startup begins with an idea. And even with the best startups, over time that idea is deeply refined. Creating your Pitch Deck is one of the best processes for getting your idea and business out of your head, on paper, and to enable continual questioning and refinement of your thinking and approach. I wrote a dedicated post on how to create  The Ultimate Pitch Deck . Read through this as you\u2019re putting your deck together and use the template and examples there. And for now here are the high level takeaways on pitch decks: Follow the formula investors look for, which I show you in my post Investors don\u2019t write checks for decks \u2014 the goal is to get a meeting\/call Go deep on your \u201cmeta\u201d narrative \u2014 why this, why now, why you, how Give basic product\/traction points but less information, more story To help you with your deck, I created a template for you along with examples and resources of successfully funded startups and their pitch decks \u2014 it\u2019s all in the  pitch deck  post. This includes recommendations from VCs like Dave McClure of 500 Startups, along with the actual deck that Reid Hoffman used to pitch and close Greylock when they invested in LinkedIn\u2019s Series B. Also, go see successful fundraising pitch decks live in the wild. For this, I recommend you go to  Crowdfunder  and look at several of the VC-backed companies we have invested in from our Fund and\/or who are fundraising online. Some of these companies are fundraising publicly so you can flip through their decks. Term Sheets (What To Offer Investors) I\u2019ve also written a detailed post on  Term Sheets . It includes samples and templates from leading legal firms, VC firms, along with data and resources on how to think about the valuation of your company when you\u2019re fundraising. If you haven\u2019t raised angel or venture capital funding before, there\u2019s likely a lot you don\u2019t know about it from a legal, structural, and process standpoint. The high level fundraising process with investors goes like this: The founder shapes terms of a financing (e.g. $500,000 in priced equity at a $5M pre-money valuation) The founder discusses these with investors, and investors consider and respond A first investor decides they will invest at specific terms (not always at the terms shaped by founder) If founder accepts, this can be formally or informally a \u201clead investor\u201d (someone credible who priced the round) All the detailed legal documents get created or updated, and the investment is finalized The founder goes out to raise the remainder of the round at same terms from other investors Term sheets are used in this process to help founders and investors come to an initial agreement. Again, I\u2019ve shared some great examples and templates for you in my post on  Term Sheets . After terms are agreed to and the term sheet signed, long form documents are drafted by legal counsel, signed, then money is wired. Build Your Target Investor \u201cHit List\u201d Every great fundraiser aims high by first finding out who the best companies and investors are in their space, and then learning about them and setting goals to to meet with them and capture their interest and investment. To this end, you want to build a deep and ambitious investor \u201chit list\u201d for yourself. This is a list on an excel spreadsheet of at least 40\u201350 active investors \u2014 notable angels, VCs, and high net worth people who have created, sold, invested in companies in your space. Great fundraisers do great research to find these investors and are creative and resourceful in the ways they find to contact them directly. Your first step is to search Google for the leading investors in your space\/industry. Google \u201ctop ____ angels\u201d and \u201ctop ____ investors.\u201d As a FinTech company I might search for \u201ctop fintech investors\u201d and I would find  this list  in the results which I would add to my hit list. This will help you build up your hit list of 40\u201350 investors or more across both individual angel investors and VC firms. In your excel spreadsheet write down the names of the investors or firms, and partners in those VC firms, and what city they\u2019re in. Then use the online lists of investors to deepen and flesh out your list info at places like Crunchbase, LinkedIn, Crowdfunder. Also, leverage the success of companies that have come before you and raised money in your space. Search for the names of companies you know have been very successful in related markets to yours, and use these online investment sources and platforms to identify who the investors are who invested in those deals. These are also your target investors. With your hit list in hand, you\u2019re ready for the next step in meeting and pitching investors\u2026 Preparing, Meeting, Pitching Investors Getting in front of investors takes several steps in preparation before you can expect to find and reach the right investors, meet with these investors, and close any funding. Successful fundraisers put the following process into place before they go out to investors, to make sure their time is well spent: (Note \u2014 I\u2019m not including equity crowdfunding in this section on meeting investors, but I cover that below.) If you don\u2019t have a live product, get as close to a working demo as possible (wireframes, designs, etc.) I\u2019ve seen this be a simply a mock up of an entire app, or screen shots, CAD designs, etc.. Just don\u2019t expect slides on a deck alone to do the trick and trigger interest. Ideas are not what investors fund but detailed product plans, progress, teams, and rollout strategy can be. 1. Get friends & family (or yourself) to  put first money into the company \/round. 2.  Bring on an advisor  or two with experience in a related space, expect them to add value & make intros 3.  Structure & timing are critical , and are your friends. Set a specific time frame for your fundraise to include an outreach period, terms period, closing periods. Tell investors exactly what the time frame and process is. Often times I see great fundraising set the timing up as roughly two weeks for outreach & scheduling, four weeks of meetings where they meet with investors and discuss and negotiate terms, and then four weeks of closing to follow where they get everyone in (or not) in a timely manner and with a final close deadline. The more you stick to your timing and your guns here, the more that both you and your investors will respect your time, and the more often investors respond more positively. 4.  Send a short pitch deck  ahead of the meeting, set expectations that you are asking for funding (qualify) 5.  Have an \u201cask\u201d  and suggested terms for the investment when you meet (see Term Sheet section below) 6.  Plan to hear \u201cNo\u201d  from all of your early meetings. Knowing this, go to the lower pressure and less significant investors first. Use these meetings to get feedback and become more comfortable on your pitch. Pay attention to what they question, where they get hung up, what they are excited by, how you did well and where you were weaker. 7.  Expect a lot of No\u2019s and failure.  Everyone fails most of the time at fundraising, until they don\u2019t. 8.  Celebrate the process of getting good investors to say No.  I know this sounds odd, but hear me out. Every successful founder knows how hard fundraising is, myself included. To feel better about myself in the fundraising process, I developed a strange and unusual \u201critual\u201d that I took up in order to not feel as deflated at difficult points in the fundraising process. My ritual? I make a point of it to celebrate how many \u201cNo\u2019s\u201d I received. I actually look over the long list of all the investors who have passed in one long spreadsheet. Looking at this, I positively acknowledge myself for the hard work, time, and toughness it has taken to get this many meetings and hear this many \u201cNo\u2019s.\u201d I also remind myself that this is part of what success looks like \u2014 getting in front of lots of great investors while knowing that I will likely hear 15\u201330 No\u2019s for every one \u201cYes\u201d early on. Use Equity Crowdfunding To Reach Investors Early stage funding across angel and venture capital is moving online. As little as two to three years ago it was against the law to raise funding for your startup online. But today there are new opportunities and new laws that allow you to raise money online from angels, VCs, and even everyday smaller investors (see my post on  The Disruption of Venture Capital ). In short, new  equity crowdfunding  platforms are aggregating investors and can help you get in front of hundreds or thousands of investors in a short period of time. There are generally two categories of funding platforms \u2014 those that help you raise money from high net worth investors (accredited investors and investment firms\/VCs), and those that help you raise money from everyday people (non-accredited). My recommendation to any startup founder is this  \u2014 first start by raising funding more traditionally offline and aim as high as you can to build great direct investor relationships. Get a strong investor or two in if you can first \u2014 as they bring strong follow on interest once you\u2019re on an equity crowdfunding platform. Then\u2026  look to leverage what you\u2019re already doing with an equity crowdfunding platform that works with high net worth investors first (accrediteds). Reason being, you won\u2019t have to spend much in the way of added cost, time, or legal resources to put your company out to accredited investors (meanwhile, with non-accredited investor platforms it is a longer and more complex and expensive process). The leading platforms for angels, VCs, and high net worth investors in terms of their size ($ raised online) include  Crowdfunder , CircleUp, and Angellist. Best of luck with your fundraising. \n ","topic":"product growth, startup funding guide, branding, growth marketing, marketing, company growth"},{"title":"3 Unique Ways to Increase Your Network and Generate More Leads","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/@joe_fairless\/3-unique-ways-to-increase-your-network-and-generate-more-leads-7f0d6cadee97","body":"3 Unique Ways to Increase Your Network and Generate More Leads Become a member Sign in Get started 3 Unique Ways to Increase Your Network and Generate More Leads. Do you struggle generating leads? Is direct mail or other standard lead sources providing you with a sub-optimal conversion rate? It is likely that your lead problem is more of a secondary symptom and not the true cause. Guy Gimenez, an investor that has completed more than 50 flips and whose current focus is on wholesaling and retailing, initially faced the same dilemma. However, once he realized that he didn\u2019t have a lead problem, rather a relationship problem, his business skyrocketed. In  our recent conversation , Guy provided 3 practical ways to increase your network, and in turn, your real estate business: (1) Google Adwords and SEO, (2) Meet-up Groups (3) Anywhere you go. Lead Generation Technique #1 \u2014 Google Adwords and SEO Guy obtains the majority of his leads online via Google Adwords, SEO, and other pay-for-click services. However, marketing in general, and especially online marketing, is outside of his wheelhouse. Guy understands marketing is one of his many weaknesses, which is why he works with those who can fulfill those weaknesses. He found such an individual at a meet-up he started (more on the meet-up later). Guy met a millennial that worked for a major company in town and like many in the millennial generation, this gentleman had a knack for online marketing. Guy realized that marketing is the engine that runs the business. Yet, it is something he is weak at. He doesn\u2019t want to take the time to learn it, so he leverages other people\u2019s time and talent to handle aspects of the business, like marketing, and then they share in the profits. As a result, Guy has partnered with the marketing millennial, who handles all the back end marketing \u2014 SEO, Google Adwords, and all the pay-for-click. He brings in the leads into the company website and then Guy takes everything from there. Lead Generation Technique #2 \u2014 Meet-up Group Once Guy realized the importance of relationships in generating leads, he decided to start a meet-up group. As a result, he has gotten many deals and formed many great relationships that would not have existed if it wasn\u2019t for the meet-up group. Guy started the meet-up group a little over 2 years ago. He held first meeting at his church because that is the only location he could think of. Going into the meeting, Guy didn\u2019t even know if anyone would show up. Fortunately, 8 people ended up attending the first meeting. His initial intentions for starting the meet-up were not to act like he was a guru. Rather, he was just someone that was looking to build relationships that would be beneficial to both parties. At the time, Guy had cash reserves, as well as real estate experience and knowledge. On the other hand, many investors that attend meet-ups lack the funds and proficiency. Therefore, Guy figured that the meet-up was the ideal way to help others earn money while they learned the ins-and-outs of investing. In return, he has been able to increase his network, get great deals, and find individuals to hire on his team, which include the marketing millennial. Flashing forward to today, and due to Guy\u2019s authentic, benevolent approach, the meet-up has grown to over 500 members, ranging from 20 to 80 members in attendance per meeting. For those that are ready to take on the challenge of starting their own meet-up, simply replicate Guy\u2019s meet-up structure: Pre-meeting, Guy will advertise the meet-up for a few weeks. His advertising approach is three-fold: (1) Put something on Facebook and then boost the post, (2) attend other local meet-ups in the area and convey what his meet-up is all about (3) create an event on Meetup.com. The advertisement is fairly simple. Guy brings in different speakers each week so it consists of the speaker, what the speaker will talk about, as well as time (7pm to 9pm) and location. The meet-up is hosted at a local restaurant banquet room. Due to the late meeting time, it typically begins with everyone ordering dinner. The meeting officially commences with Guy going over some housekeeping items (i.e. reminder to pay for your meals, overview of meeting structure, introduction of speaker) Next, the guest speaker presents, which is immediately followed up a Q&A session. Following the Q&A, those in attendance have the opportunity to either (1) promote a deal they have (2) explain any \u201cneed\u201d they have (i.e. what they are looking for, like a flip in a certain zip code, advice on how to run the numbers, etc.) Finally, Guy provides the attendees, specifically the newer investors, with an opportunity to tell a success story. Also, he asks more experienced investors to talk about a recent failure. Lead Generation Technique #3 \u2014 Anywhere you go While the first two methods were more specific, this final one is more of a high level approach, but powerful nonetheless. Guy has the ability to form relationships anywhere he goes. And I mean ANYWHERE \u2014 walking down the street, restaurants, the grocery store, etc. Guy finds that so much of the population is frustrated. They hate their jobs, they hate their life, and are very apathetic. Therefore, it is amazing what you can do by touching one person everyday with something as simple as providing a compliment or telling a cheesy joke. You may not change their life forever, but you may change their minute, their hour, or their day. By doing so, you can absolutely build relationships and even find deals! One such example occurred when Guy was standing in line at the grocery store. When he got to the register, he said to the cashier, \u201cthat is a very pretty dress. I have the same one at home but didn\u2019t wear it because I forgot to shave my legs today.\u201d She laughed and asked what Guy did for a living. He explained that he is a real estate investor, gave her his card, and went on his merry way. Within 1 hour, Guy received a phone call. It was the cashier. She explained that her mother was losing the house, that they already had a foreclosure date, and asked if there was anything Guy could do to help. All the stars were aligned on this one \u2014 Guy met her at the right time, the cashier had the knowledge of her mom\u2019s situation, and the mom was actually relaying the situation to her daughter. As a result, Guy was eventually able to stop the foreclosure, get the house under contract, sold the property, and made a nice profit. But just as important, he solved a problem and took that 800-pound gorilla off of their back. That cashier and her mom will never forget it. Therefore, it was the ultimate win-win scenario. However, what Guy did for her is he does for everyone. He simply solves problems and makes a profit in doing so. How many people do you know, including yourself, who reach out to strangers on a daily basis? No matter where you go, there is always an opportunity to touch someone\u2019s life. And maybe, just maybe, they will touch yours as well. Marketing Lead Generation Networking Investing Written by Joe Fairless Follow Controls over $265,000,000 of real estate and host of the Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever show, which is the world\u2019s longest running daily podcast Follow Write the first response Discover ","topic":"product growth, product discovery, branding, network, company growth, growth marketing, increase, generate, unique ways"},{"title":"The Basics of Customer Development for New Entrepreneurs","url":"https:\/\/medium.com\/get-greenlit\/the-basics-of-customer-development-for-new-entrepreneurs-5647f0ca37ff","body":"The Basics of Customer Development for New Entrepreneurs Sign in Get started Young Entrepreneur Legal Lean Startup Leadership Crowdfunding Investment Customer Success The Basics of Customer Development for New Entrepreneurs. So you have an idea, a product, or a vision \u2014 you may even have some users or customers, and you have committed to making your idea come to life. That officially makes you an entrepreneur, which means your day to day life just got both  easier  and  harder . The easy part is that you suddenly have access to feedback (data) from real,  live  people \u2014 your audience. They are right there, ready to give you feedback, and even inspiration. The complicated part is that there can be an overwhelming amount of information, and it\u2019s not always easy to know what to make of it. At the heart of this challenge is  something that great product managers do , they bridge the gap between internal teams and the market out there that wants (or might want) what you\u2019re building. Which leads us to something called customer development \u2014 many entrepreneurs and product managers put their own spin on it, but the bottom line is that it\u2019s about developing a relationship with customers and in the process creating a continuous loop of feedback to help inform how the product or company grows. The basics include putting together a strategy to get customer feedback, both qualitative and quantitative (stories! analytics!), a framework to analyze and interpret that information, and and a process for regularly taking action so your idea can go from a cool thing to a complete product. Here are a few key ways to get that customer development loop started\u2026 Prepare yourself for feedback (negative and positive) Finding the right customers Reaching out to potential customers Once you find customers, collect data Analyzing and using information Prepare Yourself For Feedback (Negative  and  Positive) One of the very first things that a new business has to learn to do is watch their customers closely, and without judgment. Ryan Carson, the CEO of Treehouse, an online technology education platform, wrote a post a few years ago about  just how painful it can be to get face-to-face feedback from a customer . He watched in-person as one of his customers attempted to sign onto their website. It was a brutal experience because in the process he realized that his own website\u2019s onboarding process was extremely difficult, which was a significant problem for a company that actually teaches web development skills. If you get the chance to \u201cwatch\u201d your customers (whether that\u2019s looking at how people drop off during an online signup, or in-person) you need to be prepared for similarly painful experiences. Never take it personally \u2014 this sort of feedback is golden \u2014 it will help you improve your product more quickly than just about anything else can, and experienced founders welcome it with open arms. Finding the Right Customers Every business is different, so there isn\u2019t one \u201cplace\u201d you can go look to find the right customers. At the very beginning don\u2019t worry about the perfect fit \u2014 instead, start by finding  any  customers to begin the process. Most entrepreneurs start with their friends and family \u2014 the people who know them best and are willing to give honest feedback. Most importantly, don\u2019t be afraid to  get detailed, in-depth feedback from a variety of customers and potential customers . Once you work through that process you can then begin to build a customer profile so that you understand what type of people need \/ want your product. Focus more on interests and psychographics (people who see themselves as DIYers, early technology adopters) and less on demographics like age and gender. By understanding your customer profile you\u2019ll have a better idea where they spend time online and in real life, and have an easier time reaching them. That does not mean that you should create such a tight profile that you overlook other customer-types. Keep your eyes and ears open at all time as you search for the right customers. Often, the challenge is to simply start getting information that you can sift through, and then actually start thinking about and developing multiple profiles for people using your product (you might hear some entrepreneurs or companies refer to this as \u201cseparating people into buckets\u201d). Reaching Out To Potential Customers Whatever you do, don\u2019t fall for the idea that you can use the one channel of \u201csocial selling\u201d to reach your potential customers. It is much more easy to ignore, or not even see, a message or post on social media than it is an email or, even better, and old fashioned cold call. It\u2019s important to  be conscious of what channels you are using to reach people , and how you are measuring what works and what doesn\u2019t. Again, prepare yourself for rejection because that is part of sales. But you won\u2019t find any customers unless you reach out to a lot of people and are willing to do the hard work to understand what they need and want. Trust that information above all else, because what people are willing to pay for (in money or significant time\/attention) is what you\u2019ll be be building your company on. Once you find new customers, don\u2019t be afraid to ask for referrals to people they think will like your product. Word of mouth is the strongest method of gaining new business, especially for a start up. Once You Find Customers, Collect Data Now that you have customers, you can build your feedback loop. The foundation of this loop is listening to them. Of course you will have to ask them the right questions; one example is asking why they are your customer? What pain point is your product solving for them? How could it be better? What pain point does it not solve that they wish it would? You can ask these questions via the phone, online surveys, or email \u2014 using whatever medium they are most comfortable with will yield the best results. Second, once you have a significant amount of users \/ customers, or traffic to your primary site, start correlating analytics to the information you get via direct contact. Are people saying they want what you\u2019re providing, but dropping out during the signup process or when learning to use a new tool \/ product? That\u2019s critical information that you need to balance. Analyzing and Using Information Any entrepreneur who\u2019s built a company from scratch will tell you that the moment of data overload comes very quickly. No matter how much information you have, it is worthless without knowing how to analyze it. In the early stages of building a company you\u2019ll want to read everything \u2014 every single comment and compliment, and every bit of Google Analytics or whatever you are using to understand quantitative data. Categorize the comments, and, if necessary, subcategorize them. You\u2019ll need to look for trends and chart them so that you can watch them over time. Feedback is a continuous loop, not a one time project with a completion date. And because of that you\u2019ll also want to look at  key metrics that focus on the growth of your product . Increases in total revenue or user signups are often less helpful than looking at the underlying reasons for growth. ","topic":"branding, marketing, customer development, growth marketing, product growth, company growth, entrepreneurs"},{"title":"Do You Really Need Passion to Launch a Startup? The Answer May Surprise You","url":"http:\/\/FI.co\/posts\/22201","body":"When getting ready to embark on a major endeavor - whether it be personal, professional, or otherwise - passion is frequently touted as a prerequisite quality to have. And while passion for an idea or ideal is generally considered a requirement for launching a startup, is it really as necessary as founders think?\n\nIn this syndicated post, Benjamin Chong, a Partner at Right Click Capital and Co-Director of the Sydney Founder Institute, explains why following your passion is an admirable yet misguided notion, and what founders should strive for instead.\n\nThe post, \"Is it all about passion?\", originally appeared on Benjamin Chong's Blog and has been republished below with permission.\n\nPassion makes for success. Without passion you\u2019ll fail. If you don\u2019t have passion about what you\u2019re doing, you won\u2019t do it for long. We\u2019ve all heard these catch phrases, and while they sound good, I\u2019ve had a niggling suspicion in the back of my mind that it doesn\u2019t always work that way. I\u2019ve seen salesmen with loads of passion fail in closing deals. I\u2019ve seen actors with passion for their craft fail in getting work. I\u2019ve seen speakers who are passionate about a cause fail to mount cogent arguments.\n\nWhile I was growing up, my parents sent me to music lessons. Every week, I remember going to my piano teacher\u2019s studio where she\u2019d have me play scales and pieces I had practiced during the week. On weeks where I had slacked off, my teacher would ask if I had practiced. I\u2019d say \u201cyes\u201d, to which she\u2019d reply, \u201cI can hear you haven\u2019t practiced this week\u201d. If, as a kid, you\u2019d asked me whether I was passionate about music, I don\u2019t think my answer would have been a resounding yes, but as the years of practice added up, I got better and better, and while I\u2019m certainly no concert pianist, I now say I\u2019m passionate about music in general, and piano music in particular.\n\nCal Newport\u2019s book, So Good They Can\u2019t Ignore You, deals with this very topic. He dispels the popular concept that you need to find your passion before you launch your career. Instead, he spells out the importance of following four simple rules that\u2019ll put you on the right trajectory. Each of these rules isn\u2019t revolutionary, but when combined, they make up a sensible and coherent action plan no matter what your career.\n\nThe first rule is don\u2019t follow your passion. In this section, Cal strongly argues following your passion is bad advice, especially when you\u2019re passionate about a field you have limited experience with.\n\nIn this section, Cal strongly argues following your passion is bad advice, especially when you\u2019re passionate about a field you have limited experience with. The second rule is be so good that they can\u2019t ignore you. Here, Cal puts forward a number of examples of successful individuals who have honed their skills through deliberate practice. He recalls the 10,000 hour rule made famous by Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s book,Outliers, whereby those who are experts in the field, be it music, sport, or business have spent 10,000 hours developing their craft.\n\nHere, Cal puts forward a number of examples of successful individuals who have honed their skills through deliberate practice. He recalls the 10,000 hour rule made famous by Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s book,Outliers, whereby those who are experts in the field, be it music, sport, or business have spent 10,000 hours developing their craft. The third (slightly cryptic) rule is turn down a promotion. Cal argues it\u2019s important for skilful people to be deliberate about how and where they direct their efforts. Control here is key, as is having the freedom to take little bets in exploring and experimenting with areas of interest. He also stresses the importance of continual improvement noting that so many people stop learning and stretching themselves once they\u2019ve found a comfortable job.\n\nCal argues it\u2019s important for skilful people to be deliberate about how and where they direct their efforts. Control here is key, as is having the freedom to take little bets in exploring and experimenting with areas of interest. He also stresses the importance of continual improvement noting that so many people stop learning and stretching themselves once they\u2019ve found a comfortable job. The fourth rule is think small, act big. In this section, Cal provides examples of other successful people who have \u2018discovered\u2019 their big and challenging missions after they\u2019ve developed a high level of domain knowledge and cultivated rare skills. One of my favourite quotes of this section is \u201cworking right trumps funding right work\u201d.\n\nAfter reading So Good They Can\u2019t Ignore You, I can see parallels in my own life. My passion for music seems to have come about repeated and deliberate (at least on my parents\u2019 part) exposure from a young age. I received ongoing encouragement with provided additional motivation to practice more, becoming more confident and playing (and enjoying) different genres. In other fields, I\u2019m now more motivated to spend time deliberately practicing and developing my skills, applying some of the author\u2019s other rules.\n\n(Man showing a red heart shaped box image by StockUnlimited)","topic":"passion, branding, product growth, company growth, startup, surprise, growth marketing, marketing"},{"title":"What Employees Want From the Performance Management Process","url":"https:\/\/www.td.org\/insights\/what-employees-want-from-the-performance-management-process","body":"For employees, ongoing dialogue with their managers is crucial for success in the workplace. According to research from Leadership IQ, the optimal amount of time employees should spend interacting with their leaders is six hours per week. While this number may seem surprising and even science-fiction for many employees, organizations are increasingly seeing higher productivity rates from their employees after they spend quality time with their managers. In fact, the study found that employees who spend six hours per week with their manager are 29 percent more inspired, 30 percent more engaged, 16 percent more innovative and 15 percent more intrinsically motivated than those who spend only one hour per week.The Performance GapUnfortunately, employees and managers don\u2019t get together as much as they should. From the moment goals are set at the beginning of the year to the time a performance review happens, there is a gap where little formal guidance is given by managers on how to improve performance. This leaves employees on their own, without any external confirmation that they are working on the right things and without any help on how to increase their impact.Increased attention from management is important for employees because business objectives shift over time, so employees need to be given continuous guidance on what is expected from them. The frequency and quality of such meetings is crucial for goal alignment and personal development. If employees don\u2019t get enough chances throughout the year to connect with their managers, how will they ever be sure they are on the right track and use the guidance to further improve?Why the Current Problem ExistsOften, the meetings between a manager and employee are unstructured because they lack an agenda. Without a list of items to discuss, meetings can become unfocused.Managers have other responsibilities apart from supervising their employees, so they don\u2019t make performance check-ins a priority. Common issues include:Lack of time: Managers are busy, travel often, or have too many direct reports.Forget to have them: Managers don\u2019t schedule performance check-ins, and sometimes they don\u2019t even think they are important. Also, managers with many direct reports might prioritize certain employees over others.Don\u2019t understand value. Managers will often multitask during these meetings, sending the message that the employee is not important and time should be spent on other matters.Lack of training. Managers don\u2019t know how to conduct performance check-ins. They have been promoted to the manager level because of their technical skills rather than their people skills, so they haven\u2019t been trained properly.Employees play a role in this as well, and they often fail at having effective conversations with managers about their performance for the following reasons:Absence of performance record. Employees don\u2019t keep track of their activities and achievements on an ongoing basis, so when they have a meeting with their manager they are unprepared.They avoid bragging. A modest employee might not tout their accomplishments, so their achievements are not recognized by their manager.Lack of ownership of their careers. Employees are reactive about figuring out ways to improve their performance and fulfill their potential. They expect their managers to always take the lead and provide strong guidance on what needs to be done to hit their goals. This approach works when managers take the lead and engage employees. But when that\u2019s not the case, employee performance suffers.What Employees Can Gain Ongoing conversations around performance between an employee and manager are the best way to increase engagement, improve performance, and develop skills for the future. A lack of feedback causes them to disengage and feel unvalued within the company.Here are a few ways that employees can gain the most out of having regular performance conversations with their managers:Make their work visible. In order for managers to understand what their employees are working on, employees need to make their activities and achievements visible. Ideally, these items would build up from previous meetings so there is continuity in the conversation and so steady progress can happen week after week.Align expectations. Frequent check-ins with their managers enable employees to understand expectations more clearly and confirm that they are focusing on the right tasks. Have business priorities changed? Is there a need to realign and focus on different objectives?Raise issues proactively. Employees need to share the dependencies they are facing. What resources do they need? What are the challenges they are facing that might get in the way of hitting their goals? Employees need to be very clear about how the environment is affecting their goals or the accomplishment of activities.Invite feedback. Employees need to reflect on recent actions and receive input from their managers. Are they accomplishing tasks in a time-efficient manner? Are they prioritizing their work adequately?Get coaching. Employees can struggle to see the big picture like their managers can. They often need an outside in perspective to the work they are doing. What can they be doing differently? What should they start doing or stop doing? Proposing priority actions and focusing on future goals is important for employees to progress their skills. How can they change their behavior so that performance increases? What do they need to do in order to maximize productivity?Continuous Performance ManagementWhile managers are the ones who coordinate performance reviews, employees are responsible for demanding the ongoing feedback and guidance they need throughout the year. Performance management should include recurring one-on-one meetings between employees and their managers so performance is always aligned to the right business objectives.These meetings are not a one-way street; managers and employees need to collaborate together. It is not the managers\u2019 job to do the work the employees should be doing, but rather to create the right environment that will make employees successful. And it is the employees\u2019 responsibility to proactively share their work and seek valuable feedback.Developing talent is ultimately a combination of a manager\u2019s ability to provide guidance and an employee\u2019s willingness to learn. By rethinking the performance management process to be more employee-driven, forward-looking, and continuous, company leaders can improve performance and develop talent in a way that appeals to all.","topic":"product growth, employees, branding, growth marketing, product discovery, performance management process, company growth"},{"title":"What Do Boards Actually Do?","url":"https:\/\/bothsidesofthetable.com\/what-do-boards-actually-do-9c278e81da5f","body":"What Do Boards Actually Do?\n\nThere\u2019s a lot of mystique about what happens at board meetings and a lot of imagined board-room drama. I read commentary or Twitter or blogs and realize that there are also strongly held convictions that there are these evil VCs who do terrible things to mostly altruistic founders.\n\nThe image of boards and of investors vs. founder conflicts has been so at odds with my experiences on dozens of boards over the past 20 years that I thought it was worth sharing what I actually see.\n\nAs a starting point the board is intended to have legal and financial responsibilities to a few key constituencies: shareholders, debt holders, creditors, employees, government and major parties with whom the business operates.\n\nIn some ways being a board member is like how I\u2019ve heard people describe learning to become a pilot: Many hours of boredom followed by some brief moments of absolute panic and fear. In fact, as one Twitter commenter observed to what do board do, \u201cOften, not much.\u201d That\u2019s true. Executives run the day-to-day so often the board is more involved as a sparring partner at key intervals.\n\nThe administrative work we actually do at board meetings?\n\nAgreeing an annual budget\n\nSetting a 409a valuation used to price stock options\n\nAgreeing stock option allocations\n\nReviewing financial performance\n\nTalking about the organizational structure and where we need to bolster things\n\nDiscussing sales & marketing strategies, product launches, technical challenges\n\nTalking about law suits (patents, trademarks, employee disputes)\n\nAnd so forth\n\nBetween board meetings we do calls to discuss performance or major initiatives. Often we are asked to get involved in executive-level recruiting. And of course we help with business development introductions and with fund raising events.\n\nBoard work does involve a lot of conflict at moments throughout the company. Sometimes conflict comes because a company isn\u2019t hitting its expected targets and investors vs. executives have different views in the causes or the consequences of under-performance. Sometimes conflict comes because executives want to increase personal compensation and investors aren\u2019t in favor of this. Sometimes it comes because investors believe the company needs more experienced leadership to run the company or more often to help run the company.\n\nBut unlike the popular press reporting of this conflict \u2014 80% of the time it is founder-to-founder conflict and not investor-to-founder conflict. The overwhelming majority of conflicts that I\u2019ve seen on boards over the years are a result of the tensions of either:\n\nunderperformance of a company in which executives blame the action of each other or specific individuals\n\nfounders or senior executives in a company upset that they don\u2019t have the right role, title or compensation\n\norganizational changes in a company initiated by the CEO that leaves somebody in the company being unhappy\n\ndifferent risk expectations founders have with each other: Raise more vs. raise less, engage in M&A vs. fund raise, grow faster with higher burn or cut costs and focus on profitability, etc.\n\nIn nearly 20 years of sitting on boards I have seen:\n\nFounders trying to fire other co-founders\n\nCompanies revolting against the founder & CEO and asking for the board\u2019s help\n\nFounders physically threatening other co-founders or employees\n\nSubstance abuse\n\nMajor problems with depression and dysfunction at the executive level\n\nOf course I\u2019m not saying most founders have problems \u2014 I\u2019m just pointing out that when you\u2019re involved with scores of companies you see every kind of human behavior. But importantly non-founders who are often major contributors to the success of a company and would be interested to know that it\u2019s not unheard of to see founders\n\nAsk for major top-ups of their personal equity while not having commensurate top-ups for rank-and-file executives\n\nMajor squandering of company resources on travel & entertainment that isn\u2019t in support of company goals\n\nProfligate spending with limited regard for future fund raising that causes major dilution when funds are raised at the last minute\n\nI point out the worst that I\u2019ve seen in 20 years for a reason. Boards are not appointed to be founder-friendly lapdogs for the 1\u20133 founders who start companies and usually own the largest equity positions in the company. Boards are fiduciaries to represent the interest of all shareholders \u2014 big and small \u2014 and this includes employees who bet with their careers and with reduced pay in order to have equity they hope will be valuable.\n\nTo be clear \u2014 most founders I\u2019ve ever worked with have been super ethical, very conscientious, not overly greedy and take their personal responsibilities very seriously. I also want to be clear that some investor board members can act like total jerks at times.\n\nI am usually loyal to the founders I\u2019ve backed above all else. I consider myself founder friendly. I will work evenings or weekends to help a founder in need. I prefer to leave the passionate, mission-driven founder in charge for as long as is possible. If the founder has limitations in running a company I will normally try any other option other than removing them from the CEO role. And if I believe they aren\u2019t the best suited person to run the company I will always sit down and walk the founder through why I believe the company might be better suited with somebody else at the helm. I will see if I can get him or her to see this herself.\n\nBut in the end \u2014 a board\u2019s ultimate loyalty must be to the company and all of its shareholders. The board is there to represent the interests of all shareholders & creditors and to put the interests of the company before their own interests. At times being \u201cfounder friendly\u201d can mean protecting many founders from a CEO or it can even mean providing tough guardrails to protect a CEO\u2019s own personal interests from his or her worst instincts. I saw this first hand with a CEO who tried to get into numerous company-betting lawsuits that we knew weren\u2019t in his best interest.\n\nWhat prompted this post? It has nothing to do with any individual company. I have been meaning to write this for a while as I\u2019ve noticed that much of my board time is involved in trying to be an independent referee for founders who themselves are trying to resolve their own conflicts. Those seldom get reported.\n\nThe rise of crowd funding saw the first wave of founders gleeful that they could raise capital without having to deal with terrible VCs. I think we\u2019re far enough into this trend to see that having strong board members \u2014 including VCs \u2014 is a healthy alternative to party-rounds of crowd funding with no oversight.\n\nLately I\u2019ve noticed that there is a second wave that many fantasize about a world in which ICOs drive all funding and founders and employees never have to deal with venture capitalists. ICOs certainly have a place in startup financing.\n\nBut having a board of directors and having some of those board members be large financial owners in the business with shared corporate governance forces a tension in businesses that I believe is healthy. This is similar to the role that public markets play in helping shape publicly traded companies. At times I\u2019m sure it feels terrible to be a publicly traded company but ultimately I believe the sunshine of publicly reported numbers produces better results. So, too, a healthy and skeptical board.","topic":"growth marketing, marketing, branding, product growth, company growth"},{"title":"Never Ever Compromise: Hiring For Culture Fit","url":"http:\/\/blog.eladgil.com\/2012\/04\/never-ever-compromise-hiring-for.html","body":" Never, Ever Compromise: Hiring For Culture FitYour company culture is the foundation on which everything you do rests.  Your culture acts as an unwritten set of rules that drives behavior and cohesion across the company.Cohesive, insular cultures are more resilient and can withstand shocks to it (e.g. pivoting multiple times) as well as can be extremely motivational \/ draw out the best in people (e.g. engineers at Palintir sleeping under their desks in their belief they are helping national security, the emergence of Google's \"don't be evil\" doctrine).Bad Culture Fits Lead To PainMost companies do a poor job of enforcing a common culture or are willing to sacrifice the cultural aspects of who they hire in order to \"get someone effective\" or \"to fill a need\".  This typically backfires in a big way over the short to medium term.  Every single founder I know who has compromised on culture fit has regretted it due to the disruptions it has caused their company (having to fire the bad fits, creating a crappy work environment, good people quitting, trust eroding between co-workers, product moving in the wrong direction, bad actors building power bases, misaligned incentives emerging in the organization, etc.)Note: for the purpose of this post, I define \"values\" in its broadest sense (e.g. included are things like pragmatism, get-shit-done-edness, etc.)How To Build A Strong CultureHave strong hiring filters in place.   Explicitly filter for people with common outlooks and values early.Hire lots of relatively inexperienced people as you scale.  You can indoctrinate people who grow up in your culture more easily then people who grew up in someone else's company culture (especially when experienced folks come in the door with negative cultural baggage).Constantly emphasize values day to day.  Be repetitious until you are blue in the face.  The second you are really sick of saying the same thing over and over you will find people have started repeating it back to you.Reward people based on performance & culture fit.  People should be rewarded (promotions, financially, etc.) on both productivity and culture.Get rid of bad culture fits quickly.  Fire bad culture fits even faster then you fire low performers.This post focuses on (1) above - hiring filters you can use to find great culture fits.Hiring For Culture FitFor an early stage, raw startup, your hiring focus should be on homogeneity.  You should be encouraging a diversity of origins (gender, ethnicity, etc.) while discouraging a diversity in company values.   Max Levchin put it on Quora \"Having a highly homogeneous (background, education, values, preferences, etc) very early team is better than not -- cuts down on time-wasting arguments.\"An early stage company is a fragile and having people pulling in different directions, or wasting time in pointless philosophical arguments, can be lethal.  Early on, you want to hire people with common perspectives and goals who are all pulling in the same direction.  (Note: this does not mean want you want clones or group think).1. Determine the sort of people you want to hire.Many culture evolve organically based on the first few hires you make.  As company founders, you should actively shape this.  Ask yourselves the following questions, and get agreement amongst the founders:a. What are the key cornerstones of your company's culture?  What sort of values do you want people you hire to have?b. What are you willing to compromise on?  What are you not? (Note: if you are willing to compromise on it, it is not important to you).c. How do you plan to screen for people with these values in your interviews?  What questions do you plan to ask at each stage to surface their values?d. Are there common backgrounds or resume signals you want to use as filters?  (e.g. \"built cool stuff on the side in college\" (Facebook) versus \"ivy league education, double major, and 4.0 GPA\" (Google)).2. Ask culturally relevant questions often and early in your hiring process.For phone screens at Mixer Labs\/GeoAPI (the company I started that Twitter acquired), I would ask candidates 2 basic types of questions before passing them on for an engineering interview:a. Basic technical competency questions.b. Culture fit questions.My questions were focused on things like the person's productivity, motivations, aspirations, accomplishments (e.g. what they were most proud of, had uniquely pulled off, etc.), analytical approach, design sense, and working style (are they structured?  etc.).  I would also ask for an explicit view on cultural traits they valued.In the background, I would look for red flags in the person's personality, working style, and motivations that would come up in the conversation.  Some red flags for me:People whose primary motivation was cash.  For Mixer Labs, we wanted people motivated by the impact they could have (and rewarded people richly with equity).  Cash focused people may make bad decisions when trading off financial decisions versus other stuff (see e.g. parts of the banking industry).People who were smart, but not as smart as they thought they were.  E.g. if asked a simple brain teaser, the smartest people wrote down the question and worked through it.  The people who thought they were smartest would try to do it in their heads and get it wrong.People who would create a bad environment for the early team (low energy or negative outlook, needlessly argumentative, focused on philosophy over pragmatism, etc.).People no one wanted to spend time with.  This is known as the \"airport test\".  E.g. if you were on a business trip with the person and the plane was delayed - would you be happy to hang out with them at the airport?  If not, why do you want to have them in your office every day?If people seemed technically great but a bad fit culturally, we would ding them immediately.3. Ask the interviewers for their view of the person from a culture fit perspective.When assessing the candidate after an interview, we would ask people on our team to weigh in on the culture fit of the candidate, and whether people would want to work with them.  This served two implicit purposes:a. To screen the candidate for culture fitb. To re-emphasize cultural values to the broader teamYou should be explicit about the type of culture you are trying to build and the type of people you want to hire.  By \"explicit\", I dont mean having a sign pasted up in a 5 person startup with a list of your values.  Rather, I mean make the hiring huddles an opportunity to re-emphasize to everyone on the team what is important to the company culturally.This constant re-emphasis of cultural values is key as the company starts to scale rapidly and grow (future blog post on this coming - see also example below under (4)).4. Take people out for a \"beer\" test as part of interviews.We would take every candidate to some social outing (typically dinner or beer after work).  In a startup, people work long hours and you want to make sure people fit in and the team and create an even awesomer [1] environment.Intriguingly, in a \"social\" environment, the candidate would often show more of their \"true colors\".  Especially if beer was involved.  This often happened before any beer was drunken - I think it was just a shift to a more social context from a work one that triggered behavioral changes.A great example is a candidate we rejected post beer test, who was one of the strongest engineers technically that we had ever interviewed.  However, once we made it to the bar he made a lot of really bad off-color jokes that crossed the line and made the team uncomfortable about him.When we told our then 2-person team we were going to reject the candidate (who would have increased productivity by 50% single handedly!), one of our employees literally said \"wow, you really are serious about trying to build a big company\".  He saw that we were willing to trade off a great engineer in a competitive environment for maintaining the right culture for us.  This impacted the way that he approached interviews from that point on.  Our example of trading off short term productivity for the right long term DNA resonated with him and changed his behavior.5. Have them work out of your office.Another way to see if a candidate is a good fit is have them come work out of your office for a half day.  In one case, for Mixer Labs, a designer candidate offered to take a week off to work out of our offices to see how we would all work together (we paid her for her time).  This allows you to spend more time with the person in a work-ish environment to see if they are a good fit.6. Optimize for the long term.Every founder has that moment of temptation.  There is a big hole you want to fill.  You have been looking for the right candidate for too long and can't find them.  Or, even worse, you find someone great for the role, but they seem borderline or outright bad culturally.The right strategy is to not hire the person.  \"If there is a doubt, there is no doubt\" unfortunately proves itself to be true over and over again.","topic":"branding, compromise, marketing, people management, culture fit, company growth, product growth"}]