#Session 4 - May 4th
What we did on the Fourth class...
In today´s class we started by each group presenting their evolution during the last week: empathy maps, personas, day-in-a-life and interview scripts. The main take-away from what professor said was that we need to be very efficient in the script and be sure that our questions are relevant for our research. Price should not be present in the interview, because it is a complex topic to talk about personally. Also, the professor requested the groups to be more innovative in the way that the other hypothesis (channels, revenue streams, etc.) are going to be tested.
About the Customer Segments, once again the professor reinforced that it´s critical to analyse consumers in order to avoid our business to be a complete failure – “Check before we build”. Most companies does not do this and think that marketing department is enough to get to know the customer, which is completely wrong, inside the company everyone needs to know for who are they working all day. So, it is important to check if this characters created by us match with the answers to the interviews and, if so, we are going in the right direction. Furthermore, it should be noted that if our business is on B2B field, one persona is not enough, since everyone matters, workers, CEO, partners, etc., and each one of them have different expectations that need to be satisfied and explored.
Concerning Value Proposition, it is imperative not to forget about the problems. We need to analyse if they are important or not for the business and then get a solution, (understanding the business main attributes) and alternatives to that solutions. Regarding this topic, groups were asked to do a Value Curve to realize about the position towards competition. Here, we check if in some aspects we have the chance to come up with valid propositions, different from competitors, in order to be present in a Blue Ocean (having a better value curve). First of all it is needed to identify 8 attributes that we think our customers would value more/less. Then, mark ours and competitors position in each attribute (in a scale of 1 to 7) and do a curve for both, company and competitor – value curve. If our value curve is better than the competitor’s one, we have an opportunity to outstand in the business.
During the class, we also spoke about the role of Channels and Relationships. Get customers is expensive and hardworking, but is not enough, we should keep them. For that, actualization, ongoing communication (keep it fluent in both ways) and personalization is needed. There are four main channels: marketing, sales, distribution and after sales support. Marketing can be done through websites, email, blogs, social media (Twiiter, Linkedin, Facebook), communities, SEO (Search and Optimization), PR, word of mouth and viral marketing. Nowadays, blogs and websites are essential to businesses, as well as social media. But there are other tools that can be very useful to share a business: Buffer and Hubspot are tools that replicate the contents into the channels one desires, making the process of sharing information even more easy.
Additionally, using sales as a channel to communicate with costumers is becoming more and more common. It can be done through internet, telesales, sales force, Value-Added resellers, agents, distributers and retailers. Currently, e-commerce is becoming an indispensable tool to every business since people are starting to make important decisions through internet (search and share information, buy products/services, etc.). However, we should not go after all channels at the same time, we need to analyse and understand which one is better at the moment.
About the Customer Segments, once again the professor reinforced that it´s critical to analyse consumers in order to avoid our business to be a complete failure – “Check before we build”. Most companies does not do this and think that marketing department is enough to get to know the customer, which is completely wrong, inside the company everyone needs to know for who are they working all day. So, it is important to check if this characters created by us match with the answers to the interviews and, if so, we are going in the right direction. Furthermore, it should be noted that if our business is on B2B field, one persona is not enough, since everyone matters, workers, CEO, partners, etc., and each one of them have different expectations that need to be satisfied and explored.
Concerning Value Proposition, it is imperative not to forget about the problems. We need to analyse if they are important or not for the business and then get a solution, (understanding the business main attributes) and alternatives to that solutions. Regarding this topic, groups were asked to do a Value Curve to realize about the position towards competition. Here, we check if in some aspects we have the chance to come up with valid propositions, different from competitors, in order to be present in a Blue Ocean (having a better value curve). First of all it is needed to identify 8 attributes that we think our customers would value more/less. Then, mark ours and competitors position in each attribute (in a scale of 1 to 7) and do a curve for both, company and competitor – value curve. If our value curve is better than the competitor’s one, we have an opportunity to outstand in the business.
During the class, we also spoke about the role of Channels and Relationships. Get customers is expensive and hardworking, but is not enough, we should keep them. For that, actualization, ongoing communication (keep it fluent in both ways) and personalization is needed. There are four main channels: marketing, sales, distribution and after sales support. Marketing can be done through websites, email, blogs, social media (Twiiter, Linkedin, Facebook), communities, SEO (Search and Optimization), PR, word of mouth and viral marketing. Nowadays, blogs and websites are essential to businesses, as well as social media. But there are other tools that can be very useful to share a business: Buffer and Hubspot are tools that replicate the contents into the channels one desires, making the process of sharing information even more easy.
Additionally, using sales as a channel to communicate with costumers is becoming more and more common. It can be done through internet, telesales, sales force, Value-Added resellers, agents, distributers and retailers. Currently, e-commerce is becoming an indispensable tool to every business since people are starting to make important decisions through internet (search and share information, buy products/services, etc.). However, we should not go after all channels at the same time, we need to analyse and understand which one is better at the moment.