Burke Alder - Leadership and Business Blogs
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Do you have a brand positioning statement? A business at any stage needs a strong brand positioning statement. This statement needs to be known by everyone in the organization. A clear statement helps marketers and companies rise above the competitive noise and articulate the value they provide to their target audience.
Last week (February 28 - March 3), Qualtrics held their annual customer conference called the Qualtrics Insight Summit at the Grand America Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. This conference attracts the best customer experience leaders from around the world. The line up of world renowned speakers is impressive and inspiring. Omar Johnson, Chief Marketing Officer, Beats by Dre, inspired the audience from the stage on day one with his keynote, "Your Product is the Experience: Why Beats By Dre Isn't Just About Headphones."
In my last blog, I discussed 6 rules to create a competitive advantage and win. In this week's blog, I want to cover five marketing positioning strategies that will help you differentiate your product/service and carve out your spot in a competitive landscape. These five positioning strategies will help you focus your company and help you create market value. As you watch TV commercials and marketing strategies unfold in competitive markets you'll see one of these five positioning strategies at work.
Over the past decade, I've been involved in helping Software as a Service (SaaS) companies go from concept to hypergrowth. I have gone through that that journey three times with Workfront Formerly AtTask, Lendio, and now ClientSuccess. During each of these startup journeys we have had to develop a strategic way we engaged with our customers. As we end 2016 and enter into 2017, the biggest impact in growth for a SaaS company will be in the ability to retain and grow their existing customer base. Revenue retention and growth of current customers is the catalyst to hypergrowth for SaaS companies.
Each Olympics I watch to see who will emerge victorious in Olympic branding. The IOC (the governing body of the Olympics) has many branding guidelines and restrictions to Olympic branding. These guidelines create opportunities for companies like Nike who look for creative ways to gain mass awareness and generate deep brand equity throughout the Olympics. This year was no different—Nike used it's shoes with yellow and pink to win the Olympics branding game.
The 2014 Winter Olympics were full of amazing stories of victory and defeat. From the underdogs to the favored champions, the Sochi Olympics did not disappoint. One of my favorite moments was a brand strategy from Oakley. A brand strategy that unified the best athletics in the world around the color green. With million of eyeballs watching the Olympics, companies (brands) try to use creative marketing techniques to seize the moment. Oakley did it perfectly—it started with green.
One of my favorite articles is, The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Walter Isaacson is the author of the best-selling biography of Steve Jobs. The book is based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues. Over the many years since the passing of Steve Jobs, there have been hundreds maybe thousands of blogs that have been written about him. This is one of my favorite articles on Steve Jobs because of the how much time Walter Isaacson spent with him.
In a previous post, I discussed the top 10 questions entrepreneurs and product leaders should ask before they build products. Now that you've answered those 10 questions, built your product, and found product/market fit. How do you continue product innovation? How do you disrupt a market or change an industry? Easy right? Innovation is a big buzz word. To succeed with innovation, make sure you understand 10 challenges that stop product innovation.
Successful companies build products that solve pervasive problems that people are willing to buy. Whether you're an entrepreneur or product manager inside a fortune 100 company, let me suggest ten questions you should ask prior to your build. These ten questions will help guide your product development process. The best products in the world solve real problems with simple solutions people are willing to buy.
