Do your values matter?

Our values are drawn from ourselves and our culture. A well defined set of values could be a "moral code". Do these matter in business and more specifically marketing?

There is a sweet point for your business - where your market opportunity matches some of your values and some of your resources.

Some of your values will not match your resources and some of your values will not match your market opportunity.

For instance someone with strong religious beliefs may find that including all of their beliefs does get an amount of business. Religions are networks and this may have a good or a not so good match with the market.

Having the religious beliefs in the first place has little to do with business, but the decision of including it as a focal part of how you target people in your market is.

The difficulty with values are that they are very personal. It is therefore difficult to make decisions about which personal values are and which are not included in your business. Without values your business may lack personality. If you choose the values that the largest part of the market has - but you do not actually share in, then you may appear false.

Some individuals have issues with including some of their values but ignoring others. A selective moral code may be dangerous, but this is a business, not an individual.

Plugging into your market is not just about market analysis. It is also about people and how they can be involved in taking the opportunity to market.

Resources - are they important?

Lots of people have dreams and business owners are no different. Business owners dream of the large or very profitable customer, or lots of very large and profitable customers.

Some business owners chase dreams without sufficient resources. There are examples where a business can improve its credibility superficially to get meetings with a large customer, and sometimes you hear stories of the business succeeding with a large order.

Unfortunately this is not the most common occurrence. To get orders there are benchmarks or rules of thumb on the resources needed not only to gain a customer, but to get repeat business.

For instance look at high street shops. Shops work on 3 key principles:

• They get lots of people walking past
• They get the right people walking past
• They have an attractive offer that entices people to walk in

If you are very specialist you may get away with a location that is a long way away from the centre of a city or a town, but in general, location is important to gain awareness and sales.

Whilst we do not all own shops - the shop and the location are resources. If you were a jeweller and wanted to attract the rich and famous then a location in central London, possibly Regent Street would be good.

Taking another example - if you want to tender for government work they will ask you to fill in a tender document for work of any size. The difficulty with this is that your business may be too small, or your track record to insignificant to even get an interview.

Can you improve your credibility artificially?

The short answer is no. However there are things that you can do right that make effective use of the resources at your disposal. In other words you match the resources to the best market opportunity available to you.

Plugging into your market is about focussing on key potential clients, working out what they need from you in terms of service, appearance, capability and your long term future. They must see you as a good bet and feel better about trading with you rather than someone else.

Don't Operate In The Dark - Plug In To Your Market NOW

Have you ever tried to plug in a lamp in the dark? You grab the plug and then thrust your hand towards the wall. Maybe you find the socket but by then you have scraped away a strip of wallpaper and you are getting increasingly anxious as you try to fit the three pins of the plug into the three holes that you know are there. Darkness ensures that the orientation of the plug is pure guesswork. You know it should all fit but somehow it does not.

This is not unlike the approach taken by many small businesses to the markets that they operate in. They have great products or services which they just KNOW will be bought by people. Somehow business just has not been booming - why?

The marketplace is huge so you need to focus quite a bit. What area of the market should you be aiming at, how do you identify it, what resources do you need to exploit it? If you can identify this niche clearly (think of being able to use a torch in the lamp example above), and you have the right product or service (think compatible plug and socket) then you are almost there. You still might need some help in actually delivering but the guesswork has gone and you can actually focus on making money.

Plug into your market - Why is it useful?

Henry Ford had a 57% share of the car market in 1918, but by 1936 this was down to 26%.

Ford's issues were around his dedication to mass production whilst his competitors offered colour and customisation. 

Ford's issues were that he did not listen or respond to critical factors evident in his market. In 1922 he said “you can have any colour you want as long as its black” in response to General Motors's range of colours. He did not like things that he could not control, like advertising. He did not understand it, possibly as he did not listen to other people.

This issue of listening to your market and acting on it is highlighted by many inventors by evident in many small companies. Getting good quality information is perceived as difficult and acting on it may conflict with what the company is about.

In producing lots of business plans we have found that items such as cashflow forecasting or marketing planning can be difficult to get right unless care and attention is placed on the research and analysis. Making decisions can also be difficult, especially if the solution represents new ground.

Out of deperation companies can react and “advertise”, but without the backgroun where they spend their promotional budget may have more to do with the attraction of the advertising company rather than an overall strategy. This may mean that the returns from a campaign may not work or may not work as well as they might.

Plug into your market is a service offered by the PRD Partnership Ltd that focuses on locating and analysing the critical factors relevant to a particular market and then supporting the business in developing appropriate marketing approaches. This is suitable for new products and services, companies wishing to grow, or companies who are finding their market share or sales diminishing.

..... not plugged in

The internet is full of advertising blunders where basic research was not carried out. For instance:

When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, "it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." Instead, the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

Checking out messages that you use with your customer does make sense, clearly the language used may vary over a geographic area, but it could be more than this.

Plugging into your market involves matching your resources, capabilities and values to an appropriate market position. It is a 2 way process that may mean changing your focus to take advantage of a particular segment of the market place.

Research is not just knowledge of the customer, but the broader themes that surround the customers world. This includes your competition, but also substitute products, government influence, and general trends.

For instance you may feel that there is a gap for a male clothing shop in a small town. There are enough men of sufficient income, and a straw poll says they would like a shop in town. Significant trends suggest that choice and price are important. Larger cities have lots of alternatives, as does the internet. Would you be able to supply the choice required at the right price to make a go of things? There are reasons why a lot of high street clothing stores have moved out of small towns.

Plugging into your market reduces your risk of making costly mistakes. It increases the chances of developing successful strategies that match the needs of your intended customers. For more information please contact us.

..... not plugged in

CNET voted the C5 top of its list of "terrible tech products" in 2007.

The initial idea was a good one, but all the development came from a very small pool of people, possibly one, Clive Sinclair.

The car was exposed to the elements, had a top speed of 15 mph, and overheated going up hills. When you were sat it in it you felt very small and vulnerable next to other cars, lorries or vans.

It did not sell.

From a good idea it is very easy to "muck it up". Did he research and get feedback from the market as he went along? (possibly not). If the market said "make it bigger" and the engineer said "the engine will never take the strain captain", then an electric car was not commercially possible (yet). They could have put the project on hold until battery technology was improved.