Marketing Canvas - Step 2 - Set Your Goals

The Marketing Canvas, developed by Laurent Bouty, is a powerful tool that provides a structured approach to crafting a robust marketing strategy. It's a co-creation method that intersects your environment (where you will play), your goals (what you would like to achieve), and your actions (what you will do). This article focuses on the second step of the Marketing Canvas Process - setting your goals. This step is vital as it serves as the reference point for the assessment phase.

Three Strategies for Growing Your Revenue:

In the Marketing Canvas Process, three strategies are highlighted for growing your revenue: GET, KEEP, and STIMULATE/MORE. These strategies focus on different aspects of customer interaction and are designed to help businesses increase their revenue.

1. GET: This strategy is all about customer acquisition. The primary idea is that your business can grow by attracting new customers. Tactics that can be employed include acquisition campaigns (welcome offers), channel incentives for new customers, "bring a friend" campaigns, and freemium models. For instance, a new restaurant might offer a "buy one get one free" deal to attract new customers.

2. KEEP: The second strategy emphasizes customer retention. The main idea here is that your business can grow by retaining existing customers. This strategy might seem defensive, but it is the cornerstone of customer experience and is essential for all businesses, including startups. Tactics include churn management, loyalty programs, brand and customer experience reinforcement, Net Promoter Score (NPS) programs for detractors, and below-the-line retention campaigns. For example, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company might implement a loyalty program that offers exclusive features or discounts to long-term subscribers.

3. STIMULATE/MORE: The third strategy focuses on customer stimulation. The primary idea is that your business can grow by encouraging your customers to spend more and/or more often. Tactics include cross-selling, upselling, promotion campaigns for usage stimulation, bundling, upgrade programs, and premium features. For instance, a telecom company might offer a bundle that includes internet, cable, and phone services at a discounted rate, encouraging customers to spend more.

Green Clean Use Case:

To illustrate these strategies, let's consider a hypothetical company, Green Clean, a startup offering eco-friendly cleaning services.

For the GET strategy, Green Clean could offer a discounted first cleaning service to attract new customers. They could also implement a referral program where existing customers get a discount for each new customer they bring in.

For the KEEP strategy, Green Clean could develop a loyalty program where customers get a free cleaning service for every ten services purchased. They could also focus on providing excellent customer service to ensure customer satisfaction and reduce churn.

For the STIMULATE/MORE strategy, Green Clean could offer additional services like deep carpet cleaning or window cleaning, encouraging existing customers to spend more. They could also offer a premium subscription service that includes regular cleaning and maintenance services.

Conclusion

Setting your goals is a crucial step in the Marketing Canvas Process. It provides a clear direction for your marketing efforts and serves as a reference point for assessing your progress. The three strategies - GET, KEEP, and STIMULATE/MORE - offer different approaches to growing your revenue. By understanding these strategies and how to apply them, businesses can create a robust marketing strategy that drives growth and success.

Remember, the Marketing Canvas is a dynamic tool. As your business environment changes, you should revisit your goals and strategies to ensure they remain relevant and effective. Regular review and adaptation are key to maintaining a successful marketing strategy.

Whether you're a non-marketer, an entrepreneur, or a marketer looking to learn something new, the Marketing Canvas offersa structured yet flexible approach to developing a marketing strategy. It breaks down complex marketing concepts into manageable steps, making the process more accessible and less intimidating.

The Marketing Canvas is not just a tool, but a journey. It's a process of discovery, assessment, and reinforcement. It's about understanding your market, setting clear goals, and determining the actions you need to take to achieve those goals.

So, are you ready to embark on this journey? Are you ready to set your goals and grow your business? Remember, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In the case of the Marketing Canvas, that step is setting your goals.

6 simple principles for your marketing strategy

6 simple principles that could help you when working on your Marketing Strategy

1. Goal: You should always start with a quantitative goal

2. Target: Who is your ideal buyer/user/persona you will be targeting with your action?

3. Action: Define the action you should do to for achieving your goal with your target

4. Execution & measure: Build, launch and measure your action.

5. Corrective action: fix the original action based on what you have learned from the execution.

6. Amplification (scaling): when you have fixed the action, you can scale it (growth hacking philosophy) and reach your goal.

Some companies are trying to be perfect before moving to step 4. While we should always do our best at step 1-3, I believe the most important are 4-6. Time is key and if you are agile, work in sprint and define a time limit for steps 1-3.

Growth in a Digital World

“By 2020 every business will become a digital predator or digital prey — which will your company evolve into?”

— Forrester

If you are reading this article, you might probably be interested in growing your business. While the question is easy to ask (I remember financial controllers asking me to find extra 3% revenue growth while my corporate building had been attacked by 2000 people and we suffered 50M$ damage), the answer is certainly not so obvious these days!

What growth means?

Before defining the solution, we need to understand the problem. If you want more revenue, you need to play with the following parameters of your revenue equation:

• More paid users than today with same number of transactions: you should have more clients on a yearly basis buying your product and services than last year. It can come from the market (population is growing, available market is important) and/or from your commercial actions (acquisition and retention).
• More transactions than today with same number of users: these clients should spend more on average for each commercial transactions they do with you. This can come from either (1) more products purchased during the transaction (e.g. menu versus separated items) and/or (2) an higher price paid for these products (discounted brand versus premium brand). Usually it comes from your commercial activity (stimulation).
• A positive mix of users and/or transactions: Usually the reality sits in a positive mix between users and transactions (we called it elasticity).

At the end, the combination between users and transactions should generate an higher revenue. This is the only way for generating growth. The last 20 years, we were palying with these combination by IMPROVING our commercial processes (doing better) or EXTENDING it (doing more). It did work primarily because population was growing, people economic power was growing and products were not fully available everywhere. Those days are unfortunately gone.

The thesis I am submitting to you is that for the next decade, it is not sufficient and we can only survive as a company if we CHANGE our commercial processes (new business model). Let's find out if my thesis is right.

Insight 1 - Consumers are Changing

People are changing and I am quite optimistic wth this trend. We can see this as a DES-INDUSTRIALISATION of their consumption habits.

They want abundance but they care about waste. They want you to be genuinely true. They want you to be closer. They want all options. And finally, they want you to positvely contribute to their life and world.

Insight 2 - Your World is Changing

In these days, the old habit of looking at what happened last year and extrapolating commercial figures from these data might not work because we are living in a turbulent period. If you are still doubting that we are living in a turbulent period, I really invite you to read Jeremy Rifkin on the Third Industrial Revolution.

The last century, 12,5% of economical growth can only explained by labour performance and machine capital. The rest (87.5%) was a mystery and commonly referred as "the mesure of our ignorance". After 25 years of investigations, a number of analysts concluded that economic growth could be explained by 3 factors: labour performance, machine capital and energy use. During the last 100 years, we have created economic growth thanks to the combination of electricity grid, telecommunications network, road system and fossil fuel energies. Maybe a little bit simplistic, but I would say: WE CREATED GROWTH BY BURNING THE PLANET.

The fantastic news is that we are entering in a third industrial revolution. This revolution is driven by free energy, automated transportation, internet and dematerialisation.

Insight 3 - You have new competitors

Insight 4 - How will you play the game?

5 Attitudes for creating Growth in a Digital World

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If you are not taking this digital revolution seriously (dematerialisation, collaboration, distributed capitalism), you will be most probably a digital prey in the coming years.

As the attention of people is shrinking (we are in an Attention Economy), it is fundamental that you are clear about why people would buy and stay with you (What is your purpose? What job to be done are you in? How do you monetise your activities?).

People and companies are expecting you to be generous because we are in the OUTCOME ECONOMY era where you should help people save time and effort in their daily lives.

Peter Drucker rightly said: "Culture eats strategy at breakfast". It means that even if you have the smartest strategy, you will only be successful if you have the right people and culture for delivering it.

Remember the S-Curve! What you do today, will only generate real results in 2 to 3 years. Start early when you still have time to do it because it is much more difficult when you are running out of cash or profit.