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A collection of article and ideas that help Smart Marketers to become Smarter
Quick Assessment Guide
Happy to announce that a one-pager quick assessment guide is now available for download. Sometimes before doing a full assessment which is really what the method is all about, some persons or companies might appreciate a first quick assessment for opening the discussion. Even though we are missing the nuances provided by the full version, it can be a nice conversation starter.
Happy to announce that a one-pager quick assessment guide is now available for download. Sometimes before doing a full assessment which is really what the method is all about, some persons or companies might appreciate a first quick assessment for opening the discussion. Even though we are missing the nuances provided by the full version, it can be a nice conversation starter.
A quick assessment guide (one pager) allowing you to do a first assessment of your marketing strategy (one target group, one line of product). In case of interest, you can deep dive in one or multiple dimensions using the scoring grid that can be downloaded.
Marketing Canvas - Step 2 - Set Your Goals
In the Marketing Canvas Process, after having finalised your assessment, you should discuss potential scenarios that will help you achieve your goal(s). An interesting perspective for this phase is to use the scenarios proposed by Tiffani Boffa in her book Growth IQ.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Marketing Canvas - Positioning
Demystify brand positioning with the Marketing Canvas methodology. Understand its significance, different types, and evaluation process. Enhance your brand's market presence with effective positioning strategies.
About the Marketing Canvas Method
This article covers dimension 220 — Positioning, part of the
Brand meta-category. The Marketing Canvas Method structures
marketing strategy across 24 dimensions and 9 strategic archetypes.
Full framework reference at
marketingcanvas.net →
·
Get the book →
In a nutshell
Positioning is the mental real estate your brand owns in the customer's head. Not what you say about yourself — what customers say about you when you're not in the room. Dimension 220 in the Marketing Canvas Method measures whether your positioning is specific enough to exclude alternatives, validated by customer reality, and visible across every touchpoint. A positioning statement that could apply to three or more of your competitors unchanged is not a position. It's wallpaper.
What is Positioning?
Positioning answers one question: why should customers choose you over every alternative?
It must do three things at once: tell customers what category you're in, how you're different, and why they should care. And it must satisfy four criteria — it must be defined (written down and agreed), relevant (to the customer, not to your internal team), attainable (given your actual resources), and aligned with your culture (your people must be able to live it).
The most common failure isn't being wrong. It's being vague. "We provide innovative solutions for modern businesses" occupies no mental real estate because it describes everyone. "We're the indoor health protection company" occupies a specific space because it excludes everything else.
That's the discipline: positioning is as much about what you refuse to be as what you claim to be.
The Positioning Test
Two scoring rules tell you everything:
Score negative if your positioning statement could be copied, word for word, onto a competitor's website without anyone noticing. Vague positioning — "high quality," "customer-centric," "innovative" — signals the absence of strategic choice.
Score positive when your positioning is specific enough to exclude alternatives, confirmed by actual customer research (not internal assumption), and consistently visible from your website headline to your sales pitch to the way your team answers the phone.
The test is simple. Ask three people outside your company to read your positioning statement. Then ask: does this describe only us, or does it also describe our competitors? If the honest answer is "it also describes them" — you have work to do.
Positioning Types: Leader, Challenger, Disruptor
The Marketing Canvas recognises three strategic roles a brand can occupy in its competitive space. Your choice here is not just a marketing decision — it determines your entire competitive approach.
1. Leader Brand
The leader is the category default. When a customer thinks about your category, they think of you first. Leader brands enjoy substantial mindshare and market share, but they pay a price: as they grow toward mass-market adoption, they often lose the early enthusiasts who made them distinctive. Maintaining a leadership position requires constant investment in brand relevance, not just product breadth.
2. Challenger Brand
Challengers compete by turning the leader's strength into a weakness. The leader is everywhere? The challenger is exclusive. The leader is corporate? The challenger is human. The leader is expensive? The challenger is honest about value. Challenger positioning requires precision: you must know exactly which customer segment the leader is underserving, and you must own that segment completely before attempting to expand.
3. Game Changer / Disruptor Brand
Disruptors don't compete within the existing category — they redefine it. They find the job that incumbents have been ignoring, build a product or service architecture around it, and then name the new category. Green Clean did not compete as "another eco-friendly cleaning service." They redefined the job as indoor health protection — and in doing so, created a category where they were, by definition, the leader from day one.
The disruptor play is the highest-risk and highest-reward choice. It only works when the new category genuinely solves an unmet job — and when the brand has the resources to educate the market before competitors copy the framing.
Why Positioning is a Fatal Brake
In the Marketing Canvas Method, Positioning is classified as a Fatal Brake for three archetypes: A1 (Disruptive Newcomer), A5 (Pivot Pioneer), and A8 (Niche Expert).
A Fatal Brake is a dimension where a score below +2 actively blocks progress toward your Step 2 goal. You can fix everything else — and still fail — if this one dimension is broken.
Here is why it's fatal in each case:
A1 — Disruptive Newcomer: A disruptor with vague positioning is just another startup. Without a clear answer to "why choose you over the established player," you will exhaust your budget educating a market that then buys from the incumbent.
A5 — Pivot Pioneer: A pivot without repositioning is a rebrand without a direction. You can change your product entirely and still lose if the market's mental model of your brand hasn't shifted.
A8 — Niche Expert: A niche expert without precise positioning is a generalist pretending to specialize. Owning a niche requires staking a claim so specific that customers in that segment feel you were built exclusively for them.
If your current archetype is A1, A5, or A8 and your Positioning score is below +2 — address this before anything else.
Translating Positioning into Action
Positioning only exists if it's consistently expressed. A positioning statement that lives in a brand document but doesn't show up in the website headline, the sales deck, the onboarding email, and the customer support script isn't positioning. It's aspiration.
Four questions to pressure-test your execution:
Can every person in your team articulate your positioning in one sentence — without reading a card?
Does your website's above-the-fold message reflect your positioning directly?
Would a new customer arriving from any channel — social, search, referral — get the same positioning signal?
Does your pricing reinforce your positioning? (A premium positioning with discounting creates cognitive dissonance that erodes both.)
Consistent expression across every touchpoint is what turns a positioning statement into a customer perception. The perception is the only thing that matters.
Statements for Self-Assessment
Rate your agreement on a scale from −3 (completely disagree) to +3 (completely agree). There is no zero — the Marketing Canvas forces a directional position on every dimension.
Note on Detailed Track scoring: if averaging sub-question scores produces a mathematical zero, the method rounds to −1. A split score means the dimension is not clearly helping your goal — and "not clearly helping" requires the same investigation as "hurting."
Interpreting Your Scores
Negative scores (−3 to −1): Your positioning is unclear, generic, or misaligned. The brand occupies no distinct mental real estate. Customers have no reliable reason to choose you over alternatives — and no reliable way to describe you to others. This is the most expensive problem in marketing, because every other investment (media, content, acquisition) amplifies a message that doesn't stick.
Positive scores (+1 to +3): Your positioning is defined, specific, and consistently expressed. Customers can articulate your brand in terms that match how you'd describe it yourself. Your positioning excludes alternatives rather than trying to appeal to everyone — which means the customers who choose you are choosing you deliberately.
Case Study: Green Clean's Positioning Journey
Green Clean is an eco-friendly residential cleaning service. Here is what the same company looks like at three different positioning maturity levels.
Weak positioning (scores −3 to −1): Green Clean describes itself as "an eco-friendly cleaning solution prioritizing sustainability." The problem: so does every competitor in the eco-cleaning segment. There is no functional category, no excluded alternative, no reason to choose Green Clean over EcoPure or NatureFresh. Customers see the brand as generic. The positioning is real estate no one can find.
Transitional positioning (scores +1 to +2): Green Clean has sharpened to "safe and sustainable cleaning solutions." Better — but still vague. "Safe" and "sustainable" are table stakes in the eco-cleaning category. The positioning describes the category, not the brand's unique place within it. Customers understand what Green Clean does but still can't explain why they'd choose it over a premium competitor.
Strong positioning (score +3): Green Clean shifts to "the indoor health protection company." This is a different category altogether — not eco-cleaning, not green products, but health protection in the home. It references a specific job (protect my family's indoor environment from toxins), excludes conventional cleaning companies that cannot credibly make this claim, and supports a premium price point ($200/visit vs. $100 for conventional alternatives). Every touchpoint — the Family Health Report dashboard, the B-Corp certification, the non-toxic proprietary formula — now serves as proof of the positioning rather than decoration around it.
The shift from "eco-friendly cleaning" to "indoor health protection" is the model. The words changed by a sentence. The strategic outcome changed by a category.
Connected Dimensions
Positioning does not operate in isolation. Four other dimensions must align with it:
110 — JTBD: Positioning must reference the customer's actual job. If your positioning doesn't connect to what customers are hiring you to do, it will feel hollow — however well-crafted.
210 — Purpose: Positioning operationalises purpose for the market. Purpose is the internal compass; positioning is the external expression. They must be consistent.
240 — Visual Identity: Visual identity makes positioning visible. A premium positioning with budget-looking design creates dissonance. A disruptor positioning with corporate aesthetics kills the claim before the first word is read.
310 — Features: Features must deliver what positioning promises. If your positioning claims "indoor health protection," every feature in the product must serve that job. Features that don't are complexity without strategic value.
Conclusion
Positioning is the dimension that makes all other marketing work. Without it, media spend amplifies noise. Without it, content has nothing to anchor to. Without it, the sales conversation starts from zero every time.
You should be able to state your positioning in one sentence, test it against your competitors, and find it expressed consistently across every customer touchpoint. If you can't — that is where to start.
The scoring logic is unambiguous: if your positioning statement could describe three of your competitors as easily as it describes you, it is not a position. It is a description of the category. The category doesn't need a marketing strategy. Your brand does.
Sources
Al Ries & Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, McGraw-Hill, 1981 (revised 2001) — the foundational text on owning a position in the customer's mind
April Dunford, Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning, Page Two Books, 2019 — aprildunford.com— the modern practitioner standard on positioning methodology
Fabrik Brands, "Brand Positioning Trends 2025", November 2025 — fabrikbrands.com
Crealytics, "Brand Marketing in 2025: 8 Power Moves Every Marketer Must Master", 2025 — crealytics.com
Marketing Canvas Method, Appendix E: The 24 Dimensions — Dimension 220 Positioning, Laurent Bouty, 2026
Marketing Canvas - Engagement
Satisfaction and engagement are not the same thing. A customer can score 7/10 on satisfaction and never return. Dimension 140 of the Marketing Canvas explains the difference, how to measure it, and why engagement is the leading indicator that predicts churn before it appears in the revenue line.
About the Marketing Canvas Method
This article covers dimension 140 — Engagement, part of the
Customers meta-category. The Marketing Canvas Method structures
marketing strategy across 24 dimensions and 9 strategic archetypes.
Full framework reference at
marketingcanvas.net →
·
Get the book →
In a nutshell
Engagement (dimension 140) measures the quality and depth of the relationship between brand and customer. Not satisfaction. A customer can be satisfied and completely disengaged.
That distinction is the entire point of this dimension. Satisfaction measures how a customer felt about the last interaction. Engagement measures whether the customer is actively participating in the relationship — recommending the brand unprompted, providing feedback, returning without being asked, defending the brand when challenged. These are different signals, and they require different interventions.
In the Marketing Canvas, Engagement sits within the Customers meta-category alongside Job To Be Done (110), Aspirations (120), and Pains & Gains (130). It is the last of the four Customer dimensions — and the one that translates everything upstream into a measurable, trackable relationship signal.
Engagement as a leading indicator of churn
The most commercially important insight in this dimension is also the least intuitive: engagement is a leading indicator of churn, while revenue is a lagging one.
Churn does not happen suddenly. It is preceded by a sequence of declining engagement signals — fewer referrals, slower response to outreach, silence where there used to be feedback, reduced product usage depth, a shift from promoter to passive. By the time churn appears in the revenue line, the customer made the decision weeks or months earlier. Companies that track engagement signals catch that decision in progress. Companies that track only revenue discover it after the fact.
Research consistently confirms this pattern. A 2025 analysis of customer engagement as a retention predictor found that engagement metrics — frequency of use, depth of feature adoption, responsiveness to outreach — signal churn risk before any revenue indicator does. Customers who begin ignoring key features are significantly more likely to churn; those who maintain consistent usage patterns, even at modest levels, renew at materially higher rates.
The practical implication for the Marketing Canvas: a company that scores Engagement at −1 is not just describing a weak customer relationship today. It is describing a churn problem that will show up in User Lifetime (630) figures within the next 6–12 months.
What engagement actually measures
Engagement is active participation. The four observable forms:
Recommendation — does the customer refer the brand to others without being asked? Unprompted referral is the strongest engagement signal because it requires the customer to put their own reputation behind the brand. Green Clean's 35% referral rate by 2024 was the clearest evidence of high engagement — customers were actively recruiting new ones.
Feedback — does the customer respond to outreach, complete surveys, attend review sessions, and provide input into product or service evolution? A customer who stops providing feedback is not neutral — they have disengaged. Silence is a signal.
Return without prompt — does the customer come back without a campaign, a discount, or a re-engagement effort? Repeat purchase driven by marketing spend is retention. Repeat purchase driven by habit and relationship is engagement.
Defence under challenge — does the customer defend the brand when it is criticised? This is the tribal signal. Customers who have moved from satisfied to engaged will tell a sceptical colleague "actually, here's why I use them" without being asked to.
The NPS instrument
The classic measurement tool for Engagement is the Net Promoter Score — a single question that segments customers into three groups based on their likelihood to recommend:
Promoters (score 9–10): actively recommend the brand to others. The growth engine. Every promoter generates acquisition at zero additional cost. The strategic goal is to grow this group and give them the tools to advocate effectively.
Passives (score 7–8): satisfied but not engaged. They stay until something better comes along or a pain accumulates. They do not recommend, but they do not damage the brand either. The strategic goal is to understand what would move them to promoter status.
Detractors (score 0–6): dissatisfied and potentially vocal. They represent churn risk and reputational risk simultaneously. The strategic goal is not to ignore them — detractor verbatims are the richest source of improvement intelligence in any customer base.
The NPS score itself (% Promoters − % Detractors) is useful as a tracking metric. What matters more in the MCM audit is the ratio between the two groups and whether the company has systems in place to act on what both groups are saying. A high NPS with no feedback loop is a number, not a strategy.
Score negative if engagement is unmeasured, or measured only through satisfaction surveys. Score positive when the company tracks promoter/detractor ratios, acts on the feedback, and can demonstrate a link between engagement scores and business outcomes.
Engagement in the Marketing Canvas
The canonical question
How deeply connected are your customers to your brand?
Engagement appears in the Vital 8 of three archetypes — and the roles span the full range of urgency:
Fatal Brake for A3 (Brand Evangelist): The Brand Evangelist archetype is built entirely on tribal belonging. If the tribe is not engaged, there is no tribe — just customers who happen to have bought the same product. Patagonia's NPS of 70+ and customer retention of 82% by 2022 are not incidental. They are the strategic output of an engagement system built around Worn Wear, environmental activism, and community events that make customers active participants rather than passive purchasers. For A3, a low Engagement score does not mean "improve the relationship." It means the entire archetype is failing.
Primary Accelerator for A4 (Stagnant Leader): A leader experiencing stagnation faces a leaky bucket — churn is rising while acquisition is fighting to refill it. Deepening engagement with the existing customer base is the primary defence. It is cheaper to re-engage a passive customer than to acquire a new one. It is far cheaper to convert a detractor's concern into product improvement than to lose them and acquire a replacement. For A4, Engagement is not a nice-to-have — it is the mechanism that slows the leak while the experience is being fixed.
Primary Accelerator for A7 (Scale-Up Guardian): Hypergrowth tends to destroy the relationships that created growth. As teams scale, as processes become standardised, as the personal touch disappears, early adopters shift from promoters to passives. The Scale-Up Guardian's specific challenge is maintaining engagement quality while growing volume. Tracking engagement signals during rapid growth is the early warning system that tells leadership whether the brand is scaling its relationship — or just scaling its revenue.
Statements for self-assessment
Rate your agreement on a scale from −3 (completely disagree) to +3 (completely agree). There is no zero — the Marketing Canvas forces a directional position on every dimension.
Note on Detailed Track scoring: if averaging sub-question scores produces a mathematical zero, the method rounds to −1. A split score means the dimension is not clearly helping your goal — and "not clearly helping" requires the same investigation as "hurting."
Interpreting your scores
Negative scores (−1 to −3): Engagement is unmeasured, or measured only through satisfaction surveys that don't distinguish between satisfied-and-disengaged and genuinely loyal. Detractors are not being systematically identified or addressed. Promoters are not being activated. Churn signals are invisible until they appear in the revenue line — by which point the decision has already been made.
Positive scores (+1 to +3): Engagement is tracked systematically through promoter/detractor ratios and behavioural signals. Detractor feedback feeds directly into service and product improvements. Promoters have tools and reasons to advocate. The company can demonstrate a measurable link between engagement scores and retention outcomes. Engagement is functioning as the leading indicator it is designed to be.Case study: Green Clean’s Engagement strategy
Misaligned understanding (-3, -2, -1): Green Clean lacks the tools to measure engagement and struggles to address customer dissatisfaction. Detractors outnumber promoters, harming the brand’s reputation, while sustainability efforts are absent from its engagement strategy.
Surface understanding (0): Green Clean uses basic tools like surveys but lacks a cohesive approach to managing detractors and empowering promoters. Sustainability is a peripheral concern, limiting its appeal to eco-conscious customers.
Deep understanding (+1, +2, +3): Green Clean leverages NPS and behavioral data to track engagement effectively. It proactively resolves detractor concerns, encourages promoters to share positive reviews, and integrates sustainability into its messaging, fostering strong customer relationships.
Case study: Green Clean
Green Clean is a fictional eco-friendly residential cleaning service used as the recurring worked example throughout the Marketing Canvas Method.
Score: −2 to −1 (Weak) Green Clean has no formal engagement measurement. The team sends an annual satisfaction survey — three questions, 22% response rate — and reads the results as confirmation that customers are happy. There is no NPS measurement. No promoter/detractor tracking. No system for capturing or acting on feedback between services. When a customer cancels, the cancellation is processed without any outreach to understand why. The churn rate of 20% in 2021 is treated as an industry benchmark issue, not an engagement signal. The team cannot name a single specific action taken in response to customer feedback in the past twelve months. Engagement is not measured. Engagement is not managed.
Score: +1 to +2 (Developing) By 2022, Green Clean has introduced NPS measurement after each service visit. They have identified a promoter group (score 9–10) representing 38% of customers, and a detractor group (score 0–6) representing 14%. The promoter group is being asked for referrals informally. The detractor group is contacted by the founder within 48 hours of a low score — a process that is recovering approximately 40% of those customers. A quarterly feedback session with a sample of long-term customers is feeding service improvements. But the system is still primarily reactive: engagement is being tracked, but not yet used as a leading churn indicator. The referral rate sits at 18% — growing, but not yet the dominant acquisition channel.
Score: +2 to +3 (Strong) Green Clean's engagement system is proactive and closed-loop. NPS is tracked after every service visit and monthly at the account level. Detractor verbatims are reviewed weekly and feed directly into the service improvement backlog — four product changes in 2023 traced directly to detractor feedback. Promoters receive structured advocacy tools: referral cards, a community group, and the option to share their Family Health Report data publicly with anonymisation. The referral rate reached 35% by 2024, making word-of-mouth the largest single acquisition channel. Churn fell from 20% to 12% between 2021 and 2024 — a decline that correlated directly with the improvement in NPS and the reduction in the detractor-to-promoter ratio. Engagement is the company's most reliable leading indicator of both retention and growth.
Connected dimensions
Engagement does not operate in isolation. Four dimensions connect most directly:
130 — Pains & Gains: Engagement drops when pains accumulate. The most reliable way to convert a promoter into a passive — or a passive into a detractor — is to leave a mapped pain unaddressed. Pains & Gains research identifies what to fix; Engagement measurement tracks whether fixing it is working.
510 — Listening (VOC): VOC systems feed engagement data. The feedback loop that makes engagement actionable requires a systematic listening infrastructure — not just NPS, but the full VOC stack that captures what customers say, where they say it, and at which stage of the journey.
630 — User Lifetime: Engagement predicts lifetime. The correlation between promoter status and customer lifetime value is well-established. A customer who actively recommends the brand has already demonstrated a level of commitment that translates directly into longer retention and higher ARPU.
520 — Stories: Engaged customers become storytellers. The most valuable content the brand can produce is a promoter's authentic account of why they use and recommend it. Engagement measurement identifies who those promoters are. Stories strategy gives them a stage.
Conclusion
Satisfaction is easy to achieve and easy to mistake for something more. A customer who rates the last service 7/10 and never comes back is satisfied. A customer who rates it 6/10, calls to say why, and stays for three more years after the issue is resolved is engaged.
The dimension that distinguishes between those two customers — and builds systems to identify, track, and act on the difference — is Engagement. It is the Customer meta-category's mechanism for translating everything upstream (JTBD clarity, aspiration alignment, pain elimination) into a measurable relationship.
For archetypes where brand loyalty is the strategic imperative — A3, A4, A7 — a low Engagement score is the diagnostic that explains why the strategy is not working, even when the product is sound. Fix Engagement, and the downstream metrics follow. Leave it unmeasured, and the churn signal arrives in the revenue line: accurate, too late, and expensive to reverse.
Sources
Frederick Reichheld, "The One Number You Need to Grow", Harvard Business Review, December 2003 — hbr.org
Stellafai, "6 Leading Indicators to Accurately Predict Renewal and Churn", 2025 — stellafai.com
Marketing Canvas Method, Appendix E — Dimension 140: Engagement, Laurent Bouty, 2026
About this dimension
Dimension 140 — Engagement is part of the Customers meta-category (100) in the Marketing Canvas Method. The Customers meta-category contains four dimensions: Job To Be Done (110), Aspirations (120), Pains & Gains (130), and Engagement (140).
The Marketing Canvas Method is a complete marketing strategy framework built around 6 meta-categories, 24 dimensions, and 9 strategic archetypes. Learn more at marketingcanvas.net or in the book Marketing Strategy, Programmed by Laurent Bouty.
6 simple principles for your marketing strategy
6 simple principles that could help you when working on your Marketing Strategy. 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.
6 simple principles that could help you when working on your Marketing Strategy
Goal: You should always start with a quantitative goal
Target: Who is your ideal buyer/user/persona you will be targeting with your action?
Action: Define the action you should do to for achieving your goal with your target
Execution & measure: Build, launch and measure your action.
Corrective action: fix the original action based on what you have learned from the execution.
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.
How to connect your ambition with your operations
I had an interesting discussion with @nicolasdebray (Semetis, Academic Director) about the Ambition in the Marketing Canvas Process…
I had an interesting discussion with @nicolasdebray (Semetis, Academic Director) about the Ambition in the Marketing Canvas Process. He made the following comment:
Having a high-level financial objective is definitely important but often people in the field have difficulties to link this high-level objective (generate a revenue growth of 5% thus 1M€ more) with what they could do!
There are multiple ways to potentially connect this ambition with your operations: (1) either you attract more users, (2) either you retain more users; they stay longer, (3) either they buy more often (ARPU) or (4) they buy more products and/or services. This is connected with the notion of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
The discussion you should have in the Marketing Canvas will help you to make this connection. How? By understanding which driver(s) could help you.
Q1 - Is your MARKET helping you to achieve your ambition?
For answering this question, we can refer to the product-lifecycle approach using the 4 stages definition of a market:
Market Development or Introduction: Personas are not yet used to buy this kind of product or service. They need a lot of explanations and trust is not installed on the market, yet the volume of potential buyers is huge as the market hasn’t been addressed. It is clearly an Accelerator because the market orientation is positive (growth of sales but not in terms of profit).
Growth: Personas are getting used to buy this kind of products/services. They now understand the benefits of the products/services and trust providers. There is still a huge volume of buyers available on the market and traction is high. It is definitely an Accelerator because the market orientation is positive (growth of sales and profit).
Maturity: This often means that your market will be saturated and you may find that you need to change your marketing tactics to prolong the life cycle of your product. It is a Brake as most of the market has already bought a solution to their problem. Sales are flat.
Decline: During the end stages of your product, you will see declining sales and profits. This can be fuelled by changes in consumer preferences, technological advances and alternatives on the market. It is a Brake as the market is declining.
Q2 - Is your Customer Acquisition helping you to achieve your ambition?
For answering this question, you can use 2 important concepts: Customer Acquisition Rate (CAR) and Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA).
If Customer Acquisition Rate is below market average, then it is a Brake because it takes more time to get new customers than your competitors;
If Customer Acquisition Rate is above market average, then it is an Accelerator because you attract faster new customers than your competitors.
If COCA is above market average it is a Brake.
If COCA is below market average it is an Accelerator.
CAR has the priority on COCA and therefore the final status for User is defined by CAR; COCA is telling how effective you are.
Q3 - Is your users’ ARPU helping you to achieve your ambition?
For answering this question, you need to understand if you have an optimisation strategy in place for your ARPU:
If your ARPU is below market average, it means that you are either attracting low value customers and/or not fully stimulating existing customers. It is therefore a Brake.
If your ARPU is above market average, it means that you are either attracting high value customers and/or fully stimulating existing customers (recurrent revenue, up sell, cross sell). It is therefore an Accelerator.
Q4 - Is your users’ Lifetime helping you to achieve your ambition?
For answering this questionnaires, you need to understanding of you have a retention strategy in Place for your users:
If the lifetime is below market average, it means that you are not capable to keep your existing users as long as your competitors. It is a Brake.
If the lifetime is above market average, it means that you are capable to keep your existing users longer than your competitors. It is an Accelerator.
A second concept worth looking is the Cost of Customer Retention:
If COCR is above market average it is a Brake.
If COCR is below market average it is an Accelerator.
Conclusion
At the end of the exercise, you will have a better view on how you will achieve your ambition. It will also help your team in charge of the operation to understand what they have to do:
And/Or Getting more clients on board
And/Or Developing and/or selling more products to their existing client base
And/Or Keeping their clients longer (satisfaction, retention)
Definition
Customer Acquisition Rate (CAR)=Number of customer acquired/Length of time period.
Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA)=All the costs spent on acquiring more customers (marketing expenses) by the number of customers acquired in the period the money was spent.
Marketing Canvas - Ambition
Dans le cadre d'une Marketing canvas, il est important de démarrer le processus à partir d'une question claire et simple basée sur l'ambition que vous souhaitez atteindre à l'aide de votre stratégie marketing. Une vidéo simple pour expliquer ce concept.
Dans le cadre d'une Marketing canvas, il est important de démarrer le processus à partir d'une question claire et simple basée sur l'ambition que vous souhaitez atteindre à l'aide de votre stratégie marketing. Une vidéo simple pour expliquer ce concept.
Marketing Canvas, some tips about the process
Canvas works really well if:
- Start with a clear ambition, S.M.A.R.T. and linked with the finance. One of the usual mistake when doing a marketing strategy exercise is to not properly link the marketing actions with the financial consequences. In the Marketing Canvas exercise, we genuinely start from the financial ambition for addressing this issue. This ambition is about growth and thus the canvas is about growth hacking your marketing strategy.
- Start with a clear persona representing a customer cluster sharing the same Job To Be Done (problem to be solved by your offer). It could happen that you can't achieve your ambition with your current persona/segment (in classical strategy, it corresponds to a cash cow or a future dog). If it is the case you should consider another segment with another job to be done.
- Assess the current situation of your marketing mix by asking the 28 questions as defined in the canvas. Define clearly if each dimension TODAY is helping you to achieve your ambition (it is an accelerator) or is not (then we define this dimension as a brake). Do this exercise in team as it will create a shared understanding of the situation and support your answers with facts.
- Backward thinking is a very powerful way of finding solutions to any problem. In this process, try to visualise/imagine how dimension(s) defined as BRAKES would look like if they would help you with your ambition. What is different? Could you describe it? Does it really help with your ambition? If yes, then you have one idea of potential solutions. Find as many ideas as possible.
- Having generated plenty of ideas (some could even be yellow ideas aka impossible ideas), you should prioritise it in order to finalise your preferred vision of this future where your ambition is achieved. What are the actions you should do to transform this future into a reality: Start Doing, Stop Doing, Do More, Do Less, Simplify, Magnify? Brainstorm as a team and list all actions.
You now have identified all actions for building your future but you have to organise it into a comprehensive and feasible roadmap. Some actions are low hanging fruits while others require more time and effort. One way to do this is to use these 2 criteria: contribution to the ambition and effort. Congratulations, you now have a roadmap and a marketing strategy.
New Business Models in a Digital Future
In a world strongly influenced by new technologies, new business models are emerging for brands. We usually defined this new world as a digital world but what digital really means? In this presentation, I explore the impact of digital and propose some recommandations that could help defining new ways of creating and capturing value.
In a world strongly influenced by new technologies, new business models are emerging for brands. We usually defined this new world as a digital world but what digital really means? In this presentation, I explore the impact of digital and propose some recommandations that could help defining new ways of creating and capturing value.
How to Assess your Marketing Situation With the Marketing Canvas?
One clear objective of the Marketing Canvas is to facilitate debate and discussion around a clear strategic challenge question. Most of the specialists of the leadership topic agree that one of the key reason why strategy is failing is because the decision that has to be made is unclear! When you do the strategic marketing exercise, you need to be crystal clear about which question you are trying to answer.
One objective of the Marketing Canvas is to facilitate debate and discussion around a clear strategic challenge question. Most of the specialists of the leadership topic agree that one of the key reason why strategy exercise fails is because the decision that has to be made is unclear! When you do the strategic marketing exercise, you need to be crystal clear about which question you are trying to answer.
A second reason why strategy exercise is failing is because there is no alignment neither consensus around the causes and the solutions.
The Marketing Canvas is before everything a framework for facilitating the debate, the co-creation and the alignment of the leadership team. To make it happen, the process for assessing the situation is as follow:
Start with one strategic question or ambition
Start the Marketing Canvas Process with a simple and crystal clear question structured as this:
How …. [Marketing Dimension] is helping us to …. [strategic question or challenge]?
The strategic question or challenge is the trigger for the strategic exercise. Example of strategic question could be:
- Growth our revenue by 5%?
- Become more competitive?
- Launch my startup, my new product or service?
- Increase my market share?
- Improve our ranking in the Meaningful Brand Index?
Having set your Strategic Question, you can systematically discuss each Marketing Dimension with the above question.
Example:
- How our Purpose is helping us to become more competitive?
- How the Job to be done of our customer is helping us to growth our revenue by 5%?
- How our Brand Experience is helping us to increase our Market Share?
- How our Brand identity is helping us to launch our startup?
Discuss with the team and qualify each dimension
For each question, you should assess the situation. Ideally, you have facts and analysis helping you to do this exercise however with a team of internal expert, the consensus and alignment provide usually a rather good qualitative assessment (we should only be careful about not being biased. This could be solved with an external facilitator challenging the obvious).
When asking the question (How …. [Marketing Dimension] is helping us to …. [strategic question or challenge]?), you can have 3 answers:
- RED: This dimension is definitely not helping you. It is a strong negative factor that you will certainly have to tackle in your potential solution. It is a negative factor and might play against your ambition. You will have also to mitigate it.
- GREEN: This dimension is helping you. It is a positive factor and you should leverage it more. This dimension is one of your core asset for this challenge. You should definitely leverage it and it is a key positive factor for your ambition.
- BLACK: You don't know. You have not enough information for answering this question.
Negative factors are referred as Brakes and positive factors are referred as Accelerators.
Visualise the results on the Marketing Canvas
Having answered all questions, you can visualise your results on the Marketing Canvas. The results on the Marketing Canvas will facilitate team debates around correlations, causalities and ideation.
Summary
Assessment methodology with the Marketing Canvas
Marketing Canvas 2.1 (New version)
The Marketing Canvas is evolving. We have changed 2 main dimensions as it reflects more the Marketing reality.
“Hello Everyone, we are now at version 4.0 of the Canvas. You can find the canvas and other resources on laurentbouty.com/marketingcanvas.
Enjoy the reading and don’t forget to share your experiences with the canvas.”
canvas 4.0: click here https://laurentbouty.com/marketing-canvas-structure
Hello,
After having applied the methodology to several companies, we have collected a lot of insights about what's working very well and what could be improved. We realised that the dimensions COSTS and REVENUES might not be specific enough to the marketing/commercial strategy and we could use better terminology. We have decided to
HUMAN dimension is the most impacted because it wasn't enough customer centric in my point of view. I leveraged more the Value Proposition Canvas as it is a practical and beautiful tool (Job to be done and Pains/Gains) and I added Aspiration because it is key for Meaningful Brands and Engagement in line with NPS approach (Promoters/Detractors).
Replace COSTS by BUDGET which is what a CMO is really managing for achieving his/her objectives. We are keeping the sub-dimensions (FEES, PEOPLE, KNOWLEDGE, CAPABILITIES).
Replace REVENUES by CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). By doing so, we are reinforcing the customer centricity of our model and we integrate the cost of acquisition and cost of retention in the financial analysis.
Replace the word SLA in JOURNEY by Experience as it better reflects what the brand should do.
Update CONVERSATION by replacing Touchpoint by Media and Fans by Influencers as Fans are more for Customers (Human/engagement)than conversation.
Please find below the updated version of the Canvas (2.1). Hope you are enjoying it and feel free to share your feedback.
Marketing Canvas 2.1
4 Questions for Your Brand in Marketing Canvas
Why you do business is more important than how you do business.
The Brand describes your Ideology and your Core Purpose. It is also your identity.
4 Questions for your BRAND in the Marketing Canvas