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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.


Quick Assessment Guide
€0.00


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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.

  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.

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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.

Last update: 29/05/2023

In a nutshell

The Positioning sub-dimension in the Marketing Canvas helps define how a brand is perceived by its target audience. Effective positioning differentiates the brand from competitors, conveys unique value, and aligns with the needs and aspirations of its customers. A strong positioning strategy shapes the brand’s identity, supporting its place in the market and creating a meaningful emotional connection with its audience.

For example, a company like Green Clean might position itself as “the eco-friendly cleaning solution prioritizing family health and environmental impact,” highlighting its unique benefits and commitment to sustainability.

Introduction

The Positioning sub-dimension is an essential element of the Brand category in the Marketing Canvas. It establishes how a brand is perceived compared to competitors, how it fulfills customer expectations, and the unique values it communicates. Positioning is more than a slogan or tagline; it’s an overall strategy that guides a brand’s communications, customer experience, and market identity.

A well-defined positioning strategy helps a brand build loyalty, stay relevant, and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

What is positioning?

Positioning represents the perception a brand creates in the minds of its target audience. It reflects what makes the brand unique and why customers should choose it over competitors. Successful positioning resonates with customers by emphasizing specific benefits and values that align with their needs and aspirations.

For instance, Green Clean’s positioning might emphasize its commitment to “safe and sustainable cleaning solutions,” appealing to customers who prioritize health and environmental responsibility. By clearly conveying its unique benefits, Green Clean establishes a distinct identity within the cleaning products market.

Positioning: an in-depth perspective

Positioning goes beyond words; it shapes a brand’s identity and influences how customers experience and remember it. A strong positioning strategy aligns with the brand’s core mission, resonates with its target audience, and clearly differentiates it from competitors.

For example:

  • Differentiation: Green Clean’s positioning emphasizes its eco-friendly values, setting it apart from traditional cleaning brands.

  • Relevance: By aligning with customer priorities like health and sustainability, Green Clean’s positioning appeals directly to its target audience, strengthening loyalty and trust.

When positioning is effectively implemented, customers can easily understand and identify with the brand’s unique purpose and value.

Positioning Types: Leader, Challenger, Disruptor

The 'Positioning' in the Marketing Canvas proposes three potential roles: Leader, Challenger or Follower, and Game Changer or Disruptor.

  1. Leader Brand: This is the choice of mass consumers, often at the risk of losing early brand enthusiasts. These brands enjoy substantial mindshare and market share. They represent the category and dominate the space. For example, in the clean energy sector, a leader might be a company like NextEra Energy, known for its extensive wind and solar power production.

  2. Challenger or Follower Brand: These brands turn leaders' strengths into their weaknesses. Recognized as viable alternatives to Leader brands, Challengers often leverage differentiation or provide cost-effective solutions. In the context of green energy, a challenger brand could be a new renewable energy startup offering innovative, localized energy solutions that large-scale leaders cannot provide.

  3. Game Changer or Disruptor Brand: Disruptor brands find a 'Blue Ocean' market space for themselves, using a unique product, distribution channel, target market, or price point. For example, a clean energy disruptor might be a brand that creates a new technology for harnessing renewable energy, redefining the industry norms.

Translating positioning into action

Positioning is only effective when consistently applied across all aspects of a brand, from marketing and customer service to product development. Ensuring that all brand elements reflect its positioning strengthens its identity and reinforces customer expectations.

Questions to consider:

  • How does your brand’s positioning clearly differentiate it from competitors?

  • What unique value does your positioning highlight for customers?

  • Does your positioning align with customer values and long-term expectations?

  • Are you consistently reinforcing your positioning across all brand touchpoints?

Statements for self-assessment

For a comprehensive evaluation of your understanding and application of the Purpose concept, rate your agreement with the following statements on a scale from -3 (completely disagree) to +3 (completely agree):

  1. You have a well defined and clearly formulated brand positioning.

  2. Your brand positioning is very relevant in the company's current and future context, addressing all the influencing trends.

  3. Your brand positioning is attainable taking into account resources and limitations.

  4. Your brand positioning is aligned with your company culture and capabilities.

  5. Every aspect of your positioning is in line with the concept of sustainability

Marketing Canvas Method - Brand - Positioning

Interpretation of the scores

  • Negative scores (-1 to -3): Negative scores suggest that you disagree or strongly disagree with the statements, indicating a lack of clarity, relevance, or alignment in your brand’s positioning. This can result in a weak brand identity, limited customer loyalty, and minimal differentiation from competitors.

  • A score of zero (0): A neutral score reflects uncertainty or incomplete understanding of your brand’s positioning. While some positioning elements may be present, they lack cohesiveness or fail to fully resonate with the target audience. Further refinement and alignment are necessary to strengthen the positioning.

  • Positive scores (+1 to +3): Positive scores indicate that you agree or strongly agree with the statements, suggesting a clear, well-defined positioning that aligns with customer expectations, differentiates the brand, and consistently communicates its unique value. This strengthens customer loyalty and brand perception.

Case Study: Green Clean’s positioning

  • Misaligned Understanding (-3, -2, -1): Green Clean lacks a clear, distinct positioning strategy, failing to differentiate itself from other cleaning brands. Without focused positioning, customers see Green Clean as generic and have little reason to choose it over competitors, leading to a diluted brand identity.

  • Surface Understanding (0): Green Clean has a general positioning related to eco-friendliness but does not fully leverage it to create a distinct identity. Although it acknowledges the importance of sustainability, the positioning is vague or inconsistently communicated, which limits customer engagement and weakens brand perception.

  • Deep Understanding (+1, +2, +3): Green Clean has a strong, clearly defined positioning centered on safe and sustainable cleaning solutions. This positioning is consistently reflected across all marketing, customer interactions, and product offerings. By emphasizing health and environmental responsibility, Green Clean builds a unique identity that resonates with eco-conscious customers, distinguishing it from conventional brands.

Conclusion

Positioning is essential for defining a brand’s unique place in the market and ensuring it resonates with the target audience. A well-defined and consistently communicated positioning strategy enables brands to stand out, build loyalty, and create emotional connections. By defining and reinforcing its unique value, a brand can establish a strong, memorable identity in the minds of its customers.

Marketing Canvas by Laurent Bouty

Marketing Canvas by Laurent Bouty

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Marketing Canvas - Engagement

Explore the essence of customer engagement with the Marketing Canvas Method. Discover how to measure and improve it with tools like NPS. Drive your business growth by turning customer engagement into your success accelerator.

Last update: 30/10/2024

In a nutshell

Engagement sub-dimension in the Marketing Canvas focuses on how effectively a business can capture and sustain the interest of its customers. Engagement goes beyond simply attracting attention; it requires creating lasting connections that drive active participation, loyalty, and advocacy. By understanding the factors that influence engagement, companies can design marketing strategies that foster meaningful interactions with their audience.

For example, an eco-friendly cleaning brand like Green Clean might engage customers by sharing content on sustainable living, offering loyalty rewards, or creating a community around environmental responsibility. This level of engagement helps deepen customer relationships and build a strong brand community.

Introduction

Engagement sub-dimension, within the Customer category of the Marketing Canvas, focuses on building and maintaining a connection with customers that drives ongoing interest and involvement. This connection is based on a combination of communication, value delivery, and emotional resonance, which are key to keeping customers engaged over the long term.

While Pains and Gains look at addressing customer frustrations and needs, Engagement emphasizes the importance of continuous, active interaction, aiming to build loyalty and foster a community around the brand.

In the marketing canvas

The Marketing Canvas is a powerful tool for entrepreneurs and non-marketers to build a robust marketing strategy. It consists of six meta-dimensions, each with four sub-dimensions, for a total of 24 sub-dimensions defining your Marketing Strategy. One of these sub-dimensions is “Engagement”, which falls under the CUSTOMER category.

What is engagement?

Engagement represents the emotional and behavioral commitment a customer has with a brand. This commitment might manifest as repeat purchases, sharing positive feedback, participating in brand events, or advocating for the brand. Engaging customers requires understanding their interests, delivering consistent value, and encouraging them to participate in a shared experience with the brand.

For example, Green Clean might engage its eco-conscious customers by:

  • Providing resources on reducing household waste.

  • Offering loyalty rewards for repeat purchases of eco-friendly products.

  • Organizing community events focused on environmental sustainability.

Engagement is essential for building a brand community and transforming customers into advocates.

Engagement: an in-depth perspective

Engagement is about maintaining a two-way interaction between a brand and its customers. It requires businesses to understand what motivates their customers to stay connected and to respond proactively to their interests and feedback.

For example:

  • Active Engagement: A customer who frequently interacts with Green Clean’s social media content or attends brand-hosted events feels a personal connection with the company’s mission.

  • Passive Engagement: A customer may use Green Clean’s products without actively engaging with the brand’s content or events. Converting passive engagement into active participation can enhance loyalty and increase brand advocacy.

Understanding the depth and type of customer engagement helps businesses tailor their approaches to meet the specific preferences of their audience.

Tools for engagement: the NPS methodology

The NPS methodology segments customers into three groups based on their level of engagement: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. Promoters are champions of your brand who will actively recommend your products or services. Detractors, on the other hand, may express dissatisfaction and may discourage others from interacting with your company. Passives fall in-between; they are neither actively promoting nor detracting from your brand.

The usefulness of NPS doesn't stop at categorizing customers. When you compare your NPS score with your competitors', you can gain valuable insights into your brand's standing in the market. This comparison can be achieved through an NPS study of your competitor's customer base or the broader market.

public.jpeg

Translating engagement into action

To foster deep and lasting engagement, businesses should prioritize consistent, value-driven interactions that resonate with customer interests. Encouraging feedback, providing valuable resources, and fostering a sense of community can transform passive customers into loyal, actively engaged brand advocates.

Questions to consider:

  • How do your customers prefer to engage with your brand?

  • What types of content or interactions resonate most with your audience?

  • How can you create opportunities for customers to share their experiences and become advocates?

Statements for self-assessment

For a comprehensive evaluation of your understanding and application of the Engagement concept, rate your agreement with the following statements on a scale from -3 (completely disagree) to +3 (completely agree):

  1. You have the right tools & systems at your disposal for measuring the engagement of your customer? e.g. NPS alike tools

  2. The level of detractors amongst your customers is helping you achieve your goals.

  3. The level of promoters amongst your customers is helping you achieve your goals.

  4. You understand the role of sustainability in customer engagement and have aligned your strategies accordingly.

Marketing Canvas Method - Customers - Engagement by Laurent Bouty

Marketing Canvas Method - Customers - Engagement & Sustainability by Laurent Bouty

Marketing Canvas Method - Customers - Engagement & Sustainability by Laurent Bouty

Interpretation of the scores

  • Negative scores (-1 to -3): Suggest significant gaps in measuring and managing engagement. Detractors may be impacting your goals negatively, and promoters may not be effectively leveraged. Engagement strategies may lack alignment with sustainability principles.

  • A score of zero (0): Reflects a functional but under-optimized engagement strategy. While tools and systems may exist, their use may not be systematic or effective, limiting overall impact.

  • Positive scores (+1 to +3): Indicate a strong engagement strategy. Detractors are addressed effectively, promoters are empowered, and engagement efforts align with sustainability, driving loyalty and advocacy.

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.

Conclusion

The Engagement sub-dimension highlights the importance of measuring and optimizing customer interactions to build loyalty, encourage advocacy, and align with sustainability. A thoughtful engagement strategy ensures that detractors are addressed, promoters are empowered, and the brand remains relevant in an eco-conscious market.

Sources

  1. Harvard Business Review, 2003, https://hbr.org/2003/12/the-one-number-you-need-to-grow

  2. Moving Beyond NPS, Medium, https://link.medium.com/OHO1Mz6IGY

  3. Hubspot, The ultimate guide to your Net Promoter Score (NPS)


More on the Marketing Canvas

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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

  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.

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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:

  1. And/Or Getting more clients on board

  2. And/Or Developing and/or selling more products to their existing client base

  3. 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.

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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.

MORE ON MARKETING CANVAS:

Discover the process HERE

Discover the cards HERE

Download the template HERE

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Marketing Canvas, some tips about the process

Canvas works really well if:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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. 
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

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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.

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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.

Laurent-Bouty-Marketing-Canvas-Methodology-Visualisation.jpeg

Summary

Assessment methodology with the Marketing Canvas

Assessment methodology with the Marketing Canvas

 

 

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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.

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

Marketing Canvas 2.1

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