How To Define Your Commercial Plan for Your Startup with Marketing Canvas?

When you work on your commercial strategy for your startup, you can facilitate this conversation with using the Marketing Canvas (more on the canvas here). Please find below 10 steps you should follow:

KEY QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED

1. What is your goal? Big Idea? Define a question that will clarify your projected future like How can we achieve 1M€ after one year of operation? How can we generate 5% growth next year? How can we differentiate our brand in a digital world where predictive technologies driven by AI will become a standard?

2. What is the problem you are trying to solve? Clarify the job to be done for your customers.

3. Who is our buyer and user? Define your persona.

4. If not you who else? Define the category where you are playing and what are the alternatives for your buyer.

5. How do you want to be remembered? What people will say about you? Your BRAND

6. What is your answer to the problem your buyer has? What is your value proposition? Do you have USP, ESP, Clear Pricing and Proofs?

7. What experience people will have with you? Will it generate sales and engagement? JOURNEY

8. How do you discuss with your buyer? Do you have conversations? Do you listen? Do you have content, stories, influencers? Which media do you use?

9. Does it make any financial sense? What is your Marketing Budget and Revenue?

10. If you don't think it all works, iterate one more time

PROCESS FOR ZERO APPROACH

As a startup, you should define your strategic hypothesis. It is slightly different than an existing business because you are starting from a white page.

Part 1- Target, Positioning

Define your key customer target (JTBD, ASPIRATION, PAINS & GAINS). As you are starting your business, you have no information on ENGAGEMENT.

Define your Brand strategy (PURPOSE and POSITIONING) and explain how you will differentiate your brand versus competitors. Explain what could be the VALUES of this brand and your IDENTITY strategy.

Define your Value Proposition (FEATURES, EMOTIONS and PRICING). Describe core, differentiated and unique features/emotions to support your Brand Strategy, matching your customer target and helping you to achieve your financial objectives. Do you have any PROOFS supporting your value proposition?

Part 2- Go To Market

Define your go to market approach and more specifically: Describe funnel journey (pre and post purchase) for your go to market: MOMENTS, EXPERIENCE, CHANNEL and MAGIC. Don't forget to align this with your brand strategy.

Describe your conversation strategy for your go to market. LISTENING, CONTENT, MEDIA and INFLUENCERS if any.

Part 3 - Metrics

Define your hypothesis in terms of metrics for your business: ACQUISITION (speed of acquisition), ARPU (average spending for each customer on the 12 months), LIFETIME (your churn assumption) and BUDGET (amount of € needed for supporting your strategy).

ASSESS YOUR ZERO APPROACH WITH YOUR TEAMS

Use the canvas and answer to these questions using all dimension while asking the same question:

Will my .... help me to achieve my goal?

RED: Not at all; GREEN: Definitely

Visualise your Commercial Strategy on Marketing Canvas

RED dimension must be reviewed or mitigated because that are not helping you to achieve your goal.

Interested in the Marketing Canvas, you can find more information here. 

Resources

• Startup Failure Rate Statistics To Take In [2020] - https://hustlelife.net/startup-failure-rate-statistics/

• Steve Blank - Startup Tools - https://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/

Everyone in Your Marketing Meeting Thinks Their Project Is a Must-Have. Here's How to Prove What Actually Is.

You have probably been in that meeting.

Someone presents a list of twelve marketing initiatives. All of them are "priorities." The discussion goes in circles. Everybody defends their project. Nobody wants to cut anything. You leave with a longer list than you arrived with, a vague sense that everything is equally urgent, and zero clarity on what to actually do next Monday.

This is not a people problem. It is a prioritisation problem. And most marketing teams do not have a system that resolves it — so they default to the highest-paid opinion in the room, the most recently launched competitor campaign, or whichever initiative is backed by the most persistent advocate.

There is a better way. Two of them, actually. One has been around since the 1990s. The other makes it evidence-based.

A Tool Most Marketers Know but Few Use Properly

The MoSCoW method is a prioritisation framework originally developed for software project management, adapted by Bill Hartman for creative and marketing contexts. The name is an acronym for four categories:

• M — Must Have

• S — Should Have

• C — Could Have

• W — Won't Have (this time)

The point of using MoSCoW over a simple "high / medium / low" rating is that each category has a specific definition — it describes the consequence of not delivering that initiative, not just how much you want it.

Here is what each category actually means in practice.

Must Have is anything without which the plan fails. Not "it would be better with this." Not "this is important." If this initiative is not delivered, you cannot achieve your goal. The question to test it: "What happens if we skip this entirely?" If the answer is "we cancel the project," it is a Must Have. If there is a workaround — even a painful one — it probably is not.

Should Have is important but not critical. The plan works without it, but it works worse. There may be extra effort, manual workarounds, or reduced effectiveness. A useful test: "How much pain does leaving this out cause, and to how many people?" The more pain, the closer to Must Have.

Could Have is wanted but lower-impact. Nice to do if time and budget allow. If it gets cut, the plan still delivers well. These are the initiatives that get sacrificed first when reality hits.

Won't Have this time is not a rejection — it is a documented decision. Writing something down as Won't Have protects it from being reintroduced through the back door three months later. It manages expectations while keeping the idea alive for a future cycle.

The reason MoSCoW works better than a simple priority ranking is that it forces you to think about consequences, not just preferences. "High priority" means nothing without a definition. "Must Have or the project fails" means something specific.

The Problem MoSCoW Still Has

MoSCoW is a significant improvement over ad hoc prioritisation. But it has one structural weakness that shows up every time you try to use it in a real marketing team.

The Must Have category inflates.

Everyone thinks their project is a Must Have. Marketing thinks the brand campaign is non-negotiable. Product thinks the feature launch is critical. Sales thinks the lead generation programme cannot wait. Digital thinks the website redesign has been delayed long enough. By the time you have gone around the room, half the list is Must Have and nothing has been cut.

This happens because MoSCoW is intuition-based. The categories are defined clearly, but the assignments are still made by opinion. And when opinions conflict, the discussion becomes political rather than analytical.

The Marketing Canvas Method — a 6-step strategic framework built around 24 strategic dimensions — solves this by replacing opinion with evidence.

How MCM Makes Prioritisation Evidence-Based

In the MCM framework, Step 4 (the Strategic Action Engine) is where initiatives are selected and prioritised. But before Step 4 starts, Step 3 has already done something that most teams skip entirely: it has scored the company's strategic dimensions against evidence.

The scoring scale runs from −3 to +3, with no zero permitted. You cannot choose the safe middle. You have to take a position based on actual evidence — customer data, NPS scores, churn rates, competitive analysis, sales conversion rates, whatever is available. The score reflects reality, not aspiration.

Each dimension gets a role in the framework depending on which archetype — which specific strategic position — your company is in. The eight most critical dimensions for your archetype form what the MCM calls the Vital 8. Within those eight, the roles are:

• Fatal Brakes — if these score below target, your strategy cannot work. Fix them first, before anything else.

• Primary Accelerators — once Fatal Brakes are resolved, these drive the majority of your growth.

• Secondary Brakes — friction points that slow progress. Important but not critical.

• Secondary Accelerators — amplifiers that can boost results once the foundations are solid.

Now notice what this produces for prioritisation.

Fatal Brakes scoring below target = Must Have. Not because someone in the room decided it was important — because the evidence says that without fixing this dimension, the strategy cannot achieve its goal. The score makes the decision. The discussion is over.

Primary Accelerators below target = Should Have. Important, strategic, and sequenced — but only after Fatal Brakes are resolved. You do not accelerate on a broken foundation.

Secondary Accelerators below target = Could Have. Valuable when resources permit. Not urgent. Not blocking.

Everything outside the Vital 8 for this cycle = Won't Have this time. Not because it is unimportant — because the MCM's design deliberately limits the scope of each cycle. You score 24 dimensions but act on the 8 that matter most for your current archetype and goal. The other 16 are documented and deferred.

What This Looks Like in the Meeting That Actually Matters

Imagine you are in that planning meeting. Instead of asking the room "what are our priorities?", you start by sharing three scores from a recent Step 3 audit:

• Dimension 420 (Experience) — the quality of what customers feel at every touchpoint — scored −1. It is a Fatal Brake for your archetype. Below target.

• Dimension 110 (Segments/JTBD) — how clearly you understand what your customers are actually trying to achieve — scored +1. Below the +2 target. A Primary Accelerator.

• Dimension 520 (Stories) — your content strategy — scored +2. At target. Protected, not a priority this cycle.

The meeting now has a different structure. Instead of debating which project is most important, you are asking: "Which of our proposed initiatives addresses the −1 on Experience?" That question has a clear, evaluable answer. The projects that address it are Must Have. The projects that do not are in a different category — even if someone in the room is very enthusiastic about them.

The Frankenstein problem — a mix of everything, most probably ugly and not answering to the core needs of the customer — is exactly what happens when every initiative is treated as equal. The MCM prevents this not by asking people to be more disciplined (they will not be), but by giving them a system that makes the right priority obvious from the evidence.

Three Habits to Start This Week

You do not need to run a full MCM process to start applying this thinking.

1. In your next prioritisation discussion, ask for the consequence test. For every initiative presented as "must have" or "high priority," ask: "What happens if we skip this entirely?" If the answer is "we find a workaround," it is not a Must Have. This single question, applied consistently, will cut your priority list in half.

2. Separate what you want from what the data shows. The next time your team debates a priority, try asking: "What evidence do we have that this is the most urgent thing?" Not intuition, not competitor benchmarking, not the boss's preference. What does the NPS data say? What do the churn patterns show? What did the last customer research reveal? The answer — or the absence of one — tells you whether this is a real priority or a preferred project.

3. Start using "Won't Have this time" as a legitimate category. Most teams either cut initiatives entirely or leave them on the list as vague aspirations. Write a Won't Have list. Give it the same documentation as the Must Have list. This protects the discarded ideas from reappearing two months later and makes it easier to say no in the moment without closing the door permanently.

The Upgrade in One Sentence

MoSCoW gives you better language for priorities. The Marketing Canvas Method gives you evidence to back them up.

If you want to see how your company's initiatives map to a scored priority framework — and which of your dimensions are below target — the Quick Assessment at laurentbouty.com/quick-assessment runs the logic in ten minutes. It will not tell you what to prioritise. It will give you the evidence to decide.

The Marketing Canvas Method is a 6-step strategic marketing framework built for entrepreneurs and marketing leaders who need to turn strategy into action. Learn more at laurentbouty.com.

Future of Marketing is Love (by Mark Schaefer)

Future of Marketing Is Love

Interesting article from Mark Schaefer on Marketing and Love.

In a world of Infinite Segmentation where Brand building is out of control, all you need is love. People want to be acknowledged … and loved … more than anything. The vast technological opportunities at our doorstep are the way we can scale love.

The Marketing Canvas could help you navigating in this hyper-empowered consumer world! Don't know the canvas, discover it here.

How to Assess your Marketing Situation With the Marketing Canvas?

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

Interview by Scott King

In this episode, Laurent and Scott talk about overcoming marketing complexities and the risks involved in growth marketing. We touch on influencer marketing, artificial intelligence and questions his students ask him about marketing evolution.

Growth is like chocolate, the more you have. the more you want – Laurent Bouty [ Click to Tweet ]

Questions During Episode

1. What do you consider the biggest challenge for CMOs today?
2. Why is complexity the biggest challenge?
3. How would you advise marketers to grow in the right niche?
4. Why don’t brands use the same strategy as Nike’s “Just Do It”?
5. What is your view on influencer marketing?
6. What do your students ask you about marketing?
7. How do you teach your students to be relevant?
8. What is one of your most successful campaigns?
9. Did you refurbish the family stores with the marketing budget?
10. What are some of the things the marketing team was worried about when refurbishing the stores?
11. Do you have a project that did not go well?
12. What do you read or listen to for inspiration?
13. What do you do in your free time?

Listen to the interview here: https://thescottking.com/podcast/cmo/growth-marketing-risk-laurent-bouty/

Infographic on the Marketing Canvas Process

The tool has been designed for facilitating the discussion when designing your strategy.

High-level process is:

• You start from an ambition/question (like increase revenue by 5%, have more digital transactions, be more meaningful, ...) 
• You discuss using the 28 dimensions asking:
  • What's blocking you to achieve your ambition? (brakes)
  • What's helping you (Accelerator)?
  • You can support this rating using any information, knowledge you have but it works also if you only rely on qualitative information.
• Then you map your answer on the Canvas. Red are brakes; Green are accelerators.
• Then you try to analyse these brakes/accelerators and understands what cause them, what are the correlation.
• Then you start ideating (brain-writing, co-create, ...), find crazy or impossible ideas) on what you could do (magic diamond, do things better, do different things).
• Then you prioritise your ideas.
• If you can you test it.
• Then you have your action plan.

Infographic Marketing Canvas

AI is Changing Marketing

Excellent article from Andrew Stephen on Forbes about Artificial Intelligence and how it is changing Marketing.

4 main highlights (extracted from the article I invite you to read):

1. Marketers have more insights-related tools at their disposal that facilitate true data-driven decision making but AI is needed to help integrate across tools, datasets and platforms.
2. The nature of marketing work is changing, but not necessarily becoming completely technical and focused on data science. Instead, the infusion of AI into marketing work can aid decision making and automation can free up valuable executive time.
3. Consumers are changing due to AI-powered tools and devices being involved in consumer search, choice set construction and purchase decision making, and as this becomes more widespread and feels normal to consumers, AI will start to automate certain consumer decisions.
4. Visionary marketing leaders need to understand AI and how it impacts both marketers and consumers. Moreover, they must think broadly and creatively about the AI-powered future of marketing and take proactive steps to ready themselves and their organizations for the future that they (and their customers) are creating.

AI is changing Marketing

While I fully agree with everything said by Andrew, I believe this acceleration of Marketing smart digitalisation will create somehow a tsunami in Marketing departments and jobs because most of the "classical marketers" are not trained neither skilled for facing the complexity of AI. When AI will be fully in place, then marketers will be able to concentrate on more creative tasks while others will be working on Marketing Technologies.

Are you ready? If yes, what have you done? If not, what do you plan to do?

Full article on Forbes: here

Marketing Canvas 2.1 (New version)

“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

Listening in the Marketing Canvas

Listening is one of the four key dimensions of CONVERSATION in the Marketing Canvas.

Interesting article from Interbrand about listening: Why listening and understanding people is so important

“There’s a missing element that marketers and advertisers aren’t thinking about when it comes to technology: the human element. Achieving true brand and business growth in our ever-evolving digital world will come down to better understanding people. This requires business leaders to adopt a culture that is based on listening to the communities they aspire to reach.
Ryan Holmes, CEO of social publishing tool Hootsuite, made the important point in a recent op-ed that the future of online content and brand engagement is authenticity. Right now is the moment in which brands must decide to establish ongoing and more personal relationships with their customers and fans.
While marketing has always aimed to speak to audiences, the tides are now changing. The Best Global Brands do more listening than talking.
What people have to say about you, themselves, their needs, your industry, and your competitors, offers a deeper look at the customers and brand loyalists we’re looking for. This information provides a qualitative case study into how brands can nurture the necessary relationships with the right people.
Businesses need to utilize this information in more imaginative ways if they intend on growing their customer bases.”

— http://interbrand.com/best-brands/best-global-brands/2017/articles/people-are-talking-technology-is-listening/

Listening in the Marketing Canvas (CONVERSATION)

Marketers, How Technology Enhances Creativity?

Marketers, in a world of Big Data and AI, you will have to rely less on intuition and judgement.

in a virtual world of infinite abundance, only creativity could ever be in short supply

“Technology does not quell creativity, in fact, there’s a great deal of evidence that suggests that technology enhances creativity.  Certainly, we are expected to be more creative in our working lives than a generation ago.  The truth is that by expanding possibilities and automating part of the creative process, we can all be more creative and productive.”

— https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/01/27/how-technology-enhances-creativity/#762d46393f50

5 actions should be taken:

1. Defining The Creative Process
2. Technology Eradicates Barriers To Creative Excellence
3. Mixing And Remixing
4. Simulating Failure
5. The Rise of the Creative Class

More on Forbes: How Technology Enhances Creativity

Comment l'Intelligence Artificielle investit-elle les Magasins? (E-MARKETING)

Source: E-MARKETING 

Are you ready with AI in your stores?

L'intelligence artificielle (IA) fait les gros titres, et pour cause : 2 017 devrait être l'année de l'adoption "massive" de cette discipline par les entreprises. Pour ne pas rater le virage de cette transformation numérique, les marques devraient pouvoir compter sur Microsoft, positionné "dans une démarche de démocratisation de l'intelligence artificielle et d'intégration dans les processus métiers", affirme Laurence Lafont, directrice de la division Marketing & Operations de Microsoft France, lors d'une conférence de presse organisée par l'entreprise informatique, le 10 janvier.

Dernier exemple en date, annoncé lors de l'édition 2 017 du CES de Las Vegas : l'intégration de Cortana (IA de Microsoft) au sein des voitures Nissan - ainsi, cette IA agit comme un copilote attentionné, capable de proposer un itinéraire bis ou de penser à l'entretien du véhicule, par exemple. Mais, à quelques jours de l'ouverture de la NRF Retail's BIG Show 2017, le 15 janvier, ce sont les bénéfices sur le secteur du retail et de l'expérience client que Microsoft a souhaité démontrer.

Tendance 1 : la reconnaissance faciale

"L'intelligence artificielle offre une expérience multicanal plus personnalisée et personnelle entre la marque et ses clients, explique Laurence Lafont. L'une des illustrations en est la reconnaissance faciale, qui permet, par exemple, de reconnaître un client déjà venu en magasin." La technologie "Realtime Crowd Insights" développée par Microsoft, offre ainsi aux retailers l'opportunité d'effectuer une analyse statistique de la fréquentation de leurs magasins, en temps réel, et sans stocker d'informations, et d'identifier le sexe, la tranche d'âge ou les émotions du client - 7 émotions sont repérables. L'avantage : "Il s'agit d'orienter le bon vendeur vers le client, ainsi que d'adapter son comportement du vendeur à l'état d'esprit du consommateur", fait part Christophe Rit, consultant en transformation et conseiller des directions d'entreprises de Microsoft France.

Microsoft va plus loin et propose avec "Mall kiosk" la recommandation de produits sur la base de la reconnaissance faciale ou vocale des individus et de leurs réactions.

Tendance 2 : les bots

L'intelligence artificielle se branche également sur les messageries instantanées. Microsoft recommande ainsi aux marques "d'utiliser ces agents conversationnelspour faire venir les utilisateurs en magasin". Pour être performant, "il est important que le bot conserve l'historique de la conversation", conseille Christophe Rit, qui rappelle qu'en 2020, "selon le cabinet de conseil en stratégie Frost & Sullivan, l'expérience client sera jugée plus importante que le prix du produit ou le produit en lui-même". Et l'intelligence artificielle est déjà une réalité : aux États-Unis, les commandes prises au drive de McDonald, ne le sont plus par un vendeur... mais, par un robot.

Tendance 3 : les offres en temps réel

Pour proposer une expérience personnalisée, les retailers doivent également s'appuyer sur la data : celle issue des cartes de fidélité (âge, sexe, identité), mais, également, de la catégorie d'achat la plus fréquente, de géolocalisation indoor et outdoor, de transactions, de comportement de l'acheteur... sans oublier les données exogènes, à l'instar de la météo. À partir de celles-ci, les marques ont les moyens de proposer des réductions, comme des coupons numériques. À l'instar du dispositif de vitrine interactive mise en oeuvre par les marques du groupe Beaumanoir, Cache Cache et Bonobo. L'idée : les passants interagissent avec l'écran situé dans la vitrine, à distance de celui-ci, et "habillent" virtuellement par le geste le mannequin de son choix. À la clé, les marques offrent des coupons de réduction à utiliser en boutique.

Tendance 4 : l'empowerment des vendeurs

Grâce à leurs terminaux mobiles, les vendeurs peuvent avoir, en temps réel, des informations sur leurs clients, leurs produits, leurs stocks... ou leurs équipes. Aux États-Unis, la Maison du Chocolat a ainsi transformé la documentation en sa possession (présentation, catalogue de produits...) en une application disponible sur quelques bornes de son magasin new-yorkais. Objectif : initier l'acte de vente avec l'acheteur.

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

Quatrième révolution industrielle : comment s’imposer ?

Changement de croissance, évolution des attentes, multiplication de la concurrence… Nous sommes au cœur d’une quatrième révolution industrielle qui oblige l’entrepreneur à revoir en profondeur sa copie. Laurent Bouty décrypte pour nous cette nouvelle révolution et les stratégies à adopter pour s’y imposer.

La croissance digitale s’est imposée… Avec elle, de nouvelles équations ont vu le jour. Les résoudre n’est pas tâche facile et c’est aujourd’hui le véritable défi des entreprises.

Après s’être chargé du marketing de grandes entreprises, Laurent Bouty porte plusieurs casquettes. Il est Directeur académique à la Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management où il dirige un Advanced Master in Creativity & Marketing, il est également partenaire chez Futurelab (cabinet en conseils qui aide les marques à être plus proches de leurs clients), et il est responsable d’une nouvelle agence qui accompagne les entreprises à penser leur futur… Il est donc, vous l’avez compris, particulièrement bien informé sur les nouvelles règles qui régissent notre économie et les méthodes incontournables pour les apprivoiser.

Nouveaux clients et dématérialisation

"La croissance, une fois qu’on y a goûté, on ne peut plus s’en passer ! Au cœur de notre monde capitaliste, on a pris l’habitude que, l’année suivante, on fera toujours mieux que l’année précédente. C’était une quête envisageable lorsque la population augmentait et que l’accessibilité aux produits n’était pas généralisée… Mais aujourd’hui, tous les produits sont accessibles à tout le monde et la population croît moins vite."

Ils veulent l’abondance, mais plus de gaspillage. Ils veulent la vérité, on ne peut plus leur mentir. Ils recherchent la proximité avec le producteur…

À ce constat dressé par Laurent Bouty s’ajoute le fait que les clients ne sont plus les mêmes : "aspirationnels, ils mélangent matérialisme à des aspirations sociales et environnementales… Ils veulent l’abondance, mais plus de gaspillage. Ils veulent la vérité, on ne peut plus leur mentir. Ils recherchent la proximité avec le producteur, l’accès à tout. Et ils veulent que les marques leur fassent du bien, qu’elles limitent leur impact sur l’environnement par exemple." Si elles ne se conforment pas à ces exigences, les entreprises perdent des clients.

"Partout et à tout moment, des grandes marques annoncent leur disparition ou une baisse d’effectifs. Il faut se réinventer…"

Vient s’y greffer une quatrième révolution industrielle : si la transformation de la matière première était le moteur de la croissance du 20e siècle, elle fait place aujourd’hui à la dématérialisation. Cette capacité à passer du physique au non physique révolutionne, entre autres, l’énergie, les transports et les communications. Elle perturbe toute l’activité économique et place sur un piédestal les acteurs proposant un impact neutre sur la planète. "Ainsi, le succès du passé n’est plus une garantie du futur. Partout et à tout moment, des grandes marques annoncent leur disparition ou une baisse d’effectifs. Il faut se réinventer… Nous y sommes forcés !"

Les cinq conseils pour sortir du lot

"Il faut être clair, choisir précisément son modèle et son idéologie, se concentrer sur qui l’on est vraiment."

Un nouveau modèle économique s’impose, les entrepreneurs doivent le comprendre et s’adapter. D’autant qu’il a entraîné, dans pratiquement tous les domaines, une concurrence accrue issue des quatre coins de la planète, ainsi qu’une quasi-disparition de la pénurie. Si les entreprises disposent toujours des mêmes leviers pour interpeller et marquer les esprits (à savoir le prix, l’émotion et la nouveauté), elles sont aussi contraintes à se battre autrement.

Laurent Bouty conseille alors cinq armes qu’il est nécessaire de maîtriser pour sortir du lot :

1. "Être sérieux face à ces changements, ne pas les prendre à la légère, et donc mettre les moyens humains et financiers pour les appréhender.

2. Être clair, choisir précisément son modèle et son idéologie, se concentrer sur qui l’on est vraiment.

3. La générosité paye ! Ce qui ne signifie pas forcément qu’il faut faire des cadeaux matériels aux clients… Leur permettre de gagner du temps et de se sentir utiles sont, par exemple, des présents très appréciés.

4. Prendre en compte l’impact de son activité sur l’environnement au sens large… D’autant plus qu’aujourd’hui, tout se sait.

5. Demain appartient à ceux qui le préparent aujourd’hui !"

Marketing Strategy in Context

If you want to design the marketing strategy for your business, you should first start to analyse where you will play. What does it mean? It means that your product/service will be associated by consumers/buyers with other alternatives they have on the market (maybe no alternative exists which means that you creating a new category also referred as a blue ocean).

The Context of your Marketing strategy is the first element you analysed with the Marketing Canvas Method. It is composed by 3 distinctive elements: Category, Competitors and Trends (questions 1 & 3).

Marketing Canvas Method in 10 questions

The key questions you should ask yourself before you investigate what might be your scenarios for your strategy.

1. Identify the strategy where you would like to play. TESLA could have chosen the category where most of the electrical car offers where made. TESLA decided to enter the Segment F (Luxury saloon / full-size luxury sedan).

2. Key needs. What are the identified needs that customers/buyers are addressing when buying products/services in this category (pains/gains/functional needs).

3. Competitors. If not you, you else? It could be a competitor or a substitute. In the segment F, key competitors of TESLA are: BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Lexus, Audi, Porsche….

4. Rules of the category like average price, core features and add-ons, payment scheme/subscription model, buyer power. Price of a Porsche is around 100k€ which is the starting price point where TESLA positioned itself.

5. Category dynamic. What is the state of the category (few buyers/consumers or the market is saturated).

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Marketing Strategy in Context

Examples:

• Tesla has decided to enter the luxury segment where no real electrical car offer did exist (key needs were speed, design, social recognition).

• Dove entered the cosmetic category where many alternatives existed

• Apple entered the portable music device (with iPod) where the current offers where based on features and technologies but latent motives existed (social recognition, design and simplicity).

So before you investigate which options you should follow, you need first to answer these questions because it will set the scene. Then you can start investigating your scenarios using the Marketing Canvas Method.

How to get real insights for your Marketing Strategy?

Richard Thorogood of Colgage-Palmolive describes how new technology is transforming market research, and how firms will need to adapt.

What has been the strategy for Airbnb to understand its customers and adapt to their needs? Chip Conley, Head of Hospitality at Airbnb, explains the process to achieve this

Using a real-world case study featuring one of the most iconic brands in clothing (Timberland), TEC Executive-in-Residence Kurian Tharakan shows how this clothing giant leveraged the motives, needs, wants and desires of their core customer.

Malcolm Gladwell gets inside the food industry's pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce -- and makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness.

Insights in the Marketing Canvas

What is Revenues in the Marketing Canvas?

When you start working on your Marketing Strategy, I recommend that you first discuss the REVENUES. Why? At the end of your exercise, your actions and recommendations aim to support and justify your budget. In simple word, the business world cares about the numbers and the role of the strategy is to give enough confidence that the organisation will deliver it. Thus let's start this exercise from the REVENUES.

Short Term Revenues in Marketing Canvas

When you build a strategy, it would be a big mistake to work only for tomorrow. You have to prepare your futur. Think ahead. Long term like 10 years and ask yourself what your business could look like. Start from there and identify also the revenues risk (e.g. robots will replace functional workers and we have a business of job placement, what does it mean?).

Long Term Revenues in Marketing Canvas

Your revenues are also influenced by the Total Experience you give to your customers/clients. By Total Experience, I mean Customer Interactions, Conversations you have with them, the Purpose of your Brand. The more your Total Experience is strong, the most revenues you can generate (if you monetise it properly)

In the MARKETING CANVAS (if you don't know the Marketing Canvas, just click here), we have 4 main elements driving REVENUES:

1. USERS: How much people/person are effectively paying for your products and services? you might have 1,000 persons or 100,000. It is quite different. Not all companies are capable to answer this question!!  Example: some brands in the retail have no clue who purchase their products because they have no relationship with them.
2. ARPU: ARPU means Average Revenue Per User. The idea behind this acronym is to identify how on average your paid users/customers are spending with you (on a monthly or yearly basis). Example: they all pay a subscription to the gym (20€ per month) and they all drink on average 5 energetic drinks a month @ 1€), so the ARPU is 20€+10€=30€. If only 50% of the paid users are drinking 5 energetic drinks and the other 50% are not, then the ARPU is 50% of 20€ + 50% of 30€= 25€ (getting more complex, hope you are following ;-)
3. LIFETIME: Imagine you lose all your paid users after 1 year (they don't buy anymore), then their lifetime is 1 year. If you lose 50% of your customers each year, their lifetime is 2 years. The lifetime is critical because it defines your recurrent revenues (sometimes called cash cow or matelas business). Not all customers are equal). If you lose high value customers (big spenders) faster then low value, you lose more money.
4. GROWTH: It gives you an idea about how the Market is growing. It is the external factor. It is easier to work in  growing category than in a declining. Therefore you should deeply understand where you play and prepare yourself to enter new growing categories when you feel that the ones where you are currently playing are declining soon.

When you review these elements, the question you should have is:

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List of questions for assessing your revenues situation using the Customer Lifetime Value

4 questions for your REVENUES in Marketing Canvas

MARKET

1. Do you know if you are in a growing category?
2. Do you know how to increase your market share in your category?
3. Do you know what are your top 3 revenue drivers tomorrow?
4. Do you know what are your top 3 promising revenue drivers in the next 10 years?
5. Do you know how to prepare new revenue drivers for your category?
6. Do you know if you should find a new category for the future?

USERS

1. Are you capable to calculate your revenues per customers/users instead of products ? How much users/customers do you have ? 
2. Do you know how to convert visitors into free users?
3. Do you know how to convert more free users to paid users?
4. Do you know how to accelerate your customer acquisition (traction, velocity) ?
5. Do you know these numbers by customer based percentile ?

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)

1. Do you know the ARPU of your business activity?
2. Do you know the contribution of each value proposition in this ARPU?
3. Do you know how to increase the number of paid transactions made by your users on a yearly and monthly basis? More cross-sell? More up-sell?
4. Do you know how to protect/increase the average paid price for each transaction ? more premium products? less promotions/discounts ?

LIFETIME

1. Do you know what is the average lifetime of your users? per percentile?
2. Do you know how you can secure & extend the lifetime of your TOP 1% users ?
3. Do you know the churn level of your users? per percentile ? 
4. Do you know what are the drivers of the churn? are you capable to act on them for reducing your churn?

The Top 20 Modern Marketing Challenges Identified In 2016

From a discussion with 100 top CMO in 2016, Constellation Research based in Silicon Valley defined in 2016 the top 20 modern marketing challenges (not in order of importance).

1. Delivering on a creative to commerce vision
2. Improving marketing automation and optimization
3. Adjusting to fragmentation of channels, segments, and trends
4. Investing in audience development
5. Targeting with precision and less false positives
6. Dealing with data driven approaches
7. Building for intention driven design in customer experience
8. Developing in-house ad networks and programmatic strategies
9. Mastering data and data management platforms
10. Re positioning the corporate brand for a digital world
11. Empowering communities and audience development
12. Attracting and retaining the right skill sets for digital marketing transformation
13. Identifying new agency and consulting partners to augment efforts
14. Improving internal employee engagement
15. Building a culture of behind the brand promise
16. Creating a P2P model
17. Aligning marketing strategy with marketing technology
18. Proving ROI
19. Crafting compelling contextually relevant content
20. Getting ahead of the latest disruptive technologies

QUESTION

Do you agree? Do you have the same challenges? I would be interested in to know how you are dealing with these challenges?

Original article:

https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/four-personas-modern-cmo-digital-world

Your Company Is Measuring Customer Experience at the Wrong Moment

Think about the last time you had a genuinely good experience with a brand.

Not a smooth checkout. Not a fast delivery. Not a discount code that arrived at the right time. A good experience — the kind where you thought "this company actually gets me."

Now think about what made it feel that way. Chances are it was not a single touchpoint. It was something more diffuse: the sense that across multiple moments — before you bought, during the purchase, after it — the brand understood something real about you. Not just what you wanted to buy. Something about your life.

That is the experience most marketing teams are not building. And understanding why — and what to do about it — is one of the most useful career moves you can make as an earlier-career marketer.

The Problem With "Customer" Experience

Here is a structural problem that most marketing conversations skip over.

When your company talks about customer experience, it is almost certainly measuring the customer part of that phrase — the moments when someone is actively in a buying relationship with your brand. The checkout flow. The onboarding. The support ticket. The renewal email.

These things matter. But they are a small fraction of the time your customer actually spends thinking about the category your brand operates in. Most of that time, they are not a customer. They are a person with a life — a life your brand may or may not fit into meaningfully.

The reason this distinction matters for your career: the campaigns you run, the content you create, the journeys you design — all of them are aimed at moments when someone is in the purchase process. But the customer's relationship with your brand exists continuously, in the background of their life. What you build in those active moments either fits that background or it does not.

When it does not fit — when the experience is relentlessly about selling, when the messaging assumes the customer has no life outside the purchase — people install adblockers. They disengage. They tell others about the disappointment. Not because your campaign was badly executed, but because it was aimed at the wrong version of the person.

What the Job-to-be-Done Actually Is

The Marketing Canvas Method starts every strategic analysis at Step 0 by asking one question about the customer segment you are building for: what is their Job-to-be-Done — what MCM calls Dimension 110 (JTBD)?

The JTBD is not "buy your product." Nobody's job is to buy a product. The job is whatever the customer is trying to accomplish in their life — and the product is one potential means to that end.

A customer buying running shoes is not trying to buy shoes. They might be trying to feel physically capable again after a difficult period. Or trying to build a morning routine that makes the rest of the day manageable. Or trying to belong to the kind of person who runs. The product is the same in each case. The job is completely different. And the experience that serves one job will fail another.

A bad Dimension 110 score — which shows up when a team cannot describe the customer's job in the customer's own language — almost always produces the same downstream problem: an experience that is well-executed at the transactional level and completely disconnected from what the customer actually cares about.

In your next meeting, try asking: "What is the customer trying to accomplish when they come to us — not just at the moment of purchase, but in their life more broadly?" The answer is often different from what the marketing team assumes. And that gap is where experience problems begin.

Why Experience Breaks at the Seams

Dimension 420 (Experience) is one of the MCM's most frequently critical dimensions. It measures the quality and consistency of what a customer encounters across every touchpoint — not just the purchase moment, but before and after it.

It is a Fatal Brake — the highest-urgency scoring category — for three different strategic archetypes. That means: if your company's experience is below target, your strategy cannot work, regardless of how good your product is or how well your campaigns are performing.

The word that matters most in the Experience dimension is consistent. Not brilliant. Consistent.

A single brilliant experience surrounded by mediocre ones creates more frustration than consistent adequacy. The customer remembers the gap between the peak and the norm. Experience design is less about creating memorable highs than eliminating unexpected lows.

This is why experience so often breaks at the seams between departments. Marketing owns the campaign. Product owns the onboarding. Customer service owns the complaint. Finance owns the invoice. Nobody owns the moment when all four of those intersect in a single customer's week. That unowned gap is where the "whole person" falls through.

The practical question for you: can you name one moment in your customer's journey that your team does not own, does not design, and does not measure? That moment is almost certainly where the experience score drops. And it is almost certainly a moment the customer remembers.

The Three Dimensions Behind "Human" Experience

The shift from "customer experience" to what the original framing called "human experience" — understanding the whole person, not just the buyer — maps directly to three MCM dimensions that most marketing teams underinvest in.

Dimension 120 (Aspirations) asks: what does the customer want to become? Not what they want to buy — who they want to be. A fitness brand that understands its customer wants to feel capable and in control will create different experiences than one that understands only that the customer wants to lose weight. Same product. Completely different strategic logic.

Dimension 140 (Engagement) measures the depth and quality of the relationship between the customer and the brand — not satisfaction, which can be high while engagement is near zero, but genuine connection. A customer who is satisfied and disengaged is a churn risk. A customer who is engaged is an advocate. The difference lives in whether the brand connects with something real in the customer's life or only with their purchase intent.

Dimension 320 (Emotions) asks: how does what you deliver make the customer feel? Not what features does it have — how does it feel to use it, to be associated with it, to experience it? Most B2B teams skip this dimension assuming that rational decision-making governs everything. It does not. Every B2B buyer is a person who feels relief when a vendor delivers early and frustration when an SLA is missed. The emotional dimension is always present, whether you design it or not. Undesigned emotion is where experience fails.

These three dimensions — Aspirations, Engagement, Emotions — are not soft additions to a strategy. They are the structural layer that determines whether your experience feels transactional or genuinely human. And they connect directly back to the JTBD: the job is the desire, these dimensions are how the brand delivers on it.

What to Do With This in Your Next Role

You do not need to run a full MCM assessment to start thinking differently about customer experience. Three questions are enough to begin.

1. Ask what your customer is trying to become, not just trying to buy. In your next campaign brief, customer research session, or planning meeting, ask: "What does this customer want to be true about themselves after using our product?" If your team can answer that in the customer's own language, your experience design is probably connected to something real. If you get a product feature description instead of a life aspiration, that is the gap to close.

2. Find the unowned moment. Map your customer journey from the moment they first become aware of your brand to six months after their most recent purchase. Identify one moment — just one — that no team in your organisation owns. That is where the experience score is lowest. That is where the "human" disappears from the customer experience. That is the most useful insight you can bring to a strategy conversation.

3. Score the emotional experience honestly. Pick one touchpoint — a key email, a landing page, an onboarding flow. Ask: how does this make the customer feel? Not what information does it convey — what emotion does it produce? Now ask: is that the emotion we intended? If you cannot answer the second question, the emotional dimension of your experience is undesigned. That is worth surfacing.

The shift from measuring customer experience at the moment of sale to understanding the full human context is not a philosophy change. It is a dimension change. When teams start scoring JTBD, Aspirations, Engagement, and Emotions alongside the traditional funnel metrics, the gaps become visible. And visible gaps can be fixed.

MCM Framework Reference — Customer Experience

What the Marketing Canvas Method means by customer experience

The MCM measures customer experience through four connected dimensions. A below-target score on Experience (420) is a Fatal Brake — it blocks strategic progress regardless of other performance.

Dimension	Core question	What it measures
110 — JTBD Job-to-be-Done	What is the customer trying to accomplish?	The real job the customer hires your product to do — in their life, not just at the moment of purchase.
120 — Aspirations Who they want to become	Who does the customer want to be?	The identity the customer is building — not what they want to buy, but who they want to be.
420 — Experience Fatal Brake	What is it actually like to be your customer?	The consistency of what a customer encounters at every touchpoint — before, during, and after the purchase.
140 — Engagement Depth of relationship	How deeply connected is the customer to your brand?	Not satisfaction — which can be high while engagement is zero — but the quality and depth of the ongoing relationship.
320 — Emotions How it feels	How does your product make customers feel?	The emotional experience of using your product — designed or undesigned. Undesigned emotion is where experience fails.

Fatal Brake — Experience (420)

A below-target Experience score blocks strategic progress regardless of other performance. It is a Fatal Brake for three archetypes: A4 (Stagnant Leader), A6 (Value Harvester), and A7 (Scale-Up Guardian). In all three, experience failure is the proximate cause of churn.

Source: Marketing Canvas Method — 24 strategic dimensions across 6 meta-categories. Full dimension definitions in Marketing Strategy, Programmed (Laurent Bouty, 2026).

Score Your CX →

This article draws on the original insight from Sid McGrath, Chief Strategy Officer at Karmarama, published by Spencer Stuart.

Why you should be a Smart Creative Marketer?

Today we all live and work in a new era, the Internet Century, where technology is roiling the business landscape and the pace of change is accelerating.  Eric Schmidt

In this new era where everything is accelerated by technological changes, Marketers are also deeply impacted. They can't stand still. They definitely have to reconsidered their job, their approach and finally their profession, Now. What should they do? How should they do that? While there is not one answer to this question, I use the label Smart Creative Marketers for defining what a future Marketer is! But what does it really mean, let me tell you. 

Inspired by Google

"The only way for businesses to consistently succeed is to attract the best smart creatives and create an environment where they can thrive at scale."

In the book How Google Works, Google brilliantly identified the impact of technology on organisation and coined the term of Smart Creatives:  someone that combines a technical way of thinking with never-ending ideas and ways to tackle complex issues. While this term was not specific to Marketers, I truly believe it fits very well for them. The Marketing practice is currently revolutionised by technology and competitive landscape where brands are operating. It requires new ideas and solutions to problems that didn't exit in the past.

Why Smart Marketers?

Smart can be defined as able to think quickly or intelligently in difficult situations.  Following ORACLE (1), Marketers must move at light speed. They need to adapt on the fly and be agile and nimble. With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being generated daily there really is no other choice.
You either adapt. Or die. It’s that simple. 

I don't say that Marketers were not SMART in the past but they had to operate in a more stable world in terms of disruptions and changes. Today, they are facing several challenges:

They have less time for deciding what to do. Markets are moving fast and you can't wait too long otherwise it might be too late.

They have more data to analyse. Explosion of data due to the exponential increase of objects, people and systems is making situation analysis very complex.

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They have more systems to use. Increase of technology (MarkTech) is forcing Marketers to spend time learning and using systems that didn't exist 10 years ago. Below you can see the Marketing Technology Landscape representing more than 5000 solutions (3)

They have new competitors. GameChangers are appearing everywhere, disrupting classical models with no respect for existing codes and rules.

The classical 4Ps won't work anymore obviously. This is why Smartness is key for Marketers and they have to be smart in a digital world. IBM says (2): Marketers should increase their Digital Acumen. Best Marketers are using predictive and prescriptive analytics and cognitive computing to create richer customer experiences.

Marketers have to be able to analyse complex situations through complex data provided by complex systems and come with intelligent solutions, quickly. Wow! Looks like mission impossible, no?

Why Creative Marketers?

The word creativity might be overused and sometimes misused! I like the definition provided by Creativity at Work:

Creativity is characterised by the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions. Creativity involves two processes: thinking, then producing.

This skills is fundamental today for any marketers because it implies 2 main actions: thinking differently, finding connections, hidden patterns AND turning these ideas into reality.

Interestingly enough, when following Marketing studies you either are very creative (art oriented school) or very productive (economical oriented school) but combining both is where the difficulty is.

Creativity is ranked by World Economic Forum as one of the top 3 skills you should have in the 4th industrial revolution.

Creativity will become one of the top three skills workers will need. With the avalanche of new products, new technologies and new ways of working, workers are going to have to become more creative in order to benefit from these changes.

In a fascinating study on The Conversation (7) by two Australian psychologists, creative people actually see the world differently. Their findings suggest that:  "the creative tendencies of open people extend all the way down to basic visual perception. Open people may have fundamentally different visual experiences to the average person". In simple words, creative genius literally doesn't see the world the same way you do.

Some tips that might help you ...

As a Marketer, you should be capable to explore data without fears and extract relevant insights and knowledge. Ensure to take decision as much as possible based on data but don't lose your gut feelings.

As a Marketer, you should be capable to build, change, rework systems as they are part of the value proposition and core to most of the current disruptions. Ensure to understand how products and services are built. Technology is now part of your job.

As a Marketer, you should have the flexibility to develop the capacity to think differently in multiple perspectives by operating from emergence, detachment and allowing. Ensure to keep your mind free and opened and be capable to find hidden patterns and connect the dots.

As a Marketer, you should be safe in ‘not knowing’ the answer or the solution but how to generate it through intentional disruption, provocation, and disagreement and through deep inquiry, listening, and debate.  Ensure to be curious, provocative, disruptive and avoid repeating same old recipes when situation has evolved.

As a Marketer, you should be receptive and cultivate skills in the innovative thinking including divergent/convergent, critical, associative to ideate hypothetical solutions that may not have previously existed. Ensure to be agile, apply sprints and design thinking in everything you do.

As a Marketer, put always human in the center of what you do. Ensure to apply human-centered design thinking processes and lean and agile start-up methodologies to develop empathy speed and agility.

As Marketer, you cannot make it alone. Only team play and co-creation with customers will deliver solutions to your problems. Ensure to debate, team, network and experiment with innovative business models and prototypes.

Sources

1. ORACLE (2017) - The Future of Modern Marketing: 2017
2. IBM (2016) - Global C-Suite study - Redefining Markets: The CMO Point of View
3. ChiefMarTec.com (2017) - http://chiefmartec.com/2017/05/marketing-techniology-landscape-supergraphic-2017/
4. Creativity at work (2014) - What is creativity? - http://www.creativityatwork.com/2014/02/17/what-is-creativity/ 
5. AdAge (2011) - The Habits of Highly Creative Marketers - http://adage.com/article/news/habits-highly-creative-marketers/229162/
6. InnovationExcellence (2016) - The Rise of the Smart Creative (Lessons from Google) - http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2016/05/23/the-rise-of-the-smart-creative-lessons-from-google/
7. theconversation.com (2017) - People with creative personalities really do see the world differently - http://theconversation.com/people-with-creative-personalities-really-do-see-the-world-differently-77083

What are the Benefits of Simplicity in Marketing?

Following Leonardo Da Vinci, Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It is not a given, it doesn't come like that, unfortunately. Some says that it is one of the most complicated skills.

Do you think Simplicity is important for your Marketing? Is it a compulsory process for being successful with your Marketing? Why some Brands are capable to be extremely simple while others are complex, sometimes leading to confusion or frustration? Let's investigate.

What do we mean by being Simple or Simplicity?

Before finding out if Simplicity is important, let's have a common understanding of what Simplicity is! Some external definitions could help us.

Quality or condition of being easy to understand or do (1)

Simplicity lies at the intersection of remarkably clear and unexpectedly fresh. Brands that deliver clear, human and useful experiences—win (2) 

The question is then the following: Do we believe that being remarkably clear and easy to understand is impacting positively the efficiency and effectiveness of our Marketing actions? Differently said, if we are complex and unclear, do we have a worst ROI?

Some facts...

61% - The percentage of consumers who are more likely to recommend a brand because it provides simpler experiences and communications (2)

64% -The percentage of consumers willing to pay more for simpler experiences (2)

62% -Employees who can be considered Brand Champions in companies perceived to be simple (2)

© Crazyegg.com - Why is Apple’s Marketing Just So Darn Good?

The single biggest driver of stickiness, by far, was “decision simplicity”—the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy  information about a product and confidently and efficiently weigh their purchase options. What consumers want from marketers is, simply, simplicity. (3)

A recent A.T. Kearney analysis estimates that, on average, systematic complexity management can lead to an upturn in EBIT of 3 to 5 percentage points. A.T. Kearney estimates the additional EBIT potential for DAX companies alone to be worth more than €30 billion overall.

We can say that there is a consensus about the impact of simplicity on company performance (commercially and financially).

Now that we have validated the fact that Simplicity delivers Value, the question is what should I do for making it happen (just do it might not work without some help)? 

Some tips that might help you...

Simplicity doesn’t mean being boring. It is just being clear and consistent. I have noticed that marketers like to start new things but are easily bored when they have to manage existing business. This propensity to launch continuously new concepts might be a root cause for creating complexity and confusion. Let’s think about VW Golf. It is still the same concept but continuously improved. It gives a lot of confidence to customers and clients. It is clear and remarkably fresh because the concept is revisited at each new release. Ensure that you have enough people in your team working on making the existing great, delivering fantastic basics!

Management could be an issue as well. Team members want to demonstrate their creativity and leadership which push them to promote new things. It is good as long as we keep the consistency of the portfolio. Ensure that you give enough recognition to people that deliver easy and useful experiences to your customers more than permanently releasing new concepts on the market.

Be customer centric. We see it more and more hopefully but when you start from product features most of the times you are talking product and not consumer language. It is a real barrier to simplicity. Ensure you always start from consumer needs and talk their language when you build something.

Technology astuteness. Big issue is when Marketers have no clue how the concept will be built! This major gap between idea and technological feasibility leads to endless discussion between production and marketing teams. We see at the end of these discussions the creation of a Frankenstein, a monster product, something you would never do normally. Ensure you have marketers that understand how products are built and use lean/agile methodologies for building new concepts.

Ensure to revisit permanently your portfolio and ask yourself the following questions: how to make it effortless, more simple to understand, more easy to use, more easy to buy, what can we remove, what can we stop doing, …

Consider working in releases. What does it mean? You define 3 months release where you list a number of changes you would like to do on your product for improving it. It can be small changes or global revisit. This will help you structurally to manage the evolution of your product portfolio. Ensure to work in release mode as it will help you balancing improvements and innovation in a consistent way.

Finally, ensure that YOU ARE SIMPLE in the way you work, communicate, manage. Don’t forget LESS IS MORE.

Sources

1. Cambridge dictionary
2. Siegel+Gate (2017) - Global Brands Simplicity Index - http://simplicityindex.com/
3. Harvard Business Review - Patrick Spenner, Karen Freeman - To keep your customers, keep it simple - 
4. ATKearney (2007) - How Much Does Complexity Really Cost?

Credit

photo from amazing unsplash.com, igor ovsyannykov