Topics: Lean Six Sigma, Marketing Coach | No Comments »

Duct Tape Marketing Blog had a great piece on creating a position called the Chief Conversation Officer. It actually fits the position I would tell you to create if you were working with a Duct Tape Marketing Coach .  In the broad sense the duties of this position should include:

Content - this one is pretty simple - full fledged blogger, article publisher, white paper creator and education based marketing materials and webinar creator.

Context - this one is a little trickier, but your conversation officer should employ RSS technology to aggregate and filter the content and conversations going on in every online and offline corner and package it to make it more useful for your organization and your prospects.

Connection - your CCO should be in charge of developing ways to include your customers and partners in the building of your business for mutual benefit. Your CCO should be in charge of the conversations your customers are having after they buy, as they decide to buy more and in the process of becoming a referral source.

Community your conversations must eventually come together as community. You must facilitate conversation among your prospects and customers, introduce partners and find ways to co-create value. Intentionally hosting the conversation your customers are having with each other is a must.

The key to the success of this person is the access to a marketing professional, who has received extensive training in the application of the Duct Tape Marketing system.  Your part-time marketing professional will provide you with the advice you need, when you need it. Also, participating in learning the Ultimate Marketing System is a no-brainer for this person to become effective.

Now, who in your organization is going to step up for this position?

Topics: Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Coach, Social Media | No Comments »

Beyond Lean: The Perfect Lean Market: While 80% of manufacturers have lean initiatives, less than 1% have lean practices in place. This article was written by Pamela Lopker, president and chairman of QAD Inc. She went on to say, "The Makings Of A Perfect Lean Market - There are three primary attributes to a perfect lean market. Clarity is one: The second attribute of a perfect lean market is agility , responsiveness to changes in the marketplace. But lean practices won’t get information to the right place at the right time. That’s where technology can introduce agility, through systems that can receive and process information quickly, even instantly, through automation. Unity is the third attribute of a perfect lean market. Getting information to the right place at the right time can fuel that kind of unity."

She was talking about the waste in supply change management practices. But when I read it, the correlation to Lean Marketing is very apparent.

1. Clarity: How many times have you looked at a marketing piece and questioned the meaning, the reason for it or maybe you just tossed it. We encourage  marketing pieces to be educational or a call to action that ultimately has a benefit for the customer as a result of a response.

2. Agility: I do not mean responding to the marketing idea of the week but having a process in place that allows you to have active content. This can be easily done with a company blog and with joint participation the excuse of a time factor is completely removed. The only factor that matters now is the accountability factor.

3. Unity: This is the most neglected attribute. Your marketing to be effective is not a one-way street anymore. It is about communication. Building platforms that your organization can increase the communication with your customer is the actions we take by monitoring news about our customers, building social sites that allow our customers to post, blog and add videos on their own. Being transparent and mixing it up in front of your customers is maybe the largest selling feature you can have.

Topics: Lean Six Sigma, Manufacturers | No Comments »

I had two Social Media experts on my Connecting Your Passion TV show this week, Scott Howard from the ScLoHo Collective Wisdom blog and Shirona A. Gunawardhana of Logpipe and this is what they had to say..

Topics: Blogging, Internet marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

The first step in any lean process , Woops the 2nd step(the 1st being 5S), is understanding or identifying your target market and ideal client. Many  people fail to do this and in a recession it can lead to disaster rather quickly.

The Marketing Mavens by Noel Capon is a great book to assist you in this  identification. They have  slightly different take on it but the book brings out some points that may help you identify your market and client. He professes that the fundamental challenge of business today is to serve customer  needs amid continuous change.  Nothing earth shattering but he also states that the top companies do this based on these five core values:

1. Pick markets that matter.
2. Select segments to dominate
3. Design the market offer to create customer value and secure differential advantage.
4. Integrate to serve the customer.
5. Measure what matters

If you really think through his process, you can see how apparent your target market may become. Also, it corresponds to the Product Market and Product launch processes that I adhere too.

Topics: Lean Six Sigma, Marketing System, Product Launch, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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