POWER OF THREE (part iii)

If you’re seeing this subject for the first time, you can catch up with parts 1 and 2:

• POWER OF THREE (part i)
• POWER OF THREE (part ii)

The topic of today is next next part of “TORCH”, the “R” or “Resources”. Thus far, you should have:

• 3 target audiences (“T”);
• 3 objectives (“O”), 1 for each;

Now we need to determine what resources (time, money etc) that need to be applied in order to achieve the objective for each target.

I call this “reverse engineering”. We know ultimately what we want and who we want it from, but in order to get from here to there, what’s it going to take?

Now is the time to put down what you realistically are going to have to spend to get from here to there. I used the term ”spend” a little loosely. A resource is anything that has to be used in order to achieve a goal. This does not have to be money. It could be time and effort. It could be another person or company.

In order to really understand what resources you’re going to need, you’re probably going to start formulating your plan or “how”. This means jumping around a little between the “R”, “C” (Calendar) and “H” but that’s okay.

WIDGET INC

I’m going to continue to use “WIDGET INC” as my example, but so as not to run on forever, I’ll focus on just one of their three items. If you remember, WIDGET have decided on:

Target: plastic dinosaur factories

Objective: $100,000 in new income

So, they now have to ascertain what it’s going to take to generate $100,000 in new income. They figure that every five leads turns into an actual paying client. The average paying client spends $5,000 in a given year. So, to apply the reverse engineering strategy, this means they would need 20 paying clients (20x$5,000=$100,000) in a year to meet their target.

In order to get 20 paying clients, they’re going to need five times as many prospects (1 in 5 becomes a paying client). So, they’ll need 100 prospects. A “prospect” in WIDGET’s case, means someone who has made contact, whether by phone, email or in person.

WIDGET’s marketing team determines that they’re going to use a three-pronged approach: a mailer, coupled with a blogging campaign and email incentive. They figure that if they can get email addresses then they will have an audience they can marketing to repeatedly. However, in order to get these email addresses, they’ll need to do something a little different, so they’re going to do an old-fashioned mailing to all the plastic dinosaur factories in the US (1,000).

They’re also going to set up a blog to discuss elements of their widgets aimed specifically at plastic dinosaur manufacturing called “AGE OF THE DINOSAURS”.

Money at WIDGET is tight, so they don’t have a lot to spend, but:

• The blog is free to set up, it’s just going to take some time to write the content;
• If they do a clever postcard mailer, they can hopefully grab attention enough to get people to visit their website and sign up;
• The website is already in place, but they’re going to set up a separate page with domain name so they can track respondents to the mailer more accurately.

POWER OF THREE

As you can see, a lot of the “how” is covered in the “resources”, so you’re doing some work ahead of time, but in order to accurately develop a plan, you need to know what’s going into the recipe.

Also, in your case, like that of “WIDGET”, you’re going to have three different plans. Hopefully you can see the benefit of spreading your resources and risk around.

HOMEWORK

The next assignment is to begin developing your plans. If you find that three plans are a little too much, start with one. You can always repeat the exercise for other plans.

What you’ll need at the end is a good idea of how much time, effort and money is going to be needed to achieve the goal.

• Be realistic and honest with yourself. If it takes more than you first thought, at least now is a good time to find out.
• Don’t allow the process or resources intimidate you. You’ve still got to do the “how” in full, and you’ll probably be surprised.
• Consider all resources, paid and otherwise. What “freebies” are there out there?

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Please let me know if I can be of any help.

POWER OF THREE (part ii)

In my last post(part i) I began discussing the “Power of Three” and TORCH, a marketing acronym (Target / Objective / Resources /Calendar / How). I left you with step one homework, selecting three different “T”s or target audiences for your marketing program.

I’m going to use WIDGET INC as my imaginary clients. WIDGET INC makes…you guessed it! They’ve decided they’re going to market to (1)factories, (2)construction companies and (3)janitorial companies. My first question would relate to number 1 – “factories”. That is a potentially vague market segment. After all, there must be thousands of different types of factories. It may very well be that WIDGET INC has a product or service that spans every conceivable industry, but they don’t, so I’m going to ask them to narrow the first item down. The second and third are just fine. So instead of “factories”, they’re going with “Factories that make plastic dinosaurs”.

STEP 2 : OBJECTIVE

The objective has to be measurable. “Making money” is not terribly measurable. How much money? $10? Okay, that’s more measurable. Remember, we’re picking an objective for each of our three targets. Things to consider as measurable objectives might include a certain number of sales, or a monetary return. It should be tangible and achievable. While I’m all for “the sky’s the limit”, I firmly believe that the easiest way to eat an elephant is “one bite at a time”.

WIDGET INC has decided on the following:

Target: plastic dinosaur factories
Objective: $100,000 in new income

Target: construction companies
Objective: 5 new clients (possibly with income)

Target: janitorial companies
Objective: $100,000 in new income

The second objective, “5 new clients” is a big deal for WIDGET. The construction industry is a new one for them, so there’s going to be some learning time. Their goal is 5 new clients in the first 6 months, something that’s realistic to them.

POWER OF THREE

Another reason we pick THREE different targets, clients, plans etc is to allow for backup. If one plan isn’t working as well as it might, we have two others to support us while we sort out the third. Not only is this a matter of spreading risk, it’s helpful (we hope) when it comes to motivation. While one or two plans might be having trouble, we have a third that should be doing at least “okay”.

YOUR MISSION…

…should you choose to accept it, is to now pick three business objectives for your three target companies or industries. These must be measurable goals. If they’re not measurable, how do you know you’re succeeding?

As always, feel free to contact me and I’ll see you for part iii.

POWER OF THREE (part i)

I thought I’d share one of my marketing development programs with you. It’s called “Power of Three” or “P3” for short:

• three markets
• three targets
• three plans

In a nutshell, the idea behind P3 is to pick three very different markets, develop three different goals, and the put a plan together for each.

Why three?

Well, I’m a big believer of not keeping all the proverbial eggs in a single basket. I am also a believer in not trying to do too much.

With P3, you pick three “markets”. These could be demographics, industries or other cross-segment of potential clients. This can be tricky. We all have our comfort zones. That’s why when I work with clients on the P3 program I specifically ask them to pick three unrelated market segments.

When done, pick three targets or “goals”, one for each. A goal (or target) is, in this case, defined as something that is you feel is achievable by you as it relates to the market.

Now, you put a plan together.

TORCH

In order to accomplish all of the above, I use a system called “TORCH” (Target / Objective / Resources / Calendar / How). It’s a process that can help focus your attention and hopefully give you some ideas.

“T” is for TARGET, our intended audience. This could be a certain type of company, an income level or geographic region…depending on your industry, this will vary. But for the P3 program you need to pick 3 different ones.

In part 2, I’ll go into TORCH in more detail. For now, if you’re interested in giving this program a try, I’ll leave you with some homework:

Pick your three target markets. This is easier said than done. You’re looking for three sets of potential clients that you’d like to go after. Consider all options and pick the three that suit you best.

In the meantime, feel free to contact me if you’ve got any questions.

WEBBY’S : JULY 2009 ONLINE

The July edition of Webby’s Updates is now online at www.JDELtd.com. Simply visit the site and click on the “news” button to read it.

This month features include two marketing pieces, JDE client reviews, news, new website launches and, of course, Webby’s Trivia.

Happy 4th of July!