TAKE A DIGITAL MATURITY EVALUATION

Are you worried about competitors or upstarts nibbling at pieces of your business, or worse? Are you looking for new areas of growth or new product opportunities?

Many clients come to Mod Op Strategic Consulting because they are looking to redefine their product or service, expand their place in their market, fend off competition, or find entirely new markets to capture. We use a proven, thorough methodology in our market assessments based on our principles of outside-in thinking and incremental progress toward broader strategic goals. Here are five questions we consider:

1. MAPPING THE MARKET – Who serves your customers? 

Every Mod Op Strategic Consulting market assessment starts with a mapping exercise that puts your customers at the center of the market ecosystem, and then identifies the major types of businesses or organizations that enable, serve or supply them.

In the case of a non-profit association for example, we would place their members (the “customers”) in the center. Surrounding these members are the professional or trade groups, technology vendors, data providers, business services, media, content and event producers, workforce and career development companies, and other significant suppliers to the industry all competing to serve them. Mapping out the “universe” of service providers that enable an industry, market, supply chain or a specific professional group in this way provides you with a baseline for all your opportunity assessments. One thing to remember is that many organizations can and do serve several different customer types, so a complete assessment framework may require designing multiple maps to visualize the entire market in which you operate and compete.

2. CURRENT MARKET POSITION – Where do you play?

Next, we look at where and how you currently serve your customers: In which sectors of the mapped ecosystem do you play in now and with what products and services? You may find you are concentrated in just one or are playing thinly across many of the industry service and supply opportunities. Oftentimes when our client sees this universe laid out with their current product suite it sparks new and interesting conversations about why they are strong in one vertical or how they could take what they are doing for one set of customer needs that might be effective for another set.

3. MAXIMIZE YOUR CURRENT BUSINESS – Where are the incremental “inside” opportunities?

We like to dive deep into a client’s operations and business, working with front-line staff and management to evaluate current products and services and, hopefully, identify new opportunities based on what is working well or not working at all.

4. FIND THE OPPORTUNITIES IN THE MARKET – Where are the “outside” opportunities?

The bulk of our market assessment engagements focuses on outside-in research based on these maps. We size the markets (and verticals within the markets) and then identify key players, potential competitors, partners, and other best-practice examples. We combine this research with survey and interview data from actual customers, prospective customers, and lapsed customers to give us a holistic view of the marketplaces.

5. CHOOSING YOUR BEST OPTIONS – How can we prioritize what we do next?

Once we have engaged with our client’s customers and staff and research the market ecosystem we build hypotheses as to where new opportunities lie. Each hypothesis is then passed through five filters:

• MARKET NEED – How strong is the need for this product or service in the marketplace? Is there a willingness to pay? Is anyone else delivering a similar product or service and, if so, what can your organization do to deliver it better?

• RIGHT TO PLAY – How closely does the proposed product or service fit into your brand? There may be a great opportunity but if no one would understand why your organization is providing it then it may not be the right opportunity for you.

• REVENUE POTENTIAL – What is the market size the opportunity addresses and what percentage of it can your organization reasonably expect to capture with the right product mix?

• MISSION ALIGNMENT – How well does this opportunity align with the evolving mission and vision of your organization?

• DIFFICULTY TO EXECUTE – Using rough people-power estimates (+/- 50%) how much time and resources would need to be dedicated to the delivery of this product or service? Can you do it alone or do you need partners to execute?

We engage with our clients (our goal is to innovate with our clients, not for them) in interactive workshops to run the hypotheses through the above filters and prioritize the ones that make the most sense. These opportunities tend to have the best mix of potential revenue, brand permission/ organizational mission, and ease of execution.

By following these five steps you can lead your company through a very useful exercise, utilizing  both inside-out and outside-in customer-centric thinking, while identifying opportunities, partners, competitors and more that can impact your business. Then comes the fun work of executing on these opportunities and making them into new businesses that can sustain a company’s growth!

TAKE A DIGITAL MATURITY EVALUATION

Social media, two words that were relatively non-existent 15 years ago, have now become a vital part of everyday business, so much so that entire campaigns are now focused around them. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram are some of the top social channels used by businesses today.

Before your company dives deeper into social media, it’s important to remember what your company stands for and what you want to portray across each platform. Your brand, target audience, leadership team, company policies and imagery all play key parts in how you will be received on social media.

While each business and brand are different, the following tips can help you prepare as you dive headfirst into social media:

1. Identify your target audience. In the advertising and marketing world, knowing who to target is an integral part of any strategy and choosing the wrong demographic can be seriously detrimental to the success of your campaign.  There is a bit more flexibility when it comes to social targeting. Social media allows you to set up campaigns and target specific audiences, but pressing send on a social ad or paid campaign doesn’t mean you have to cross your fingers and hope it works. You can track the success of a campaign and alter the target audience based on how it is trending. Even with this flexibility, it is still important to identify your key audience early on, because knowing who to target will also help you with the next step – choosing the right platform.
2. Choose the right platform(s). While many businesses implement multiple platforms in their social media campaigns, not all platforms are the right fit for your brand. Each platform serves a different role and encompasses a different style of user. LinkedIn is primarily a business platform and is a great way for businesses and business professionals to reach out to other businesses, customers, employees and job seekers. Facebook and Twitter serve a more social role by incorporating more personal information, and Instagram and Pinterest focus more on sharing through images and captions. Thinking through who you want to target and how you want to portray your content will help you choose the right platform for your brand.
3.  Be unique to your brand. If you choose to implement multiple platforms in your quest for social supremacy, your brand needs to be equally identifiable in each platform. This goes for imagery as well as tone and the quality of content. Create a tone and voice that is unique to your brand. If you have multiple people in charge of creating and sharing content across your social sites, make sure everyone is in sync when it comes to the type of content and phrasing you want associated with your business.
4. Know the rules. Each platform has a different set of rules as to what is acceptable in terms of content and interactions. For instance, Facebook penalizes content that appears overly promotion or might be considered “click-bait.” Penalties like these could affect the placement and frequency of where your ad is shown. Familiarize yourself with each platform’s guidelines before making the decision to join.
   • Facebook
   • Twitter
   • LinkedIn
   • YouTube
   • Instagram 
5. Join the discussion. Post engaging content and ask questions to connect with your followers. Reply to comments on your posts and wall or newsfeed to keep the conversation going. By engaging with your followers, including working to resolve issues or problems, you help grow brand loyalty and encourage users to return to your page for updates. You can also use hashtags when appropriate to join larger conversations and organically put your content and brand in front of users who may not already be part of your following.
6. Have fun. This may be one of the most important aspects of social media. For most brands, success stems from storytelling more than product news. When appropriate, and only as it applies to your brand, have fun with your audience. Be inviting, make jokes and go with current trends in the marketplace. This can be tricky for brands that have a more professional tone and voice, but an occasional fun post can be refreshing to your followers. It’s okay if your brand doesn’t necessarily allow for you to share the funny cat video or meme currently trending on social media. You can still look for ways to make your content more engaging without losing the character of your brand. Know your audience and your brand and find the connection between them.