The Laws of Entrepreneurial Marketing

Law of the Angle: strategy vs. tactics. Massive advertising programs are no substitute for a good angle.  Find a tactic. There must be a “reason to believe.”

Law of Pain or Opportunity: Find the pain—found the market capitalize of opportunity.

Solve the pain and watch consumer change. The thought of what might be is a very powerful motivator too. Every big problem is a big opportunity. Get around barriers when you are trying to solve problems.

Law of the Sweet Spot (the Blue Ocean)

• Attack an unknown market space
• Develop markets where there is little or no competition
• Technology innovations are not primary reasons for new markets
• Forget incremental improvement—go for the sweet spot.
• Entrepreneurs don’t risk, they manage risk.

Finding the sweet spot

• Take it to a new geographic region.
• Increase the frequency of purchase. Is there anything I can do at a tactical level?
• Buy my brand vs. buy another brand (Red Ocean). This is the battlefield idea.
• Buy my category or don’t buy at all.
• Cow pie clocks. Because it is interesting it can get publicity without spending a lot of money.

Law of Specialization

• It is human nature to go after the total market and appeal to everybody.
• Narrowing your focus produces a winner.
• Specialist always beats a generalist
• “Crossing the Chasm” technology is not a product. You must make a specific thing for a specific group of people.
• Direct1.com: real-time feedback and information solutions.

1. Target a very specific niche market (person-situation) and establish the whole product for specific applications.
2. Define the battle.
3. Assemble the invasion force (partners and allies).
4. Launch the invasion (marketing mix). Don’t go after niches at random, establish whole products that must be built from scratch.

Law of the Neighbor

• Modify or tweak someone else’s idea to fill a market need.
• Gain an edge from what is all around you.
• Stay away from me-too products/services.

Nine methods for new product success

1. Take something out of your product
2. Put something in your products
3. Answer to consumer gripes
4. Visible difference
5. Make the task easier
6. Use products in new way
7. Product substitutability
8. Don’t be literal, be creative
9. Look overseas.

Law of the Horse

• The key to real success in life is to believing in someone else.
• Find a horse you can ride to the bank.
• Increase your speed to market.
• “You can get anything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” –Zig Ziglar.
• Marketing in start-ups is all about leveraging relationships with people of influence.
• It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
• I don’t have much money, so how do I feed the horse? Answer: Power, recognition, credibility, stock—increase wealth. Everyone likes to be associated with a winner.
• “If you’re starting a company, find a company advisor as soon as possible. The opportunity to run our initial strategies by a seasoned veteran would have saved us time, frustration, and headaches in the early stages.” –The Mouse Driver Chronicles

Law of the Spider Webb

• If you don’t have a powerful reputation, surround yourself with many people inside and outside the company who do.
• Healthy disregard for the impossible—not fear of failure.
• You can’t make yourself successful. Only others can do that for you.
• Get an good advisory board members.
• Get people on the board that may eventually become customers.
• If you don’t have credibility go out and get someone else’s.
• Your product/service will attract the horses and get you the spider web because you are a “winner” and your product looks good.
• “Advisory boards are not mandated and therefore are frequently ignored or limited to scientific aspects of a company. Yet, there is an increasing logical trend toward the use of advisory boards for intellectual leverage in all aspects of corporate management.” –Chuck Re Corr, “The Hidden Value of an Advisory Board.”
• Experience counts—and, it doesn’t have to be your own.” –Rob Jeppsen, Allegiance Technologies.

Law of Energy

• “All things come to those who hustle while they wait” –Thomas Edison.
• “Men of action are favored by the Goddess of Good Luck.” –The Richest Man in Babylon
• Stop planning and start doing.
• Successful entrepreneurs build companies because of meaning, not because of money.
• Work=Force x Distance
• What lies at the heart of an entrepreneurship is to do the things today that other people simply won’t do.
• Give 110% working long hours, including weekends for long periods of time.
• You know you are an entrepreneur when you are so excited about your idea that you don’t have time to go to the bathroom.
• Passion is the first crucial sign of success.
• “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies soely in my tenacity.” –Louis Pasteuer
• They succeed because they are willing to do today what others only dream about.

Law of Benefactors

• The most powerful thought in the world is to seek an answer to a well though out question.—Gary Rhoads
• Who benefits if I succeed?
• Success in asking the right question. MyFamily.com believed Intel, AOL, Compaq, Kodak would succeed if they did as well.
• You must take a look at who else your product or service will effect and to what extent it will do so. Will this further help you out?

Law of the Puffer Fish

• Perception is reality. Be as big as you can.
• Represents a non-permanent change in how the start-up presents itself such that others looking from the outside in will see the company as much larger than it is.

Law of Beta Gold Mine

• Beta customers are like veins of gold, they are your first customer that provide needed cash.
• Use beta customers to fund your fixed cost and R&D.
• Minimize the effort of managing people because it is painful.
• If it is enough of a wow, then someone will pay you to build it. If you need an investor your product does not have enough legs to get going in the market.
• Once someone else helps you develop it, charge them service for it and then sell it to as many other customers you can.
• Getting the first person to buy is unbelievably expensive.
• Getting the second customers to buy is unbelievably cheap.

Law of the Anchor

• “With an anchor on board you are bound to go places.”
• Increase the rate of sales or of customer acquisition.
• Establish immediate credibility within a market
• Create a reputable and sold reference customer.
• Significantly decrease sales cycle.
• Generate cash flow that fuel growth.
• EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO GIVE YOUR PRODUCT AWAY TO GET AN ANCHOR, DO IT.
• Anchors are those who benefit the most from the use of your product.
• Horses are usually people that introduce you to companies that are anchors.

1. Who starts a business and becomes an entrepreneur?
2. When and how do they do so?
3. Are they glad they did?
4. What makes an entrepreneur successful?

How do they do so?

1. Build ventures around incremental innovations
2. Quickly focus on opportunities that are likely to work: markets in flux, markets where they do not confront large incumbents.
3. Generate free publicity or “buzz”
4. Project a big company image
5. Find employees who are “diamonds in the rough.”
6. Low personal overhead
7. Sell, sell, sell

Law of the Chase

·         Chase customers not competitors

·         DO the opposite of what everyone else is doing and you just might find a successful new tactic.

·         When everyone is making one type of thing, try making just the opposite.

Law of the Feeding Frenzy

• To get vendors, channels, and VCs to take action, you must create a feeding frenzy.
• Give people a reason to take action today.
• Motivation to move forward. Greed: don’t want to miss the boat. Fear: someone else will get it first.
• To be victorious you need to know your enemy and know yourself.
• Never go after your potential number one client unless you have two or three others you are going to talk to.
• Greed: they don’t want to miss the boat.
• Fear: someone else will get it first.
• Infer they are going to miss the boat if they don’t sign, don’t actually say it.

Law of Courtship

• Get the “I do”
• Court the love group
• Create trust through engagement
• Commitment escalates as the relationship progresses.
• Five steps for dating your customer:
1. Give them incentive so they volunteer to keep communication but spend as little as possible.
2. If the customer volunteers, start teaching them.
3. Reinforce incentive
4. Increase the level of permission.
5. Leverage the attention from the customer to benefit.

• Listen more, talk less
• The more the other party is involved in your business, the more important they will feel.
• Be humble: be willing to accept criticism and then change for the better.
• Seek commitment because loyal customer provide: referrals, revenue, testimonials , honest feedback and ideas for R&D, and decreases in price sensitivity.
• Get customers involved in the business.
• Ask for feedback and don’t just rely on occasional focus groups or surveys.
• Make sure customer know who their advocate/contact is within the company.
• Learn to leverage your smallness. You can turn on a dime and they can’t.
• Leverage your smallness.

Law of the Love-Fest

• Let your customers sell your products for you.
• Orchestrate a process that gets your customers doing the selling.
• The ultimate credibility source is customer to customer.

Law of Producing Heroes

• The greatest leaders are those that produce other leaders and heroes.
• “I gauge my success on how strong my customers felt that they are the champions, solver of the great problems facing their company.”

Law of Exceeding Expectations

• Under commit, over deliver
• Creating customer trust.
• Performance should be greater than expectations, unlike big corporations.
• Value: extra service benefits.
• Speed: impress your customers.
• Personality: doing the small things to touch your customer more often.
• Add-ons: additional features and benefits.
• Convenience: offering support above and beyond the call of duty.

Law of the Underdog

• Many companies not in the top 100 fortune firms want to be there. Fortune 200 firms are more likely to work with a small promising start-up to leverage growth.
• Channel partners who want to aggressively grow will take more risk than the number 1 channel partner.
• Find the number 2s, they try harder.
• “Never fear the underdog is here”

“The Anatomy of Buzz” 

by Emanuel Rosen

• Customers are skeptical
• They listen to their friends
• People feed off of Hubs, both social and experts.
• “Buzz spreads faster when associated with a person.”
• Give Aways
• Lead people along and don’t give all of the product specs at the beginning because it will lead them coming back for more.
• Always exceed expectations. Mysterious products that don’t meet expectations quickly fail.
• When newness dies, buzz dies.
• Scarcity creates buzz, especially perceived scarcity. When doing this the product is better if it is high-end. Timing is everything.

Law of Marketing Events

• Marketing tactics are really an event, activity, incident, happening, gathering, tournament, competition, match, race, game, heat, or bout.
• Think of marketing as going from one activity to the next.
• “Positive media coverage is 600% more effective than paid for advertisements.” –David Ogilvy as quoted in entreworld.org.
• Making something viral.
• Who is the spokesperson? What is the message? Who is the target audience? What is the information channel? What is the desired affect?

Law of Evolution

• Faster, better, cheaper
• Don’t kill yourself trying to change the world.
• Simply ask if it is faster, better, or cheaper than your competitors?
• Evolve your existing business model in a profitable way by offering a better, faster, cheaper alternative.
• If one principle works what about a combination of 2 or 3.

Law of Situation Domination

• Customers buy your product/service for specific usage situations.
• Be a specialist that dominates situations.
• Capitalize on buyer usage situations.
• Organize a store to fit buying behavior.
• Consider your audience and situation.
• Find a usage situation you want to dominate and then sell them.
• Person by situation segmentation.

Law of the Closer

• Sell, sell, sell

• Use your selling skills to get an order or complete a deal.
• Beg for the order if you have to.
• Principle of Insanity: doing things the same way and expecting different results.
• We’re not in the feel good business—we are in the deal making business.
• If don’t have someone that will close deals, get someone.
• As an entrepreneur, one of your foremost objectives should be to develop the skills necessary to persuasively sell your ideas, products, and processes to both internal and external audiences.

Law of the Catch Phrase

• Find a tag line or catch phrase that is memorable to reach the masses.
• Develop a mind teaser.
• Find a catch phrase that highlights your strengths and at the same time attacks the weaknesses of your competitors.

Law of Warm Fuzzy

• Don’t confuse activity with accomplishment!
• It feels good when big companies call you, visit you, fly you out, and promise you the world. Unfortunately, that doesn’t lead to sales and dilutes your efforts.
• Make sure you spend your efforts and emotions on activities and events that get results. The warm fuzzy can kill your company.

Law of Scarcity

• Spend a dollar to make 2 dollars or don’t spend.
• Be frugal.

Law of Imperfection

• Destiny waits for no man.
• Consumers are likely to be more forgiving when purchasing a product in the sweet spot.
• Get the product out there quickly to your beta gold mine—learn from your customers on how to make the right product.

Law of Free/Addiction

• There ain’t no brand loyalty that two-cents-off can’t overcome.
• If you have an addictive product or service, give it away to prime the pump.
• They must have an addictive component.
• This gets you your beta gold mine customer.

Law of Augmentation

·         You can make more profit in selling augmented products and services than you can by selling the main product.

·         To increase your revenue, search for augmented products and services.

·         There are three levels of a product

1.      The core product—the benefits received.

2.      The tangible product

3.      The augmented product—additional services and benefits. A lot of the money comes from augmentation. Accelerated growth comes from augmented products.

• Core product, tangible product, a product that augments benefit of the product (reinforcements of the product with other things).

Law of the Guarantee

• Slap some sort of quality seal or guarantee on your product.

Law of Rabbits and Elephants

• On the path to killing an elephant sized deal, rabbits are needed to keep the company alive—provide cash.

Law of Love, Swing, Hate

• Love group love your product.
• Swing group are indifferent.
• Hate group hate you.
• Spend most of your time understanding the Love Group.
• Show the Swing Group why the Love Group loves you.
• Avoid and minimize your efforts with the Hate Group.
• Understand competitors.

Law of Incentive Pricing

• Use price as an incentive when it makes cents.
• When does it make cents?
• When you are selling coca cola not toilet paper.
• You don’t use more t.p. when the price is reduced. However, when soda prices are reduced more is consumed.
• Incentive pricing doesn’t make sense unless people are going to use the product more.
• Unless you bundle T.P. with prunes!

• Make or create an experience—especially in the service industry.

Law of Gut over Matter

• A lot of entrepreneurs start their venture based on gut feelings, and many of them do become successful.
• But it is not always safe to rely only on gut feelings. Some market research is also needed to see if the assumptions are valid.
• But too often they use to much gut.
• Some basic data can be relatively easy and inexpensive to collect helping to educate the intuition.
• Analysis Paralysis can defeat you.
• Instinct is used to make quick decisions. Don’t think TOO much just get it done.
• Is marketing research worth the expense?
• Analyze to reinforce the gut feeling.
• Ask who, what, when, where, why, how about the product or service.

Law of the Drummer Boy

• You can’t beat your own drum too loudly too early.
• Have the client give out your press releases. This makes them the hero and they love it.
• Early drum beats are best played by: anchor customers, partners, advisory board, beta-gold mine, investors, news, radio, and public TV.

Law of Teaching Buyers

• Rather than giving customers what they want (customer driven), we need to develop tactics to help customers learn what they want (new-to-the-world).
• At some point in time a buyer will have no knowledge of how to be a buyer. We need to teach them. Use market-driving strategies.
• Teach buyers about product—establish brand perception.
• Create concept of value.
• Create logic for choosing pioneer brand.
• To have warm fuzzies without signatures on contracts, don’t mess with it.

Crossing the Chasm: Winning Over Pragmatists

1. Target a very specific niche market (person-situation) and establish the whole product for specific applications.
2. Define the battle (USP).
3. Assemble the invasion force (partners and allies).
4. Launch the invasion (marketing mix).

Don’t go after niches at random, establish whole products that must be built from scratch.

Nate Nead

Digital Signage