Alberta Business Marketing

This post today is not about social media consulting in Calgary or even the work we do each day helping our clients with search engines optimization. However, keep this in mind, the work we do with all of our social media efforts and investing the time and/or dollars into a search engine optimization campaign all start with understanding our businesses.

You know it is still very surprising how many business still don’t have a business plan and even more have a marketing plan that consists of the proverbial, “let’s throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks” approach.  By the way, don’t be in denial…don’t tell people you have a business plan and then have to blow the dust off it or even worse..you can produce it.  If your business and marketing plans are in your head, they are simply dreams. Get it on paper today.

During a recent Starbuck’s gathering with one of our SEO copy editors who works with Ulistic, we got chatting about business and the various stages of a small business.  I was intrigued about these various stages and thought that I should know them because I am on my second small business now.  Once I started to understand them, it was easy to share with you all.

Here are the three stages that we discussed over coffee:

• Forming – These are the early stages in a small business.  You may be here solo or have a group of two or more.  This can also be known as the “dating phase”.  You like each other, you see synergies and you elect to jump into a business with each other.  Everyone kind of knows what they need to be doing.  Usually lots of toes are stepped on but everyone is happy.
• Storming – Enter the rocky seas.  Everyone is heads down and feverishly working hard for the success of the business.  Everyone has the right intentions but lots of things are being missed, people are getting upset and this stage is where a number of the small business relationships fall apart.   Success occurs but everyone is so busy pushing forward that they fail to reward themselves, egos start to form and everyone is jockeying for position.
• Norming – If your small business can make it through the storming phase, you will start to see that the stormy seas start to calm and everyone settles into what they do best.  Your true sales experts start to emerge, your technical folks understand their roles and everyone is on the same page.

Let’s face it…egos get bruised every day in a small business and every business goes through these phases eventually.  The forming period maybe longer for others.  Storming may be short-lived and norming we all hope can go on for ever.  Let your colleagues flex their muscle and ride out the stormy times to get to the smooth sailing.  Some people just need to know they can do it and have early success.

Having run a very successful IT firm in Calgary for 9 years I can tell you that we went through all of these phases.  It wasn’t until we had some outside help that allowed us to figure out the norming phase.  The phase where roles and job descriptions are clearly defined and KPI’s are set.  Do you have KPI’s in your business? If not, how do you know if everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing?

Having someone come in to do a SWOT analysis on your business is totally awesome and well worth the exercise.  I highly recommend investing the time.

Where are you in your business today?

Tags: Business, Business intelligence, Business/Finance, Calgary, Group processes, IP, Management, market research, marketing plan, search engine, search engine optimization campaign, search engines, search engines optimization, Social groups, social media, social media efforts, Social work, Stuart's ramblings, SWOT analysis
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…and yet we still rely on consumer research techniques that were designed by statisticians in the 1950s. I’m not a psychiatrist, but it seems to be that there is something vaguely neurotic about an industry that continues to do the same thing, at great expense, knowing full well the outcome will have a 90% probability of being wrong. Innovation needs a fundamentally new and different approach.

Why does the traditional statistics based research not work?

I think the problem has more to do with the real lives of people in a world that is much less predictable than it once was. In the case of a high frequency CPG, let’s say toothpaste, it is almost impossible for someone to accurately predict how they will react when they are in the store buying toothpaste, unless they are rigidly brand-apathetic (that is, they always use the same brand no matter what, which is generally because it is easier to stay with what they are doing than try to figure out all the other alternatives).

For instance, a respondent might say in anticipation of buying toothpaste (in a research or interview or any other setting – even in-store) that he definitely will or is somewhat or very likely to buy a new product, even if it costs ten cents more. However, when I am actually in the process of buying the product, my actual decision will be based on a number of unanticipatable variables: how much money do I have in my pocket, how full is my basket and how much have I already spent, am I feeling frugal today, is the toothpaste only for me or is it for the family, what other brands are on sale, and so on.

Clearly people’s projection of buying behavior, which we call buying intent, is necessarily unreliable. In a simpler world, when brands behaved in an orderly fashion and consumers lived in a rigidly budgeted, regulated world, this may have been different.

What is the alternative?

Simply put, people’s predictions of amalgamated behavior is likely to be much more accurate than their prediction of their own behavior. This is at the heart of the economic principle captured in James Surowieki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds.

ProteanPrediction Collective Wisdom Engine is a proprietary process that integrates this theory into a very practical market-ready system. As a component of any innovation development strategy it can be used to guide development teams in incremental steps, rather than quantum (and very expensive, but very risky) leaps.

The Collective Wisdom Engine is particularly powerful when used as a mechanism to involve the entire organization in the process. I am not sure there is any proof positive, but it makes sense that the collective wisdom of the people who work with the product and brand on a daily basis is likely to be more interesting than the collective wisdom of a random or specific external crowd (although, not necessarily more accurate). It can also be accomplished at a fraction of the costs of traditional, research based methodologies.

Tags: Branding, Customer Experience, innovation management, market research, prediction markets, protean consulting, protean research, Research, Strategy, wisdom of crowds
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