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#DATA#

Market

Activities we need to do to understand the market.

Market Problems

Discover problems in the market by interviewing customers, recent evaluators and untapped, potential customers. Validate urgent problems to show their pervasiveness in the market.

Win/Loss Analysis

Understand why recent evaluators of the product did or did not buy and what steps they took in the buying process.

Distinctive Competencies

Articuate and leverage the organization’s unique abilities to deliver value to the market.

Competitive Landscape

Identify competitive and alternative offerings in the market. Assess their strengths and weaknesses. Develop a strategy for winning against the competition.

Asset Assessment

Inventory your assets (technical, skills, services, patents, etc.) and determine ways that they can be leveraged.

Focus

Activities to help prioritize investments.

Market Definition

Map needs with target markets and analyze the market segments to actively pursue. Ensure that the targeted segments are large enough to support the current and future business of the product.

Determine which channels best align with your markets’ buying preferences.

Distribution Strategy

Product Portfolio

Integrate products into a coherent portfolio of products focused on the market. Manage the portfolio like a “product” (business plan, positioning, buying process, market requirements and marketing plan).

Illustrate the vision and key phases of deliverables for the product. The roadmap is a plan, not a commitment.

Product Roadmap

Business

Activities that build and justify the business case.

Business Plan

Perform an objective analysis of a potential market opportunity to provide a basis for investment. Articulate what you learned in the market and quantify the risk, including a financial model.

Pricing

Establish a pricing model, schedules, guidelines and procedures.

Buy, Build, or Partner

Determine the most effective ways to deliver a complete solution to an identified market problem. Where you have gaps in your offering, analyze whether to buy, build, or partner to complete the solution for your market.

Product Profitability

Monitor and analyze key performance indicators to determine how well the product is performing in the market, how it impacts the company operations, and ultimately, how it contributes to profit.

Innovation

Focus your teams’ creative spirit on solving market problems by leveraging your organization’s distinctive competencies.

Planning

Activities that turn your vision into a plan and a product.

Positioning

Describe the product by its ability to solve market problems. Create internal positioning documents that will be used to develop external messages focused on each key buyer or persona.

Understand and document the buyer’s journey for the key segments and buyers you have identified.

Buyer Experience

Define the archetypical buyers involved in the purchasing of your products and services.

Buyer Personas

User Personas

Define the archetypical users of your products or services.

Requirements

Articulate and prioritize personas and their problems so that the appropriate products can be built.

Use Scenarios

Illustrate market problems in a “story” that puts the problem in context. Use scenarios are one component of requirements.

Stakeholder Communications

Manage proactive communications with relevant stakeholders from strategy through execution.

Programs

Activities around customer acquisition and retention.

Marketing Plan

Articulate the strategies and tactics for generating awareness and leads for the upcoming fiscal period, including key programs and events with measurements and goals.

Revenue Growth

Define the specific plans and budgets for selling products and services to new customers.

Revenue Retention

Define the specific plans and budgets for ensuring customer loyalty, as well as selling products and services to existing customers.

Launch

Plan, execute and measure effectiveness of strategic launches.

Awareness

Develop programs to raise the profile and awareness of your brand within strategic market segments to bring more prospects into your funnel.

Nurturing

Develop programs to move prospects quickly and effectively through the funnel, with the objective of turning prospects into satisfied customers.

Advocacy

Identify customers who are willing to give testimonials, case studies and references and amplify their voice in the market.

Measurement

Measure and tune product marketing programs to ensure alignment with corporate goals.

Enablement

Activities that prepare your channels to successfully sell your product.

Sales Alignment

Use your market knowledge to help sales align their selling process to the way the market wants to buy.

Content

Develop relevant content to be used for all go-to-market channels and materials.

Sales Tools

Create tools for salespeople focused on a specific step of the selling process.

Channel Training

Design and deliver training programs to help the sales channels focus on how to sell the product, not how to use it.

Support

Activities required to support other parts of the organization.

Programs

Provide needed market and solution information to support internal and external marketing programs.

Operations

Provide needed market and solution information to support the operations group.

Provide needed market and solution information to support marketing events such as conferences, trade shows and webinars.

Events

Provide needed market and solution information to support channel opportunities and activities.

Channels

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