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R & D
Customer Definition
Knowing who your target customer is goes beyond just typical demographics such as age, income, location, etc. The most powerful products, services and brands attract early customers who have a 'hair on fire' problem that your solution solves. These ideal customers are moved by passion and an emotional connection to what you are doing. They believe in it and they believe in your mission. They will be evangelists and champions of your product or service and help you grow. Great! But how do you know who they are and how do you find them? In the resource links there are some examples of templates to help you understand the traits of your customer so you can create ways to make them aware you exist and attract them to your product or service - aka marketing. The great thing about ideal customers is they are ready to buy or purchase from you, so often you only need to make them aware.
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TASKS CARDS
Do First
You should complete the following tasks before proceeding to the current one.
Why do you exist
On the surface this may seem like an obvious question but it's critically important to understand a deeper meaning behind your idea. It doesn't matter if your idea is about food, cars or curing cancer. Knowing WHY you exist will help you later craft your brand and who your ideal customers are.In addition there might be a point in your business development where you feel like you've lost focus. Revisiting your first principles as to why you exist may help rekindle your spirit and refocus your efforts. This is an exercise that will take several passes to refine. Spend time on it and enjoy the process of connecting the thing you'll bring into the world with a higher purpose of making people's lives better no matter how large or small.
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Problem Statement
As you narrow down to creating a thing called your Value Proposition, you need to spend time understanding the problem you are solving. Too often entrepreneurs want to rush straight to the thing they are creating. They are interested in the solution, however, deeply understanding a problem makes the solution much more powerful and lasting. No matter what you are proposing to create or do, you are solving a problem that isn't currently solved. Create a problem statementA problem statement should describe an undesirable gap between the current-state level of performance and the desired future-state level of performance. A problem statement should include absolute or relative measures of the problem that quantify that gap, but should not include possible causes or solutions. You might describe symptoms, size and scope, the consequences of not addressing it, supporting data that the problem is real.To learn more about your problem and adjacent problems you should be out talking with as many people as you can in order to test if this problem really matters to anyone else other than you.Focusing on the problem can be uncomfortable so you'll be tempted to move quickly to solutions. You will revisit this statement often as you learn more about your potential customer and you start to develop a solution.
Validation
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RESOURCES
Our Curated Resources
List of resources, subject matter experts, trusted partners, and tools that can be useful to complete the task.
article
Small Business Marketing 101: Using Email, Social, Video and More
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TASKS
Tasks Within the Stage
STAGES
Keep Moving Forward
Don't stop now! Just pick the very next stage-card that resonates with your business and continue working on the correspondent tasks.
