Put your "MVP" on the box, before building what goes inside

Before the Product MVP (Minimally Viable Product) is specified, we need to establish another kind of “MVP”.

Here the acronym stands for: Messaging, Value-proposition, and Positioning

Think of it as the “Marketing MVP”

These “MVP” elements are foundational to strategy and absolutely critical to the product’s ultimate commercial success. Without knowing the Positioning you want your product to take, its Value-proposition to customers, and how you will Message these things, you don’t have a path to market success. Moreover, you can’t really make critical Product MVP (Minimally Viable Product) decisions because those decisions must be based upon the Marketing MVP factors (Messaging, Value-proposition & Positioning) that lead to market success.

Simply stated: If you can’t clearly identify what will ultimately make your product sell BEFORE you build it, you won't build what will sell.

You’ll Find the Marketing MVP on Every Box

The essence of your Marketing MVP is right on the box.

“Box!? We don’t even have a product yet!”

Exactly the point. Design what you will need to say about the product on its box BEFORE you design what goes inside. The box is metaphorical of course; your product may not come in a box. But you can still start by designing that metaphorical box such that it communicates the Messaging, Value proposition, and Positioning that will sell the customer. What goes on the box is the distillation of these things. Get it right and the marketing of the product can go well. Get it wrong and no amount of spectacularly creative marketing will fix it.

Then too, it’s only after establishing that winning Messaging, Value proposition, and Positioning that your product’s features can be purposefully chosen. You choose the features of the Product MVP specifically in order to deliver on that winning Marketing MVP.

Markers Out

You can utilize structured processes to derive each of the Product’s Marketing MVP elements, not to mention the market assessment, segmentation, personas and competitive intelligence that feeds that Marketing MVP. Those are all subjects unto themselves, and yes, there are good methods to resolve each.

But assuming that you are getting a handle on those inputs, get out the markers and let’s put what you know to the test. Start designing that metaphorical box for your product. Begin with a blank box and mark it up to display the information that will make it sell. Literally- write it on a box (or the drawing of a box). Just remember, whatever you put down must fit on the box—you’re not doing a brochure. The exercise is to identify and express the most critical stuff.

It’s valuable to do this exercise with a cross-functional team because the discussion about what should go on the box reveals assumptions and knowledge gaps and allows team members to inform each other and/or to agree where more research is required. You may find that the technology person is focused on getting specifications on the box, while the marketing person drives toward the value-proposition and the salesperson comes up with points of competitive differentiation. Great. That helps the team see the differing perspectives and to then turn focus to the customer’s most important interests.

Defining “MVP”

• Start with Positioning. How are you different from competitors? How is that difference relevant to customers? Is it something they can believe? Write a few versions and give each the test:  Is it Differentiated, Relevant, Credible?

• Proceed to Messaging. What features let the product deliver on that positioning? Write up 3 using the format: [Description of feature] so that [Statement of key customer benefit]. You can vary the format, but the “so that” part is critical. The box can talk about features but only in the context of the benefits they deliver. Use customer-understandable language and avoid superlatives here.

• Now, Value Proposition. Construct it in the following manner: An attention-getting Lead Line that states the product’s overarching, special benefit that can be read and understood in 3 seconds or less. Next, a Clarifying Statement that describes how that benefit is delivered to target customers that makes it particularly valuable.  Just one, brief sentence here please. Of course, your Messages must support this statement.

Learning to Box

I’ve also done this with groups by breaking them into small teams. Each team designs a box, then later all the boxes are shared and discussed in the larger group. Each group learns from the others and can then improve their own box. But, regardless of how you approach the challenge, designing what goes on the box is an acid test that makes any knowledge shortfalls quite clear. It also gets everyone thinking in terms of that Marketing MVP—you know, the things that will actually sell customers on the product.

You can even ask customers to respond to what you’ve put on the metaphorical box. That’s the real question for any product. However innovative, carefully designed and quality assured the product is – will it sell? The answer ultimately comes down to what you may say about it on the box that will either resonate powerfully with your target customer or not. What gets their attention and what’s missing? However rough around the edges, engaging customers with your box is the way to learn what wins in the marketplace.

MVP Precedes MVP

When you start by expressing your Marketing MVP on the box you make it tangible to everyone involved and gain the further insights that can let you improve it. Moreover, that Marketing MVP serves as a guidepost toward building your Product MVP. Create the product that fulfills what customers find compelling on the box, and you’ve got a hit.

One good MVP deserves another

Perfect Your Value Proposition

Most market failures don’t result from poor marketing tactics. They result from going to the market with a poor marketing message, i.e.: not Relevant, Differentiated, or Credible to the target market.

If your talk doesn’t say the right things to the right people in the right way, your marketing efforts will fail to produce the level of results you want.

Of course, there is more than one way to approach this, but here I’ll describe an approach that I’ve found particularly effective with B2B companies:

The Steps

Value Proposition and Messaging go hand-in-glove and are how you communicate your reason to buy to customers. They stem from your Positioning. So, if you haven’t developed your core positioning statement, do that first.

From there you build a set of Benefit Messages, then derive the Core (cross-segment/ cross-persona) Value Proposition from those. Later you can create Segment-specific and/or Persona-specific versions that are based on the Core. But we’ll just focus on the Core here.

The Core Messaging Deck

This consists of a set of statements that each describe a particular benefit and how that benefit is special or unique. Messages should first be written as an internal document but can later be converted into marketing copy for use in promotional materials.

To start with, you’ve got to be clear about what target prospects need/want so that you can match what you say about your product to the things that really matter to prospects. If you are not extremely clear about the prospect’s high-value needs/wants, you need to talk to some prospects or conduct other kinds of research to get clarity. We’re really talking about creating clear Personas here, but that’s a discussion for another article.

Your Benefit Messages must: A. express your solution in terms of those real-world needs, pains, and desired gains of target prospects; B. address their experiences with competitive solutions; and C. embody their attitudes about the value of a better solution. Strong messages hang off the intersection between customer needs and your solution. Write 6-8 of these using the following format:

[The specific benefit created] by [The special or unique approach of product]

Bolster each message with 1 or 2 pieces of supporting evidence that prove what your message is conveying. These might be drawn from be surveys or other studies, testimonials, adoption statistics, thought leader opinion, or other sources.

Core Value Proposition

Messages in hand, build the core value proposition. This is the coalescence of your messages as an overarching, customer-facing statement that can be used in promotional materials. It must be expressed in the customer’s language and must succinctly convey how the product is uniquely valuable to the prospect. Follow this format to construct it:

Lead Line: State the product’s overarching, special benefit in an attention-getting way. There’s no set format here, but it should express the idea within 3 seconds.

Example: “Reduces cost and errors so you can focus on customer service instead of customer complaints.”

Clarifying Statement: Describe how that benefit is delivered to target customers that makes it particularly valuable.

Example: “Our mobile management solution simplifies your staff’s data collection, manipulation, and reporting where they need it most- in the field.”

Supporting Points: List subordinate benefits. Prepare 3 of your key messages in customer-facing language to use here.

Example:

• “Simplifies and speeds data collection in the field using RFID capture.”

• “Seamless integration with your existing CRM.”

• “Eliminates the most common data input errors.”

You Talkin’ to Me?

You get this right only if you are laser-focused on who it is you are speaking to and what is important to them, what the other guys are saying, and the kind of language they normally use and believe.

Relevant, Differentiated, Credible

Meet Your New Partner: The Sales Team

In B2B, Sales is your #1 customer.

“No, no, no… Sales is not our customer! They constantly insist that all the deals we lose are due to features, price, or because our literature sucks. It’s like they’ve never heard the phrase: ‘The selling starts when the customer says NO.’

Do you see how this thinking takes you exactly nowhere?

Bottom line: If you’re in a B2B market the chances are that you won’t be successful unless your Sales Team is successful. It’s like a marriage. There is misinterpretation of action, lack of communication, plenty of opportunity for frustration… but you are co-dependent. If you can make it work- Bliss. If you can’t- Hell. What’s more, since you can’t divorce Sales, you have to make it work. Here’s how to work toward that happy marriage.

Create a Partnership-Driven Feedback Loop

You’ve got to create a partnership-driven feedback loop with sales. Otherwise, there is just a long list of demands for stuff that sales says they want, which they may or may not actually need, and which they probably won’t use. Of course, you can’t do it all, so both parties just continue talking past one another.

So, how do we get that collaborative, ‘partnership-driven’ relationship going? Do two things:

Create a Sales-Centered Journey Map

You have to establish that partnership-driven feedback loop on the back of a tangible artifact- a sales-centered customer journey map.

To create that initial map, work with sales leadership and a couple of the best sales staff to hash it out together. Use the journey map model discussed in my prior article (Mapping the Customer Journey) to focus on how sales interact with prospects & customers within each segment and for each Persona that requires a different process.

This intensive discussion(s) will reveal what really happens throughout the sales process, which resources really get used or not used, and where gaps exist. You establish a common language with sales, understand the key articulation points in the sales process, and thus can then talk specifically about what can better support the sales team.

In the end, the priorities will become clear to everyone. Moreover, you’ve also established a baseline from which ongoing discussions can stem—the journey map anchors discussion, rather than simply orbiting around this week’s wish list.

Establish a Rotating Sales Roundtable

Next, set up a regular sales roundtable session (at least quarterly) to hash through what is working or not working and how the customer world or competitive tactics may have changed that suggests the need for something new.

You should have a core group for these sessions that includes non-sales folks too (e.g. product, marketing, customer service, and perhaps others). Importantly, you should invite one or two extra sales people to participate in each session who haven’t participated before- in order to keep things fresh. These folks participate for one session, then are replaced in the next.

The session focuses on the sales-centric journey map. This keeps the discussion focused and results in a changed map where everyone can see and agree to the key influence points and tactics needed for each event in the customer’s journey.

To gain enthusiasm from sales for these sessions, keep the focus positive. Ask for sales success stories. Everyone loves to share their successes. It makes them feel expert and highlights their accomplishments. You use discussion of those stories to dissect the elements that created success, and which may create success in other situations as well. Everyone wins.

With this kind of regular, refreshed, and focused dialog, the discussion changes from “We need a full brochure with everything in it!”, to something more like:

“So, at this point in the process the prospect is typically assessing us against competitors as part of their evaluation committee. So, what have you seen that works best? How can we make sure every committee actually gets just most critical comparative information/ demo/ thought leadership/ etc. that will make our advantage apparent?”

That’s the kind of focused dialog you want with sales. The kind that is partnership-driven.

What Else?

Hang out with sales people. Get to know them and establish mutual trust. You will learn far more about the intricacies of prospects and the nature of the challenges faced than your CRM system can ever give you.

(But, yes, you’ve got to look at the CRM data too.)

PR Does Not Stand for “Press Release”

Perhaps the most sought-after aspect of Public Relations is known as “Earned Media”, i.e. the coverage you get in various media without paying for it. This can be a powerful tool in B2B, but to earn your coverage you’ve got to create something worth publishing.

So, no— just posting press releases to press release brokers doesn’t cut it.

In a B2B space, Public Relations is better thought of as “Audience Relations” because you are usually not interested in reaching the general public. Your interest lies with the narrowly focused target audience for your solutions- with the goal of changing the audience’s awareness of, or attitudes about, an ISSUE that is closely related to your solutions.

What About My Product?

No… wait, you say. My goal is to change the audience’s awareness of, or attitudes about, my PRODUCT! Yes, that is your overall goal. But that’s not the way earned media works. Publications don’t give you attention for having a product. They give you attention for addressing an issue that strongly concerns THEIR audience. Note the emphasis on ‘their’ audience. If they are going to dedicate time/space/effort to something that you bring to their table, it must appeal to their audience more than an ad. So, if what you have to offer just reads like an ad, they will happily send you to their advertising department and joyfully accept your money to purchase ad space. To stay on the editorial side of things instead, you must pitch a story about the issues that concern their audience.

Which means that when your CEO says: “Let’s get a release out on this (new product, new customer, new etc.)!”, you must step back and find the bigger picture: What key issue are we addressing that is meaningful to the audience? Why does it need to be addressed? Who thinks so? Is this issue new or long-standing? What is the scope of its impact? Etc. In the answers to these questions is the essence of the PR story you can tell.

The story you pitch should follow this general structure:

• Important issue that the audience should be aware of. (Topic fits within the editorial interests of your target publications.)

• Key impacts of the issue and why it is important to address this issue now.

• Authoritative voices chime in to reinforce. They describe the kind of solution that can be effective. This just happens to be your kind of solution.

To Whom it May Concern

Knowing who you want to reach, and what effect you wish to have, will determine what vehicles are best able to touch your target. Make a list of outlets and rank them in terms of reach and influence. These may include trade publications, websites, blogs and other social media outlets, analysts, etc. Determine the reach that each has (how many people in your target are reached), and how influential it is (i.e.: from trusted authority to passing opinion).

Ventriloquism

With targets in hand, you must assure that the story is interesting, objective, and written in the publication’s voice (not your company’s voice). In order to understand these factors, you need to speak with the editor to get a feel for what he/she is looking for and to understand the publication’s acceptance criteria for articles. They are only interested in topics that fit their target subject matter and perspective, which can also fit into a space on their editorial calendar. That said, editors also understand that publications need money to run. So, proposing a package that includes an allocation of paid advertising can grease-the-skids of acceptance and also buy some content latitude.

Earn It

So, the next time someone presses you to “put out a press release”, press back and first develop a story worth its weight in earned media.