Well, the financial crisis is re-prioritizing the needs of my clients, and most likely, your customers. I am curious to hear how you see the shifts in customer needs, and how you're responding.
In Monday's EBIG VC panel discussion, the Peter Gardner from Wavepoint Ventures suggested that emerging companies look at sharpening their value propositions to be more effective in the current economy. Solutions that help companies save more money than the cost of the solution will continue to do well. Companies should also be tweaking their product plans to more clearly sharpen the focus on a more tangible ROI and cost savings. I agree.
The most recent Conference Board CEO Challenges survey -- from before the financial crisis -- showed the top three challenges to be:
- Excellence in execution
- Sustained and steady top-line growth
- Consistent execution of strategy by top management
To support my clients, I have service offerings that align with each of these challenges. For example, a marketing assessment gives clients insight to their marketing function's "excellence in execution". Services that help my clients improve their product management and marketing and bring new products to market with a strong value proposition contribute to "sustained and steady top-line growth".
Now post-crisis, I imagine the major challenges will look more like they did in 2001 or 1993, with items like these moving to the top of the agenda:
- Cost reduction/Cost containment
- Customer loyalty/retention
- Industry consolidation
To me, marketing organizations should focus on meeting these changed customer needs by:
- Confirming the needs of their target market post-crisis. What information are you gathering about how your customers' needs are changing?
- Re-prioritizing the product pipeline to deliver more solutions, and feature enhancements on existing solutions, to meet these new unmet needs.
- Updating their positioning and messaging to focus on the new needs. For example, if most of your customers are concerned about cost reduction, if your products or services help with that, increase the emphasis on that part of the message in product and corporate marketing.
- Restructuring pricing and promotions to align with the improved value proposition.
- Creating campaigns that focus on how your company addresses these needs (and implicitly, better than the competition.
So I'm curious - how are you driving your business' response to the crisis?
