Early adopters of subscription boxes are the visionaries. They try new things for the sake of trying new products, but your biggest hurdle is crossing the chasm into the mass middle. How do you convince the pragmatists that your product is delightful and exciting? And how do you venture outside of targeting your core customer who will also be receptive to your product?
There is a high degree of disappointment which converts into poor ratings. In many cases, the ratings are not appropriate because the type of customer receiving the box is a mismatch. The overreach of marketing drives many correct customers but can lead to some big potholes. It’s hard to reach a broad audience and satisfy everyone.
Box disappointment can lead to poor ratings which impact sales tremendously. It is not a marketing or product problem, but like finding a place for a Tetris piece. It’s about matching the right customer in the perfect spot. By designing the right box for the right customer, you create high degrees of delight social sharing.
The results you find online can be terrifying to a company. There is an oversupply of subscription box companies right now, and the company who wins this battle will seize market share now in a challenging environment later to win volume. Subscription boxes are a powerful way to capture market share brand awareness and sales. For many reasons, this is why we shop in stores to be delighted and surprised at what we pass. This is a new way of thinking, but it needs work.
Below is a snippet of activities in Dallas, Texas, which is our example city. We see here that people interested in cooking are nothing like people who travel, while travel and home decorating have similar psycholinguistic traits. Our research indicates that writing specific content based on your goals drives a better conversion rate.
We know that this is a somewhat unconventional way of improving conversion, but we have found that understanding why people buy is critical and an efficient way to grow sales and profits. Contact us to see how we can help you improve knowing your customer.
Spreadsheets, correlation and ‘data of the past ’….They’re needed. I use them every day.
But I don’t rely on them when it comes to predicting the future.
As an executive, your tasked with predicting the future or more like reducing the odds of failure. If you are guessing, you are more likely to be guessing again a machine or a competitor executive, aided by a computer. That machine is empowered with machine learning, AI or something else your human brain can’t outmaneuver by guessing.
The growth operating system we all want does not exist yet, but it’s getting closer. To get there, you need to balance three data sets asap.
— Data of the past forms a foundation of where you have been
— Real-time data, where are we right now
— Predictive data, not based on the past in any way, shape or form
Today I had an exciting conversation about artificial intelligence. It’s incredible to think in late 2018, data from traffic cameras can change the market share of healthcare companies dramatically. Not because of something that happened in the past but predicting using ways of thinking far beyond a person. In this one example, millions if not billions are at stake.
How much of which kind of data do you need?
Sometimes, depending on who you are and what kind of business you’re in, the organization needs a little bit more of one versus the other.
If there’s no data of the past, whatsoever, you don’t have a choice but to look forward. Maybe you can model something from the past but not likely with too much accuracy. We use to call that assumption.
If you have slow growth or stagnant business, that’s not going many places anytime soon, and with few competitors, you can rely on data of the past. Sadly, that’s the foundation of how schools teach us. Using data from the past models are excellent when it’s a lazy river. Things are changing too quickly. There’s got to be a competitive advantage that is different from the past.
Allen’s Acers, Pitkin, LA
Today it’s very different if you’re in a fast-paced environment. If you’re impacted and disrupted by technology, you’re feeling the pain. People are predicting and connecting things that have never done before. It is a multiplier effect of efficiency and girth.
Plugging in the right operating system at the right time and the right stage is essential to driving the company to its rightful size and volume. It’s also important when creating the right value expectations.
Most companies I helped grow usually start with a ‘data of the past’ business model. Getting people to look at predictive data sets is difficult. It feels unnatural. Excel is such a warmer, more cozy place to be for middle management, who often arm senior leadership with ‘facts.’
By adding in elements of a growth operating system, we combine data of the future with data of the past and sprinkle in a little bit of real-time data. It’s the elements of a pretty good growth operating system. Not perfect but good. Adding in sources of truth and understanding exactly what type of source you are looking at, helps define limitations, anomalies and builds the foundations of an OS.
An example: Very early on I remember pushing a major airline to increase its CPA from $2.50 per ticket to $11.75. I wanted to factor in the early-stage customer journey, as $2.50 was competing with its consolidators, and the result was only adding very few net new customers. My theory was people who were aware of the airline did not shop the airline because of that classic ‘out of sight, out of mind’ issue. Too many options. I had NO DATA to support my claim. Instead, I devised a test, and it worked. Today, over 50% of new customer sales come from a more advanced full customer journey. And it is a system that does not rely on cookies and session IDs to ‘prove’ value.
When we append jobs to be done theory as a driver to defining our total addressable market, a real total addressable market, we have a foundation of an operating system for business. When we know how many people can be customers and should be customers, we can define things like customer journey far better than the limited, linear systems our competitors struggle with today.
Growth operating systems combine complex, multiple sources of data that don’t usually play well together. Smart organizations focus on the right things while others live in fear. It’s time for more people to leap ahead.
People who buy Chevrolet in Illinois are different than the people who buy Chevrolet Mississippi and Iowa.
The dominant traits in Illinois are cause and positive emotion oriented. While dominant trait in Mississippi our motion, work and clout oriented.
People who are motion oriented, Have traits that tend to be active, enthusiastic and always on the move. I believe this is consistent with the brand that GM portrays.
The goal for venture capital is to return a profit. How can we improve the odds of success?
Get better at improving the odds. A combination of people, process and technology are how we build Start-ups. Why can’t this apply to those who fund the startups? Many VCs focus on people and connections. People with different skill sets improve the odds of success along with a well-defined business process that focuses on the right KPI’s. For example, having a well-defined brand, at the right time improves Long-term KPIs.
Having a technology core that improves core capabilities of the VC as well as the startups they invested. For example being able to define a total addressable market is critical to understanding the opportunity. Many startups are forced to pivot too many times, creating a risk of running out of capital. How can you quickly define the market, tested rapidly, ramp and scale at speeds not seen before? It’s not possible using yesterday’s technology.
The long-term goal is higher returns, better deal terms and becomes demanded (brand). Few VCs recognize they have a brand they’re focused on results. By improving both sides of the equation, ABC and those it funds can have greatly improved outcomes. It’s not about PR, It’s about being able to predict and create the market movers.
Systematically improving odds of success means you need a way to look at predictive indicators in sales, marketing, and product development combined with solid due diligence (what you already do well).
Combining all of this is how to make it work. You can’t drive a car without three sets of data: data of the past, real-time and predictions of the future. You have to combine all 3 in different datasets and create priorities based on the circumstance you are in. Think of it as driving a car. You’re not going to put the car in third gear at a stop sign.
Building a predictive process into the VC, the Start-up and for the total addressable market, the customer base is a must. It’s a three-way balancing of an equation.
I call this a business growth operating system, you would attract more deals, at favorable terms, based on the higher chance of success. Deals would be scored according to their ability to succeed, using methods taught at the best business schools.
Here is a high-level outline of what I would do.
Picking deals based on a process that is well defined by many business schools, using predictive indicators. Companies that are disruptive and likely to succeed can be defined by a process before any investment is made. Odds of success improved dramatically when there is an understanding of the market, the technology, and the opportunity.
Predictive business planning combined with due diligence management. What Clayton Christensen teaches results in higher success rates and bigger scale. One of the downsides might entail the greater use of capital but that’s to be determined by the market you’re in.
Scorecard management. Get rewarded for taking calculated chances, testing in predictive ways. How your choose investments need to be balanced. Companies with too much caution choose wisely, produce great returns but suffer by not finding enough deals. Companies that don’t manage their investments according to a predictive methodology lose track of what is possible and the capabilities of their investment. After the check is writtenThe right kind of management and oversight needs to be in place. If this existed you would not see the abysmal failure rates that exist today. It’s possible to double the chances of success.
Data-driven marketing and sales. Marketing automation combined with sales intelligence Needs to be in place so matter if it is B to C or B to B. Modern ways to find predictable yet profound scale are possible. There is no need to overreach and suffer abysmal marketing KPI’s anymore. Great companies know this everyone else relies on something from the past.
Build the brand. Become demanded. You obviously know what this means. If you’re desired to get to be choosy. Your investments are more precise and the results are more predictable. What’s not to like.
And customers don’t just leave a product — they switch to something else.
Or is this correct?
There are inherent traits that predisposed us to switch or change. People that have a high degree of openness to experience, one of the big five personality types, can be predisposed to change more so than others.
It’s in these switching moments that the deepest customer insights can be found and are easiest to uncover.
I agree. I just think it’s easier to segment people into groups of openness to experience versus not at the very least. That information can be calculated and predicted before an interview. How people see the world is very different based on their traits and personality.
Tourism is a great business. Sometime in the not too distant future destinations will embrace augmented reality as a means to attract and more important, retain visitors. The days of media-driven answers don’t always work for the DMO and individual businesses struggle to represent the whole market. We need more things that gives customers what they want.
Augmented reality Is one of those things that allows the user of an electronic device with a camera to visualize virtual objects in reality. A great and relevant example of this is the popular mobile game Pok?mon Go (pictured below).
Pok?mon Go, developed and published by Niantic, is a game for mobile phones released in the summer of 2016. The game’s main pull is that users can find and collect digital monsters scattered around the world using their phones. As you can tell from the picture above, a 3d digital creature is superimposed on the world as seen through the camera.
Augmented reality differs from virtual reality in one major way. In virtual reality, the user’s sense of space in the world is almost completely nullified; at the least, users of virtual reality wear a headset that completely obstructs their vision of the real world. The Oculus Rift (pictured below from the front and the back) is a prime example of what a basic virtual reality headset looks like.
As you can see, the headset completely envelopes the user’s eyes, cutting off their view of the real world. This is not going to be the answer to real-world tourism.
Inside the headset are a pair of small screens that are directly in front of the user’s eyes. The screens work like typical screens, displaying whatever the developer has made, the pair of small screens creating a false binocular vision. Some more advanced models also come with hand controls that are able to create a digital copy of the user’s hands that track and mirror the users hand movements from the real world to the virtual world accurately using infrared sensors; additionally, they can include headphones that allow the user to hear whatever is in the virtual world. Finally, some experimental devices allow for the player to “walk” in the virtual world using a multi-directional treadmill (pictured below).
All these combine to give the user the most realistic feeling of being in a virtual world apart from the real world. Unfortunately, all these devices mean that the user must be confined to a small area in the real world (as small as 2×2 meters to as large as 3×3 meters)
Augmented reality, on the other hand, primarily uses the real world and superimposes virtual assets (text, images, 3d and 2d, etc) onto the screen of whatever electronic device the camera is hooked up to. Compared to virtual reality, augmented reality is cheaper, more accessible, and allows the user to move about the real world freely. Most destinations have deep understandings of their history. That asset alone is more valuable than media when integrated with augmented reality.
My suggestion is to use augmented reality to introduce tourists to history mashed with current businesses and attractions through their phones at historic locations. Every place has a history that can be explored and brought forward to the current world. In New Orleans, there is a thirst for its history. The public wants history yet how it’s performed today is inconsistent and on the schedule of the business, not the customer.
In addition, a company can fill in the blanks and hire reenactors to portray any event at a historical location and film it with a 360-degree camera. Similar to how online education is coming about, this is a way to bring modern tourism and history together. Augmented reality developers could make an app that shows this reenacted scene to the user through their electronic device, allowing the user to experience a reenactment of history up close and in any position they want and at the same historic location. The image below is a good example of what I was thinking about; I took a modern-day image of New Orleans and a historical photo and made it appear that the viewer sees the historic photo through their phone.
This version of augmented reality could be repurposed for almost anything tourism related; haunted houses, historic battles, maps, the Hurricane Katrina flood, sports. Almost anything could be recreated with reenactors, computer-generated images, and historic buildings. Much of these assets exist already and can be made useful in a modern way.
When combined with current assets such as the businesses in these historic buildings, you drive a multitude of things at the same time. You satisfy the need for tax revenue while creating customer delight for the tourists in a consistent and modern way.
Many travel publications have a solid understanding of regions, cities, and places in the US and beyond. They get why travel and people are so interesting. They can match the customer to the product well. They also have a great understanding of how to entice you, pulling you into a direction you might not have foreseen. National Geographic Traveler is one example. It has the experience and people to figure out the story, but imagine if they knew so much more about why places exist and why people cluster in certain areas?
What are the deep feelings? What are the psycholinguistics and traits of a people, a community? Having a deep understanding of people is knowing a place and giving the reader a reason to travel, understand and buy.
Before you start typing, know.
Many publications of all types could benefit from including more data before writing begins. Someone sells a content idea and now a journalist at the pub must start research. Why is it on them?
It takes considerable talent to understand a place and its people with so little time on the ground. Too often, the journalist is burdened with doing the research, understanding the place but has not set foot on the ground. Even being there does not mean you understand the vibe of the place. You might get one part right but miss so much more.
Imagine picking places based on deep understanding of the people who live in those areas, discovering things and a vibe, too often missed.
By understanding who lives in each city, what each city is about, writers can better understand where to go and how to write. The writer needs help.
Places have personalities. Some cities extrude fun and randomness while others are deliberate. Matching the reader and visitor to the place makes for pleasant experiences, pleasant reading, and influential content.
Tourism is a simple activity yet a complex topic. The cities that try to appeal to a wider audience often dilute the value of what they are. By having data at hand, you can better fit the tourist to the city or region. There is no perfect fit and it’s best to use data to aid the seller and writer before a visit.
Happiest Cities Example:
Writers often attempt to pick happy cities. Sometimes they base it on things like density of green space or number of microbreweries (true story). Sadly, many places that are incredibly happy places to live and visit are never found. Why? The data is not readily available to a writer, pressed to find some hints with a deadline looming. Some places that exhibit the same behaviors of a Boulder, Colorado but don’t quite have the street cred are missed, limiting the writer and the people who live in those places.
Using data we can help figure out why a city or a region is happy or whatever the question may be. In addition to defining what is the happy city we can define food cities, and other types of cities that typically escape the common radar.
If we have data on the psycholinguistics and traits of people, based on location, we have something that helps all sides. Both the readers as well as writer have a valuable tool, used in an ethical way, to help people find and decide what they choose.
It’s such a great pleasure to hear “that publication gets me and knows what I want”. We can infuse data to better inform publishers, writers and readers, we have a much better ecosystem for all.
I have been studying related work to Jobs to be Done theory, who people implement the theory and what are the results. The theory is well known, there are a lot of variations and options to the process and few results to share from the effects of JTBD.
It’s a great theory and the sophisticated capabilities of some people make it possible for the biggest and best. I want to see startups embrace jobs to be done as a means to get answers and results faster than ever before — even in real time as they make changes and pivot their products to meet the needs of customers who have jobs to be done. How can this get done? Software. It starts not nearly as sophisticated as current abilities but it becomes affordable, accessible and easy to use. Maybe not all the answers but 80% in 1 hr. In 2 hrs, a look-a-like CRM that feeds into your CMS for both web and app development.
Borough Street market, London
A summary and point of view of other methods:
The Forces of Progress
The forces of progress are the emotional forces that generate and shape customers’ demand for a product.
Very true but clusters of people will have far more push than pull, making them easier to convert without too much pain. Segmenting people by traits is a clear way to discover how much push, how much pull. Quantify the segments.
They can be used to describe a high-level demand for any solution for the customers’ JTBD or the demand for a specific product.
Events do create demand. But demand will trigger many options based on how you see the world. Your traits and personality pre-select options. We are not just dumb blobs that buy based on what is shown to us.
An event might trigger a far different result, based upon who you are. What is in your deep ways of thinking, your traits, will define what might be a solution to a job to be done.
Push. People won’t change when they are happy with the way things are. Why would they?
Push is a difficult subject. Many brands push all day long, with price, time based offers, etc. Because people can find better, always, people will change if they can be happier, even if the offer is the same or less. Many products over serve their market. I am happy with Verizon but would be more happy if it find a trustworthy alternative at 30% less cost. It can be a tad slower. I might even deal with a few dropped calls like we all did 15 years ago.
External Pushes– Our circle of influence, such as our children might influence our shopping patterns.
An external push is a classic. Of course that will change a job to be done. We find subtle changes can keep a customer loyal. This example Is a good extreme case but many are subtle. I once helped a company that was intimidating introverted minded customers. It was very subtle use of words and imagery. It did not take much for customers to avoid the company which was otherwise a great fit for so many. In many cases it does not take much to see when you’re leading edge customers are dropping off and not converting anymore, while the mass middle might be happy as clams. By segmenting based on traits you can see problems developed early and stop them before the damage is done.
Internal pushes. These pushes ranged from frustration with the homogeneity of a peer group to parents who wanted experiences for their children that would teach life lessons.
Internal pushes or extern a push is a push.How that push develops is often connected to traits that can be quantified and used to determine the real reason why people make decisions. Having software allows you to quantify in real-time and change the environment before real damage is done. Don’t wait for a survey. There is a time and place for that. For many of us who are trying to build a business and take market share, we can’t buy time, we can’t afford consultants and we need to remove as much bias from our system. Software does not solve it all but having it usually means you have a technology core in which to disrupt the hell out of others with last year’s model.
