Guest Lecture with Timea Kadar

Ethen Dent
Oct 25, 2021
3 min read

How to fail at marketing before you even start.

"The customer should be here at the meetings. A decision should not be made without the customer. Whenever a decision is made, it should be made considering the customers perspective."

"A lot of companies fail because they don't consider the customers perspective. They think that they can sell something just because the company is good at it."

"Social media is a great tool for customer identification as you can see what is positive, but more importantly, what is being complained about."

[Profile picture of Timea Kadar]

Personas

When identifying a target audience, it is much more advisable to look at the need of the customer first (what is the need?). If you see the need, then you can pursue that direction for the business. If there is no need, there is no marketing that you can sell.

Ask startups what they are doing. How do you solve the issues that you face?

Obviously you are required to research the target market, competitors, target industry. All of it."

You should try and develop as many personas as you need. Develop a main one. Then, tailor most of your marketing strategies to that person. After that, start developing 3/4 more personas.

Other businesses that don't sell directly to the consumers should develop a persona based on who makes the decisions and who pays, as well as the customers each have for their business

Always update personas as the business grows.

[example personas]

Personas - Interviewing

- Here is a product, would you buy it?

- What is stopping you from buying it?

Consultancy

Consultancy is selling knowledge. It matters how you sell the package (the knowledge).

"sit down with the clients, explain what you do, show them what you do. Be very clear what exactly the client is getting... even if it is a service. The client has to know how the business can help you.

Pricing

Look for resources that can help mitigate the costs of your business.

Branding

What is the customer looking for?

As a business, you should attempt to be brave enough to be different than your competitors. Being different will obviously set yourself apart.

Persona Creation Tool

Kano Model

Developed by Professor Noriaki (1980s), the Kano model is an approach intending to depict aspects of the business that are likely to delight/excite customers. The model is often used by production teams to assess a high-satisfaction feature against the cons of the implementation (e.g. heavily invested prototype has no desirability in potential customers). The strict focus on the customers reaction to the feature distinguishes it from other models. The key consideration with the Kano model is how much it will satisfy users.

How it works

Production teams pull together a list of potential features and consider these features to the following criteria:

- Their potential to satisfy customers

- The investment needed to implement the feature.

Kano Model Categories

The Kano model helps identify types of initiatives that product teams will need to consider:

- Threshold Attributes (Basic) - these features are what are needed for the business/product to be considered competitive. Customers often expect these features and take them for grated. Hence why they must be included. If these features are excluded, or don't work as intended, it may lead to dissatisfaction.

- Performance Attributes (Satisfiers) - these features give you a proportionate amount of customer satisfaction if properly invested in. Described as 'one-dimensional' features by Dr. Noriaki for their linear correlation between the investment and the customer satisfaction it delivers.

- Excitement Attributes (Delighters) - these features give an disproportionate increase in customer satisfaction to the investment implemented. Described as 'delighters' by Dr. Noriaki due to the effect they have on users. 'Delighters' have the ability to create an overwhelming positive response to your product.

- Indifferent Attributes - features that your customers predominantly wont care about.

- Dissatisfaction Attributes - features that will upset customers.

Both indifferent and dissatisfaction attributes should be avoided on a conventional Kano model.

Further Reading

Reflection Segment

"Persona construction is a concept I am finding difficulty in understanding. The personification of a collective target demographic is supposedly useful for a business, but I have yet to experience the utility of them.

Most likely I will construct various personas during reading week in hopes that they will be useful to the business idea. During our guest lecture, one aspect of the persona construction that caught my attention was the star signs. I questioned the inclusion of star signs in a persona about how relevant it was. Where religion is a belief and way of life, star signs is a niche belief that predominantly doesn't effect our behavior regardless of a belief in astrology or not.

However, after a conversation with Saint, I've realized that doing research of your demographic could reveal correlative traits which were once unknown. Information useful and exploitative if you begin to target those traits. After which you can begin to construct new personas based on new found research."

What I've been listening to: