10 business problems you can solve on the internet.

Most of my clients own or manage midsize companies. Some are tech-savvy, others not so much. None are able to spend a great deal of time worrying about the details of their marketing programs, especially the design and operation of their company websites.

A few years ago, I developed a presentation that looks at web strategy from the 30 thousand foot level. It asks a simple question: What is the most important business problem you can solve on the internet? This slide show walks you through the process I use in strategic planning sessions or workshops for CEOs and marketing teams.

In an hour, the execs have a strategy they can communicate to techies and creatives.

What business are you in?

When I work with a coaching client, I ask a lot of questions starting with…

– What business are you in?
– What products do you sell?
– What services do you provide?

When a potential customer takes a look at your website, brochure, mailer, biz card…

– What do you want them to learn?
– What do you want them to think?
– What do you want them to feel?
– What do you want them to know?
– What do you want them to do?

When it comes to websites, I ask…

– What problem(s) does your website solve?
– … for whom?

When I get a sense of the answers from my client’s perspective, I ask…

– How would your marketing team answer these questions?
– How about your sales team?
– How would your customers answer them?
– How do you know?

If the answer to the last question is not convincing — and it almost never is — I suggest that we work on finding a way to get solid answers to these questions before we do anything else. It is rare for a CEO, sales manager, marketing director and a select group of customers to agree on a description of a business and its products/services, let alone the message(s) they are trying to communicate.

If you think it is time to make sure your company is strategically aligned, here are some real world tools from Kevin Connolly, marketing guy.

Hey! Somebody’s talking about you.

Somebody’s talking about you, your company, or your products… and you can find out what they’re saying, whenever they say it. All it takes is a few minutes of effort and zero cost thanks to Google Alerts. Free and easy competitive intelligence.

It will take about 10 seconds to set up an alert for your name. Another 10 seconds for your company’s name… 10 seconds each for your product names. Just enter your search terms, type of search and frequency. The tricky part is the email address. If you have the time, enter your own. If you don’t, assign a dedicated surfer. Ask them to visit the links and report back or forward anything significant.

So, somebody’s talking about you. What’s next? Join the conversation. If they’re saying something nice, say thank you. If they’re saying something negative, say thank you and add some positive comments that might turn them around.

You can also try a customer-focused marketing twist. Set up alerts for key customers, companies, products. If somebody says something nice, send a personal note including the link. If somebody says something not so nice, teach your customer how to use Google Alerts.

Wisdom of customers… revisited.

In my recent post on Tapping the wisdom of customers. I talked about Dell’s IdeaStorm as powered by SalesForce.com. It seemed like a valuable if pricey way to gather ideas and test them out before putting them in the development cue.

At $5/user, I thought the SalesForce solution might be too rich for most midsize companies. But if the idea farming process works, I expected to see competitive options in the near future. Here’s one, currently in beta…

Stop selling, start listening.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that this is a natural law: Everybody wants to buy, nobody wants to be sold. Some of us like to shop, others don’t. But let’s face it, buying stuff feels good. New car, new shirt, tasty Napa cabernet, whatever. I used to coach the president of a moving company whose eyes lit up like Christmas morning when he talked about buying a couple of new trucks.

Maybe it’s just me, but I am annoyed by uninvited sales people (telemarketers, retail clerks, pushy sales reps of all shapes, sizes and descriptions) and the daily onslaught of sales messages (email, banner ads, radio and TV commercials, direct mail, billboards). To me, it’s all spam… unless it talks to me about something I want to buy. Then it’s right place, right time… thanks for making my life much easier! How can you put this “natural law” to work?

Stop selling, start listening. You’ll sell more if you do.

Tapping the wisdom of customers.

In The Wisdom of Crowds, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki argues that “under the right circumstances, groups of ordinary people are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.” So, I was excited to read about Dell’s Idea Storm in Laurie Clemans’ blog.

Apparently, Dell has been inviting customers to share ideas for new/improved products and services for over a year. Anyone can register, post an idea and rate (promote or demote) ideas posted by others. and see what Dell is planing to develop. According to Clemans, “the Dell Community has contributed: 8,949 ideas, promoted 615,131 times, and posted 69,456 comments.”