This chapter will discuss execution and Go–To–Market strategies. A firm's Go-To-Market strategy is the mechanism by which they propose to deliver their unique value proposition to their target market. That value proposition is based on the choices the business has made on where to focus its investments and what markets and solutions they believe will respond positively to increased attention.

The first section focuses onomni-channelOmni-channel, ‘cross channel being done well’ — a continuous experience across brands, across format and across devices that is completely made to order. strategy and online-offline interaction. It will provide a comprehensive overview of accessing customers in both the real and virtual world. The second section details how to find lead users, facilitate influence and contagion, in other words, prompting buzz-worthy conversations regarding a product. The third section describes targeting, messaging, pricing to value, access to customers, and distribution issues. In this section we will cover brand assets, then think about customer assets and finally focus on the historically controversial “marketing spend” as an asset.

The term “omni-channel” may be a marketing buzzword, but it refers to a significant shift: marketers now need to provide a seamless experience, regardless of channel or device. Consumers can now engage with a company in a physical store, on an online website or mobile app, through a catalog, or through social media. They can access products and services by calling a company on the phone, by using an app on their mobile smartphone, or with a tablet, a laptop, or a desktop computer. Each piece of the consumer’s experience should be consistent and complementary.

This video is a wonderful example of omni-channel marketing done well. Women’s fashion label Rebecca Minkoff knows its shoppers well: They’re millennials driven by digital, who want to control every phase of their shopping experiences.

 

The first of three key marketing acronyms are the five C's. The five C's can be thought of as constraints. Customers come first as we need to understand their needs. Next are competitors as we should understand our point of differentiation, and our point of advantage over competitors. Thirdly, we must think about our own company as we consider what internal resources we have in terms of our existing customers and our brand strength. Fourth, it is critical to think about collaborators as they may serve as partners that we may need to facilitate our access to market. Finally context, an idea that is inclusive of what transpires in the macro environment including, age, population, new innovations in technology, and more concerns about the environment. These are the five C's.

In Chapter Two we introduced the four P's. For the marketing executive or team, the P's serve as parameters or things that can be changed or manipulated. The four P's included product, price, promotion, and place. STP strategy, introduced in Chapter Four, is defined as segmentation, targeting and positioning. These strategies provide the link between the environment, the five C's and the parameters (the four P's that you implement). Product is quickly becoming more important than the other three parameters. Product should be considered first as it has never been easier to develop a new business. This holds true whether it's a business revolving around content and information or one that includes physical goods and services. Due to this shift, it is imperative the product deliver exceptional value. It should be a product that could appeal to a large market and one that is very easy to explain and describe.

Now that billions of people worldwide carry a smartphone in their pocket, the marketer is able to show an interesting product, service or the solution to a problem on the phone. Therefore, your product should be easy to explain and describe. In addition, a product shouldn’t cost much to test and to scale. Even though the four P's are equal in some respects, with regards to the four conditions, is necessary to consider product first. When contemplating execution, we should consider a key question when it comes to developing new business ideas and how to execute them. The question: what is wrong with the status quo? Consider how daily activities like buying groceries, ordering taxis, booking hotels, interacting with friends and family can be improved.

The following is an example of how one entrepreneur succeeded in developing a change to the status quo regarding the consumption of coffee. Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, noticed how people in the United States were acquiring their coffee. Most were purchasing their coffee in the supermarket and consuming it at home. Still others would pick up a cup of coffee at a gas station and most of the time it did not taste very good. In short, it was just simply a product, without much peripheral experience or service to go with it. When Schultz visited Europe, he discovered when folks there drank coffee, they did so with friends, drank higher ends of coffee, and were familiar with macchiatos, lattes and so on. For Europeans, coffee was an experience, more than simply a product with a number of niceties wrapped around it. When Schultz returned to the United States, he envisioned Starbucks would be known as the third place. The first place is home, the workplace is second, and Schultz's idea of Starbucks as the third place. The place to go and experience all of your troubles floating away on a steamy latte.

This is an excellent example of someone who saw what was wrong with the status quo and improved it. This also serves as a clear starting point to begin thinking about execution. In addition to execution, there are four changes within the sea of contextual change that really affect the start-up and development of new business. One major contextual trend that is difficult to stop and can be leveraged is called democratization in access. Here, technology through scale and low cost allows people to access things they may not have been able to before. A prime example of this is Coursera where thousands can enroll in an online class and interact together because of technology. Previously, taking a class mandated being physically present in a specific classroom or school. Today, technology provides this opportunity and Coursera is just one example to consider.

The next big trend that is occurring, in part due to the internet, is value chain disruption. Markets where the price that's paid by the end consumer is very high relative to the cost is an example of an opportunity for value chain disruption. Perhaps some monopoly has the market locked up or there's some kind of structural impediment that results in consumers getting a raw deal. Dropbox with tiered pricing starting with free replaced the need for memory sticks or USB memory which had replaced floppy disks.

One company that respects the customer is Harry's. Harry's ships mens razors, cream and shaving foam directly to a customer’s house. This company is built on the premise that there are some competitors out there that offer a very good shave, but at an extremely high price like Gillette. Gillette may respect your face and give you a nice shave, but it doesn't really respect your wallet. In the United States, one of their shaving cartridges may cost $10. On the other hand, for companies like dollarshaveclub.com, the blade cost is much lower, and the quality of the blade is not quite as good. On the contrary, Harry's is both considerate of your wallet as the product is generally affordable and considerate of your face by providing a good shave. Harry’s paid $100 million to purchase Feintechnik, a company and factory that have been manufacturing razor blades since 1920 and the source of Harry’s shaving products. Again in this second trend, the value chain for many business is being disrupted.

The third trend is called collaborative consumption. Where there is an oversupply of products and their categories there is an opportunity to share. An example of collaborative consumption is the automobile. If someone owns a car, there is a strong possibility that car is inactive for most of the hours in a day resulting in a real waste of that resource. Wouldn't it be more efficient if there was just one or two cars per apartment building and there was some efficient way of sharing those cars? This is the idea behind a company called Zipcar. Similarly, bicycle sharing available in Paris, New York City, Chicago and other places is an example of the same kind of efficient use of resources. The third trend is this concept that assets can be shared and consumed collaboratively.

The fourth trend, primarily facilitated by the use of technology, especially mobile technology, is the matching of supply and demand. Think about going out at night with a group of friends and trying to locate a taxicab, particularly, in a less populated area of the city. This can be rather challenging. However, in many cities there are drivers available just waiting for passengers. One way to match that supply and demand is to create a ride for the person who needs to get home, and create the payment for the driver, who would stand to benefit from that excess demand. One company that has discovered how to match that supply and demand is Uber.

Consider these four key trends in terms of executing new businesses and using some innovative thinking. In addition consider if you want to visit DisneyWorld, you'll need to buy a ticket and wait in line. If you want to see the full moon, you can go outside and look up in the sky. Often, we're tempted to create friction, barriers and turnstiles. We try to limit access, require a login, charge a fee... sometimes, that's because we want control, other times we believe we can accomplish more by collecting money. Clearly, people value the moments that they spend at Disney--with hundreds of dollars on the line and just a few hours to spend, there's an urgency and the feeling of an event occurring. On the other hand, far more people look at the moon. Just about everyone, in fact. If your goal is to be present everywhere, significant friction is probably not your finest tactic.

There used to be very few resources that were truly scalable at no cost, resources where we didn't need to use money or queues to limit who would use them. In the digital world, that number keeps skyrocketing. It doesn't cost a cent to allow one more person to read this book. If you're going to add friction, if you're going to create urgency and scarcity, understand that it always comes at a cost. By all means, we need to figure out how to make a living from the work we do. But with scalable goods, particularly those that have substitutes, don't add friction unless there are enough benefits to make it worth it to hassle the customers. Concept borrowed from Seth Godin.

This comment by Ben Thompson points out that some services or products that are friction free provide value by supplying awareness to a more profitable product. “given the fact that the single most important attribute of any social network is the number of users on said network, any sort of for-pay model is a bad idea. It's not simply the fact that many people aren't willing to pay even $1, but also the inherent friction involved in any sort of payment. As WhatsApp founder Jan Koum noted this point is especially acute for WhatsApp given its strong penetration in developing countries where many people don't have credit cards.” WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook for 19 Billion dollars.

Visit this discussion Medium - invisible-user-experience to learn how great companies design the customer experience to be friction free.