Richard is still in Houston, but he thought that this case study detailing the unique problem facing a company with no competition and a radically new product would be of interest to you.

A Case Study of Customer Mapping

With the massive shifts in the economy, your customers are moving. Your sales and distribution channels are moving. Do you know where your customers and channels are now; where they are going tomorrow? Do you have a new product that is so that it is not just a matter of competing, but of evangelizing?

Giftventures, Inc. was facing many of these problems. Recently I worked with them to map their customers and channels.

Challenge—Find the Customers

The target market for Giftventure is parents with children in the 4-12 age range. The product is clearly a discretionary consumer product, a significant sales challenge in this environment. In addition, Giftventure is a new concept, which requires some explanation and investigation by the parent before making a purchase. How can an emerging company, with little cash to invest, gain recognition and traction with a discretionary product in a crowded consumer market?

Giftventure needed a compelling, proven go-to-market strategy in order to complete its initial fundraising, so this exploration had to be thorough, fast, and low-cost.

The results had to be conclusive and compelling, so Giftventure could focus its scarce resources in the channel that would produce large results, quickly.

To do that they needed to identify a channel that would produce large results, quickly.

The three keys:

• In starting a new product or service line, and especially in starting a new venture, you do not know where your “sweet spot” lies in the market. Don’t rely on opinions–embrace your ignorance. You must test.

• Be thorough. It can also be fast. Plan a comprehensive market exploration to test many possible channels, even in spite of your internal biases.

• Only actual market results, supported by wide outreach and in-depth contact with potential customers, can direct you to the sweet spot for your product.

The winning combination is always to

Test many market channels.

Test wide and deep.

Let actual results lead you to your sweet spot.

To read a detailed explanation of Giftventure’s customer mapping download the PDF.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 1:30 am and is filed under Business info, Innovation, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: case study, customers, sales efforts
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