5 Frameworks I've Been Using Lately.
Hi!
Happy Halloween if y’all are around kids and celebrate. We have a lot of kids in our neighborhood, so it is a vibrant day for everyone here.
In that spirit, I’ll be quick this morning and share 5 frameworks I’ve been using with clients this year to jumpstart their recovery from the pandemic lockdowns and slowdowns.
And, we can build off of these even more later:
CFA:
Choice. Focus. Action.
This is a simple strategy framework. JP Castlin says he gets a bit irritated when people talk about strategy being choice.
And, I get his take.
For me, strategy is about choice, but it is about really knowing what you are not going to do and being willing to commit to holding yourself accountable for that decision.
In most cases, when I see businesses struggle, they are struggling because they are trying to do too many things at once.
So that means you need to focus.
That’s where choice becomes useful. You can’t do everything. So you have to do the right things.
And, action.
Ideas without action, worthless.
The Differentiation Gap:
I’ve talked about this a lot over the years and use it in some workshops and classes because I find it helps people envision the challenge of positioning themselves in the market.
As a definition, the differentiation gap is the gap between how your market perceives you and how you think the market should perceive you.
If your perception and the perception of the market is close: you’ve done a good job of your positioning and building that up in your market. If the gap is wide, we need to do some work on your positioning and differentiation statements.
Brand Triangle:
Emma Raducanu’s win at the US Open helped me come up with this.
Your brand is build on three ideas:
Awareness
The impression you give off
The meaning of your brand
Awareness is straight forward. Do people know you exist?
The impression means what are the words or ideas you are stamping on your market’s brains so that when they think of you, they think of this.
The meaning is not brand purpose but how your market thinks of you. What do you mean to people?
You want to make sure you mean what you are supposed to mean to people.
RVP Pricing Model:
This is a new one that I’m building up to help teach the pricing course I’m working on.
Research. Value. Perception.
To set a successful price, you need to do some pricing research so you know what people want, need, and value. In a lot of cases, looking at the pricing of other folks is a bad decision.
Value is what price reflects. Understand your research to understand the value.
Perception is what you are managing through your marketing efforts to create and manage the perception of value you have created to get the price you deserve for your product or service.
SMB Analysis Framework:
Strategy
Marketing
Brand
I use this to analyze stories to figure out what is going on.
Strategy is what is attempting to be accomplished. What is really supposed to be happening?
Marketing is about the way the idea or story is being sold.
Brand is whether or not the strategy and the marketing make sense.
As an example, here’s one I did to look at the Facebook story as the leaks and whistleblower stories were hanging around last week.
· Facebook:
o Strategy: continue grow their blood sucking, soul crushing, dishonest ad machine through any means necessary…consequences be damned.
o Marketing: sell this horseshit sandwich will PR campaigns, lobbyists, a new corporate name, and BS.
o Brand: not at all credible. They’ve been caught in lies at turn after turn before Frances Haugher like ad fraud, Instagram 4 kids, Facebook files on WSJ, The Facebook origin, and Kara Swisher says the dude isn’t that smart.
This is just a shorthand to help me piece together stories quickly and being to put a process of thinking in place.
Do any of these ideas stick with you?
Let me know.
Dave