Thursday, February 25, 2016

The Twenty Percent Make up the Eighty Percent

Who do they think their target customers are? 
I have three potential customer groups that we pursue to put our trip planning widget on their site or in a blog
CARE – Hospitals, hospice, nursing home, surgery centers, rehab centers, infertility clinics, prisons
EVENTS – Events (sporting, entertainment, charity, community, celebrity, family), event ticketing and registration companies
TOOLS – Media companies that have online listing services (Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages), Sales Force Automation companies and Contact/Calendar providers (Google, Apple, etc.)
Where do they find their customers? 
I first look at the top 10 in each sector, then generally go after the 2, 3 or 4 (the #1 is generally too arrogant to think they need anything new).
What are their customer's demographics? 
Our B2B clients have at least 100,000 people that they reach each month, of which at least 10% of those need to travel to see them or attend their events.  Preferably we are getting what we call “enterprise” clients that reach thousands of target customers for us.
Customer side
  • We put our widget on a hospital site to reach the friends and families of patients that need to come in from out of town.
  • We put our widget into a software platform sold by FrontRunner to funeral homes, so that the friends and families of the deceased who come from out of town can find a hotel close by
  • We are just contracting with UNATION (here in Tampa) to put our widget on every event on their site, so people attending can book a hotel room
  • Any company that has people coming in to visit them (to interview for jobs, to try to sell to them, employees coming from another office/plant)
What kinds of media do their customers consume? 
Our customers are everywhere and consume a wide range of types of media (video, audio, images, narrative) on a wide range of channels.   We rely primarily on reaching them through LInkedIN versus social media.  But by showing our product on various social media channels, we can demonstrate to potential clients how we can help them.
What are their customers' problems? 
B2C – The client provides inefficient tools to the consumer http://saltlakecomiccon.com/hotel-information/  when with our system, the consumer would see this  http://hotelsbyevents.com/events/comicconslcfanxperience.html
How big, on a scale of 1-10, is this problem in their customers' lives? 
It generally only impacts 10% of a business or event’s customers, so it is low on their pain scale 
What are some of the bigger problems their customers are dealing with? 
The lack of resources to get our product implemented.  Our product literally only takes a few hours, but with some of our clients it has been a month since they signed our agreement.
Do their customers have a budget allocated to fix this problem?
No, but with our product, they don’t need a budget.  We actually share our revenues with our clients (10% with our B2B clients and another 10% for our Enterprise clients that power other businesses with their technology).  We also contribute 10% of our revenues to their charity of choice once per year.




3) Reflect. Does the entrepreneur adequately understand their customers' problems? Where are the differences? Why might these differences exist. 
I did one customer and realized that although they have a very slim portion of their business B2C that this part is difficult to quantify if they understand their customers' problems because their revenue comes from B2B.

4 comments:

  1. Hello-
    I really like the way you targeted the business customers. I thought that was very unique and effective. The questions you asked were also very helpful in evaluating the unmet need. The only thing is I would change the color of the font of this post. I don't know if its because I have glasses but, I had a hard time reading the post. But, other than that great job!
    Check out mine:http://basmacirachel.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-twenty-percent.html

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  2. Hey, Garrett! Well, next time try a different text color against the black background because I was squinting trying to read this haha. I guess the best approach to gain knowledge on if the business accurately understands its customers would be to actually interview one of its business clients instead of a non-business customer. But great job with asking open-ended questions. Here is my post:http://analeisent3003.blogspot.com/2016/02/week-8-twenty-percent.html

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  3. Hi, Garrett!
    Looks like you did a great job! Im not sure if your video is supposed to be all black or not but I personally had difficulty viewing it. I agree with the comments above, it would be visually helpful if you change your font color next time! Oh and I found the response to "Where do they find their customers?" pretty humorous! haha

    Please feel free to check out my "The Twenty Percent" post at the following link:
    http://efp13.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-twenty-percent.html

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  4. Hello, I think that you did a great job on the assignment but I must admit the color of your blog takes away from reading it. It was extremely distracting (although still a welcome change from the cookie cutter look of some other blogs :) ) . I think you did a great job otherwise, with good organization and detail! Feel free to check out my blog at http://ufclassblog.blogspot.com.

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