Top Ten Marketing Takeaways POST3
Podcast: April Dunford in conversation with Yaag.
The thing about podcasts/ or any other marketing learning session is I get to know about books which I have not read and they sneakily enters my TBR! Recently I finished Yaag’s podcast with April Dunford and of course had a lot of key takeaways! She hit the death blow on most of the buzzwords, which I loved it (as I hate buzzwords) and the rapid fire round was a complete entertainer!
• Positioning is a widely misunderstood term and “why” only a few can nail it.
• Positioning differs from messaging.
• The best way to understand if your positioning is right, sit on a sales call and understand the flow. How many calls a sales rep has to make to get the customer to the “aha” moment.
o I have a follow-up addition. Marketers rarely “listen to the sales call” and unknowingly misses the gold-mine which they offer.
• April has provided a positioning methodology in her book “Obviously Awesome” and she references to those ten pointers during the podcast.
• There are five steps which April explains should serve as a framework and her engineering background helped her to plan this. Competitive Alternatives top the list.
• There are so many discussions going around category design/ creation and she cites a study which substantiates the fact that it’s rare that you are going to create a new category. She discusses at length on this topic as how when existing categories do not work for you. The story of how “demand gen” became such a big thing bowled me over.
• Most of the time, marketers are excited about concepts which are divorced from reality and instead we should do things which drive revenue.
• Positioning for the customer and for the investor is totally different and hope you are not messing it up with one message for both of them.
• What do you think comes first: Product Market fit or Product Positioning? I would love to hear on how you define product Market Fit. Yaag explained it fairly well in the podcast.
My favorite takeaway: What I have to BEAT, to win a DEAL!
Do listen to Yaag’s podcast and look forward to reading your takeaways.
