Attractive Thinking

Chris Radford

Description

Forget everything you’ve been told about
maximizing Lifetime Customer Value. 

To take your business to the next level, you need a brand strategy
that’s focused on attracting new customers, not exploiting existing ones.

 In this transparent digital age, smart
business leaders know that profitable growth comes from helping customers,
not exploiting them. Attractive Thinking
sets out a ground-breaking methodology, developed during 30 years’ experience
transforming brands for Pepsi, Mars, Miracle Gro and many high-end service
businesses, to achieve exactly that.

 Discover the five key questions you must
answer to create a better brand strategy and the tools to deliver it: clarity
on what matters to customers; products and services that customers love;
marketing that attracts them; and a team that is committed to delivering it.

 Attractive
Thinking is
a practical handbook for CEOs, managing directors and marketers who want to
make the big-brand techniques work for them.

Sujets

• Vente
• Marketing de contenu
• Marketing
• Business
• Design
• Economics
• Brand management
• Marketing et communication
• Communication persuasive

Informations

• Publié par: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781788601016
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published in Great Britain by Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2020
© Chris Radford, 2020
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN 978-1-78860-103-0 (print)
978-1-78860-101-6 (epub)
978-1-78860-100-9 (mobi)
All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the author.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Dedicated to Shona for her unfailing love and support for me as well as being a mentor, advisor and contributor to many of the ideas and techniques in this book
Contents
Foreword
Preface and acknowledgements
Introduction: What is Attractive Thinking and why does it work?
Part I: Why does Attractive Thinking work?
1 Start with the customer
2 How to understand customers
3 Why is it so difficult to get it right?
Part II: How to apply Attractive Thinking
4 The five questions and why
5 PINPOINT: Who are our customers and what are their problems?
6 POSITION: How can we solve the problem and stand out?
7 PERFECT: How do we create a product, service or message that delivers this?
8 PROMOTE: How do customers find out about it and where do they buy it?
9 PITCH: How do we engage our shareholders, board directors, colleagues and customers?
10 Conclusion: a brand strategy that everyone is convinced will work
Further reading and useful websites
Foreword
Mike Harris
Creator of Iconic Shift mentoring
Founder of First Direct and Egg
Former CEO of Mercury Communications
I have spent a large part of my career creating brands that disrupted the incumbent providers. Each business went on to be sold for significant amounts or created noticeable value for their shareholders reflected in share price, revenue and profit. First Direct was the first telephone bank without branches, Mercury Communications (the Mercury consumer business was ultimately acquired by Virgin Media) was the first challenger to the BT monopoly, Egg was the first internet bank and Garlik (acquired by Experian) provides internet security for everyday people and everyday businesses that goes beyond credit checking, anti-virus software and consumer cyber insurance.
For each of these brands the team worked relentlessly to create a customer experience that was much better than the prevailing norm. We learned that helping customers solve a problem or address a need is the best way to create sustainable growth and to build value for the shareholders.
From these experiences I have drawn some conclusions about what is required to grow a brand that creates shareholder value. This is summed up in some teachable intellectual property I have developed that I call Iconic Shift. I believe a company wishing to develop a powerful, value-creating brand must pass four tests:
1 A value proposition for their customers that is relevant, distinctive and differentiated.
2 The proposition is communicated with sufficient power and reach.
3 The promised experience is delivered every time, everywhere and every day.
4 The business economics work.
High-growth brands have these four things in place. When growth slows down it is because one or more of these elements is not working as well as it could.
I have worked with Chris. His Attractive Thinking approach and method is the most powerful tool I have come across to help you gain the insight from your customers and turn this into a value proposition for your customers and create the means to communicate it with sufficient power. In my experience many businesses do not pay enough attention to the value they create and offer to their customers. Instead they are focused on how much money they can extract from their customers. Attractive Thinking explains why creating value is better than extracting it and shows you how to do it.
Preface and acknowledgements
I have always held a view that businesses who serve their customers with better products and better service will do better than those that don’t. The purpose of business should be to solve a problem for their customer and address their needs. In my world this purpose is ahead of the profit purpose. The reason is not that profit does not matter; it is essential for the business to prosper. But without a customer purpose, the business will not enjoy sustainable profitable growth. This view is not a moral or principled position, but instead is a practical approach to creating a strong brand in a successful business.
When I started business in 1979, I was somewhat surprised to discover that many people did not hold to these priorities. Helping customers solve a problem with products that address their needs is quite often seen as subordinate to achieving short-term profit results. As a result of seeing this reaction from others, for quite a while, I questioned my view that serving customers was the priority and went along with the prevailing views of people around me that short-term results trumped everything. I always campaigned for my way, which was to focus on doing what would attract more customers, but I did not always win the argument.
Over the years with more experience and with more education, studying and research, I have developed my view of what works best. This book, Attractive Thinking , is my explanation and analysis of this. It is not just theoretical; it is a practical handbook on how to take this approach.
Part I starts with a rapid tour of the prevailing theory and research on how customers behave, how to attract customers and how to build brands. I will discuss the principles of an approach I call Attractive Thinking and contrast it with Extractive Thinking. In Part II , I then move on to show you a practical five-step framework for building a brand that will attract more customers. This involves answering five questions. The questions are simple but answering them takes graft, creativity and persistence. I also look at research and evidence on how to get to a strategy that everyone is convinced will work. Getting support from everyone for the strategy is hard. I have conducted research into this via my own consultancy, and several academics and the big consultancies have researched and reported on how to win support for a brand strategy. In the final two chapters ( 8 and 9 ) I will explore methods and tactics on how to get that engagement.
I hope you will find the book is refreshingly absent of jargon, I have tried to explain things in normal language. It is built on my experience transforming and creating brands with the world’s biggest companies such as PepsiCo, Mars, McVitie’s, HEAD and Scotts as well as some smaller businesses and high-end business-to-business (B2B) service businesses such as AON Benfield and UL. It covers consumer products, services, leisure and high-end B2B sales.
I will discuss the basics of why people buy and how customers behave. You can use this to develop your own approach that will work in your business and your industry. Every industry needs specialist knowledge. There are specifics and nuances that are important in your industry. You already know what these are. What I would like to do is to shed some light with you on the fundamentals of how customers think and behave and how to attract more of them to your business and brand. Many of these fundamentals are about customers as people and have not really changed, despite the advent of the internet, artificial intelligence, mobile telecommunications and new marketing techniques.
I will describe an approach and some principles that work across different business sectors. The fundamentals of how people buy are always about the people who are buying and not the industry that is providing. I will be covering both consumer brands and B2B brands. Now selling to businesses may seem like it is different to selling to consumers. I will argue that the differences are tactical. The principles of creating a strong brand are the same across all sectors. It is still people and individuals who buy, not institutions and organisations.
I am aiming to bring lessons from the world of big business, entrepreneurs and small business and make them accessible to anyone trying to create and manage brands. You do not need big budgets or large teams to take this approach. More money helps but it is not the key to success. The approach is rooted in how people behave and what drives their decisions to buy or not buy.
Attractive Thinking will make your brand and your organisation not just stronger but also ‘antifragile’. By answering the five questions in the five steps called PINPOINT, POSITION, PERFECT, PROMOTE and PITCH you can build an organisation and brand that is focused on helping customers solve a problem and address a need. This is dynamic and responsive to customers. Your reputation and ability will be grounded in solving that problem rather than delivering one product or one technology or one service. Your purpose will be to help customers solve that problem. This purpose becomes core to your brand and organisation.
The insights and ideas in this book come from many people and many experiences. They are my take on what matters after working with and listening to many great minds and do-ers in business. I would particularly like to thank the following people for their coaching, encouragement, advice and support on my journey.
For being loyal business partners, fantastic supporters and insightful advisors: Stacey Clark, H