People Drive Cash, Profit, Assets and Growth… How do you Anticipate Their Needs?

In Seeing the Big Picture: Business Acumen to Build Your Credibility, Career, and Company, Kevin Cope, puts People at the center of his 5 Key Drivers: “People make the decisions, supply the financial resources, buy the products, provide the labor and services, and otherwise create and contribute everything else about a business. They drive cash, … Read more

Build a Design Thinking Culture that Creates World-Class Innovations

In order to be a top brand, companies need to build a Design Thinking culture that supports world-class innovation. Many organizations are focused on operational efficiency that does not have room for the design-thinking’s explorative and iterative process where mistakes must be made for innovation to occur. According to a recent article in HBR, How … Read more

Intervention Design and Iterative Prototyping

You all know my evangelism for iterative prototyping… Well, you can imagine my joy when I saw this month’s Harvard Business Review dedicated to “The Evolution of Design Thinking” and a great article by Tim Brown and Rodger Martin on “How to use design thinking to make great things actually happen.” According to the article, … Read more

Tailor Customer Insights to Prioritize Actions

Just as we discussed how to chart satisfaction and value, you can do the same with tailoring your customer insights to prioritize actions. Somewhat like a SWOT analysis, this charts the most important strengths and weaknesses based on your insight data findings. Important weaknesses are where you need to focus ways to improve your customer … Read more

Word of Mouth Strategies and Tactics

Source: Modern Comments Customer Feedback Stats From Medipost’s Let’s Rethink How Advertising Works: “As far back as 1966 the phrase “word of mouth advertising” was coined in a Harvard Business Review article by Ernest Dichter, the father of motivational research (and the “focus group”). He exhorted the ad community to move from acting as ‘a salesman who … Read more

Recent Study Shows How Much That Device Usage Varies by Generation

MillwardBrown Digital conducted a digital survey via mobile or desktop devices that included 1018 US respondents ages 18 – 69 who own or have access to a smartphone or tablet. The survey, Getting Audiences Right: Marketing to the Right Generation on the Right Screen, was conducted October 2014 and found: DEVICE USAGE VARIES BY GENERATION … Read more

Six Steps to Building a Customer Journey Map

Danny Peters is Customer Experience consultant at Conexperience, specializing in Customer Journey Mapping and Customer Experience Management. He posted 6 Steps to Build a Customer Journey on LinkedIn Pulse. He breaks down CJM in six steps: Step 1 – Episodes: Episodes are groups of touchpoints in the customers’ journey. An episode is like a chapter … Read more

The GE–McKinsey Nine-Box Matrix

Large organizations with multiple business units need a way to determine where to invest across all the units. The GE–McKinsey Nine-Box Matrix is a method for deciding how to share capital across multiple units by assessing each unit’s market position and profitability. This model looks at two factors: Market attractiveness and Business strength: Market Attractiveness is … Read more

The Essential Guide To SWOT Analysis: An Interview with Jackson Hille

Jackson Hille is a Content Associate for FormSwift, a SaaS startup that focuses on providing customizable personal and legal templates to small businesses and nonprofits. He is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, having been awarded the 2013-14 Departmental Citation in American Studies. He came up with the idea for The Essential … Read more

The BCG Growth Share Matrix with Design Thinking for Today’s Economy

The BCG growth–share matrix is a chart that was created by Bruce D. Henderson for the Boston Consulting Group in 1970 to help businesses decide which markets and business units to invest in. The matrix looks at two basic factors: Relative Market Share that represent cash generation Relative Growth Rate that represents cash usage The … Read more

Cross-Channel Attributes and the Customers’ Journey

“Attribution helps brands track their marketing and media efforts more accurately and show how they impact the overall business.” Daniel Kehrer, VP Marketing at MarketShare, posted in Forbe’s Insights The Truth About Cross-Channel Attribution In Marketing. Cross-channel attribution helps us see a holistic view of our customers’ journey Graphic by Theresa Wilcox Attribution provides clear and … Read more