*Content in this blog is reproduced with permission from A New Era Webinar Series, created by the partners of Business of Brand (BoB) in response to the recession and the challenges businesses have been facing throughout most of 2020.
Shifting into the 21st Century and the new era of business begins with understanding that the old business models of trading B2B – business to business and B2C business to the consumer are being replaced by a new model called B2P or business to people. Shift your business also involves the movement from a single channel and often taking only one or a few products to market, to innovating and selling many products through the multi-channels made accessible by the digital revolution.
The Five Steps to Take to Shift Your Business are:
Step 1: Connect emotionally with your Who
Step 2: Understanding the market need.
Step 3: Engagement
Step 4: Brand Awareness
Step 5: Leveraging Awareness – remodelling through product and pricing innovation.
In Part 1, we explained the first two steps and now continue to Step 3.
Engagement is a critical ingredient both in your sales process, and as you innovate your products. It keeps everyone in your the community, connected, and that enables you to campaign together, which is so crucial at this time.
As Linzi Boyd from Business of Brand (BoB) puts it from a big picture perspective, “You will have heard us say many times, come and join the quiet revolution. We’re here to shift health, education, manufacturing, all service industries and so forth. And what we look for is gurus or advocates in each of these areas.
To campaign, you need people who will lead. We describe these as the 3%. They are the leaders who will stand up and lead us into a new era, who will stand up for manufacturing, for health, education, in fact, for all the different industries.
These are the people who will be the advocates, who will support the charge, who will be the clients who will be the partners who will come together with us and lead. That only comes about in the space of engagement. Keeping the customer engaged and creating a community; leading with the campaign and driving it not only from your community but also into the wider world.”
So how these first three steps link to the product itself? When you move from the 20th Century model of a sales-led business to the 21st Century model of brand-led business, a critical, pivotal point to taking market share is brand awareness.
Step 4: Brand Awareness
The first layer to understand is how do you build a productisation system around awareness? Whether you are looking to design a webinar, you’re providing some form of online learning, or you’re creating learning circles, what is important is to create something that provides awareness into the marketplace through which you can drive your brand.
The second layer down only connects in if you’ve done the first three steps in the five-step process. You’re now looking to connect your business into the market from brand awareness to product awareness.
It’s okay to be driving awareness into the market because that will create engagement and reach.
Step 5: Leveraging Awareness – Remodelling Through Product and Pricing Innovation
This step is about leveraging the awareness and remodelling the product, then looking at the pricing innovation.
In a product sense, and for many businesses as a leverage point, they are looking for a lower-cost product in a higher volume that can create leverage in their community. And you’re looking to drive it through knowledge, education, or information.
So for example, if you’ve created awareness, could you drive your Who into an online learning programme? Could you drive them into an education series? Then could you find something that you can drive in on into a more in-depth programme that leads in from a webinar or another awareness product?
Then you can look at your pricing model. So, rather than providing one price at a time, you may want to look at bundling the pricing. You could pay directly, pay it forward or pay it with an ethical currency. For example, BoB has a product which is an education programme where you can pay for somebody else to be educated. That’s how you pay with a donation.
Another option is to have a low-cost model such as a subscription or a pricing and packaging model. With a subscription, you can reach thousands of people, rather than a one-on-one, lower volume, time-consuming model.
In summary, when you are driving into the revenue system, you are looking at how do you create awareness in the market? And how can you drive that awareness into leverage? Think about what type of leverage products you could create. Could it be an information product or an education product? And how could you bundle those into a different pricing structure so that people can engage with you?
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