For companies to be successful, they need to have a firm understanding of their market and stay on top of the constantly shifting landscape. Key to that are customers and competitors, and their intertwined dynamics. Many companies don’t have the knowledge or processes to be successful. They think they understand their customers and competitors and then find out after launch that they missed the mark. The results are launch failures or even going out of business. Learn about various market strategies to ensure successful products/services. Discover how to identify the right strategy and ways to implement that strategy into your organization to create virtuous cycles. Understand agile market analysis and customer analysis, and pitfalls to avoid. Learn about real-world case studies and practical ideas that you can utilize immediately. Erik Suhonen was the speaker. Enjoy the presentation.

2. Goal: Create sustainable competitive
differentiation through successful products
/ services
#MarketHacking

6. Who is this dude?
 20+ yrs tech/media/advertising (9 yrs at Yahoo)
 Marketing, product, strategy, ecosystem
 Founder and Advisor
 USC MBA

7. Approach
 Framework
 Strategic gamification
 Signals
 Tools

8. Market framework with virtuous
cycle
Corp goals
Customers
Competitors
Market
dynamics
Market
opportunity
Products &
services
Go To
Market
Market
reaction

9. Market framework with virtuous
cycle
Corp goals
Customers
Competitors
Market
dynamics
Market
opportunity
Products &
services
GTM &
Launch
Market
reaction

10. Corp goals
 Measurable
 Will we have an accurate way of measuring
progress?
 Time-based
 3 years, annual, quarterly
 Attainable
 Will we have the resources required?
 Agility
 Can we and how will we react if we miss?
 Culture
 What will happen when we miss?

11. Market framework with virtuous
cycle
Corp goals
Customers
Competitors
Market
dynamics
Market
opportunity
Products &
services
GTM &
Launch
Market
reaction

12. Customers
 What is a customer?
 Future (where the puck will be)
 Customer segments
 Benefits-based segments
 Use cases
 Demo, geo, behavioral, psychographic, title
 Signals and sources

16. Create a customer virtuous cycle in
a value ecosystem
16
Advertisers
1. Developers employed by advertisers create
& deploy apps
2. Developers employed by advertisers build
tools for their teams to manage display &
search creative and bidding
Agencies
1. Developers employed by agencies develop
apps on behalf of their advertisers
2. Developers & designers employed by
agencies deploy digital creative for their
advertisers
Consumers
1. Consumers download & interact with apps
from developers employed by advertisers,
agencies & publishers
2. Consumers engage with digital creative from
advertisers & agencies built and deployed
from developer apps
Publishers
1. Developers employed by publishers create
apps to host content, monetized by ads
= customer activities
Monetization
Conversions
Spend
Content
Our company

17. Market framework with virtuous
cycle
Corp goals
Customers
Competitors
Market
dynamics
Market
opportunity
Products &
services
GTM &
Launch
Market
reaction

18. Competitors
 What is a competitor?
 Alternatives to customer needs (defined by
customers, not by you)
 Diminishes customer value (money, data,
attention, advocacy, etc.)
 Frienemies and coopetition
 Future
 Competitor segmentation
 Signals and sources

19. Competitive landscape
19
HighLow
Longtermvalueto
customers
Short term value to customers
HighLow
Our co
Co 2
Co 3
Sweet spot
Short term value: revenue + engagement lift + brand value lift
Long term value: competitive advantage + high value to customers + sustainable
Co 5
Co 6
Co 1
Co 4

20. Competition Comparison
20
# of
customers
Products w/
broad adoption
Market de
facto standard
Current | 2013 Current | 2013 Current | 2013
Mobile
Search
Mobile
Social
Media
Cloud
Media
Media
Co 1
Co 2
Co 3
Co 4
Co 5

21. Market framework with virtuous
cycle
Corp goals
Customers
Competitors
Market
dynamics
Market
opportunity
Products &
services
GTM &
Launch
Market
reaction

22. Market dynamics
How will your customers and competitors
react to potential changes in:
 Technological
 Economic
 Political
 Other…

25. Market framework with virtuous
cycle
Corp goals
Customers
Competitors
Market
dynamics
Market
opportunity
Products &
services
GTM &
Launch
Market
reaction

26. Market reaction
 Why buy / not buy?
 What else did customers consider?
 Was our customer segmentation
correct?
 How did competitors respond?
 Was our competitive segmentation
hypothesis correct?
 How did the press respond?

30. Signals, signals,
everywhere
Market
intelligence
Customer
expressed
Customer
behavior
Competitor
expressed
Competitor
behavior
Investor
expressed
Investor
behavior
Partner
expressed
Partner
behavior
Analysts
Press
3rd party
data
providers
Other…

31. What they say ≠ what they do

32. Customer and competition
intelligence: EXPRESSED
 Expressed = what they say
 Direct
 Customer Councils
 Indirect
 Owned media (website, app, etc.)
 Paid media (ads, email newsletters, etc.)
 Job postings and layoffs
 Earnings calls
 Regulatory filings
 Become a customer

33. Customer and competition
intelligence: BEHAVIOR
 Behavior = what they do
 Earned media (social networks, app
ratings, company ratings, etc.)
 Content consumption
 Customer purchases
 Competitor acquisitions

34. Social Intelligence Opportunity
 85% of enterprises will use social information
to support other business-critical decisions
like research and product development
 1.5 billion conversations an hour on social
media platforms
 Social media users share 30 billion pieces of
content – comments, opinions, information
videos, podcasts and photographs – each
month
 Just 15 years ago, none of this existed
Source: IDC and Computer Weekly

35. Potential real-time data sources

38. Market Intel Tools & Data
 Social Listening (what are people saying), Social
Analytics (what are people doing), Social Intelligence
(decision making)
 Topsy
 DataSift
 Gnip (acquired by Twitter)
 Sprout Social (FB and Twitter)
 Iconosquare (Instagram)
 Hootsuite (reporting)
 Amobee
 Oracle Social Cloud
 Many more…
 Google Alerts
 Moat.com: messaging and landing pages for paid media
 Etc…

44. #MarketHacking take-aways
 To understand the market opportunity,
you must first understand corp goals,
competitors, customer and dynamics
 Sustainable competitive differentiation is
a real-time, agile, iterative cycle (chess
game)
 Make customers your BFF, and
supplement with real-time signals and
tools

45. Thank you!
Tweet me @ESuhonen #MarketHacking
Connect on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eriksuhonen
Erik Suhonen copyright 2015