The lion will kill and the rabbit will eat carrots: how different entrepreneurs market their enterprise
We are more connected today. We have accelerators, incubators, support programs, skype, youtube and whatsapp. So, have entrepreneurs become more successful today?
Sadly, no. Failure rates on entrepreneurship, in percentage terms are pretty much the same, as they were five decades ago. Over any timeframe, about 48% of businesses survive beyond the fifth year regardless of recession.
Cliché will tell you that entrepreneurship is a state of life where you choose to not have a cheque deposited in your name on a certain date of the month. Within this cliche’ is a vast breadth of people with varying occupations and money-making models, across four entrepreneurial DNAs. Let’s call it the SCIT matrix- based on what motivates them to be entrepreneurs in the first place.
The structural entrepreneur is highly scalable- they build businesses very fast, sell the company, move on and start a very different venture and so on. They areprogrammed to be appealing to good employees, good capital, and tend to see the skeletal X-ray of their business structure so clearly, that success seems pre-destined. They are all about numbers, scale and serially entrepreneurial.
The Cashout entrepreneur as the name suggests is highly impatient. They do not want to create lasting structures or vast footprints. They are into deal-making, entry, exits- typically real estate stocks etc;
The industry entrepreneur specializes in a certain kind of sector and is extremely risk averse. A doctor may build up a hospital or a lawyer may set up a huge practice. But they measure success not in terms of structures created, but their own influence and tend to be content within that.
The tripper entrepreneur is typically someone who never thought he would be an entrepreneur in the first place. They just hit upon something very accidentally. Its never about the money- they want to create impact, lasting value and typically end up creating billion dollar businesses.
THE SWOT
The structural entrepreneur builds scale, but could lack in providing service, value to society and quick numbers.
The cash-out entrepreneur will churn numbers, but will lack scale, service and value to society.
The industry entrepreneur will offer service but lack scale, quick numbers and impact
The tripper may be ignorant of service, scale and numbers till someone comes along to make sense of all of that.
MARKETING YOUR ENTERPRISE
The idea to begin with entrepreneurial segregation is simple- there is no one type of entrepreneur, nor is there any one type of approach to communication.
Yet, the entrepreneurs desire to communicate to his customers can be shaped into the classic cause-effect scientific patterns. It can be programmed to stimulus- response mode and generate the required result.
But such precision communication requires homework. Truckloads of it! Such as-
1. Observing customers when they interact with your product/service.
2. What were they seeking, to the exception of all else?
3. Of the 10 attributes present in your product/service, were there some they didn’t even notice? What is the dead cost of those features?
4. If there is an existing product in the category, is it doing better or worse than you and why?
5. Is your pricing compatible with the customer you feel is your TG?
6. Is there another way to fulfill the same need, without paying the price you’re asking for?
7. Do you learn from the customers who’ve accidentally discovered what they like about your product?
8. Are you using this learning to help more customers discover your product?
So while each entrepreneur has a set of motivators and force of habits- The lion will kill and the rabbit will eat carrots- they have to make themselves aware of a new set of attributes to be able to win the go-to-market game.
Through some exciting case studies, we will discover how entrepreneurs, across all SCIT categories, repositioned themselves to succeed.
About the author: Reeta Gupta is the founder of The Network, which helps startups and other SME entrepreneurs with branding and marketing. Follow her on twitter at @ReetaDGupta or her blog: http://allaboutpositioning.wordpress.com/
