The Barnes Family

Consulting

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Practical marketing tools and strategies

Writing for fun and profit
I like to write. Thats why this website is here. But Ive also written fiction, songs, a play, and a couple of technical books. Publishing is harder than writing, I find. My first book, Electronic CAD Frameworks, was published by Kluwer—now Springer—(its out of print now, alas). Since then Ive used lulu.com , which offers an easy interface to self-publishing, and its free to publish (although you pay for the books). Here are some links to books Ive written: Electronic CAD Frameworks .— this book describes the core technologies involved in electronic design ...
The Art of Flows
Writing is a powerful and well-tested marketing tool. The use of extended written materials is a key part of much technical marketing: white papers, brochures, documentation, and more. Creating a whole book to tell the story of a product or capability is less common, but no less valuable. Over the past several months Ive been co-authoring a book with Andrea Casotto, founder of Runtime Design Automation. It addresses technical strategies for the management of complex computational tasks that involve multiple jobs, with dependencies and pre-requisites. The management of these jobs is an important part of the design of software ...
Marketing with integrity
Ive spent years in the marketing business, working with companies large and small. Ive been on the inside as a Vice President, and on the outside as an Executive Consultant. Theres a key problem with a lot of marketing. Integrity. Its too easy to get hung up on making your product look better than it is, in the hope that people will be fooled into buying it. The issue is that marketing is not just about putting lipstick on the pig-or making things look good. Its about negotiating a relationship of value between your ...
Differentiation is the key to selling in a tough economy
Great products always have a market. The question is this: Whats the value proposition that makes sense in difficult times? If your product is all about quality, you have two advantages over lesser products: 1. Your product can enhance your customers brand 2. You can offer risk-reduction purchasing strategies to your customers. Both of these differentiators depend on the quality of your product. If your offering is really well-designed, and it stands out from the crowd, you can offer your customer a way to differentiate, simply because they own and use your product. This applies to furniture, lighting ...
Segmentation and the power of focus
The more companies I talk to, the more convinced I become that thinking clearly about the segments you serve is the key to effective marketing. The value of segmentation is really that it causes you to be objective about the kinds of people who will find your products and services interesting. Objectivity includes understanding the positive and negative aspects of each segments needs, frame of reference, and belief system. I find that belief-based segmentation is the most powerful: if you can accurately characterize the beliefs of your various segments, you can build value propositions that speak to those beliefs ...
Customer relationship innovation
There are many ways to innovate, but one of the most reliable is in the customer relationship. Its reliable because you can quickly measure the impact of changes in the way you manage the relationship with your customers. You dont even have to have a brilliant ideayour customers will often provide it for you (if you ask!). Nordstroms is a great example of a retailer that has achieved differentiation through a unique approach to their customer relationship. Not only do they establish a customer-centric approach to doing business, but they specifically empower their salespeople to go ...
Innovation is not optional
Most people would agree that innovation is important. But not every company takes it seriously. Innovation is what keeps your business relevant as the needs of your customer change, and as your competition evolves. Its tempting to believe that in a cost-driven, mature market, efficiency is the key that close management of costs and efficient and predictable processes are what makes the difference. But this is a mistake. Of course, efficiency and cost management are part of every companys operational plan, and in the environment where theres not a lot of overall market growth, cost overruns can ...
Pragmatic steps to strategy development
Strategy is about making informed choices with limited resources, in ways that strengthen your business. Theres no easy way to be sure that you have the right strategy, but there is a process that yields consistent results. In this post Ill summarize a proven process for strategy development. Then Ill describe each step in turn. The seven key steps are these: Problem definition whats the scope of the strategy? Who is the end customer for the information? What are the success criteria? Environmental scan get hold of every piece of information thats easily available. Talk ...
Strategy: Making your recommendation
Once your strategy hypothesis has been presented and validated, its time to get on to implementation. But implementation in any organization requires buy-in and understanding from a lot of people. The recommendation phase is the process of establishing common understanding and buy-in, so that implementation can proceed. The good news is that you have gone through a thorough process already, if youve followed the seven steps have a good audit trail of information and ideas all the way from the original problem definition, and youve also taken the time to keep others involved along the way. If ...
Strategy: Validation completes the picture
A strategic hypothesis lays out your view of the market, the opportunity, the risks, and a prioritized set of options. Once subjected to internal review and discussion, there are bound to be a number of additional questions raised, and perhaps some preferences expressed. The purpose of validation is to test the preferred options with friendly customers and internal stake-holders, and to find answers to the questions raised in the hypothesis review process. Validation can be short or long, depending on the scope of the strategic leap proposed, and upon the style of the organization. I always try to keep the ...