As a business owner or senior manager, it’s vital that you understand why customers choose to do business with you. Is it your customer service? Superior product features? Are customers purchasing from you due to lack of choice in the market, or are they captivated by a unique selling proposition that sets you apart? From family-owned and micro businesses to multi-national, global juggernauts, understanding what makes you ‘special’ in the minds-of-the-consumer is essential to sustainable business growth and repeat business. To set your business up for success and differentiate you from the pack, Sony Music provides insight. To learn from their story, read on…
The birth of digital music presented Sony Music with a wicked problem: evolve the business model to meet diffusion of innovation or remain stagnant (like Kodak and its refusal to acknowledge digital cameras), and face financial ruin. The fact that Sony remains one of the world’s most successful music corporations today provides insight to their choices. Fast thinking and immersive, Sony put their business plans and marketing strategies aside and focused on cultivating a marketing-led culture that would reposition the business for generations to come. In the space of weeks, Sony moved its employees from an ‘us and them’ syndrome to an environment where experiments and innovation became the bonding materials of the organisation. And it was all led by the marketing team.
Embracing an adhocracy culture and applying qualitative primary research of face-to-face interviews (marketing staff filmed and profiled segments from across the country), Sony used market segmentation as an in-road to completely change the business landscape. Through this process, employees learnt a little more about their clients and customers of their clients, which, building upon existing experience and gut instinct, resulted in a new way of approaching the marketing – something Sony to this day still calls, the Market Segmentation Bible. Through use of market segmentation, Sony empowered employees to deeply understand customers, leading to greater control over the future and improved profitability.
In this success story, a number of clever steps were taken that can be applied to any business:
- Recognition of the need to ‘tell a story’ (customer journey) and build an inter-face that is relevant, engaging and multi-faceted
- Conversion of marketing into a competitive advantage
- Recreation of a roadmap for all employees
- Relevance to all employees through removal of business and marketing jargon
- Achievement of complete stakeholder engagement through a whole of business approach and senior management endorsement
- Application of an ad-hoc internal marketing strategy (supported by internal word of mouth marketing) to improve up-take
The Market Segmentation Bible created by Sony demonstrate to the world that Sony understood its audience better than anyone else. Creating a unique point of difference, Sony not only attracted better artists and producers (customers), but it improved control over its future destination. If you want to select your customers and understand how to differentiate your business, contact Start Grow Run today.
