The reflex
The team has designed a service. When it comes to presenting it, they are still working out who it is for, which alternative it replaces, and what they can promise.
The builder’s reflex
Bring the questions of recipient, use and choice into the design, with the people who know those subjects.
Why
Marketing helps work out who an offer fits and why someone might choose it. The words, the design and the channels then make that proposal perceptible. These pieces of work feed each other; their worth does not depend on a hierarchy between thinking and executing. “retailers” names a very wide group. “The person reconciling stock and sales at closing time” describes a situation you can examine. It still has to be checked: their tools, their constraints, and the reasons they would change a habit.
A precise description helps you make choices: which needs to handle, which uses not to cover for now, which evidence to show. It does not guarantee adoption. Price, access, trust and the cost of changing can count as much as the presentation.
If the people doing the marketing meet the product only at the end, some of their information arrives too late to inform those choices. Involving them earlier does not mean a permanent large meeting: one exchange on a decisive question can be enough.
With no commercial activity, the same questions help you present a workshop, a resource or an internal service. For a beginner, naming one person and one situation is already progress. An experienced practitioner can check whether their offer still fits as uses change.
Try this
Answer four questions briefly:
For whom, and in what situation?
Instead of what, today?
What useful change, with what limits?
Why try now, or why wait?
Compare your answers with a peer’s, or with someone affected. Tell differences of vocabulary apart from disagreements about the need. Pick one assumption to check at the next conversation or trial, then adjust the promise according to the feedback.
From where you sit
- Marketing: bring the uses and the alternatives that inform the shape of the offer.
- Design: check that the promise is understandable in the real situation.
- Product: state which uses are covered and which stay outside the remit.
- Management: let the useful information in before the commitment is fixed.
To discuss
Which part of our presentation rests on an assumption nobody has checked?