- As your marketing strategy shapes up,
you'll need a place to park that information.
It needs to be agile,
easy to update,
and very simple to distribute.
Now, I use a format called the Lean Canvas,
and it serves as a visual guide
and also helps as you consider
what marketing efforts you want to deploy.
Now, the Lean Canvas is a one-page document that was adapted
from Alexander Osterwalder's "Business Model Canvas"
by Ash Maurya.
Now, it's great for taking
all of your marketing knowledge and research
and organizing it into one central document.
Here's what it looks like.
You have a series of boxes
that you'll need to fill out
with the corresponding information.
If you were to fold this paper in half
where the left side is all about your product or service
and the right side is all about the market.
Let's walk through these fields together.
In the problem box,
list one to three high priority problems
that your customer has.
And below them,
list any existing solutions
that try to solve those problems.
In the customer segments box,
list the personas that you're targeting.
Now, the problem and customer segments
are intrinsically connected.
From here, the solutions box
is where you'll list one to three ways
that your product or service solves the consumer's problems.
Now, from here,
you'll fill out your unique value proposition.
And this is right in the middle,
as it lives both between your product or service
and your market.
Next, list all of your channels.
This is your path to the customer,
and it's how you'll communicate the existence
of what you're selling.
Pick the channels that your customer segments
are spending the most time with.
Now, moving on, you'll need to outline your revenue streams.
How are you going to make money?
What's the lifetime value of your customer?
What's the gross margin on whatever it is you're selling?
Now, just to the left is your cost structure.
And this is where you'll list the operational costs
for making the business get all the way to market.
How much will it cost to acquire your customer?
How much does it cost to run the business?
How much are you going to be spending on marketing?
Next up is key metrics.
Every business must have key metrics
that are used to monitor performance.
List what activities you'll measure
that are going to demonstrate that you're successful
in your marketing efforts.
And finally, the unfair advantage.
The job of your value proposition
is to grab your customer's attention.
Well, an unfair advantage's goal
is to deter copycats and competitors.
It must be something
that cannot be easily replicated or purchased.
Spend 20 minutes or so filling out a Lean Canvas.
And if you're looking to do this online,
you can check out miro.com,
or just Google Lean Canvas templates
and you'll find plenty of resources.
And as with everything,
once you put your canvas together,
start to test it.
keep evolving it until you find the model
that works for your product or service.