Focusing on the Market

The East Anglian Daily Times columnist Frank Stone asked me how Milner helps companies to focus on the market and succeed. In the interview, which was published in this week’s newspaper, I shared three marketing fundamentals, which I wanted to pass onto you. The economy is strengthening, but we just don’t know what is around the corner and implementing these steps within your company will help you outperform the market, whatever the economy throws at us.

Frank Stone Column: Focusing on the Market

Strategy and marketing consultancy Milner helps high tech companies to focus on the market. Frank Stone spoke to founder Nick Milner to find out how.

Milner started in 2006 as a “spin-out” company from Azure Solutions. Azure was the largest spin out from BT Brightstar at Adastral Park and had rapidly grown its international brand and valuation significantly in three years. “Several people asked me how we had established such a strong market position in such a short time,” said Nick Milner. “As I explained the process, conversations turned into contracts and the company started with two employees.”

The company has grown significantly and is working across a variety of technology sectors from telecoms to healthcare, from software to renewable energy. In 2010, three of its four largest contracts were with non-UK companies. With that breadth of customer base, what fundamental lessons has Nick learnt that are useful for businesses in 2011?

The first step is always to know your customer and understand their needs. If you want to grow your business, it means understanding your target customers too. “In 2010, we worked with several clients to identify and understand their target customers. We developed a segmentation model based on the client’s existing customers and used international company databases to create a ranked list of target customers.” Every company should have good information about its target customers if it wants to grow.

The second step is to carefully formulate your market strategy. Every week on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den you can hear people testing the robustness of a business’s market strategy. How big is the market? Who are the main competitors? Which sales channels will you use? These are all market strategy questions. “In the last 2 years, we have run a number of strategy workshops for individual companies, which have been highly valued by their leadership teams. I believe an annual structured review should be part of every company’s process.”

Finally, it’s important to pay attention to the company’s brand and reputation in the market. Brand helps open up the sales pipeline and can increase sales conversion rates. “But I always remind clients that nothing is brand neutral. Everything you do in your company either confirms your brand with customers or detracts from it. Failure to deliver on your brand promise angers and confuses customers, erodes confidence in your company and harms future sales. Once you are confident you can deliver on your brand, the next step is to promote your company using the right combination of press releases, articles, social media, events and so on. Deciding on the right media and messages does depend on your target customers, your market strategy and your brand.” And that takes us full circle.

If you want to explore how we can help you grow and develop your business, then please contact us.

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