Reflections on Writing
Before I sit down and write a new article, I usually start with a basic idea and come up with a few key points that I want to communicate. Once there is a rough framework, I’ll spend most of my time working everything through in my head to further develop and refine my thinking. This is a slow and abstract process that can go on for quite some time before I start writing.
In contrast, there are writers who don’t ponder and plan ahead like me, and just let the words flow naturally. As a writer and a person, I’m now learning to listen more to my emotions and go with the initial gut-feeling.
This is going to be one of those spontaneous type of posts, as I haven’t worked out where I’m going with this yet.
I think a lot about customers and customer value, but lately I’ve also been reflecting on my own writing. I am not writing with any particular goal in mind, other than I know that I am enjoying the process and the experience. I also want to document my thoughts and knowledge in writing, which might come in handy at some point.
Earlier on in my writing journey, I sent out a reader survey. Based on the responses I had back, it told me that readers of Scaling Customer Value are often mid-career professionals who work in business and already have a basic/intermediate understanding of customer value. Their main reason for reading this publication is to pick up new skills and knowledge to make a greater impact in their role and to support with their own career growth and personal development.
As this publication has grown in size and evolved over time, I am wondering to what extent this still holds true?
I started from zero on Substack and there are now over 350 people across 51 countries who are reading this publication. A further 1,200 are followers.
As someone who has spent most of their career in post-sales environments, I am drawn towards ordering information and data into different ‘buckets’ and looking for ways to structure and organise it, so that it becomes possible to execute on it and optimise performance.
I naturally think in terms of different customer segments and customer personas to try and get a better overview of the overall situation.
I don’t have a simple way to do this with my subscribers, but just scrolling through the list of people who have signed up shows how different people’s backgrounds are.
Represented amongst the readers are:
Small business owners
Operators in multinational companies
Writers and creators
Product managers
C-level executives
Investors
Academics
Solopreneurs
Startup and tech people
This isn’t a proper segmentation, but more of a melting pot!
It’s really nice to see that so many people from different walks of life are taking an interest in the same topic — customer value really is quite key for many of us. Thank you again for subcribing and reading my content. 🙏
As a writer, the diverse reader base creates the challenge of conveying a meaningful message to everybody, while recognising that individual needs and interest are likely to differ to some extent.
Customer value and the surrounding topics I write about are timeless. Once you understand the main concepts, what matters is the practical application of them which is why the written content needs to relatable and make sense to the reader’s own context and personal situation.
“Everyone is not your customer.”
— Seth Godin
I am most aware that I can’t write for everybody and conventional wisdom says that if potentially there are now different emerging segments across the readership, I need to weigh the benefit of adapting or creating new content to fit the needs of each sub-segment, versus the additional time and effort (and the opportunity cost) of embarking on multiple content-creation paths at the same time.
Just as when we are managing a customer portfolio, we’ll need to be careful with not relying on “average assumptions” when trying to create a typical customer (reader) profile.
For example, imagine a hypothetical world of only two customers — a student with zero income and a corporate middle manager on $100k per year.
If you profile the customer population by using a simple average, your KPI dashboard is going to tell you that the average income per customer is $50k per year. If your product, pricing and marketing strategy is based on this assumption, you are effectively targeting no one as the $50k per annum income-earner is not a real person.
Yet, this is a fundamental issue in customer management and the overreliance on average metrics in KPI dashboards, which strategies and execution plans are often based on. If you are looking for ‘low-hanging fruit’ in your customer planning, be aware of this issue and go deeper on segmentation and map out customer profiles.
What have I concluded by all this?
Having a clear offering and knowing your target market is undoubtedly important. However, always keep an open mind. It may turn out that your customers (or readers) are not always who you think they were when you first started.
A (customer) strategy isn’t a one-off creation that should be kept on a shelf. It should be a living document that needs to be continuously reviewed and adapted.
Evolve your offering over time as you gain more insight about your customers and the market, and be ready to pivot and act on new opportunities when they arise.
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