What's up everybody welcome to the stack and growth podcast. I am Tori Kinlick one of the vp's of demand generation ever fine labs joined today by my co host Allison How's it going? Hey everyone? So we are recording an episode today and also streaming live on LinkedIn That is near and dear to Allison's heart She has been I think doing a little bit of reading outside of work and had a great idea for a new framework And a template that we wanted to share with y'all So Allison I'll let you kind of take the ranks from here and introduce the topic and explain a little bit more about what you've been working on Yeah, awesome.
So yes, I have been doing some extracurricular reading believe it or not in between celebrating Halloween getting my six-year-old ingrained in her kindergarten classes I'm back to reading which I absolutely love and the book I'm reading right now is called the one-page marketing plan by Alan did and I'm really enjoying it I Absolutely love beauty and simplicity and this book is about a simplistic and sort of basic as you can get when it comes to creating a marketing strategy Or a marketing plan. I am not finished with it yet But I'm literally two chapters in and something immediately just stood out to me and it's basically talking about Narrowing down your ICP into the right niche to go after and to align all of your marketing messaging Around and kind of using what is called the PVP index to help identify that best niche or that best place to sort of begin When you're thinking about now, you've got you know a Tam you've got an ICP you may have several ICP So how do you really pick the one to construct your marketing plan around and be successful and show measurable growth and measurable results? And so I had not personally heard of the PVP index before but once I saw it in this book I'm like, you know what? This is a very simple framework Tory and I love a good framework We love sharing new ideas and so I just wanted to start with it today and I'm getting some of the juices flow in some of the conversation around it awesome love it and yeah, I think to kind of like double back here on the problem that we're effectively trying to solve for You know, we obviously we work with a lot of different clients And so we're you know able to get exposure to many different companies on their ICPs and one of the problems that I see most frequently Is that there is not a ICP there are many ICPs and I get that right, you know That is not necessarily a an issue in and of itself the challenge for us marketers And you know for any of the sellers listening in as well is where we start right because if you are trying to market to let's say you have two three four five ICPs You can't mark it all at the same time because then you run the risk of just saying nothing and your message fallen flat because you're not specific enough You're not showing enough value deep enough understanding of the people that you're trying to market and sell to and so What I love about what Alison has been working on here is that this is not just another approach to let's say create an ICP This is much more about okay.
You've got your your ICP or ICPs and you want to niche down and really figure out where you should be prioritizing Your time and your energy and this is a really simple way to do it. So why don't we jump right in and Hey, guess what another acronym marketer Yeah, so what I sort of understood from this acronym the PVP index from my reading so far is you're essentially answering three questions So when you think about as Tori mentioned, there's usually more than one ICP For example, I work with a company they have a recruitment ICP They have ahead of sales kind of sales decision maker ICP and then they like a marketing ICP And those are all inherently different and so what we want to solve for in this let's just say we were solving for this example is on this index How does each of those ICP groups? Either you know fulfill my business personally, so how much does your business enjoy working with this type of customer and you know I think this is Can sound maybe a little bit personal or maybe can sound like it's doing a little bit small business But I think you could look at it is like yeah There are some customers that they are really high profits But they're such a pain to work with or they just like you're constantly making changes to your processes Are the way that you're doing things in order to support this subset of your ICP or this type of client? So I think those are sort of things like how how well situated are you to deal with this type of ICP and does your company get Personal fulfillment and joy out of working with them.
That's the first key that second letter of the V is the value to the marketplace So how much does this like market segment value your work? Do they truly have a problem that you can solve and is that problem strong enough for them to take action and buy your product? Also, I think what's interesting here is can you make a difference in their lives? Like is it a nice to have or a need to have can you position yourself as a need to have within this segment?
How much would they value what you're offering? I think a really good proxy for this toy and I were talking would be like your lifetime value So look at your highest lifetime value customers the ones that are buying from you year after year There's a value there. They can't live without you. They can't imagine doing their jobs without you So that indicates a strong value.
I think also those that are willing to give referrals So if you have kind of an ICP portion of your ICP that are often giving referrals That would indicate that they're seeing a lot of value from your product as well And then the last P is profitability So that's pretty simple how profitable is the work that you do for this market segment? Maybe you know SMB businesses in in your case in like a SaaS company They might be really low profit, but you might love working with them Is that you know necessarily the right mix of this PVP to completely niche down and go after so you're kind of weighing a bunch of different? Emotional quantifiable, you know different types of responses you're blending them and weighing them together and you're ultimately going to get a score So if you want to look at the next slide The way that you're going to kind of do this is you're going to give each segment of your ICP each area you could potentially niche down to a score from one to ten And then you're going to add up the totals and then the highest total would indicate like hey This is potentially where you would want to start when it comes to constructing a marketing plan and specifically messaging around this particular niche So you don't have to be all things to all people you can be a bell one thing for the one person I think that's really the goal you're like what you're trying to get at when you do a PDP index like this Well, there's not always super simple I'll pause here and like just kind of wanted to talk through it and see See what your thoughts were. Yeah, I love it.
I love it because it is a such a simple solution to a Commonly held problem, right? You know we see it all the time where you know as companies grow as the revenue targets grow So does so does the expectations of kind of what the marketing team is is is asked and oftentimes You know, it's like hey, we've got a good foothold in this specific area in this in this region with this, you know subset of our our Tam so now let's grow it right and and as your business matures this happens time and time again and at some point, you know The things might start to become unraveled and you've just got such a potentially broad market that it's becoming impossible to market to all of them In an effective way and so this is a great way to really kind of zoom out And apply this really simple framework to help you quantify Which of your market segments is the one that you should be prioritizing And I think you know going back to like the the PvP acronym itself The what I like about it, right? Is that you're weighing in things, you know like you mentioned lifetime value or you know a net retention rate, right? Just just understanding the data that your business has around your existing clients and factoring that in but then you're also sprinkling in a little bit of you know It almost reminded me of first glance of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs right of when to figure out like okay What role do we play in this client or this company's life?
Is it is it the kind of survivor thrive type of mentality and sometimes look in the mirror and being honest with yourself and your company about about the value that you add? It's not easy, but it's really important and if you are being honest with yourself with an assessment like this It's only going to pay dividends later because it's gonna help you zero in on where you can make the most impact And so for example like what we've got on the screen here right and for those just listening You know, this is just kind of a an example Matrix here of four different groups and the scores for each of the personal fulfillment value marketplace and profits for each one of these segments And you know an out house and just kind of threw in a couple numbers here But like what you don't want right is tends across the board because then that probably suggests that you're not being very honest with yourself at all You really want to you know kind of pull in the appropriate people within your company that can that can help you make this assessment? because the Yeah, the more thought you put into it up front, you know the better off the the outfits going to be and And I think the you know the more helpful the the stack ranking and prioritization is going to be as you figure out You know the right way to go to market and where you should be spending the most time your time your budget and your energy so So yeah, what else what else else and like what do you what else do you see as far as like kind of like the Applications that the use cases or something like this. Yeah, so I think it's like really complementing a win-loss analysis in a lot of ways So it's like sometimes the win-loss analysis It's very data driven because it is going to spit out like here's where you win.
Here's where you lose Here's what the profits were here's what the return was and I think this is kind of you know a way to use that data So maybe you're taking some of the industries or personas job titles However, you want to break this down from that when when when loss analysis and you're plotting it here and you're going up Extra layer deeper. So yes, we've won in these four areas We've won in the financial services sector. We've won in the you know the the neo-bank sector We've won in the bino-paylator sector whatever your software is I'm just kind of spit falling here But now you can take those different areas where you've won and you can really Understand where to start because I think the problem is that Marketing is often asked to be all things to all people and you have a finite budget for some companies like you know The Monday comms of the world like sure budgets infinite they can literally go after anyone and everyone and that was a strategic choice You know they made but for the rest of us like budget is pretty finite And so if you're really being asked to invest if you had one more dollar to spend and you were asked like where would you put it? This is a really great way to say like I would put it here And I think what people get nervous about is they're like well What about the other groups and it's like well?
This is you know, this is a priority session you can start here dominate one niche get momentum there become kind of the leader in that In that category or in that segment and then move to your next section of this You know I see and then move to the next into the next and you can have it kind of be like a flywheel You know you can get positive signals and positive momentum in one and then start layering out another and it takes time to build a man So as you're sort of maturing your first area prioritization You can start introducing another you know another area and then kind of be growing them simultaneously But I think having a place to start and a place to really focus on and really have the entire marketing team sales team kind of Understand this is what marketing is working on this quarter This is what marketing is doing. This is where they're going to grow the needle It gives people like that barometer of like all right, you know We have we have a plan and we can move forward with the plan and I think sometimes when you try to just do too much The plan becomes unwieldy and the messaging becomes diluted and you kind of you just you lose before you can even start really Yeah Yeah, and I really like what you said a moment ago about the kind of like the the flywheel effect right so To borrow from the Rev R&D concept that that Chris our CEO has been working hard to evangelize lately You know you might get one of these one of these these ICPs personas whatever you might get it to a place where you know You've got some proven results There's some level of predictability in terms of the they go to market strategy with that ICP what channels are working what messages are working What tactics right and that's when you can start to layer in those other ICPs right and so I think that that's an important part of this Because by no means are we suggesting that you need to focus on a single one of these ICPs if you have multiple You know, but what we are saying is just make sure that you're you know You are prioritizing your your time and your efforts the right way and sometimes that might be just kind of yes simplifying your your approach across the board Until you've got some traction and then you know reallocating resources elsewhere because the reality of it is with any type of experimentation With any type of campaign building the early stages and getting going like the ideation building it You know architecting and putting all together pushing it out in the market That's the hardest part and then the testing and iteration right, you know that part is difficult But once you feel like you have that recipe for success That's maybe when you can kind of start to maybe hand off some of the work related to that ICP and go back to work on On your next one, you know, your next one I came in that and that's stack ranking And so I think that that is a good way to approach it as well And of course it does kind of you know gives a mention to this this Rev R&D framework that you're certainly going to be hearing a lot More about from the refined lab scene moving forward. Yeah, I love that and I think to Thinking about kind of weaving things in and out is I'm a very firm believer in like your website should be the most valuable piece of Property that an organization owns like even beyond physical locations if they own that like the website is truly kind of your house It's it's exactly like you're welcoming people into the front door And so I think your website will naturally be the place that's addressing Your your TAM and all the different segments within your ICP usually there's you know by pro whether it's by products Whether it's by solution whether it's by persona you usually will have that sort of architecture on your website already And so make sure that you know to keep the lights moving with these other kind of areas like you have a hub Where people can organically or naturally kind of find you but when you talk about putting paid investment towards something That's where you really have to niche down So a lot of your sort of and there's a big debate on whether or not You know FCO is for your organic content is free There's obviously people behind those roles that are you know have to be paid and do wonderful work But you can have some of the let's say less direct kind of ad spend Like your website like your SEO some organic content speaking to these other groups But when you're putting paid dollars behind something you want to make sure you're putting up behind a group that's identifiable that you can measure That you can speak directly to so when they see your ad when they see your Participation at an event when they see your outbound sales sequence whatever it may be that person feels like hey This is for me and it was purposely designed for me not for someone in another department that maybe has a relation to what I'm doing And I think that's where something like this is really helpful You're always going to keep the whole in mind, but when you put paid dollars behind it It's it's wise to start small and unexpanned versus like taking on the whole and then having to kind of back into it Yeah, well said well said and so it looks like you had another visual prepared for our conversation What we working on here what's your thoughts around some of the questions that you've got? You're exactly so I think once you pick that niche something that I'm also seeing in Tori I know it's like probably a struggle with you too.
It's just It's not enough to just know Thermographics and demographics of your niche like you really have to get inside the mind of the people within your niche within your Segmented ICP and this is just something that it feels really like a huge hurdle for a lot of our clients to get into this habit of Regular customer research and customer feedback loops And I think a big part of it is like as marketers were not specifically trained on doing customer research You know I think a lot of us sort of fall into it And it's they can be challenging to know where to start and I took these questions from the book that I was reading again It's called the one-page marketing plan by Alan Dibs I want to make sure credit is given there But I thought these questions were just so interesting because all of the Research that you do you can listen to sales calls if you don't if you're not able to get direct access to your clients Which that should be something you put on the roadmap to like get approved for next year Like you should always be fighting for that direct access But if you can't like communicate with sales or listen to sales calls and try to listen to the conversations with these questions in mind And these questions can really inform them the messaging that you're putting forward and I think it's just not enough to say okay I'm going after you know People in the hospitality industry and like I'm gonna just be stop there Like what do people in the hospitality industry care about like what makes them happy you said? Do they have specific language or jargon that they use like you should be able to answer these questions so that you can craft the right Because knowing the person isn't enough. It's knowing what to say to them. That's going to make your advertising effective And so I don't want to throw these up there I know I'm always looking for things I can swipe and steal and Figured I'd lighten up the mental load of customers are too little bit Yeah, I really like this this list of questions you have here and again just for anyone who might be Listening in on just the audio.
I'll just read through these really quick before I do right like I think just a recap We started with you know the recognition that this this exercises for people that very likely have more than one ICP or at least They brought ICP that they want to figure out how to niche down the PVP framework Then helps you quantify which of those subsets of your audience is the the one that has the most potential to You know really make an impact on your business and from here the questions to ask right This is where you really start to get to know the ICP that you want to begin marketing to so the questions that Allison had had Listen out here. What keeps them awake at night. What are they afraid of? What are they angry about who are they angry at?
I love that one What are the top daily frustrations? Trends occurring that will occur in their business. What do they secretly or ardently desire the most? Is there a built-in bias to the way that they make decisions?
Do they have their own language or jargon that they use? This is a big one definitely for us the language or jargon I think then that's probably debated enough itself about you know Shouldn't using jargon and acronyms I I I'm for it and then the last three right? What is the person's day like? What is the main dominant emotion and what is the one thing that they crave above all else?
So like the things that you're not seeing on this list are like how many employees are at the company? What is the revenue band right like of course these things are important in your in identifying your ICP? Especially when you talk about like the applications for an ICP like I want to build a campaign and the targeting and so like knowing What you know who someone is angry at that's not gonna help you with your with your targeting Let's say but when you're trying to really craft that message when you're trying to dial into what is the pain point that we can hit on that? We know we can resolve for these people These are the type of questions that you want to be asking and if you can't ask them directly to your customer like Allison said You know go with kind of like the the next best option within your business Maybe it's sitting down with your customer success team or your sales team Right the people that are client facing that maybe have asked questions like these or these direct questions before or perhaps have even worked in the role of You know the the ICP that you're targeting because this is ultimately what's gonna separate You know a good campaign from a great one is really demonstrating that you deeply understand what your clients care about the pains that they have and Yeah, maybe who in the office they really can't stand and why you know these are the type of things that can really track someone's attention Or stop their scroll if they see an ad that calls out some of these things on you know on social media for instance Yeah, and the reason I love this is because it's not about you the product the company at all It's all about a buyer and another great book story brand by Donald Miller, you know very classic like love that book too And it's all about making the customer the hero and positioning yourself as the guide And so if you know that who what somebody is angry about as the guy you can like lead them down a path that avoids like all of that Negativity and frustration and headache and lead them to this Maca or the Nirvana of happiness and it's cheesy But it's like what I said earlier like there's beauty in simplicity.
There's really a lot of like Success to be had when you just boil it down to some of these really basic principles and Kind of nail the basics because I think you sort of slow down here to speed up right like you can do this for one Meash and get a process going you'll be able to do it faster for the next one and even faster for the next one But I think it's like building that repeatable framework that says hey, this is how my company scales It's not by going after everything all at once. It's by concentrating Building showing momentum getting those growth signals and then repeating that process And these are just some really like simple back to basic marketing 101 But I gotta tell you I love it I'm like give me all the airplane books that I can read right now because I'm I'm learning a lot But yeah, no I really like this like like I had mentioned before right it is a very simple approach to solve a problem that we know a lot of Companies have and so yeah I think that this is the type of thing that people could really take and put into practice immediately Hopefully yeah for anyone listening and live or some of the folks that are listening to the recorded podcast You know, this is something that they feel like they can implement right away So so great. Yeah, I also I don't know anything else that you wanted to kind of share on the topic or you want to just Maybe take a little words and wrap things up. Yeah, I think we when we post this will add a link to these slides I'll figure out how to do that and so those who are listening just to the audio check out their refine labs Facebook page Or Facebook whoo LinkedIn page, and that's where this will be posted and then we'll make sure to drop in a link.
Oh, yeah It's cool. Yeah, I don't know what I'm Facebook. Don't go looking further a fine labs Facebook page. I don't think it exists Yeah, we did have a comment from anonymous that the news are amazing talk awesome.
Well, glad you enjoyed it and hopefully that's some good Tangible value out of it. So this is great. Allison. Thank you for coming up with you know This this well at least identifying this framework I'm gonna apply to you know building out our ICP here is a topic conversation that you and I and our clients are having quite a bit So I know I'll be able to make you so this stuff pretty quickly So so thank you that's one person that got value out of this and hopefully there's there's gonna be some other so Great well until next time.
Thanks a lot for anyone listening in and go Phillies