Entrepreneurs - Spot Your Customers!

Source: Yavvy.com

This is for entrepreuners burning their midnight oils to run their companies in B2B segments. This piece of knowledge is not an enlightenment for many of you. May be Validation point as this comes from practice, this is what I observed during our startup journey since last 4 years.

From experience at Screen-Magic for 6 years building product & customer base from scratch, I  got some wisdom, would like to share so writing this blog. When anyone starts with some kind of product, you dont have budgets & skills to market it. This happens mostly for entrepreneurs.

Here are 3 types of category I can classify, various customers :

Early Adopters - They will find you
      They are high class ideators, master implementers and always willing to try new things to improve their own life. If you create simple but value products, these guys will find you and use your products. They are also advance users of google of knowing tricks of discovering hidden treasures. They will give you some money as well. You should listen to them to get valuable ideas.

Implementers - They will approach you with Reference      They may not ideate themselves but they are highly aggressive implementors. They will keep searching for greenshoots. They will get references and find you. Implement it successfully and will write reviews for you.


Money Burners (earners for you) - You hunt them and Sell services in polished and higher price     These people have been given larger budgets and assigned with huge targets. They run out of ideas, if you have nice website with business oriented content with ROI. These people would love you and would pay your higher cost to achieve success with little efforts. They believe in using products, rather than building it themselves.

All the best for building successful enterprise.

Twitter - Mega Network with Micro Updates.

I did analysis of Twitter usage by Common people and Enterprises. This is How twitter started and grown in to Mega Network with Micro Updates.
1) Tech people were early adopters
2) People used it as a replacement for blogger where they need to give a lots of time for posting anything. Twitter was easy,no-brainer, one can tweet whatever they have on their mind. They dont have to ruminate over it.
3) People loved it.
4) Additionally it enabled open conversation across the globe. Just simple stream of interesting thoughts, updates abt various people by themselves, you didnt need approval to follow him/her. 
5) It enabled way to hear thoughts of people who shares common interests with you.
6) It was not like other social networks where you start with connecting people you are already friends with.
7) Everybody actually liked the Idea, even Celebrities came directly on twitter. Interacting with their fans openly. People loved this more.  With Celebrities, more fans logged on Twitter. For Example, many of the people in India registered on Twitter to Follow Little Master Sachin Tendulkar. 

With Millions of real people having open conversation on Twitter and additional features built like Trends. For Marketers, It was gold-mine to catch the people. Specific targetting was possible just scanning through one's tweets. Lots of startups have emerged which are providing various services  including analytics of data and techniques to increase follower counts.
From My point of view, we can clearly seperate companies in 2 types
Type B2C = Business to consumers Model
Type B2B = Business to Business Model

For B2C Enterprises, value proposition is quite clear as many of their existing and target customers possibly would be on Twitter. They can use Twitter for Customer Service, Marketing and Advertizing. They can run Loyalty programs also.

But what would be value proposition for Enterprise who has B2B model, because they would be trying to sell their products to companies only. so How Twitter can be useful for B2B model companies. Because Twitter accounts of these companies would be handled probably by Marketing Team. If Twitter accounts of 2 businesses converse with each other, which means basically Marketing teams of 2 companies are talking with each other. Which will not help one of them who wants to sell his product to other.  As other's marketing team might not be decision makers in various purchase decisions or business decisions. 
Although Conversation may not help either of them to get business. but connecting with people who are following/followers of target company may help. 
What enterprises can use Twitter for?
1) Share/Evangelize knowledge abt their company, product.
2) Connect with people who are connected to your targets.
3) Spread the word abt your company in related open conversations.

Actually I am not a Marketing guy but had some thoughts abt using Twitter by Enterprises so just shared them here.  You can have many other great ideas abt Twitter usage, You can share it with me via comments on this blog.