Strategic Communications
It does not matter how much progress you and your team make if it is not obvious to your investors, advisors, and potential customers what you have done and why it is important to them. You must clearly explain your successes ( and failures ) in a timely manner to each of three key groups : your audience, your community, and your business partners and customers.
- Your Audience - People who find you interesting
- Your Community - People who find you valuable
- Your Business - People who find you necessary
Your Audience - People who find you interesting
You build your audience out of all of those people who say your project sounds interesting and they would like to know more. You can build an audience of thousands from all over the world through a blog, E-Zine, and article marketing at very low cost, long before you build your product and before you get your first investor.
Your Community - People who find you valuable
From your audience of thousands you want to find the tens or houndreds that not only want to know more, they want to do more. They want to see the presentaion, read the book, or play with an early prototype. Here too, because of the Internet you can build an online community of those who value your ideas and you can begin using them as a focus group and selling them information products about your ideas and your future products, long before you build the final commercial products.
Your Business - People who find you necessary
Now that you have found thousands who find you interesting and hundereds that find you valuable, you need to find at least a few who cannot do their job unless you do your job. These are people who need what you sell before they can do what they do. They will become your first core customers and they will help you productize your ideas into marketable, profitable products. Don't fire up the factory and build your products until after you have a good crowd begging you to ship.
