For each lesson visit the forum & post your answers.  And, read what the other students have posted!

 

Lesson 1 – Creating a Product That Sells Itself

1.     In the lesson there was an example of a restaurant that is struggling and doesn’t have a lot of customers. If you were hired as a Product/Market Fit Consultant for this business, how would you help them?  Write out a step by step plan that you’d pursue.

 

2.     Choose a business in your town and evaluate their product market fit. Do some research about the company, their products/services, messaging, history, growth, financials…anything you can find about them. Look at their website and social media accounts to determine who you think they are trying to sell to. Then, write up an evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to product/market fit.  Also, include some suggestions about how they can improve this.  If you are bold enough, send this to them if you think it would be helpful. 

 

 

Lesson 2 – The Power of Product/Market Fit

1.     When surveying customers about your product/market fit,  the first question to ask is: How disappointed would you be if our product or service no longer existed?  Write out 4 more follow-up questions you think would be important to include in a survey you were giving to customers.  Think of questions that will give you helpful feedback about ways you can improve or even pivots you might want to make as a business.

 

2.     Read this article about how one company perfected their product/market fit before they launched: https://visionaryentrepreneurship.com/img/Superhuman.pdf

 

 

Lesson 3 – Guerilla Marketing Techniques

1.     Imagine you are hired as the new marketing director for a small bakery in town. But, they don’t really have much of a marketing budget. Any marketing you do is going to have to be very creative and very low cost. What are the first 3 guerilla marketing ideas you’ll do to get the word out about the business?

 

2.     This is a very powerful book written by a marketer named Seth Godin. It gets to the heart of guerilla marketing and will be very helpful in shaping your perspective on this topic. Read the entire eBook for your homework today…it is long, but very worthwhile. https://visionaryentrepreneurship.com/img/IdeaVirus.pdf

 

 

Lesson 4 – Amazing Guerilla Marketing Examples

1.     Imagine you are starting out as a real estate agent.  You have a lot of excitement to grow your business, but not a lot of marketing money.  What are 4 creative and unique ways you could market your business without spending much money?

 

2.     Read about the example of Hotmail and how they used creative marketing in a really simple way to grow their user base to over 12 million users in just 2 years: https://visionaryentrepreneurship.com/img/Hotmail-Growth-Hacking.pdf

 

 

Lesson 5 – Creative Marketing Wins the Prize

1.     You probably noticed that media coverage was a key part of many of the creative marketing ideas covered in this lesson: “The Best Job in the World” campaign, the Airbnb cereal boxes, the King Kong 3D footprints in the sand.  Creative, clever marketing, can often attract the attention of reporters and help spread your message much further than you’d be able to without media coverage.  Imagine you are the founder of a small, unknown startup company that has created a new platform.  Your platform connects experienced chefs who want to cook a meal for someone in their own kitchen with customers who want a fun evening dining experience at home.  You aren’t the first company to have tried this idea so it is going to be a bit tough to catch the media’s attention.  What are some creative ways you could try and generate some interest in your business and hopefully get some media coverage?

 

2.     Read the story of how IHOP used a clever rebranding stunt to get some great attention for their new line of burgers: https://visionaryentrepreneurship.com/img/IHOb-Rebranding.pdf

 

3.     Take a look at these creative examples of marketing:  https://visionaryentrepreneurship.com/img/Creative-Marketing-Examples.pdf
What are some of the common themes you notice in guerilla marketing?  Make a list of some of the common traits.

 

 

Lesson 6 – Good Marketing Tells a Story

1.     In this lesson we discussed CDAIdaho.com. Spend a little time looking around their website to become familiar with the brand. Look at the way they use video and images to communicate a consistent theme and feeling. This clothing company has positioned itself as a favorite for the locals in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Amazingly, this is the opposite story that most people would have expected them to tell. Their clothes would most naturally appeal to visitors to the town and tourists who wanted to get a shirt with the town’s name on it. But, through an intentional effort to tell a different story, they’ve been able to grow a very strong support base of locals. This goes to show that the way a company chooses to position itself and the story it chooses to tell can have a massive impact on the direction and success of the company. In this project, your task it to pretend you were a part of the CDA Idaho team from day 1 and instead of telling their current story, you choose to tell a different brand story. Maybe it is a story that resonates with tourists. Maybe it is another story altogether. How will you position yourself in the market? How will you use marketing materials and media to support this message? What feeling do you want to communicate. Who do you want to connect with?  Write out a step by step plan for how you’ll grow the brand telling a different story.

 

Lesson 7 – Telling Your Brand’s Story

1.     Here are a few more brand storytelling examples from Google and JetBlue Airlines: 
Reunion (Google) 
FlyBabies (JetBlue)
Little Tickets (JetBlue)

 

2.     What do you think the brand stories are for each of the following companies?
  Burt’s Bees
  GoPro
  Coca Cola
Do some research on these companies.  Look at their websites, the social media pages, their marketing materials, their about us statements, etc…  If you had to describe their brand story in just a few sentences what would each one be? 

 

Lesson 8 – Intro to Pricing Strategies

1.     Read this interesting article about the irrationality of consumer behavior with a number of case studies: https://visionaryentrepreneurship.com/img/Irrational-Consumer-Behavior.pdf

 

2.     Here is another related area of consumer behavior: neuromarketing.  Watching this TEDx talk to learn more about this interesting marketing topic:
Neuromarketing Part 1
Neuromarketing Part 2