Despite some belief that H1 and H2 tags are “old school,” Google still considers these tags, so having a good strategy for keywords that do not get labelled as spam is very important.  After all, you want to get the right attention from Google and not be marked or blacklisted as a spammer!

H1, H2, and H3 tags are essentially used for the major sections of your online document to define what is found on each web page. The accompanying number indicates the level of importance for each headline with ‘1’ being the most important.

These tags have also become one component of a SEO/SEM strategy. Consider these strategies for relevant keyword selection for H1 tags:

• Stick to one H1 tag per page. Multiples send out the wrong type of attention from search engines unless, of course, it’s a landing page and then it is somewhat acceptable to have multiple H1 tags. This may because you are setting the page to appear in multiple languages to attract an audience from around the world.
• Use them to set the expectation levels so visitors have a good idea of what will be on that particular page. Hence, keywords help to add description and precision to your H1 tag’s definition.
• Place the keyword early on in the H1 tag or H2 tag to assist with SEO/SEM strategies.
• Don’t resort to keyword stuffing as this will soon be noted by search engines.
• Just because H1 is the top priority doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put attention to keywords in H2 tags and H3 tags. They count too when it comes to search engine analysis.
• Be selective with your keywords to ensure that you can differentiate your site from others and be ranked well due to your uniqueness and niche offering.

Many search engine experts also believe that you should use a hierarchy in header tags.  Our preferred hierarchy and the one that we use most often is:

• One H1 tag (first)
• No more than one H2 tag (second)
• H3, H4, H5 tags after that, as necessary, but in that order.  So H4 never appears before H3 and so on.

When deciding on a domain name, many business owners wonder if it is really necessary that it contains their main target keyword.

Well, the answer is yes and here’s why: having keywords in your domain name will improve your chances of moving up the search engine ranking quickly so that current and prospective clients can find your website before they find your competitor.

Before dashing off in a panic to snap up that domain name from a domain auction or registrar, put some strategic thought into the domain name you want to have for your business:

1. Your domain name does not have to be your company name, especially if the company name does contain a keyword that reflects your product or service, such as copywriting or car sales, for example.
2. If your company name does not contain a keyword, then it might be better to select a domain name that can include at least one keyword about the type of products or services you offer. For example, let’s go back to the copywriting example. If you are a small business owner who simply goes by their name, it might be better to add copywriting to the domain name alongside your name or pick something like “TheGlobalCopywritingExperts.com.” If you teach children how to play drums, maybe you pick something like “DrumLessonsForKids.com.”
3. In case you find that the domain name you want that contains your primary keyword is already reserved, then it is best to have some other domain names ready to go. Brainstorming with keywords is always a good way of finding a great domain. Try different keyword combinations but be sure to minimize the number of words in the domain name. The two examples above have four words, which can be long, but were only used to illustrate how a domain can utilize primary keywords. A better option might be “CopywritingExperts.com” or “DrummingLessons.com” if they were still available.

TIP: Try using Google’s keyword tool to see what people actually search for when looking for products, services and businesses like yours.

Even if someone already owns the .com version of the domain name you want with your primary keyword, there are so many possible extensions (.tv, .info, .net, etc.) that you can still get what you want and be found on search engines quite easily.  However, many SEO experts recommend you steer clear of .info domains – because companies like GoDaddy sell them for less than a pound each, many spammers have snapped these up and it’s thought that Google may take this into account when analysing your website and deciding where to rank it.

Before we go on to how exactly to segment a market let’s look at some examples of segmentation in action to discover the famous 4.

Remember, the aim of segmentation is to allow you to know a market in different ways from your competitors and then closer match the jobs and outcomes people want with different or tailored products and services. It may also allow the marketing of products to specific types of consumers as a specialist, and for you to concentrate resources in markets where competitive advantage and returns are highest. It is to that we come in Step 2. It also, very importantly, allows the measurement of customer retention and profit within each segment.

Let’s take a look at how response variables and identifier variables are used in jobs and outcomes based segmentation in practice.

Electrolux’s story of its food service equipment industry is a good example of how powerful the correct use of response variables and identifier variables can be.

Its brands were fragmented, with 15 weak national based brands making up its portfolio. This greatly increased its marketing costs and lead to inefficiency because economies of scale were hindered. In addition, brand equity was also being diluted through lack of focus and reducing the possibility of charging a greater premium for the brand. The company was making a loss in these areas of 1.3%. After the plans that follow were executed, it turned this around to a profit of 8.1% after just five years.

Electrolux had up until now followed segmentation strategy based upon low, medium and high price and on product specifications (good, better, or best) – all of which were response variables. Then it had segmented further from these tree tiers across specific customer profiles – hospital, canteen, bar, school, convenience store, restaurant and hotel – so called identifier variables.

Yet, despite following the correct response and then identifier variable approach it still found two problems –

1)  Further segmenting on customer type was not productive. Prioritisation and importance of differing jobs and outcomes actually transcended these boundaries across the types of institution.  Therefore identifier variables had been grossly misused and had separated consumers who actually wanted to do the same jobs and achieve the same outcomes regardless of who they actually where. More jobs and outcomes (response variables) should have been used to better identify what these customers were really trying to achieve.

2)  Each customer sought the best solution for those customers’ jobs and outcomes – the good, better, and best variables were a false paradigm. Why would a customer want a “good”, or “better brand”, rather than the best for their purposes? The use of good, better, and best response variables approach was therefore faulty. What mattered was the jobs and outcomes to be performed.

Electrolux realised that the best solution for each customer required starting from customer jobs and outcomes to identify the most important response variables, and that these transcended through customer types which were largely irrelevant until the final analysis – finding where people were. Its Europe-wide new approach to segmentation research revealed four segments which each had different customer types, product specs, pricing indexes, distribution needs and contexts in which the equipment was used.

These segments and a few of the famous 4 -

1) Performance specialisation segment – The Ultimate Goal was to produce large volumes of meals under circumstances that involved complicated logistics. Other high priority jobs included high performance and well integrated systems. There was  a price index of 100 compared to other segments. Airlines, five star hotels, hospitals and so on made up this group.

2) Basic solution fast return on investment segment – Those with the Ultimate Goal of using catering as an auxiliary service to generate fast ROI through basic menus – conformity with legal and sanitary regulation was an important job as well as very low prices being an important need giving a price index of 25. This segment mainly contained pubs and convenience stores.

3) Gastronomy partnership segment – Those whose Ultimate Goal was producing under 200 meals a day and doing it with a low technical competence. Jobs and outcomes they valued most were the ability to move solutions about, solutions being easy and simple use, good customer support, plus proven technology at reasonable prices. They had a price index of 50 – 75. Staff canteens, family restaurants and elderly homes made up the most of this segment.

4) The prestige gourmet segment was made up of the very best gourmet and celebrity chef owned restaurants. They required a prestigious kitchen, feature packed, with a very reliable stove as a status symbol. Price index of 200 – 300.

Note how the response variables were used first – a focus on Ultimate Goals, jobs and outcomes. Once these had been identified, identifier variables were then used to see who most of these customers were.

For now Electrolux decided it would forgo the basic solution segment due to low prices, and then chose three brands from its current 15 to position. It settled upon Electrolux, Zanussi and Molteni to target the others 3 segments.  Brand images appropriate to each segment where then built, with personality, values, rewards, functional benefits and features being built for each. 10 of its other brands were eliminated; the remaining two were kept on as they had pockets of strength.

(This worked, I took a look at Molteni and they are known as the Ferrari of stoves! They have a cult following and many of the very best restaurants use them!)

A better understanding of each jobs and outcomes based segment led to fewer but more appropriate products for customers because in reality, customers across many different roles, professions and businesses shared a lot more in common that first thought – a small set of only 4 different jobs and outcomes. Now Electrolux insists that all divisions use the same segmentation approach to new product development.

Electrolux now visits consumers to learn how, when and why these use appliances. They from this develop distinct personas to represent segments based on personality and lifestyle, jobs done and outcomes expected, usage patterns, and similar elements. One interesting thing that have found is that consumers often want their personalities reflected by their appliances, with aesthetics and functionality key in meeting this requirement.

Another example is how supermarkets have begun to segment their markets – e.g. Sainsbury’s – Be Good to Yourself (health), Organics, Taste the Difference (premium) and Basics (low cost). It is also wise to realise that one customer could be all segments over a week depending on he job to done on that usage occasion.

For example they could use “Basics” for unimportant staples, “Good to Yourself” during the week and “Taste the Difference” for a weekend treat or just items of particular importance to the user e.g. desserts. These different jobs may be classified – for example – ‘indulge me’, ‘healthy me’, ‘budget me’, ‘sophisticated me’ and change to meet specific jobs at specific times. An EasyJet user for family holidays may always fly BA first class for business.  So people can be part of many segments based on their specific job they want to do right there and then – their usage occasion. Therefore brand loyalty across a category can switch and change depending on the situation, and often consumers will be loyal to different brands in the same product category, based on the job they want to do– their loyalty may however firmly lie with one brand per usage occasion.

Another example is how Porsche sub-segments its core segment – over forty, male, college graduate, with income over £100,000 pa/a using psychographics.

• Top guns are driven ambitious types who expect to be noticed and care about power and control.
• Elitists are old money blue bloods who consider a car to be transportation not an extension of their personality.
• Fantasists want to escape through their cars and feel guilty about owning one.
• Proud Patrons consider ownership an end in itself a trophy for hard work.
• Bon Vivants are worldly jetsetters and thrill seeks whose cars heighten the excitement in their already passionate lives.

Notice how all 5 segments have a different Ultimate Goal to be achieved by their Porsche.

A final simple example of segments based on Ultimate Goals is for the users of tooth paste. Some buy to stop decay, some to attract attention, and some for nice taste. Matches for characteristics in demographics, psychographics, etc within those groups would then be looked at afterwards for trends and similarities.

A good way to think of segmentation is as the ultimate customisation of offerings to individual’s jobs and outcomes. In line with how we see all markets moving, the winners will be those that are able to give more power to buyers by giving them the package that best meets their required jobs and outcomes at the right price.

Many firms try and customise their offerings, such customisation can be collaborative  – by involving customers, transparent customisation – customised to unique needs without letting them know how, adaptive customisation – using one standard product that users can customise themselves and cosmetic customisation – where the product stays the same but only the solution changes.

As part of any search engine marketing campaign, title tags play an important role in generating successful results. Considered to be one of the most important meta tags used (although not strictly a meta tag but usually discussed in the same context), it’s the go-to source for search engines that put out spiders to crawl through the Internet to find and analyse websites. To use title tags and catch the spiders’ attention requires a little know-how and some simple tips to keep you on the right format framework.

There are some easy steps to follow to format the very necessary title tags that help the little SEO engine that could drive traffic from search engines to your website. Here are some handy tips to help you get the most out of title tags.

Let’s start with the ingredients that need formatting in a title tag:

• Company or website name
• Site architecture location
• Keyword(s)

The format for titles tags must fit the situation it is being used for as some websites may want to highlight keywords whilst others are not concerned about architectural location.

For most title tags, there are some common format techniques to employ regardless of your site situation:

• Put the keyword(s) anywhere in the title tag.
• Stay light on the keywords. No stuffing!
• List the company name after the page title.
• Focus on one theme. Take the “less is more” philosophy to heart.
• While you can use your company name, it may not be necessary, especially if it is not a well-known brand.

Here’s an example:

<title>Keyword and Keyword at Company Name[or Website]</title>

Just like some general “dos” when it comes to title tag formatting, there are also some things to avoid in order to not appear unprofessional or be penalised/blacklisted by search engines:

• Don’t use anymore than 60 characters in the title tag. Keep it succinct!
• Don’t use run-ons.
• Don’t make the title tag sound unnatural just to try and make it work for search engines. Spam alerts will go up!
• Don’t rely on non-letter characters.

Now that you have the dos and don’ts of formatting title tags, put it into action on your website as part of your overall SEM/SEO strategy.

Search Engines have become a significant tool in the daily lives of many people, providing direct access to web resources, products and services.  Research suggests that nearly 70% of web users start with a Search Engine as their point of entry.  Since around 2002, web search queries have been categorised by the searchers intent.  In this post, I will distinguish between the 3 main query types referred to as:

• Navigational
• Informational
• Transactional

I will also discuss the usability benefits attached to targeting all three search types.

Note: This subject delves much deeper than this articles purpose as the content is aimed at the beginner. However, I am happy to post further information about this subject, or indeed write a follow up article upon request.

Lets begin by briefly describing the 3 types of search queries, the common pointers used to perform the query and an example of each:

Navigational Queries

The intent of a navigational query is for the searcher to navigate to a specific website or web page. This is often brand related, or searchers might not be not familiar with the exact  or full URL (web address). A searcher may type a brand or website name into the engines search box in order to navigate directly to the website (often the homepage).  Research shows that around 10%-26% of search queries are navigational.

Navigational Query Pointers:

• Brand, website or business name
• Key phrases that are approximately one-two words.
• Part or segment of the URL

Informational Queries

An Informational query is performed to research a topic, product or service and intends to educate the searcher. A good indication of an informational query can be seen when Wikipedia or WikiAnswers appears in the SERPS’s (Search Engine Results Pages). Informational queries are by far the most frequent query type, capturing anything between 48%-80% of all web and search queries.

Informational Query Pointers:

• A Question format such as what, why, where, how, when etc.
• Use of plural language and words, suggesting to see multiple items such as product lines and ranges.
• Key phrases that are approximately 4 or more words.

Transactional Queries

A transactional-oriented query indicates the searchers intent to interact with a website. This does not however restrict the sole intent to purchasing. A transactional query could be to watch a video, download a file or play a game. Research shows that around 10%-24% of all web searches are transactional queries.

Transactional Query Pointers:

• Interactive verbs such as login, search, buy, download, apply, contact, register etc.
• File extensions for multi media files such as .mp3, .jpg, .mpg etc.
• Nouns relating to an action or activity such as  music, recipes, movies, demo, software etc.

Why will this effect my SEO campaign?

If you rely on your website to bring your business or exposure,  it is now more important than ever to compete in the Search Engines.   Combining SEO and usability methods will help improve traffic and increase conversion rates.  You should take time to understand your users as it is important to acknowledge search intent to leverage an SEO campaign. Website owners should strive to satisfy all three query types as they will often see an improved ROI. Understanding navigational, informational and transactional intent will help you to gain a better chance of targeting the right users by creating appropriate content for a specific query.  This will ultimately satisfy both user and business goals by serving the desired targeted page to the searcher.

Inherent benefits of segmenting content for user intent

Segmenting search intent not only improves SEO and rankings, but also improves usability as it streamlines desired content and resources. This can have an inherent impact on bounce and conversion rates.  Admittedly, bounce and conversion rates have many more influential factors, but serving appropriate content to the searcher is an integral part of a positive user experience.

Searchers may use your site to satisfy all 3 query types.

For instance:

• A searcher may know you offer a desired service/product and know your business name (navigational)
• A searcher may want to research that service and find out what’s involved. Said information maybe highlighted in the service description or FAQ. (informational)
• A searcher has sourced enough information about the service to send an enquiry (transactional).

And Finally…

As you can see, creating web pages and content for all 3 query types can support a valuable user experience from search engine to site.  This can be achieved via a well constructed page and clear information path. Harnessing all three queries can bring a wide range of relevant users to your site. Users will also appreciate your efforts to inform and deliver content that fulfils their needs. Thus encouraging brand loyalty and trust.

As mentioned earlier, segmentation variables can be broadly classified into two categories – identifier variables and response variables.

Identifier variables are used after response variables to define who the members of a segment are. These are of great use when it comes to communicating value to the market, because they tell us exactly who people are. Of course, we also need to know who we are creating value for, which is why we include them here in the identifying value Chapter.

They include -

• Location.
• City and city size.
• Population density.
• Climate.
• Demographic age.
• Family size.
• Family life cycle (e.g. age, martial status, children etc).
• Gender.
• Sexual orientation.
• Income level.
• Occupation.
• Education level.
• Religion.
• Race.
• Generation.
• Nationality.
• Social class.
• Psychographic lifestyle.
• Personality.
• Behavioural occasions.
• Status.
• User cycle – first time buyers etc.
• Buyer readiness stage – e.g. heard of product, unaware, interested, desire it etc.
• Attitude – enthusiastic, positive, indifferent, negative, hostile etc.

These are bits of background information, so demographics, geography, psychographics (internal drivers of consumer behaviour), product preference, purchase frequency, and channel are collected and tracked and help us build profiles of segments, but the segments are always, first and foremost, built around jobs and outcomes based segments drawn up for response variables first. We may well find that within each jobs based segment there is other meaningful data – such as 90% of economy buyers are males 45 – 60 living in the North – but this is secondary data – the response variables are always used to create the jobs based segments first!

We must never segment initially by demographics, or by product or service, as many people may buy the same product when they have very different jobs to be done. So we would never say – “all people with black hair over 60 is one segment of our market” – as there are simply is no common jobs and outcomes that binds them together.

Identifier variables are especially important when you look at who the Key Players are –  buyers, users, payers, key influencers, and final decision makers – because then you know where to find them.

With Google currently commanding over 85% of the search engine market in the UK, it has never been as important to rank well on Google.

Here we have included 17 quick on-page SEO tips for better rankings in Google.

Tip 1: Use no more than 66 characters including spaces in the Meta title.

Tip 2: Use no more than 3 – 5 keywords in the Meta keyword tag.

Tip 3: Use no more than 120 – 160 characters including spaces in the Meta description tag.

Tip 4: Always include your main keywords or phrases in the Meta title and Meta description tags.

Tip 5: Never use multi h1 and h2 tags.

Tip 6: Multiple h3, h4 and h5 tags are fine.

Tip 7: Try to avoid using <br> tags for line breaks, always use <p> tags.

Tip 8: Try and get your keywords at the beginning of a paragraph.

Tip 9: Try not to use 10 or more images per webpage and make sure the image file sizes have been optimised or reduced to increase load time.

Tip 10: Make sure all images are under 30KB.

Tip 11: Make sure the cascading style sheet (CSS) is less than 10KB.

Tip 12: Make sure page size is less than 30KB.

Tip 13: Use breadcrumbs for a good internal linking structure.

Tip 14: Work with a keyword density of 2% – 4% per web page.

Tip 15: Include sitemaps on every page of a website.

Tip 16: Don’t use images for navigation buttons, it’s far better to have text (this is also good for internal linking).

Tip 17: Use ALT text on images but don’t keyword stuff, 5-7 words maximum is optimum.

Social media activities are happening right now.  Conversations on social networking sites are taking place all across the world and if you’re not involved, they’re taking place in your absence.  Social media will continue to happen with or without you, so isn’t it better to take part and be aware of what is being said?

Social media isn’t scary…

Many bosses have huge reservations of being active on social media sites. When asked why, many of the reasons they give point to a lack of information; they need the facts and stats.

So if you’re selling social media to your boss, wow him with your knowledge and show him it’s not a scary place to be.

Countless examples suggest that it is far more damaging to be inactive on social media sites than be active.  It’s like a bunch of people talking about you in a room and you not being in on the conversation.

Follow the plan below and you’ll be wowing your boss with your social media knowledge and be well on your way to social media success.

Making your case – Create a report/presentation explaining why your company should be actively embracing social media and what it could do for the company.

1. Explain
As said before research has shown many bosses stay away from social media because they don’t understand it or have enough knowledge about it. To combat this explain the benefits of social media, and each platform you aim to use (Facebook, Twitter, etc)

Cover what each platform does, what it is best for , who uses it etc.

2. Current Conversations
Conversations are happening all the time and social media enables everyone to be involved and add in their opinions about products/services/brands so if you aren’t active on social media platforms you aren’t aware what is being said about your product/service/brand until it is too late. Find out what is being said, and who by – you can uses tools like TweetDeck, explained in the tools section. TweetDeck is great for tracking keywords or companies.

3. What are your competitors doing
Undertake a research campaign into what your competitors are up to. Find out if they are on the social media train,  how active they are, what they talk about, how many followers they have – what do they do – engage or just talk to all and not engage in one to one communication.

Also search your market sector websites (industry bodies/ events/ key personalities) to see how active they are. Check if there are any major personalities that spend their days tweeting/blogging about your industry/products.

4. Facts and figures
Research what your industry sector is doing in terms of social media. Find out about fellow professionals and their successes and failures. Look around for social media statistics when you are hunting out your facts and stats. It is important to give these as an example to your boss, showing that you have done your research properly and covered all angles. Remember why you need these stats and facts – it is to prove your point and make your case – your company should be active on social media sites.

Some great social media facts I found during my research include -

• Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities, even  beating personal email. 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the Internet is on social media sites.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.*
• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people… in less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.

Ref : Econsultancy 2010

5. Advantages / disadvantages (show you have looked at both sides)
With advantages and disadvantages of social media, you need to show your boss you have done your research and have looked at things from every side. List advantages and disadvantages and if possible show how you would turn disadvantages into positives.

Examples would be :

Advantages

• You know what is being said about you
• You can get customers’ feedback
• It is a way to show your company has personality – e.g. photos of staff having fun.
• It’s a way to engage and communicate (not sell)
• Being on social media sites can help your sales because if people have a question that is stopping them purchasing they can ask and get a quick response and go on to purchase whereas without, they probably would not purchase.
• It helps get you message out to wider audience – Facebook alone has more than 500 million users.
• You have control of your message –  it is not sent via third party channels i.e. by contrast, you send a press release to a magazine, and the magazine publishes information how they want to (if they even publish it)

Disadvantages

• You can’t control what people say – although I would say this is even more of a reason to be active on social media because then you know what is being said, by who etc and you can also have your say about things.
• The conversation may not always be what you want it to be.

With disadvantages you need to prove and show that you have a plan for when you are asked about this product/service, this issue or if the conversation turns to something you would prefer wasn’t discussed. You need to show your boss you have a plan/policies already in place for such issues or risks.  You could consider Search Engine Reputation Management as a plan for extreme cases.

6. Action plan
Next stage, Action Plan – it’s all about the plan!

Show you have an action plan – How you are going to go about creating and maintaining your social media presence. How many hours it will take to set up? How long they will take each day to maintain? What you will tweet about?  How do you intend to resolve issues and crises? Show your boss you have thought about every step.

One platform at a time
I would say it is better to start with one social media platform at a time. They all work differently so spend time getting to know them and how each works, what they would offer to your company. Pick your top three and say these are the ones you wish to be active on, on a daily basis.

I would say Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon, based on my experience and that they all offer something different. Do your own research and see which are best for your business. A great starting point would be our previous post – The ultimate social media list.

Followers
Explain how you are going to get followers, attract them, keep them, engage with them. Remember social media is a platform to engage with your customers, not a selling platform. Although admittedly if carried out correctly it will help your sales.

Chat
What you plan to communicate about – show you have thought about what you are going to tweet/facebook. You need to make your updates informative and engaging.

Who you are planning to follow and interact with – show you have thought about who you are going to follow, list the links, show your boss what they tweet about and how they interact with their followers.

Policy
Have a social media policy drafted. It may include points like employee guidelines, what is expected of them. Example: they have to produce at least one blog post a week (on their specialist area), they have to tweet twice a day, etc. You may also have elements in the guidelines that state that they can not use their own personal accounts during work time.

Outcomes
When explaining to your boss what you aim to achieve, explain what outcomes you aim to achieve and how you aim to achieve them.

An example would be get 500 followers in three months by seeking out people within your sector, tweeting about relevant news, industry and non industry and regularly blogging about company activities and industry developments.  When stating figures, don’t aim too high, it is better to be over your target then majorly below it.

Tools
There are a number of tools you can use to make updating your social media sites faster and easier.

TweetDeck – TweetDeck is a great way to manage and see who is saying what about you on social networking sites. You can set up columns and hashtag terms you wish to know about i.e. #socialmedia or #seo and then every time someone hashtags or tweets about your chosen term it will appear in your column meaning the information comes to you and you don’t have to hunt for the information. You can pull your Twitter and Facebook feeds into TweetDeck.

Ping.fm – Ping is great way to update your social media sites all at once, meaning you ping your update, which maybe a new article, new links, etc, to Facebook, Twitter, Digg, WordPress, Blogger etc all at the same time, saving you time when you have various profiles to maintain.

and finally…
Your boss should now be either totally into social media or really interested to find more. If he or she wishes to know more, go away and research the areas they have asked about because you’re close to changing their mind about social media so keep rolling with it.

If your boss is still against social media, don’t give up, keep researching and keeping up with social media goings on and revisit it again in the future. If the social media market changes for you, i.e. your big competitor starts actively undertaking social media your boss may change their mind very quickly.

Remember this challenge is not easy, bear with it. One person can change how a company thinks and acts – it just takes time and patience.

So there you go, go wow your boss and let us know how you get on. Did it work?

Summary: Read our top 3 link building guides created by Angel SEO.

Link building is one of the most important parts of SEO right now. These guides are about obtaining high quality, relevant links to your website from other trusted domains to boost your rankings – how, why and where.

• Why do I need to build links for SEO?
• How do I use content to help with link building?
• Are image links or text links better for SEO?

Motorola using cluster analysis software analysis found 3 segments for two way radios. The frost segment’s Ultimate Goal was not been overheard – they wanted to communicate privately, discreetly, or covertly. They wanted do minimise the effort to establish a record of the communication, minimise the number of communications that could be intercepted, and minimise the effort required to communicate discretely.  From using identifier variables they found most of these people where law enforcement or security officials. The second segment’s Ultimate Goal was clear, unambiguous and uninterrupted communications when faced with dangerous, even life threatening situations. The wanted to minimise messages misunderstood, number of interruptions, interference and the effort required to use the radio with gloves. They were fire-fighters, police and security who often had to leave their vehicles to perform assignments but maintain vehicle contact at all times. The third segment wanted to do the jobs of using radios to communicate with groups, coordinate activities and perform admin; they were engineers and life guards who made constant use of radios to fulfil their work roles. The wanted to minimize effort to program the device, the time it took to confirm receipt of communication and the number of annoying incoming communications.

Segment 1 got an offering with an enhanced encryption mechanism to prevent others overhearing and noiseless operation. Segment 2 got an offering with voice command operation, emergency locators and modifications to allow gloves. Segment 3 got a model with easier to program radio and mechanisms to ensure message receipt.

Before this segmentation approach based on jobs and outcomes, there was a one size fits all mentality in the entire industry. By focusing on the Famous 4 and optimising the offering with 3 new products that met the reality of the jobs to be done, Motorola was able to eliminate product features that addressed outcomes of little or no importance to the segment.

This approach allows you to see that there are often unique opportunities even in mature markets, to see demanding customer segments that will be willing to pay more, see those segments that are unattractive, find over served markets (those that will accept inferior outcomes along some measures for less cost), determine best ways to enter a market segment ignored by competitors, and score segments on their potential growth – in terms of looking just how underserved need are.

As we’ve said, any firm that is able to target a specific group of consumers with an offer best aligned to the jobs and outcomes they prioritise is more likely to win their business.

It is therefore important when segmenting the market to maximise the differences between segments whilst simultaneously minimising the differences within them. Remember if two segments will respond identically to the same offer they are not separate segments.

So exactly how do we segment effectively?

1. The first step is get the right software – it takes a lot of work out of the job!
2. Enter the data you have collected to define the market.
3. You should now have results. Can you see groups of people with similar priorities of jobs and outcomes? If so you are now in a position to form segments from like minded decision makers. That is to say that they show a similar level of interest and place similar importance on the same, or comparable set of jobs and outcomes across the Consumer Value Line. Each segment will be a group of consumers within a market who share similar priorities.We now look at the identifier variables to see if they share any particular variables in common. For example, one jobs/outcomes based segment might be made up of a majority young male professionals living in the city, another made up of retired couples living in the country. A very useful method is giving these segments human personas, even drawing what they look like! This helps visualise them and helps us get into their world and think like them!
4. Look at the famous 4 from your market research. How well are the jobs and outcomes of this segment already been served?
5. What are the famous 4 of the segment for buyers, users, payers, decision makers and key influencers – the
6. What different Consumer Value Lines are there? Can we out execute on any Consumer Value Line? What Value Creators are
7. What Value Creators of current competitors or prospective competitors for segments are at first sight Value Barriers and Value Gates
8. How close are the famous 4 to that of other segments?
9. Which segments are most removed from bigger and more powerful competitors offerings, in other words – what are they less likely
10. Very importantly, are there some segments that no company seems to care about at all? It’s great news when there is, because you
11. Is a vastly different Product Value Line – a new and independent set of Value Creators needed to serve the segment?
12. What is the ability to serve this segment of other competitors given their Value Creators and the famous 4? Can they match us
13. What are the synergy gains of serving a segment for us in terms of offering value and reducing costs? What about for our
14. What is the current and future growth of the segment?
15. What is the size of the segment?
16. What is the current competition in the segment?
17. What are the brand loyalties of existing customers in the segment?
18. What is our attainable market share given promotional budget and competitors’ expenditures?
19. What is the required market share to break even?
20. What is the sales potential for the firm in the segment?
21. What are the expected profit margins in the segment?
22. What economical, social and political trends are and could affect the segment?
23. What segments there is opportunity in
24. Where we are going to research further in terms of competitors offerings
25. Finally, where we are going to try and come up with ideas through Value Innovation

Post research – segment attractiveness

Segment attractiveness comprises many factors, and at this stage all that is needed is a broad overview. Don’t go into too much detail but brush over the questions below to see what ideas and segments you can obviously and definitely rule out. We are not trying to say with certainly which segments we will certainly choose that comes much later, we are trying to make a short list and rule out any segments if we can.

To serve a new segment you often must share Value Creators that create costs – costs of coordination, costs of compromise and costs of flexibility. What is the cost of compromise, coordination and flexibility to serve the segment for us and other competitors and how does this match up to the net advantage of sharing?

Think in terms of –

Coordination – Time, personnel and money – complexity

Compromise – Sharing any Value Creator means it may become less optimised for another segment and effect other Value Creators negatively as well.

Flexibility – Difficulty in responding to competitors moves and higher exit barriers.

Summary: Read our top 3 Google SEO guides created by Angel SEO.

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Not looking for anything specific? This section is full of general SEO tips, tricks and articles that we couldn’t fit into any other category. Don’t overlook it though, some of our best SEO articles are in here!

• How can I improve my site’s speed for Google?
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• Does my website design impact my SEO for Google?

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• Facebook v Twitter – which is better for business?
• What to do when you’ve optimised your website
• How to design a search engine friendly site in 10 steps

The two most popular social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, have changed how we use the Internet, and how we even interact with friends, family and customers.

Are you like many businesses – you gave Facebook ago, it didn’t work so you gave up and moved on? If this is you, you’re probably like most and have since moved on to Twitter. It’s true that Twitter is an excellent platform for businesses to communicate, but Facebook offers some things that Twitter doesn’t – and to be truly active online, I would say you need an active account on each. Facebook and Twitter have some of the highest daily users of all social networking platforms, and you will find different types of users on each platform.  If you only choose one, you are missing out on a big opportunity to connect.

It is true that Facebook was previously, and still is used, by college students to network and communicate with each other. Facebook does seem the more personal social media tool whereas Twitter seem to be easier to use for business reasons. I think this is because on Twitter, you only have 140 characters to say something and that is enough to share links to your website, blog, etc – for many businesses it is the easy option because it doesn’t take much time to maintain.  By contrast, the usual interaction for businesses on Facebook is to keep a personal and professional/fan page and/or group, and this can be a pain in terms of effort to maintain.  It’s possible for this reason many business people have kept away from Facebook.

Facebook can do something that Twitter has deemed possible yet, creating lists and privacy settings. These two little things that Facebook enables every user to do enable them to have total control of who sees what on their profile, also meaning they don’t have to numerous different accounts/pages.

If you wanted to do this yourself, for your business, you would need to set up a Facebook account. Then, enter in all of your details and then create lists i.e. friends, family, business, customers etc and then you set what each group can see. i.e. you wouldn’t want your customers seeing your personal contact details or your family photos.

Also from your one Facebook profile you can create a business page and promote it on your profile and business website. Encourage your customers/fans to ‘like’ your business page and then when you write something on it, it goes direct to their news feed – this is also a great way to get your customers/fan interacting with you and means your business stays at the forefront of their minds because they are seeing your brand on a daily basis, where as they wouldn’t normally view your website on a daily basis.

Like Twitter, you need to encourage fans to ‘like’ (follow) your page, and engage with you. Post their comments on your wall. You need to make a community that everyone wants to be involved in and so they feel if they share their views and opinions you’ll take note and if needs be, make changes and improvements.

If you have different members of staff maintaining your page (Facebook gives you the option to give admin rights for your page to other users), it would be a good idea to have a dos and don’ts list – so every member of staff knows what is expected of them. It could include the following points:

• Every wall post/comment gets a reply from the company
• What to do if there is a big news story (industry specific or not)
• Your policy on other people’s work – do you promote other people’s articles – i.e. article of the day?
• You could also have a day of the week that you ask questions to your fans, to gain their opinions, competitions and giveaways.

Facebook and Twitter enable you to post photos. To promote the Company and as a great way to encourage engagement from followers, post regular photos of the Company at work, out at promotion events and also quirky goings on that show the Company’s personality (use your own judgement as to what sort of images are ok for your business).

Now for some quick pros and cons of Facebook and Twitter – If you have more, feel free to share below in the comment box.

Facebook pros

• Facebook has over 5 million users, with more than half of them active daily.
• Facebook is a community – everyone helps each, asks and answers questions
• Your posts show in your friends’ feeds, which encourages fast responses
• If set up correctly, Facebook can be like a marketing gold channel
• Things (news, promotions, etc) can spread very fast
• Facebook can be used on computers and mobile devices
• Anything can be posted i.e. links, photos, videos and articles.
• You can use the privacy settings to enable you to stop people seeing certain parts of your profile. Note: Business pages are viewable to everyone, even none-Facebook members.
• Business profiles are indexed in Google
• Facebook is the number one social network in the UK and America

Facebook cons

• Facebook can be a pain to maintain (more time consuming than Twitter)
• Facebook has a lot of games and fun applications – you don’t want your staff playing on these on company time!
• Facebook mods/developers enjoy changing things very regularly and don’t always consult the users – the changes made are not always popular ones.

Twitter pros

• Twitter is easy to use and maintain
• Twitter can be easily accessed on computers, ipads and mobile phones.
• Twitter appears in Google live search feeds
• Posts are 140 characters in length – great to promote links and quick one liners.
• It’s easy to share and re-tweet things
• It’s a great way to get out information quick
• Twitter is always current – on the right-hand side tends to be the top news stories and topics of the day
• It has more than 300,000 new users everyday! These are potential customers for you.
• Amazingly there are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter

Twitter cons

• You need to be active daily – twitter followers are more fickle than Facebook, they don’t hang around long if you aren’t active.
• You Twitter one to one (direct message) or one to everyone – you can’t chat to a few people in the same conversation
• The 140 characters limit can sometimes be too short, although there are some great sites that enable you to have longer messages. Twitlonger, for when you talk too much for Twitter.
• It does have issues with being over capacity – this is due to Twitter starting as a simple text share service. It is improving all the time, although the fame fail whale can become annoying.

I would say to be actively engaging in social media activity any business needs to have an active account on both Facebook and Twitter because they offer different platforms, along with different users.  If managed correctly they don’t take that much time each day and the engagement and feedback you can receive from them far outweighs the time the business is putting in.

It’s great to be able to say you’ve jumped from 100 followers/friends to 1,000 in a day – and if you’re working for a company, I’m sure your boss would be very happy about it!  But whilst short term increases look good for the stats, often they do nothing in terms of results.  By the end of this article you will know the difference between quality followers and quantity of followers.

When quantity of fans becomes an issue – for example because you’ve been given a target – you need to take care.   There’s a raging debate about the worth of a Facebook fan – and we’ll leave that debate for another day -  but it’s clear that some fans are worth more than others.  Factors affecting each fan’s ‘worth’ include their job, their connections and their influence.  Keeping this in mind, you don’t want to drive away your quality fans by using general tactics that traditionally attract the masses.  It’s a better approach to engage with relevant customers and your target audience.

Target the right fans

You want to obtain fans the right way, and you want fans to stick around and engage with you long term.  Effectively you are trying to create and build an online community that your influencers and customers want to be part of, a place they share information with each other and with you.  Make sure your goals and focuses are based on this strategy, and not just on acquiring as many new fans as possible.

Here are ten top tips for engaging with a view to keeping your fans:

1. Know what you are talking about. If you are going to work with social media, be involved in social media. Start your own Twitter account, Facebook page, read blogs and get engaged. That’s the best way to understand the culture, tone, best practices, and protocol.

2. Always be transparent. When you’re communicating in social media, say who you are and who you work for. Don’t try to be sneaky and plant comments, don’t hire people to go out and say nice things about you and stay away from ghost writing. Be genuine and be real.

3. Be yourself. Readers can see through marketing talk. Be passionate about what you do and let that show through your personality. Let people see you as a person, not a mouthpiece.

4. Post frequently. It’s a lot of work, but don’t post to your blog then leave it for two weeks. Readers won’t have a reason to follow you on Twitter or check your blog if they can’t expect new content regularly.  2-3 times a week is a minimum.

5. Add value. Share tips, tricks, and insights. Peoples’ time is precious and they need to get something out of the time they spend with you. Make listening to you worth their time.

6. Respond. Answer questions, thank people even if it’s just a few words. Make it a two way conversation.

7. Listen to what others have to say. Appreciate suggestions and feedback even if it’s difficult to swallow – it will make what you do even better.

8. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t be afraid to say you were wrong and be quick to make changes when you are.

9. Be external. You don’t have to be 100% internally focused. Link to other blogs, videos, and news articles. Re-tweet what others have to say – you’re likely to see it reciprocated.

10. Have fun. If you don’t like what you are doing, others will notice it and won’t enjoy interacting with you.

Avoid gimmicky giveaways and offers

An example of this kind of approach is if you have a giveaway or offer for a limited time to gain some Facebook fans quickly.  Sure, this is proven to work and gain fans fast.  However, there are downfalls to this kind of strategy.  You don’t tend to reach the type of followers you’re after. In fact, in many cases, giveaways and offers can attract the opposite fans to the ones you really want.  They’re just after the promotion and not interested in building up a relationship with you.

Influence does have power

Your influencers will depend largely on your business sector.  Traditionally, influencers are well-known professionals in your sector, bloggers in your sector, twitter members who regularly tweet about your industry sector/products/services, and members of forums who discuss your industry sector.

Influencers could also be followers you already have as part of your Facebook and Twitter communities. These could be people who regularly give you feedback and engage with your and your other followers. These are the influencers you want to target.

Try launching a promotion targeted at influencers

Create an exclusive promotion to target influencers – maybe a free gift, or exclusive sample of your next product. You would need to do this by filter and make it only available to your influencers and not the general public, at least to start with. Get them testing and talking about it.

A way to do this maybe send direct messages with reward codes to your influencers on Facebook and Twitter.  The code would enable them to access your free sample. Also, if you want them to forward the code on to their followers, give them an incentive to do so – maybe a percentage off their next order, or a free exclusive gift from you.  A point to remember when thinking about how to engage with your influencers is that the easier and quicker you make it for them, the more likely they are to engage with you.  Don’t make them jump through hoops!

Incentive ideas that would make people want to join your online community -

• Free knowledge
• Engaging discussions
• Hot topics
• Industry gurus/professionals (featured posts, interviews, quotes etc)
• Giveaways/offers

Summary

The aim of a Facebook fan page is to gain as many fans as possible without using up too many resources or a chunk of your marketing budget. If you add a focus of attracting the right kind of fans, you’re likely to see less quick drop offs and a higher level of engagement and traffic to your page.

Encourage engagement with influencers and get more coverage for your brand from  it. Clearly the success of such a campaign is down to your own business niche, the key influencers you have access too along with the amount of time and effort you put into it.

Could you share you views, experiences and tips with us? Have you had success with Facebook? Have you created your own Facebook community?

Remember customer jobs and outcomes are stable over time. For example, when shaving the ultimate goal is the removal of facial hair, and some other jobs to achieve this are to maximise hair removal, minimise potential harm, and minimise time to do so. These do not change and will not change. In terms of a razor – the current leading solution today – these outcomes can be expressed as maximise effectiveness of blade, minimise nicks, minimise skin dryness, minimise shave time and minimise the number of passes that must be made to complete the job.

What does change though is the degree to which new technologies, products and service satisfy these outcomes. When a new product or technology is launched, the opportunity for value often migrates somewhere else. When an outcome or job has been fully satisfied to the level of its importance, it may be time to look for another or add another job… unless the solution you have in mind to create tells you something different.

To understand this you always have to stay absolutely focused on to what the customer jobs and outcomes are, which of these jobs and outcomes are important and which are unsatisfied.

You will now have a list of all jobs, and outcomes from consumer interviews.

Some businesses like to collect rankings later for a separate set of people, say a statistically valid representation of between 150 – 600 people and asking them rate the importance of all the jobs, outcomes and constraints using a scale of 10 as most important to 1 least and the same for satisfaction 10 totally, 1 not at all.

There is no reason why you can’t do it when collecting data as in our example as long as you get a complete list of jobs and outcomes early on.

This gives you two scores – the importance score and the satisfaction score.

The importance score is the percentage of people that scored importance of the job or outcome at 8 or more. So it is 90% the score is 9.

The satisfaction score is the percentage of people that rated satisfied as 8 or higher. If it is 41% the score is 4.1

You take these scores to see what opportunity is hidden as so

Importance score + (Importance – Satisfaction score) = Opportunity Score.

So on our example 9 + (9-4.1) = 13.9

Please note if the result of (Importance – Satisfaction score) is less than 0 than use 0. So if it is (6 – 8.9) 0 would be out in the formula not -2.9!

It also important to realise that consumers may say that they are satisfied compared to current solutions, and even compared to ideal solutions, but what about ideals that you have in mind? An example – consumers might say they are satisfied with the prices airlines charge, the service they are given and the travel time. You see no good opportunity scores there, and even the opportunity scores compared to their ideal solution are low. But what frame of reference is the consumer using? They are likely using the same planes with a different level of service and features to imagine their ideal solution, because they unwittingly restrict their thinking to current solutions – but just made better. What if your company thinks it can develop a supersonic plane that utilises oxygen as fuel – making it lighter, safer, bigger, quicker and cheaper? Consumers may not even know of the existence of such technology. This is called the companies ideal proposed solution. When thinking of their ideal solutions, current consumers are probably thinking in terms of how current planes be made better – their dream airliner – and commenting on how current solutions perform.  So, you can score current solutions against your ideal proposed solution and see how they match up. Where there appeared to be no exciting Opportunity Scores from your consumer data may this may be a mere mirage, because when judged next to the solution you have in mind and how much better it performs consumers jobs, huge Opportunity Scores are revealed! This is why market research can be deceptive. Better libraries as a solution would not have presented a big Opportunity Score until compared with the ideal proposed solution from within Google. On every job and outcome is blew away the competing solutions, both Search Engines and Libraries.

There is a saying you make your own luck, there is now a new one – “You make your own Opportunity Scores.”

Any such ideal proposed solution will be one that moves us closer to the Ultimate Solution. Now that you know the specific jobs and outcomes people want to achieve it doesn’t take long for you to think of the ways that they can be met in the best way possible. Ultimate Solutions are often hundreds of years away, or physical impossibilities. The Ultimate Solution is where all outcomes are minimised or maximised to zero. In other words all detriments are removed, and perfection is achieved along the parameters that matter to consumers. So in terms of transport if you find the jobs people want to achieve are shortest travel time, lowest cost, complete safety and shortest waiting time  – the Ultimate Solution would give you 0 travel time, 0 cost, 100% safety, 0 waiting time. Ultimate Solutions are therefore nearly always exaggerated examples that will either never happen or are so far in the future they are incomprehensible to us – so for example, the Ultimate Solution to complete the job of transport would be some sort of teleporting system. You could not expect consumers to use that ideal as a frame of reference. So there are always ways that jobs and outcomes that can be judged compared to the Ultimate Solution. If you have an ideal solution in mind, you should ask – how much closer does it take people to the Ultimate Solution from where they are now? Only then you can score current solutions against your ideal proposed solution and see how they match up.

You have to be objective here when analysing your ideal proposed solution. Thinking it will meet jobs and outcomes better when it doesn’t in reality will be fatal. There’s nothing to stop you going back to the market and asking them about how your ideal matches up for people. What matters is that versus the detriments, the value the company’s ideal proposed solution meets really provides something better.

Once you see it, there it is, clear as day and right in front of you – value that perhaps even consumers could not comprehend – but that is tailored made to do the jobs and outcomes they want better than anything else in the world.

You’ll be able to construct 7 types of Opportunity Score –

• Jobs/Outcomes of current solutions
• Detriments
• Jobs/Outcomes vs. consumers ideal solutions
• Jobs/Outcomes vs. ideal proposed solutions from within the company
• Jobs/Outcomes of current Consumer Value Line
• Jobs/Outcomes vs. consumers ideal Value Line
• Jobs/Outcomes vs. ideal Consumer Value Line from within the company

You can also look at how close solutions come to the Ultimate Solution and the Ultimate Value Line.

This stage represents some of the most important thinking you can do inside a company and many people must have input into the discussions.

You now should be able to see different segments, but before we get into the more technical side of value innovation, the most important thing of all is that you build something you are going to be really proud of, something that really excites you and you have a passion for. In order to do that you have to make something that solves a problem you really care about. The challenge you want to overcome has to be something shared by your team, something you really want to meet and conquer. The enthusiasm you and your team have for the challenge will shine through in your product.

If you don’t work on something you really love, what’s the point? Why spend you life making something you don’t care about? You have to choose ideas that mean something to people and that you can have fun with and enjoy creating!

Think of your products as works of art. After all is said and done, no amount of money can beat the feeling of looking at something and saying “Wow – we did that!” and that’s what business is all about! Better still, if you do your homework right, it will be something that people really love and are proud to use, something special that brings a smile to people’s faces and makes them feel good! What a great way to be of service!

Giving better value is about really caring for people more. It’s an external focus which comes from being continually focused on looking at other people’s lives, their thoughts and feelings in lots and lots of detail and then using equal love and care to make something that really makes them happier.

The first step is you need to look at where the opportunity is. From your segmentation, you can see how consumers are grouped based on the famous 4.

You now have to begin to ask yourself, “What can we do here based on what we know?” You need to start coming up with ideas based on the opportunities that the market shows and what you feel you can make.

Based on what you know, where can you see the greatest opportunity scores amongst the greatest number of people? Sure you can come along and provide a solution to any old job, but in reality, the job has to be important and the level of dissatisfaction high (expressed or otherwise) in order to make an impact. That’s what so many “me too” companies don’t get. They make a few incremental improvements to an existing solution and expect people to beat their door down for it – but it’s not going to happen. It’s no good launching a product that just slightly improves on everything else that’s out there. In any event, incremental improvements can and will always be quickly copied.

There are 9 ways to build demand with differing combinations of –

sell existing, modified or new products

to

existing customers, to new geographic markets, or to new types of customers.

Whatever you decide to do, first, you’ll need to focus on the actual value itself. How close can you get to the ultimate solution?

Will you be…

• Making improvements to current solutions?
• Meeting segments ideal solutions?
• Giving segments the companies ideal solution, surpassing their ideal solutions?
• A selection of various ideas from all of the above?

You should now know the famous 4 for each segment and be ready to decide which ones to research further.

Just as with choosing segments, at this point we are not choosing what ideas we are definitely going to pursue, again that comes much later, but we are trying to rule out definite no go ideas if we can. We are also trying to rule out ways of creating better value that are not worthwhile. If you can rule some segments and ideas out now as definite “no go areas”, then you’ll save time on research, because you won’t need to research competitors and their offerings for those ruled out ideas and segments. If time and money are less of a concern then you may wish to include all ideas and segments in your research.

The Right Focus of your mind, energy, emotions and time for value innovation is:

Job – approach – benefits per costs – competition

The main focus should be on the job consumers are trying to do and how well the competitions solutions meet it. Your main focus should not be on the actual approach. Many companies soon become obsessed with the approach – the solution itself and how it works – at the expense of everything else because they thought it up. It’s the classic self centred approach. A company becomes excited by their solution because it matters to them, but they operate in a bubble and forget the rest of the world. The approach is how you are going to do the job better, and of course is very important, yet get the job wrong and it matters not one bit. Likewise even if you get both the job and solution right but forget to measure it against the competition’s solutions, you’ll not excite others with what you have to offer.

You have to know the realities. What are people trying to do? How are they doing it? What are they using? How exactly will what you offer do better?

We now need to assess roughly how we might be able to bring better value to the segments we have found and in what way.

For example you have 3 ideas in mind for a broad segment – men that shave.

The first is an improvement of current solutions – by adding blades to a razor, doubling how long they last, and making them cheaper from a new material.

The second meets consumers ideal solution – a razor that lasts forever made out of a revolutionary composite material. It simply never needs replacing.

The third is the company’s ideal solution – a tablet taken once a month that prevents all hair growth on the face. Now there’s no need to even go through the actions of shaving or remember to do it, let alone buy new razors every few weeks.

As you can see, when you go onto identify competitors in the next stage, how their Value Creators match up to the Value offered by each solution will be very different. Indeed for the third idea, some of the value creators competitors have worked so hard on, simply become valueless overnight – they no longer matter. Contrast this with the value creators used for the first idea, the main competitors are so well suited they could make changes in a matter of weeks to counter us. Value creators are only valuable if they provide the value required by consumers.

Secondly, remember, don’t just focus on the products, focus on the entire Consumer Value Line.  So whenever you have solutions in mind ask “Can we see new and better Value Lines for each of these opportunities, these new solutions?” Look at these especially in the areas of communication and delivery of value. Can you really innovate along the Consumer, Product or Company Value Line? Innovation can take place not just in a product but in a variety of other ways. Across processes, or changing the way a product is marketed, a new business model or a new way of doing things.

From your initial consumer research you should have a good idea of the competing solutions for the jobs and outcomes you want to target. You may have already identified segments of consumers were you feel you can offer something better, or you still may be unsure. As well as looking at the actual Value, you look at the entire Value Line from the value receiver’s side – remember this is -

Identify value – Create value – Look for value – Choose value – Get value – Use value – Evaluate value – Sustain value

An example of two separate Consumer Value Lines for the same product type would be –

Two segments that buy high end ladies designers clothes. Both segments prize designer names and luxury and care little for price, however Segment A enjoy the shopping experience, and being seen buying these designer goods. They will only buy from “The Big Name Shops”. Segment  B however lacks the time to shop, and is more interested in just getting the clothes with the minimum of fuss. They are more price sensitive.

In both cases the Ultimate Goal is “Buy Designer Clothes” but Segment A’s other jobs are “Look and feel important whilst shopping”, “Be seen at the main shops”, “Escape through shopping”, “Be served well”, whilst Segment B’s other jobs are “Save time”, “Save money”, “Quick delivery” and “Easy returns”.

Let’s look at the different Consumer Value Lines and the main Value Factors, in other words what’s the most important to the Consumer at each stage of their Experience.

Figure 9.8 Consumer Value Lines for 2 segments

As you can see the actual value in the solution itself – designer clothes – is exactly the same, but the most important Value Factors are vastly different for both segments. Segment A, is far more suited to retail stores, whereas segment B to online luxury stores.

How well do the current Industry/Product Value Lines in operation meet

• Segments Consumer Value Lines compared to current solutions?
• Segments Consumer Value Lines compared to ideal solutions?
• The companies ideal solution for Consumer Value Lines, surpassing segments ideal solutions?
• A selection of various ideas from all of the above?
• How close can we get to the Ultimate Solution?

The innovation may come in the value itself, but commonly huge innovations can also be made in how consumers look for value (Google, Vista Print, Glide), choose value (moneysupermarket.com, Virgin, Apple, Amazon), get value (IKEA, Dell), and use value. (Apple, Nordstrom). Many of these innovations can of course exist at the same time, and often the biggest innovations drastically change the Product Value Line along many dimensions. In other words, innovation can be the morphing and development of many ideas, and may not be just one brilliant idea! An example is how IKEA brought almost the entire Value Line under one roof – giving customers more choice, quicker delivery and better products for less. It changed the entire consumer experience.

An important point to note, when it comes to thinking up an ideal solution from within the company for the Consumer Value Line,  it’s not about deciding to tailor the Product Value Line in ways that meets the Consumer Value Line best for you as a company – but for the actual consumer themselves. If you think “Yes, we can sell directly to consumers and save them 25% – they’ll love that” you’re thinking in the wrong way. Consumers might want to save 25%, but they also might want choice, impartial advice, trusted retail brand names, so on and so forth. So, when thinking of innovation for the Consumer Value Line, just as with the solution itself, you must focus on the jobs and outcomes and the Opportunity Scores your research has revealed. Value is not value unless consumers think it is.

If you look at this from the company’s side you can see several types of innovation in the Product Value Line to better match the Consumer Value Line -

For example

• Value Creation innovation – Making a new product – e.g. email – that performs the job better – or doing a job that could not be done before e.g. The Sten – a product that helped keep the arteries unblocked.
• Value Communication innovation – Any innovation where you can change how you communicate your value or who communicates your value – Glide was a floss marketed directly to dentists rather than to the consumer due to budget constraints – 18 months later it was the best selling in the USA!
• Value Delivery innovation – Any idea where you can change how the value is delivered – for example travelling dentists, next day delivery furniture, software companies delivering directly. Look for areas where people have to spend time waiting, expend effort, travel to do something or pay middlemen.
• Value Support innovation – Any idea that enhances the use of the value delivered.

A series of internal Operational Innovations in the Value Creators will often take place here behind the scenes. There is also disruptive innovation – this is where technology exists and a need for it in the market is sought. This is the opposite way round from the usual type of innovations which place the consumer first. In other words, it is technology seeking jobs and outcomes that it could better fulfil.

Some things to watch out for because they can harm value innovation –

• Ill conceived growth strategies
• Faulty data collection
• Ideal solutions that suit the company not the consumer
• Missed opportunities
• Poor market segmentation
• Wrong growth targets
• Unfocused marketing, messaging and branding
• Poorly prioritised development initiatives
• Scattershot idea generation
• Value Line innovation that suits the company not the consumer

Let’s now look at how we come up with ideas.

Start by thinking of the ultimate solution to the jobs and outcomes people are trying to perform. The ultimate solution is the one that maximises or minimises everything to the fullest possible levels sought by consumers. It’s the once in a life time pill that stops facial hair growth, the 100% safe instant personal teleporter, the fuel and emission free motor engine that weights as little as polystyrene.

Now these solutions will often be beyond all achievement, even physical possibility, but, all solutions are slowly moving towards them. For example razors are trying to remove hair quicker, more easily, more closely and require less replacement as they do it – all paler shades of the ultimate solution.

Likewise all the value lines for solutions are moving towards the ultimate solution in the consumers eyes too – this time in the form of the ultimate consumer value line. Why ring round companies for loan quotes, when you can get all prices on one website? For example – see moneysupermarket.com

Take a look at solutions and consumer value lines for the segments you want to target and analyse them along the following value constants to come up with the ultimate solution and the ultimate consumer value line. Looking at the ways that products and consumer value lines have changed in the past can help you too.

Let’s look at some of the value constants that stretch across improvement in all industries and the solutions they provide.

• Quicker
• Faster
• Easier
• Better
• Quicker to buy
• More convenient
• Cheaper price
• Cheaper cost of ownership
• Smarter
• More choice
• Lighter
• Smaller
• Number of users
• Greater conformance of results/quality
• Number of collaborators
• More fun
• Less middlemen
• Quality
• More effective
• More accurate
• More storage
• More availability
• More exclusive
• Warmer
• Cooler
• Cooler (as in more hip/more fashionable!)
• Real time
• Better image
• More expensive
• More beautiful
• Healthier
• Bigger
• Faster
• More powerful
• More trusted
• More accessible
• More indulgent
• More luxurious
• Simpler
• Greener
• Purer
• Older
• Newer
• Younger
• Sexier
• Tougher
• Softer
• More comprehensive
• More comfortable
• More customisable
• More opinions
• Bigger community
• More users
• More interaction (with others)
• More interactive (with interface)
• Durable
• Automated
• Less thought
• Less repetition
• Less noisy
  Less messy
• Less waste
• More realistic
• More organised
• More prestigious
• Visual results
• Easier to find
• Greater transparency
• Greater trust
• Greater accountability
• Authenticity
• Not fake (rip off)
• Un-metered/unlimited
• Flat rate
• Converges or adds other jobs

Now perform an ultimate performance 14 analysis and jot down the absolute best use of the value creators to meet the ideal in each of the below areas -

1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion
5. Penetration
6. People
7. Policies
8. Processes
9. Property
10. Perceptions
11. Performance
12. Partners
13. Planning
14. Priorities

When driving innovation these eight questions should be asked about the industry that suppliers the current leading solutions for the jobs and outcomes.

1. Are there consumers who are either unhappy with all of the industry’s offerings or better still that are not being served at all? Consumers that cannot do a job? For example Progressive Insurance decided there was no such thing as an uninsurable individual and covers people who no other insurance company will cover.
2. Can we offer a value proposition that delivers dramatically better results for jobs and outcomes or lower prices compared with others?
3. Can we radically re-define the Value Line for the industry in a way that better meets the Consumer Value Line and with much lower costs? For example as IKEA did in the furniture industry.
4. Which attributes given the Opportunity Scores that an industry takes for granted should be eliminated?
5. Which attributes given the Opportunity Scores should be reduced to below industry standards? This forces us to look at what is over offered and should be reduced.
6. Which attributes given the Opportunity Scores should be increased to above industry standards? This forces us to think about compromises the industry currently forces its customers to make.
7. Given the Opportunity Scores which new attributes should be created that the industry has never offered? This forces to think what new sources of value creation exist.
8. What can be done cheaper, quicker and better, with a favourable effect on overall value?

In all – can we have a value proposition that is dramatically different and better from the rest?  These 8 questions give us a framework to help conceptualise opportunities for innovation in the industry and better cater underserved or overserved segments.

If at question 1 you think you have found people that are not being looked after, very simply, all offerings going after uncontested market space successfully share 3 characteristics. They will be focused on unique and superior value, will diverge from the value curves of the rest of the industry (in other words the features they offer)  and will have a unique and compelling tag line value proposition that appeals strongly to consumers.

If a job or outcome is important and unsatisfied for current solutions or detriments, it is an obvious area of opportunity.

For all jobs and outcomes, scores of over 15 are extreme areas of opportunity! 12 – 15 are pretty good and ripe for improvement! 10 – 12 are worth of consideration in a broad market because they may allow you to focus on a segment better. Scores below 10 are unattractive areas of opportunity.

In the case of high Opportunity Scores compared to ideal solutions, both from consumers and within the company, this shows that the actual product type may be ripe for replacement through innovation, or that there is a lot of value still to be realised with improvements being made to the current favoured product type for the job.

Common mistakes involve using opinion, intuition, and guesswork instead of using the hard data. This can lead to improvements in areas that satisfy unimportant jobs and outcomes, in areas that are already satisfied, or making improvements that negatively impact other outcomes. Now you have your data, you must listen to and use your data! Also, keep a close eye on the weighting scores. Consumers may rate everything 10 or 9s in terms of importance, but when they weight them, you might find that just one job or outcome has over 50 of the 100 allocated points, which tells you a very different story. A score of 50 obviously shows you that in reality it is as important as all the other jobs or outcomes out together!

Post Research – Overserved Jobs and Outcomes

Knowing where the market is over served is also very important, because we are interested in optimising value to the requirements of customers – not just adding as much value as we can. Customers are over served where they are very satisfied, but the job or outcome is not very important. It costs money to make people very satisfied, money that eventually gets added to the price they have to pay. Airlines are a classic example here of how more and more features add to the price! One of the reasons SouthWest Airlines, the leading budget airlines is able to bring parity with the value offered by the more expensive airlines is through its focus on one of the biggest Value Creators of all – great service. Once staff are in the air they have been paid for – great service is therefore free!

If you find these overserved areas you know that you can cut out Value Creators and thus costs, as improving on satisfying the job or outcome is a waste of money – consumers are satisfied enough and the area is just not that important to them. Plus, if the job or outcome is unimportant, its money that your company could better spend elsewhere on improving the things that do matter to customers but where they are dissatisfied. Indeed consumers will often trade cost for being less satisfied with jobs and outcomes that are not important to them.

You can see when a market is overserved because the satisfaction rating is higher then the importance rating.

If there are many overserved jobs and outcomes discovered in a market, then a company may consider taking out cost amongst multiple dimensions and creating a lower cost business model that existing competitors would be unable to match, again the budget airlines are a classic example.

When there are groups of consumers with different sets of jobs to do, or placing of importance on jobs and outcomes, we have what we call a consumer segment. In this case these consumer segments will likely require different offerings because they will respond differently to them. In plain English, what they value is different. Therefore what is suitable for one segment will not be for another.

Segmentation should always revolve around the jobs and outcomes people prioritise first. Not who your consumers actually are but what jobs and outcomes are important to them. The idea is to find groups of people that hold the same jobs and outcomes as being the most important to them – then they form a segment. Great, if you then find that one group are all Men from Bristol between 30 and 35, drinking in pubs in the city centre, you’re going to know where to find the segment – but these distinctions are only looked at, after you have grouped people that hold the same jobs and outcomes as the most important.

All the data you have needs feeding into a cluster analysis program or some type of segmentation software, so we can see if there are patterns – distinct groupings of consumers with the same priorities for jobs and underserved jobs or outcomes. These are segments of opportunity.

There are distinct groups of consumers who want to see improvements along the same dimensions as the others in their group. So you may find the segment of essay buyers that has price 70/30 weighted against quality, a segment that is 50/50 and a segment that is 20/80 towards quality. Within each segment you may find that the exact Value Factors that make up quality differ amongst even smaller segments – so in the 20/80 group maybe a segment that values face to face contact, continual contact and high quality work as the three most important Value Factors and another segment that has high quality work, speed of delivery, and reputation as the three most important Value Factors. You’d know that two distinct offerings or services would be needed right there.

Yet, segmentation provides more than that, because only when we know the different segments can we decide upon ideas, and can we see what competitors are doing for those segments in Step 2.

The question we ask is “What jobs are people trying to get done today that they are unable to get done satisfactorily given the products and services that are currently available?”

You may find an entire segment with a job to be done, or a smaller segment with a group of outcomes for a job that are not being met. You’ll have to pay close attention to the opportunity score; this is where there are unique opportunities. The importance score for the segment is of course important, but if consumers are well satisfied, matching is all you need to do.

Traditionally, people would argue that this is different from segmentation for communicating value, which is how people will respond to the offerings. In other words, some experts argue that we should separate identification of value segmentation from communication of value segmentation. I think the two go hand in hand, because in both cases the value that people want differs. Even though in reality the value you create might be the same you may need to communicate it differently to different segments. It doesn’t harm you to have both firmly in mind now. Later, when it comes to communicating value, it might be time to look at the specifics of communicating the same offering to different segments in more detail. So the two are linked, but at this moment in time, you are looking to see if and how many different offerings will have to be made to best satisfy the jobs and outcomes segments want to achieve.

From this you’ll have found where the biggest Opportunity Scores are for jobs and outcomes, and this is the place where often you really need to drive home your advantage. The Priority Opportunity Score is the highest score, and Key Opportunity Scores are often the next 3 to 6 biggest.

There will be a Priority Opportunity Score and Key Opportunity Scores overall as well as a Priority Opportunity Score and Key Opportunity Scores for each part of the Value Line.

Post Research – Adding the Priority Value Factor and Key Value Factors

It’s also time to correlate all your scores to find the leading Value Factors for not only the value itself but the entire Value Line at each part.

These are the most important jobs and outcomes, and may or may not be well satisfied and therefore there can be overlap with the Priority and Key Opportunity Scores. Whatever the case, they are important, and even if well satisfied, you’ll need to meet them as well as the rest.

This will provide invaluable later on because it is these Priority Value Factor and Key Value Factors (you always have to be comparable here if these are not showing big opportunity scores across any of the 5 types) and the areas with the biggest Opportunity Scores (where we need to be the best) that we are going to focus most of our effort.

Remember that jobs and outcomes can be both Value Factors and Opportunity Scores and often will be both.

A job/outcome will be a Value Factor is it is highly prioritised, and an Opportunity Score if medium to highly prioritised, but unsatisfied.

Value Factors must always be met. That’s why I don’t recommend removing them from the Opportunity Score list. Yes you’ll remove duplication of a little analysis somewhat later on, but what if an Opportunity Score is phased out and that it turns out to be a Value Factor in that was crucial and is not deleted? Very bad news! That’s why I advocate having items that should appear in both lists, be in both lists, rather than using an either/or mentality.

Now with a strict focus on the jobs and outcomes that consumers want to fulfil, and with the ultimate solution in mind, ask if there are ideal solutions that you could develop that outperform the current solutions on offer?  Also, what improvements in meeting the consumer value line could be made – if any?

These changes have to be realistically achievable at a cost that means they can deliver superior value given the price charged. For example, it’s no good developing a jet plan that is 200 mph quicker, if its operation costs twice as much – the net result will be less value. It’s no good trying to sell budget PC’s direct, if the product value line to do so will make them more expensive that those bought from a normal retailer – because that won’t meet the consumer value line better in any way.

What would you, the members of your business like to see as the solution based on what you know about consumers? How close is this to the ultimate solution, how much would it cost to make?

Contrary to popular belief developing great ideal solutions isn’t about lots of unfocused ideas, it’s about generating good ideas, based on a focused set of consumer value data.

The way to do it is focus on the underserved outcomes first, those with the highest opportunity scores and then think of the ideas to solve the problems. What you’re left with is a true reality – the solution better meets the jobs and outcomes because it does “x” with a value line of “x”. When I thought of delivering 2:1 standard essays, I didn’t have to do consumer research, because I knew people were buying essays and I knew the quality was bad. The 2:1 feature therefore identified a huge opportunity – people needed high quality essays and they were unsatisfied with what they were getting. The consumer value line was already apparent – buyers were using Google to look for essays and choose the best company, and essays were being delivered direct via email. There was no need for innovation there, bar being able to do these things better. (Although arguably consumers could still benefit from an essaysupermarket.com idea)

Great ideas are those that will increase satisfaction scores of important underserved opportunities by 20% or more. This may be one solution/feature, but is more commonly made up of many smaller features, or innovation at others areas of the value line.

Some tips -

• Stay focused on high opportunity scores!
• Focus on both the solution and the value line – but always from what’s best for the consumer
• Know what the ultimate solution is
• Know what the ultimate value line is
• Know what the consumer’s ideal solution is
• Know what the consumer’s ideal value line is
• Decide ideal solutions from within the business
• Can you make significant leaps in the way value creators are used and their costs to better meet the consumer value line?
• Be realistic – exactly why does your solution meet the jobs and outcomes better without raising detriments such as price out of proportion?
• Be clear about what features meet jobs and outcomes better, why and by how much
• Aim for a real breakthrough improvement if you can
• Constrain thinking to enhance creativity
• Eliminate bad ideas quickly – always make sure a lot of people will be given a lot of value in their underserved jobs and outcomes
• Optimise the best effort for cost, risk, effort and suitability. For example Bosh managed to serve underserved outcomes well, by focusing on ideas that required little extra effort or cost in terms of modifying current products, little technical risk and are hard to copy, but provide huge value.
• Consumer value lines are habits – they take time to alter these habits to utilise better ways of meeting them – especially the longer the habit has been in place, and the longer the buying cycle for the product. (e.g. how often it is replaced)

Common mistakes include

• Filtering out ideas if a company does not have the required value creators, when at times they could develop them
• Giving concepts for consumers to evaluate, many of whom are often unable to appreciate fully all features and may be unbiased. Consumers for example gave the microwave the thumbs down because they did not fully understand the implications for them
• Losing site of the actual job and outcomes to be achieved
• Thinking your solution provides better value when in reality if does not
• Adding so many features to a solution that it fails to deliver on the ultimate goals and outcomes
• Adding so much cost that the overall value is actually lower to the consumer
• Making a new value line that suits you, not the consumer

Employees not customers are often in the best position to objectively evaluate concepts by determining the degree to which the proposed offering satisfies all the possible jobs and outcomes against the outcomes and opportunity score data provided by consumers.

New products that only provide 3% more value than current ones often fail. Ones that provide 5 – 10% more often are successful and those that manage 20% of more deliver rapid increases in market share, revenue and profit.

Quite often good ideas for ideal solutions can come from looking at the compromises competing solutions force consumers to make… let’s take a look at these now.

A strategic group is a group of companies making products based on a very similar strategy aimed at similar customers. For example, Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar are in the same strategic group.

Seeing what value factors cause buyers to trade up or down to another strategic group is a way to identify compromises that consumers are being forced to make. Toyota knew customers many traded down from the above group because of cost. Enter their Lexus brand, a ‘same for less’ value offering that met the jobs and outcomes of consumers as well as marques like Mercedes, including very importantly close parity on prestige of brand, but for much less.

In another example, the job of undergoing a home fitness regime versus health clubs was looked at. These two alternatives were part of differing strategic groups – but what made women trade up or down to them?

Value pains for health clubs were men, complex machines, self consciousness, traffic in city centres, high costs and time. The only value factor many women saw in health clubs was that is got them out of the house, as staying in they were likely not to bother. That was the main value pain of home exercise – it was too easy to give up or do other things!

A distinct segment cared little for the highly priced extras and luxuries at many health clubs. Curves was born – a 30 min exercise club with 10 machines for women only. The machines are in a circle facing each other; everyone starts at the same time and rotates. From the business point of view, town center locations, lavish large facilities, and expensive complex machines were all cut out – they cost a lot but provided very little value to the customer they were replaced with small rooms, simple machines and out of tome locations.

Another example that springs to mind is eating out – either ‘all you can eat’ – low cost but low quality with quick “time to meal”– or traditional restaurants – slow “time to meal” but high costs and high quality. The value lies between the two – “quick time to meal”, high quality, but low cost. In others words an all you can eat restaurant with low cost, instantly available food of the same quality as in a real restaurant.

Innovation does often not involve the purely new but blends other concepts or takes a new angle from what’s already out there. Very little is completely new.

James Dyson first came across the cyclone concept when he saw how factories used giant cyclone extractors to remove debris from the factory floor – just like a huge vacuum cleaner. He then of course took this idea and applied in miniature to the vacuum cleaner and the rest is history.

When Henry Ford out performed over 500 competitors in the car industry, he did so by achieving economies of scale through a production line method he copied from a meat packers – he used unskilled workers to work on one piece each of just one type of car. The work was quicker, simpler and cheaper. His competitors were all building high priced customised cars with highly skilled workers on a multitude of parts.

Nobi, a bus maker looked beyond the use of steel for buses. Steel as a solution meant many compromises for buyers such as high maintenance costs due to corrosion and high costs due to fuel consumption – value pains. Nobi, taking a cue from the boat industry, made lighter rust free fibreglass buses instead – which cured these value pains.

See how moneysupermarket.com has altered the consumer value line for loans to one that more realistically mirrors what they want, and you may be able to see similar applications in other areas.

Look at the space between similar industries

If you’re trying to think of features, one way is to look at those industries that produce products which do the same jobs for buyers. Often the space between these industries can provide space for value innovation.

For example, Net Jets, the multi billion pound firm, allows members to hire private jets – a concept called fractional ownership.

It looked at the 2 main ways of corporate air travel – flying first class on an airline, or using a company wholly owned jet. The famous four for air travel included cost, convenience, time, pleasant experience, access and coverage. When opportunity scores were looked at first class only performed better over ownership on cost, in all other areas they were compromises or “value pains” for first class users. Yet, when it came to jet ownership, the only value pain was the cost.

Cheap ownership, in other words, this was the one job that could not be done by either industry and its solutions!

A new concept was born. Netjets now promises availability within 4 hours. You can drive straight to your plane, and get a set amount of flying hours every year for a far lower overall cost then ownership. The cost is more expensive compared to first class but not by much, and yet it excels it in every other Value Factor! In addition, over another product – plane charter – plane types, accessibility and training levels were guaranteed.

Segmentation variables are used to identify different segments. They can be broadly classified into two categories – response variables – the ones we use first and then identifier variables – the ones we only ever use after using response variables.

Different jobs and outcomes may be based up the following “response variables” so called because they are to do with how the consumer will respond to an actual offering. You’ll know this from your consumer research, but it doesn’t harm us to state them all together here -

• Exact functional benefits sought (e.g. features, performance, liability).
• Exact psychological and emotional benefits sought (e.g. trust, esteem, status).
• Exact service and convenience benefits sought (e.g. time, ease)
• Exact financial benefits sought
• Priority and importance of benefits sought.
• Cost.
• Use/purchase occasion.
• Usage rate/consumption patters/volume and frequency – high, medium, low.
• Location.
• Loyalty status – unaware, experimenters, satisfied, very satisfied, unsatisfied/defectors.
• Attitude towards product – loves, favourable, indifferent, unfavourable, hates.
• User cycle – first time buyer, potential buyers, regular user non user etc.
• Attitude and sensitivity towards price (e.g. bargain hunter, price quality balance or very best).
• Knowledge of product.
• Application.
• Channels used.
• Sensitivity to promotion.
• Exact functional liabilities and risks sought to be avoided
• Exact psychological and emotional liabilities and risks sought to be avoided
• Exact service and convenience liabilities and risks sought to be avoided
• Exact financial liabilities and risks sought to be avoided

Across the board, because these are all too do with value, these fit into one of four broad types – functional factors (e.g. quality, performance, durability, etc.), service and convenience, financial, and psychological/social/emotional factors such as image and social status.

Remember to analyse these for buyers, users, payers, key influencers, and final decision makers – these are the Key Players.

These response variables allow us to segment consumers based on their hierarchy and importance of jobs and outcomes, attitudes, behaviour, buying patterns and occasion, as we’ve said – how they will respond to an offering because of their different jobs and outcomes they prioritise and how well they feel they have met their Opportunity Scores. In addition, you may find some segments use different Consumer Value Lines.

As you’ve seen from your consumer research, sometimes, consumer’s jobs are stable across purchase/consumption occasions and those are a reliable predictor on any purchase occasion –for example a preference for light/diet soft drinks over normal is well captured by a user based outlook. In contrast however the preference for flavour is more likely to change depending on usage occasion. Another example of how usage occasion can alter things, is how people may consume different brands of beer on different occasions depending on the job to be done – drink at home in private, drink with friends, drink on a date, drink with co workers and so on.

Therefore people can and often are part of many different segments depending on the usage occasion – the job they want doing in the circumstances.

To illustrate optimisation of value, let’s look at Easy Jet’s buyer segment – what they want from the product of air travel is cheap prices above all else. The standard airways find it hard to deliver this because the segments they target buy based on other criteria.

EasyJet has to tailor its offering in the best way possible, and in ways that ensure it can deliver optimum value. This doesn’t mean succumbing to all customer wishes. For example, if consumers say they want free meals – Easyjet would have to raise prices significantly, which in turn would lower the actual value delivered to the customer because price is such an important factor to them!

You should never ever reduce costs at the expense of value to the customer, unless the payoff in price reduction is greater! Banks and foreign call centres spring to mind here. None of us seem to have benefited in anyway from what we have to put up with… which leads you to ask… who exactly has benefited from the cut costs? If you are going to reduce costs then the price savings you pass on must outweigh any loss of value.

You should know by now you can’t just give consumers exactly what they want. Yet you might find useful ideas that you can blend with your own to create something that is a close match to the consumer’s ideal solution, or makes a great ideal solution from within the company. Remember you will have to do a lot of thinking for consumers by thinking in ways they do not… this often comes from accepting some hard nosed commercial realities – sure you can give them more leg room on your economy class airline and meals – but the price will double.. now what does the budget conscious consumer think of the value you’ll offer them? “Give me back cheaper seats!” they’ll scream!

Look at the consumers ideal solutions all along the Consumer Value Line, can you innovate there as well?

Look across time and trends to create unique superior value

We’ll go onto this in far more detail when we come to Step 4 – Context. For now, have an eye on buying trends, sociocultural trends, technology trends, regulatory trends and environmental trends.

Look for clear irreversible trends in their ascendancy, and their impact on value and business models for the ideas that you have. Solutions should fully take advantage of these trends which can be years in the making.

For example, whilst the music industry fought the illegal download of music trend, Apple looked at what people were actually doing. They then tried to help them. They addressed the Value Pains of customers downloading illegally – poor music quality, high search time, and the Value Pains of those buying from stores – having to purchase whole albums, travelling, or waiting for delivery, and the Value Pains of producers – loss of revenue. It did so by creating ITunes where each song could be downloaded/transferred no more than 7 times enough for any users but too little to make it easy to share! In stead of fighting the trend, it observed what people were doing and then created a product to help them meet those jobs and outcomes better.

If you’ve got a great idea, perform a performance 14 analysis.  Start by jotting down the achievable ideal in each of the below areas – remember – keep focused on the famous four as you do! What’s the achievable ideal here for each of your ideas?

1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion
5. Penetration
6. People
7. Policies
8. Processes
9. Property
10. Perceptions
11. Performance
12. Partners
13. Planning
14. Priorities

For example, for ‘price’, what would be your ideal price?  For product, what would be the ideal solution to the problem you have?

Now add some magic! As you look at the entire consumer experience, see if you can add these magic touches anywhere  –

• Make it more fun!
• Make it exciting!
• Make it something people will tell their friends about
• Make it unique
• Make it remarkable

From time to time, as a website owner, you might come across another website where you want to contact the owner.  For example, you might find a site that’s copied your content, misquoted you or is even impersonating your company.  You want to take action – you run a WHOIS search and what happens?  The website is listed as a private individual.  There’s no contact information on the site.  Is this allowed?

The first thing to bear in mind is that business websites have to comply with UK law.  They are required under UK law to give certain information about their company on their website, including their company name, any trading name, their address, registered company number and VAT number (if applicable).  This information is required even if they’re not actually selling goods through their website.

A .uk registrant can only opt out from having their address published on WHOIS if they are a living individual who is not using their domain name in the course of a business, trade or profession – for example, a consumer.

On this topic, Nominet have said:

“If we are made aware of a .uk domain name that is registered to an individual and they are using it as a business website we will issue them notice to change their website so that they do not advertise business activities, otherwise we will remove the opt-out, and the address details that we hold for them will be published on the WHOIS at www.nominet.org.uk/go/whois“.

If you come across a site which is obviously a business but has kept its details private on Nominet, contact Nominet.  Nominet is the registry for .uk domain names and they manage the central database for .uk registrations.  They will issue notice to the registrant of the domain name(s) to arrange for their websites to be changed so that they do not advertise business activities.  If they do not comply, they will be opted in to the WHOIS search facility and their address details will be shown.

If you are concerned about the content of a particular web site, in the first instance, you should contact the registrar associated with the domain name.

Although Nominet are not a regulatory or governing body and cannot comment on the business practices of registrants or the content of their web sites, they state that they take complaints of this nature seriously and recommend you report this issue to the appropriate organisation:

- To report illegal web site content, you should contact the Police. You can find information on your local Police Force at www.police.uk/forces.htm.

- To report financial scams such as ‘phishing’ or ‘fraud’ you can contact the Office of Fair Trading at www.oft.gov.uk or Trading Standards at www.consumerdirect.gov.uk.

- The Advertising Standards Authority may also be able to assist and you can contact them at www.asa.org.uk.

Nominet also have a Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) which you can use if you feel that a .uk domain name registration has caused unfair harm, either in the way it has been used or by its very existence. The party complaining may wish to have the registration cancelled or suspended, but usually they want the registration transferred so that they can control how the domain name is used.

More information about how this works can be found at http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/drs/

If you do not meet the criteria for the Dispute Resolution Service you can seek independent legal advice or obtain a court order.

It may help you to fill in the below Value Charts for your ideas – below is an example for a product which is a quick and easy online business creator.

The numbers in brackets are the weighting in your estimation of how important that aspect is in meeting the Opportunity Score in question.

The number in brackets next to the Opportunity Score e.g. (P.O.S) (30) is its weighting for the consumer based on your data.

For the “Solution Features” box, ensure that you do not repeat the Opportunity Score in your features – e.g. “minimise time to set up business to seconds.” Then as a feature “Speed of Use”.., exactly what feature leads to the speed of use?

Now do the same for the Priority Value Factor and Key Value Factors – those things your data shows you are important but satisfied.

You need to now analyse the costs of the Value Line for the product. This is a brief overview, but it ensures that you can eliminate any ideas at this early stage that just wouldn’t be financially viable.

• How much will it cost to create value – for example to get the resources such as raw materials, people and technology required?
• What expense will be incurred to communicate value to the right people at the right level given the Industry Value Line and what competitors are doing there?
• What costs will go into getting the effectiveness of communication right?
• What partners/distributors will need to be paid?
• What will delivery costs be?
• How big is the potential market?
• What’s the buying cycle?
• What price would you need to sell at?
• How many would you need to sell and over what time?
• What costs can you reduce or phase out?
• What’s the downside – how much could you lose?

Look at the price corridor of the mass of users – the prices that most people pay for products of the same form, those of a different form or function but fulfilling the same job. Now you need to specify a price within that price corridor based on the better value you offer, and the difficulty of imitation – a target price that represents a better deal fort he value provided. In some cases the more difficult it is to imitate the more the price can be pushed higher if you have patents a higher price is more likely.

If economies of scale or lots of users are key, and an idea is more open to imitation, lower prices may be more advantageous so the offering can get the maximum userbase.

Do not underestimate a free offering. It’s a law of nature that you have to give to receive, and that given time, you’ll reap what you sow. Look at Facebook and how it’s free use has attracted users. Also, Microsoft, who realised Bill Gates vision – “to get a workstation running our software onto every desk and eventually in every home” in many ways including providing hardware manufactures with an Operating System that was free to end user. Once control of the actual environment had been gained, this allowed Microsoft to control a lot of what went on in that environment.

With any pricing decision, the aim is to create a cost structure which is hard for competitors to match as well as being profitable by streamlining it. Look at Value Creators such as operations, location, raw materials, staff, product simplicity and partnering as ways of reducing costs. Finally, if you still can’t meet the target pricing based on your costs, look at innovations in pricing models such as renting, time shares, part ownership, equity share and so on.

On the value canvas, each product in an industry is plotted on its rating per Value Factor, to create a Value Curve. In many industries there are two distinct value curves which all players have converged upon – creating hotly contested marketplace. These are usually a group of competitors competing on very similar Value Factors trying to out compete each other little by little – with low cost producers fighting a game of catch up by tempting buyers with low prices.

There is no reason why you can’t create Value Canvases for products/offerings outside one the industry, and instead, focus on jobs along the bottom axis and opportunity scores along the top.  For example in the custom essay industry you could add editing, essaybanks, tuition and EssayBay on there as well, as all could be chosen!

Can you create Value Canvasses for your products and main competitors? Do you know where we are trying to compete?

Do you know what your “me too” products are (converged value curves), your migrants (potential for new value curve) and your pioneers – those set to take uncontested market space are?

When looking to address these look for big wins – those of disproportionate influence. There will be small things you can do that have huge benefits!

An example Value Canvas for games consoles is below.

Can you really create unique superior value?

For each idea that you have for a great product, decide upon the foundations below that we’ve covered already.

• Value Mission – This is simply stating in a clear, short statement, the reason the brand, product or service exists in terms of the superior value it aims to provide and to whom.
• Value Position – This is what you actually get for your money – e.g. less for more, more for less etc.
• Value Proposition – The whole set of benefits that an offering comprises, in terms of what you do for people, how they think about you and how they feel about you. The more sustainable these are – in other words the harder to copy – the better. The greater the value they provide over competitors offerings – the better.
• Unique Selling Point – Unique selling point or unique selling proposition. The main reason you are different! The more unique Value you provide the more remarkable it will be.
• Brand and Positioning – The personality of your offering and how it is positioned distinctly against other offerings in ways that will matter to your customers.

It is a good idea to list these against main competitors to see if there are real differences in the areas that matter. Then, once you have done this, look at the Consumer Value Line along the different elements of Value. Now you can check whether the greatest Value Pains consumers feel from rival products are removed by the offering. Does your offering have a dramatically different chart in terms of what’s in the spaces compared to other offerings? If not it is likely to be too similar!

How much better is it at meeting the famous 4? An example Value Map is below – mark in how your idea differs in each box compared to the leading offerings in meeting the famous 4. Remember to look at the Performance 14 analysis of your ideas, so you can pick and choose anything in addition to the product that will have a significant impact on the famous 4. Give your solution hypothetical satisfaction scores based on your knowledge of it, and any other research you want to carry out on employees within the business or consumers. At this stage there is no need to test ideas, we are only looking to short list them.

Let’s look at a real world example of how to innovate to create superior value with a new product.

First we look at the job being done, and the outcomes sought, in this case they were all entertainment based jobs and outcomes, which meant Cirque du Solei shared a lot in common with other forms of nights out and entertainment from the consumers point of view.

Then these decisions were considered …

1. What can we eliminate from the product because its value/cost ratio is poor?
2. What can we reduce from the product because its value/cost ratio is poor?
3. What can we raise/enhance in the product to provide superior value?
4. What can we create and add to the product to provide superior value

When Cirque du Solei addressed these questions they found several features (Value Factors/Value Creators) could be eliminated from the circus.

• Animals – they cost a lot to look after, train and transport – many customers also felt they shouldn’t be kept by a circus and considered it cruel. The value to cost ratio was therefore wrong – high cost but little value.
• Circus Stars – these people were small in number and had high power in traditional circuses as they were in high demand – this allowed them to command even bigger wages. Compared to movie stars and so on, they had little bearing on value for customers – yet they were high cost – they were therefore phased out.
• Comfortable seating – the traditional circus seating and surrounds were saw dust like and were replaced with more luxurious surroundings and comfort.

There were 3 main Value Factors/Value Creators remaining from the traditional circus – clowns, tents and acrobats. Each were scaled down and modified in some way, and made to fit with the rest of the show – for example clowns were made a little less slapstick, and the leading circuses often used 3 tents, with 3 separate shows at one time, greatly adding to cost, and adding little value as only one show could be watched at a time!

Cirque then looked across different industries, and borrowed heavily from theatre and street performance Value Factors, blending them with the circus product to create something new in a refined atmosphere, and perhaps more entertaining than any of the 3 products on their own!

When creating a Value Canvas from this, it was found that the leading circus were all competing on the traditional circus based Value Factors – bigger tents, star performers, lots of animals, clowns etc, and smaller local ones where doing the same but not able to do so with as much leverage. When Cirque was added to the canvas its value curve was wildly different, as there were many features it had which circuses did not.

Yellow tail became the most popular wine in the USA in a manner of a few years – and did so in a highly contested marketplace, with declining customer numbers and increasing competition. It leapt from zero to 112,000 cases in 2001 to 7.5 million cases in 2005, despite many other Australian wines being launched in the USA before it.

Using a Value Canvas, all the main players were competing on similar Value Factors trying to outdo each other with incremental innovation based on Value Factors such as complexity of flavour, awards, vineyard prestige, aging quality, prestigious image, price and marketing for increased awareness. There was nothing wrong with this, what’s what wine drinkers wanted. However, Yellow tail looked outside the Industry – what did drinkers of other drinks love about their drinks – what were the Value Factors these non wine drinkers were seeking from their drinks? More importantly, what did they dislike about wine – what were the Value Pains it gave them?

All in all, the question they wanted to answer was – “Why do non-wine drinkers not use wine for the job of drinking?”

They found that from their market research that non-buyers saw wines as complex, snobby and serious. This stopped them even trying to get into wine drinking. Wine made them feel stupid. They wanted to maximise simplicity of flavour, minimise complexity of flavour, minimise complexity of label, minimise chances of wasting money and minimise choice. So Casella, launched Yellow Tail – just two wines, one red and one white – with simple blends. The packaging showed a yellow kangaroo on a black label and emphasised the fun and approachable Aussie nature. There was no mention of vineyards or awards. The same bottle was used for both red and white wines. The only promotion was to the staff at retailers who were sent Yellow Tail merchandise, no other initial advertising took place. (Later as word spread millions were pumped back into marketing). Yellow Tail was priced above budget wines but below many premium wines, and in customers eyes delivered the quality of a premium wine without the cost – this further enhanced word of mouth and market penetration.

The US specialist wine marketer and distributor, W.J. Deutsch & Sons had a successful track record of building great wine brands and undertook the complicated process of bringing a product to market in the U.S. with fifty different sub-markets governed by different laws. They had strong distributor relationships which increased the speed with which the success took place.

It was the biggest success in the history of the USA wine market.

Aging and complexity of flavours were eliminated, greatly reducing the costs in producing value that this segment of buyers did not require and keeping wines on the store shelves not in the winery. An increasing trend of younger wine drinkers to pick based on brand and grape type was also taken advantage of. Now according to Deutsch “The most evident change with consumers is the movement toward fruit-forward, easy drinking wines, which has really evolved in the last 5 to 7 years, and Yellow Tail has had a lot to do with that change. Consumers have gotten more sophisticated and more educated about value. They’ve gotten smarter about what sort of quality they can get for what they are paying. Sophistication doesn’t mean complexity. Consumers have been tortured with a sea of new products, regions and labels and they are telling us that they value simplicity.”

The Famous 4 included– ease of drinking, ease of selection, soft fruit flavours, fun and adventure. The brand really added to the perceptions of value and allowed users to overcome psychological barriers. No other wine came close – it had an entire market to itself because it was meeting the needs of none wine drinkers all the others had ignored!

For each job, it’s the market researcher’s role to find out what the outcomes needed to perform it well actually are. In each case, they need to look at whether the consumer seeks to minimize or maximise these outcomes and exactly by how much.

For example, for the job of cutting an electric line with a saw four outcomes maybe – “minimising the amount of kick from a saw”, “minimizing the amount of time the cut line is blocked”, “minimizing the weight of the saw”, “minimizing the mess created whilst cutting”. So ensure that you dig down until you get actionable units of data. If a consumer says “minimise the sawdust that gets in the way” – in the way of what? How much is acceptable? Why is that important to you? If they can’t give a measurable unit, can they compare it to other solutions, e.g. better than x?

Another key question is “What other outcomes does this outcome help achieve?”

Outcomes can sometimes reveal other outcomes. So in the example above if you ask what outcome does “minimise the sawdust that gets in the way” achieve they will say “increasing the time I can see the cutting line.” So you have another outcome “Maximise the amount of time I can see the cutting line”.

Try and capture data on all desired outcomes. Only then can you know which are important and underserved. Remember, like Ultimate Goals and jobs, outcomes can be functional, emotional/psychological, time or convenience, financial or social and the metrics to measure their success must be defined by the consumer! This is how they judge the value of a product or service!

Be careful not to assume things. If a consumer says “identify plagiarism quickly” What sources do they mean from? What exactly is plagiarism? How do we measure quick? What exactly is quick? Subjectivity is the enemy of market research!

If quick means 5 minutes and it’s twice as quick as anything else on the market, there’s no need to go to the expense and time of developing something that scans in 5 seconds, especially when doing so would make it so expensive most people would not buy it. A competitor that makes the 5 minute scanner may be able to beat you on price and thus ultimately value because they are closer to the performance the consumer is willing to pay for.

If an airline passenger said “minimise the time taken to check in” – what would they mean? Queuing? The time spent with staff? Finding the help desk? Is 5 secs, 30 secs or 5 minutes acceptable in each or longer? Or is it quicker than the lines around them, or a combination of all these factors?

For example a pesticide company found after its market research that the biggest Value Factor was buying a pesticide the worked really well. It went away and developed the most effective bug killer ever – in terms of percentage of bugs killed when sprayed upon them it was by far and away the best on the market in performance. However sales were disappointing. When consumers were quizzed through market research, they remarked that the spray did not work. The company knew this wasn’t true, yet the problem was that it killed bugs over one to two days after treatment. An important distinction was found – consumers judged effectiveness not by the likelihood of the bugs dying alone, but also and more importantly by the speed at which they died. The need was not so much to kill bugs but to kill them quickly, indeed almost instantly.

Also, don’t let consumers use words like “eliminate” or “prevent” unduly – they imply a target of zero, which may not be that critical! If a consumer says this, ask them if they really mean this or they mean minimise and to what level. Eliminate sound, is very different to “minimise it to a level the human ear cannot detect.”

When captured properly desired outcomes for jobs stay stable over time. They are fundamental measures of performance that are inherent to the execution of a specific job. They are the same now as 100 years ago! Take the job of cleaning your teeth – these functional jobs were and still are removing plaque, fresh breath, and protecting gums! Another, but emotional job, is “feel like you have cleaned your teeth” – one of the criticisms I have heard levied at electric toothbrushes is that you don’t feel like you have cleaned your teeth and I agree! Perhaps a hybrid shaped model would be the answer?

If anything does change with these jobs,  it’s only the priority that these jobs take due to trends, for example, more people might value the job of “protecting the environment” now when they buy a car then they did 10 years ago. The functions to satisfy them, and indeed the products are always changing and improving, and it’s your job to make them and make them better than the rest.

Step 1 – Part 11 – Now we look how the consumer chooses solutions.

Now we look at the process of the consumer assessing prospective solutions and choosing the best value from solutions. This helps us to identify value, create it, and enhance the effectiveness of our communications.

On the value line:

• Consumer Value line – Identify value – create value – look for value – choose value – get value – use value – evaluate  value – sustain value

• Product Value Line  – Identify value – create value – communicate value (level and focus) – communicate value (effectiveness) – deliver value –support value – monitor value – sustain value

Choosing solutions – Choose/Communicate Value (how consumers weigh up solutions to the value they need)

1) What part did you play in choosing and buying solutions and did other people get involved?

• Who were these other people and how did they get involved?
• If other people were involved in choosing and buying spilt up 100 points between them and yourself for influence on looking for solutions.
• Whose opinion did you value most in your choosing decision?

2) Did you decide to buy in the end and how long did it take you from start to finish to choose and buy?

3) Where you a first time buyer, potential buyer, regular user, or non user at this point?

4) Where did you eventually buy your solution?

• Where did you go to buy solutions? Rank all of these in terms of 1^st best to last.
• Please tell us the 5 main factors you look at when you choose and buy solutions of this type, spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10.

5) Tell us what your ideal experience for choosing and buying solutions would be like.

• Please tell us the 5 main factors an ideal assessment and buying of solutions here would have, spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10.
• How close did your choosing and buying experience come to that ideal solution?
• In what 3 ways could it have been better?

6) Split hundred points between quality and price for how much they affected your buying decision.

7) What’s your attitude and sensitivity towards price (e.g. bargain hunter, price quality balance or very best)?

Where did your solution rank in terms of cost with out of 10, 10 being most expensive, 5 average and 1 cheapest?

9) Did you look at different types of products (e.g. disposal razor and electric shave) or just one?

• What was your attitude towards the different product types you were looking at – love, favourable, indifferent, unfavourable, hate?
• What features did solutions have to do just to be considered?
• What made you choose the product type of your eventual solution?
• How much did special offers play a part in your decision?
• After you decided the specific product type, what attitudes towards the different makes you were looking at – love, favourable, indifferent, unfavourable, hate?
• The one reason you choose the solution you did was….
• Did you find anything hard to understand, or information that was hard to find?
• Was their things in other solutions you would have loved in the solution you eventually chose?

10) What do you think about the brands of different solutions?

• Please tell us the 5 main factors of the best brands, spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10.
• Please tell us the 5 main factors of the worst brands spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10.
• Please tell us about the ideal brand.

11)  What were the biggest 3 things the company did that made the solution that encouraged you to buy? Spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10.

• How much did communications such as advertising, play a part in your decision?
• What appealed to you in the way solutions were marketed to you?
• Who marketed best?
• What did you dislike about any solutions that were marketed to you?

12)  Did staff play a part in your decision and how?

13)  What 3 things did you hate the most about the experience of choosing and buying solutions? Spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10.

14)  How does where you buy solutions affect the following –

• How other people see you
• How you feel
• How you think
• Time and energy
• Finances

15)  How has how you choose and buy solutions here changed in the last 5 years?

16)  How do you think it will change in the next 5 years?

(Experienced consumer? If you have not already, consider asking questions about solutions that will allow you to construct a Value Map)

Let’s take a look at an example of how consumers choose and buy solutions. Consumers seem to be buying cars based on 4 Value Factors in the segment we are looking at – price, size, green, and mpg. Yet the cars in this area seem to be competing more along the lines of speed and looks in the features they are trying to outperform on, as well as communicate in their promotions. We also find that the ideal solution and the current solutions are very far apart, meaning that there is a lot of value yet to create. We also find that although many people first look for cars on the Internet, they actually go and choose them in dealerships, and buy them in dealerships because the knowledge of sales people and the ability to get a test drive are big factors. We also notice that there is a trend where more and more people are looking on the Internet, choosing in dealerships, then buying on the Internet.

Step 1 – Part 5 – Now for each job, get the Opportunity Scores for the outcomes.

Getting the outcomes is only half the story, because we need to know how important these outcomes are and how well these outcomes are met. Then we can see areas of opportunity, because we get what is called an Opportunity Score.

1. On a job by job basis, what are the weighting points out of 100 for the importance of each outcome, splitting 100 points between them all? In other words for each job there are 100 points you can split up amongst the outcomes.
2. Rank the importance of each outcome from 1^st to last
3. What’s the importance of each on a scale of 10 – 1, with 10 being most important?
4. How satisfied are you with each on scale of 10 – 1, with 10 being totally satisfied?

Do this for outcomes within each job. So if you have 5 different jobs you will have 5 outcomes in 1^st – one for each job.

For example, if you were developing a plagiarism scanner we may have the Ultimate Goal of detecting plagiarism and the jobs to complete that would be -

Scan quickly

Minimise speed to less than 10 minutes for a 2500 word essay – weight 50, importance 9, satisfied 5

Minimise speed to set up scan to less than one minute – weight 30, importance 6, satisfied 9

Minimise speed to generate report to less than one minute – weight 20, importance 5, satisfied 8

Scan accurately

Maximise Internet plagiarism found a 2500 word essay to 99%  – weight 40, importance 10,  satisfied 3

Minimise incorrect identification of plagiarism to twice on 2500 word essay – weight 30,  importance 7, satisfied 8

Maximise time to check results by clicking on a link – weight 30, importance 6, satisfied 8

Scan easily

Minimise speed to start scan to less than one minute – weight 60, importance 6, satisfied 5

Maximise time to check results by clicking on a link  – weight 40, importance 4, satisfied 10

Don’t be worried if some outcomes stretch over several groups and are repeated.

Already after looking at the above jobs, areas of opportunity are emerging – for example speed of scans and the amount of plagiarism found.

Your SEO strategy should include obtaining links from other sites.  Very simply, this can count as ‘votes’ for your site in Google’s eyes and they tell Google something about your content.  But not all links are worth the same.  What factors influence what a link is worth to you?  Whilst almost all links to your site are going to have a little bit of value, knowing which factors make a more valuable link will help you focus on obtaining links from sites that will have the greatest benefit for your site.

Most important: Trust

Google trusts some links more than others.  There’s no definitive way of figuring out which are trusted domains, although you could probably stab a guess at which in your industry are likely to be trusted – i.e. the big hubs and main news sites that people in your industry go to.  The trust of any domain is calculated by search engines based on calculations made by analysing trusted seed sets.   A link from a trusted domain is worth far more than a link from a domain that has no trust.

Very important: Authority/Importance of domain

Google considers some sites to be more authoritative than others. As for trusted domains, there’s no hard and fast way of knowing if a site is considered to be authoritative although you can probably identify some that are likely to be, from industry knowledge. See our article ‘How do I know if I have an authoritative domain‘.

Very important: Keywords in anchor text

Getting a link with your keyword in is much more value than getting a link with your site address or site name.  For example:

<a href="http://www.angelseo.co.uk">SEO</a>

…is going to be far more valuable than:

<a href="http://www.angelseo.co.uk">www.angelseo.co.uk</a>

The first link example tells Google that our site is about SEO and is relevant to the search term ‘SEO’ so helps us rank better for that term.  For more info, see our article ‘the value of anchor text in links‘.

Important: PageRank

Every page can pass on link juice to the pages it links to.  Each page on the internet has a passable PageRank, the maximum amount it can pass to the sites it links to.  Every time it links to another page, that figure is divided a little bit more.  So for example, let’s say hypothetically the passable PageRank of a page was 6.  If that page links to three pages, it’s only passing a value of 2 to each.  The amount of PageRank (link juice) that is passed by a particular link is important.  Some SEO experts attribute it more importance than anything else but nowadays, it’s a combination of things that give value to links.  Still, PageRank, taken with relevance, authority, trust and anchor text, makes up one of the most important factors.

For a basic overview of PageRank, see our article ‘How does PageRank work?‘.

Relevant: Link is in the content

The position of the link on the page linking to your site is important – a link positioned in the content is more valuable than a link positioned in sidebars and footers and so on.  This is probably down to two things.  First, often the links in sidebars and footers are found on every page and Google can therefore see that they are a general link, not specific to a particular piece of content.  Secondly, Google will look at the content around the link for relevance and if the link is contained in a sidebar or footer, there likely won’t be any.

Relevant: Link is not with many other links

SEO experts tend to agree that the position of the link on the page in relation to other links is relevant.  If your link is in a long list of links, it’s less valuable than being positioned in content.  So similar to the above point, but the point is here that the link isn’t surrounded by a lot of other links.

Some bearing: Other links on the page

It’s thought that the quality of the other links on the page is relevant for the value of your link, although this has less bearing than other factors.  Still, it’s likely that Google will give more value to a page containing a small selection of quality links, than a large collection of random and sometimes spammy links.  The latter suggests the links may be paid, which Google does not allow.  Further, a good quality select collection of resources is more likely to receive inlinks itself so will be more trusted than a huge collection of less valuable links that nobody is likely to link to.

You may also like our articles on ‘how valuable is a link for SEO‘ and ‘link relevance, authority and trust‘.

This is about adding complementary offerings or services in order to create superior value.  In others words, helping people do supplementary jobs with your solution.  These are solutions to Value Pains – things you can do that free up compromises traditionally associated with the solutions you seek to improve.

For example, one of the main Value Pains for people going to the cinemas is babysitting; if you were in the cinema business you could look at the effect of the cost of getting a babysitter killing demand and could invest in staffed crèche facilities on certain nights.

The same, (sound proofed concept!), could even work at a restaurant if the children were easily able to be seen from each table.

Changing functional/emotional bias to create unique superior value

Do the majority of competitors solutions focus on functional or emotional aspects, where Opportunity Scores show segments can also be better served by doing the opposite of the rest so add emotional value to functional, and add functional value to the emotional?

One example is Cemex – domestic cement producer in Mexico who entered all buyers into a weekly draw – the winner gets their extension built for them! QB is a Japanese hair dressers. The usual session in Japan takes 1 hour, there is lots of pampering, massing, coffee etc QB knew some people had no time for this tradition and cut this out, concentrated on the functional and got the time of a hair cut to 20 mins – halved the price and still earned more profit per hairdresser and venue than traditional hairdressers.

Step 1 Part 3

Find the Opportunity Sores for jobs people are trying to do when they use value.

Now you have a list of jobs you want to know how important they are to doing the Ultimate Goal, so you need ask for weighting of each job in order of importance to completing the Ultimate Goal.

Ask

1. What are the weighting points out of 100 for the importance of each job, splitting 100 points between them all?
2. Rank the importance of each job from 1^st to last
3. What’s the importance of each job on a scale of 10 – 1, with 10 being most important?
4. satisfied?Using your current solution, how satisfied with doing each job are you with each on scale of 10 – 1, with 10 being totally satisfied.
5. Is this the best solution available? If not what is? If you were using the best solution, how satisfied with doing each job would you be on scale of 10 – 1, with 10 being totally satisfied?
6. If you were using your ideal solution, how satisfied with doing each job would you be on scale of 10 – 1, with 10 being totally satisfied?

Step 1 – Part 4

Find the outcomes people are trying to achieve for each job they are doing or would like to do.

Getting your list of jobs complete is vital to good market research, because jobs lead to outcomes which we can then measure.  When we know what jobs people want and what outcomes they seek, we know how to outperform along the Value Line, because we have a target to aim for.

It’s to collecting outcomes we now turn.

For each job you would ask.

To complete that job well, how would you do it? What things would you need to happen?

(This is where you collect outcomes – you know when you have found an outcome because it could have been around for hundreds of years and is dependent on the job being done – not the solution. So minimise number of passes across the skin is not an outcome because it assumes the solution is a razor. Minimises time taken to remove hair is an outcome and has been around thousands of years before shavers were invented!)

1. To what level must each of these outcomes be maximised or minimised?
2. How would you measure success?
3. Can you compare success to other solutions in any area?

(Customers often use other solutions as a frame of reference – remember all good quality and performance is relative!)

The data you need must give you specific metrics consumers to define the successful execution of the Ultimate Goal and each job.

Just how comfy does that seat have to be and what makes it comfy? Just how quick does the service need to be? What is “quick”?

Your questions must lead to you getting data that is actionable. This thereby improves your chances of giving the consumer something that delights them!

Typically desired outcomes can be split into 3 steps –

Actual outcome desired (amount of vibration or cutting accuracy for example.)

Direction of improvement (minimise or increase)

Unit of measure – metric (number, time, frequency, likelihood and often competitors solution)

So for a plagiarism scanner a desired outcome for the job of “Detect Internet plagiarism” the outcome maybe – “Increase likelihood of finding plagiarised sources to 99%” and a measurement of success would be – “Always find more plagiarism than Turnitin”.

Step 1 – Part 6

Now for each job and outcome, ask about detriments/constraints that may prevent consumers from either using or buying a new product or service.

Think of these as removing obstacles that prevent people doing a job altogether or under certain circumstances.

Such detriments are often functional, emotional, social, time/convenience, psychological, or financial in nature.

Ask –

1. What gets in the way of doing these jobs and fulfilling these outcomes?
2. What outcomes were you trying to satisfy and couldn’t?
3. What things are you trying to avoid when you complete these jobs and outcomes?
4. What don’t you like about doing the job?
5. What does the solution not do well? What do you hate about the current solutions you use?
6. What takes too long when you use that product or do that job?
7. What costs too much?
8. Does they way people may think about you stop you?
9. What things does your chosen solution not do well?
10. Describe the worst/best experience you had with your solution.

This is a way of finding out the detriments people have to experience. These may well not be glaringly obvious at first. For example, the fact I have to throw my razor blade away every 2 weeks is obviously a detriment, but because I am so used to it, I may not see it as a big deal. But if one day I didn’t have to do it, suddenly I’d realise what a pain it actually was!

Finding out if something is a detriment is easy. Ask -  Do you like doing it? Would you avoid it if you could? Is that a good thing or a bad thing – a positive or a negative?

Take the device that requires diabetics to take small blood samples on a strip. When having a diabetic episode, they were suffering hazy visions, and shakes, hardly the best of times to be handing a needle! A new product did away with the needle and made it easier to record samples whilst having an episode, and soon achieved a 45% market share.

Step 1 – Part 7

Now for each detriment, get the Opportunity Scores for the outcomes associated with it.

Again, as with outcomes, we need to see how important these detriments are to consumers.

1. What are the weighting points out of 100 for the importance of each detriment outcome splitting 100 points between them all?
2. Rank the importance of each outcome for 1^st to last
3. What’s the importance of each on a scale of 10 – 1, with 10 being most important?
4. How dissatisfied are you with each on scale of 10 – 1, with 10 being totally dissatisfied?

Step 1 – Part 8

Consider using the Kano Test.

This is a great way to work if you are looking at competitors’ product features or proposed features you may want to introduce. Here you ask how respondents would feel about certain attributes present.

They then go on and rate them as

1. Delighted
2. Expect it that way/must be that way
3. Neutral
4. Not like it but could live with it,
5. It must not be that way.

Here you can see what could be dropped due to indifference, what needs to be focused on and excelled because they either increase or decrease satisfaction – attractive features, and what is enough just to meet the normal standard. For example satisfaction does not increase from a car buyer if there are no leaks, squeaks, and rattles, they are just expected not to be there, but if one of them occurs dissatisfaction will occur, as you know these are Qualifier Value Factors. These are “Deal Breakers” – in that if a consumer can’t get just one of – for example for budget flights,  book over the web, find a destination they like or get the best prices in a deal, no amount of excellence in these factors or all the others will matter as the deal will not be made!

The market research plan can be split into 7 phases.

1) “Why?” Why exactly are we doing this?

• The ultimate research objective (what do we want to find out?)
• Main questions to be answered
• Problems to be solved
• Level and scope of analysis
• Decision alternatives (our options – what we can do at the end of our research)

At this point it’s absolutely vital you are very clear about what you want to do.

For example an airline set its main problem to be solved as – “Will offering an in flight internet service create enough incremental preference and profit to justify its costs against other possible enhancements we could make?”

Then the main questions to be asked were identified, e.g. “How many passengers will use it at different levels? What type of first class passenger is most likely to use it? How much goodwill will be added to the airline image?”

This is a very narrow focus, equally, as an airline manufacturer you may ask “What craft can we develop that does the job of long distant transportation better?” which is far broader.

2) “Who and What?” Who do we need to speak to? Who and what do we need to analyse?

This of course largely depends on the “Why?” part at Phase 1 which gives you the scope to work with.

• Who you will survey (for example, consumers, customers, employees, non users etc.)
• What you will survey (for example companies, trends, products, Value Lines, Performance 14 etc.)
• How many of them you will survey
• How you will find them
• How you will choose them
• How you will incentivise them

3) How? How are we going to get our information?

• How are you going to gather the information? Your approaches need to be set. Think about whether you need observational research, focus groups, surveys, behavioural data, or experimental research. Experimental research is the most scientifically valid of all – simply this is the experimenting with doing what you propose but on a small scale to test results.

• Secondly think about the research instruments to collect the primary data– questionnaires, qualitative measures and technological devices such as neurological scanners and think about the contact method and – mail questionnaire, telephone interview, personal interview, and online interviews all should be considered.

• Thirdly, you need a time line for all this to happen

4) Now at the fourth phase, it’s time to collect the data. This is where you design your data collection methods and then go to work. You have to focus on getting the right sort of data to avoid all sorts of complications.

5) During this time, and afterwards you’ll have to analyse the data – objectively. Avoid the trap of using the data to confirm what you thought or wanted!

6) Present the findings in a report format, usually within a Value Plan.

7) Make a decision.

Execution of Research – Consumer

Okay it’s time to begin our research. Let’s follow this process now for Step 1, part by part.

Step 1 – Part 1 Get some identifying data

Get some identifying details early on. Nice and easy questions help break people in. This is a great place to collect identifier variables like age, sex, job, salary, location, family size, and so on.

Step 1 – Part 2 – Find the jobs people are trying to do when they use the value in a solution

On the value line:

• Consumer Value Line – Identify value – create value – look for value – choose value – get value – use value – evaluate value – sustain value

• Product Value Line  - Identify value – create value – communicate value (level and focus) – communicate value (effectiveness) – deliver value –support value – monitor value – sustain value

For any job, most consumers will be using something, or doing nothing at all. We need to find out what people are currently doing and what they think about it all – only then can we offer something better! Not only does this help us make something better, it also helps us with the information we need to communicate the value to them at a later date.

Market research is very useful for finding out how people prioritise the different aspects of what ‘better’ is. Whilst is relatively easy to see how things could be improved broadly, it’s more difficult to know what improvements consumers really value and exactly why they want them. We can find these out by looking at the fine details of the jobs and outcomes they need to meet.

Your objective here at Step 1 Part 2 is to get a list of all the jobs that lead to a successful completion of the Ultimate Goal to be achieved.

You can of course suggest jobs the consumer might want to use the solution for they might not have thought of based upon your own viewpoints or previous respondents answers.

Consumers – Identify Value (how consumers see value they need)

Let’s see when the consumer found out they needed a solution.

1) When did you first realise the need for a solution?

(Try and get to the job they were trying to do!)

2) What’s the main thing you wanted to achieve with the solution?

(Be prepared to ask a few Whys – we want to get to the Ultimate Goal!)

3) Did other people help you realise you needed a solution? Who were these other people and how did they get involved? (e.g. as a user, buyer, payer, influencer etc)

4) If other people were involved spilt up 100 points between them and yourself for influence on realising the need for a solution.

Consumers – Create Value (how consumers imagine the solution to the value they need)

A lot of the time the consumer knows about current offerings already and/or creates the Ultimate Solution in their mind and goes and looks for it, on their way they may find solutions that exceed their expectations or fail to find anything that does, and not buy or settle for something that makes them compromise.

1) What solution did you already use to do the job at that point, if any?

2) What other solutions did you have in mind?

(We want to find out what other solutions that were available were considered.)

3) Did others suggest these solution(s) and what were they?

• Who were these other people and how did they get involved?
• If other people were involved spilt up 100 points between them and yourself for suggesting solutions.

4) Did you imagine an ideal solution or solutions that you weren’t sure was available or existed? Tell us about these solution(s).

(The idea here is to find out if there are solutions being dreamed up that are not available at the moment.)

• Did other people help you with imagining this ideal solution? Who were these other people and how did they get involved? (e.g. as a user, buyer, payer, influencer etc)
• If other people were involved spilt up 100 points between them and yourself for imagining solutions.

5) What’s the best solution you have used to do this job?

6) Do you still use it now? If not, why not?

All others questions in all Steps from here when they refer to “the solution” are about the best solution they have used!

(See the example in the tips section below for an idea of what we want here from Questions 7 to 15.)

7) Describe carefully step by step what you did with the solution –

• When receiving/unpacking it
• Learning how to use it
• When using it
• Getting any help with using it

Has the way you use the solution changed since you used it the first time? If so how?

9) How does using that solution or doing that that job well affect how you feel and others feel about you?

• What positive feelings does it give to you?
• What negative feelings does it give to you?
• How does using that solution or doing that that job affect how you feel others feel about you when it does not go well?

(For each answer if you feel there may be further reasons ask – Why? It’s not enough to say “makes me feel smart” – or “it makes me angry” why does it)

10) What does using that solution make you think about the job?

• What positive things go through your mind when you think about it?
• What negative things go through you mind when you think about it?

(For each answer if you feel there may be further reasons ask – Why?)

11)  Does using that solution or doing that job effect how others see you – if so how?

(For each answer if you feel there may be further reasons ask – Why is that important?)

• What must the solution avoid doing here?

12)  Does using that solution or doing that job effect how others treat you – if so how?

(For each answer if you feel there may be further reasons ask – Why is that important?)

• What must the solution avoid doing here?

13)  How does the solution affect time and effort?

(For each answer if you feel there may be further reasons ask – Why is that important?)

• How does it make your life easier?
• What must the solution avoid doing here?

14)  How does the solution affect you financially?

(For each answer if you feel there may be further reasons ask – Why is that important?)

• What must the solution avoid doing here?

15)  Does the solution you use need to work/integrate with other solutions? If so describe what jobs they have to do there.

16)  Are there other jobs you would like to do at the same time that the solution does not perform?

17)  Are there any other places you would like to do the job but can’t?

(For example in the 80’s – “I would like to use my phone whilst moving around”)

18)  What would be the ideal solution if you could use a magic wand and make it?

19)  How close does the best solution you’ve used come to your ideal solution?

20)  How has how you use solutions here changed in the last 5 years?

21)  How do you think it will change in the next 5 years?

Finally – do you have an experienced consumer here? Consider asking questions about solutions that will allow you to construct a Value Map. You should have in mind top solutions before you do this. Be prepared to expand the list if they use solutions you have not heard of.

Finding Out Jobs to Be Done – Some Tips

As you go along you’ll have identified the Ultimate Goal and a list of smaller jobs needed to complete it. These jobs can happen together or one at a time and sometimes you’ll have a combination of both.

Remember that jobs, as providers of value can be functional, emotional, social, time/convenience, psychological, and financial in nature, and we need to assess all of these because they add to value in their own way.

Let’s deal with functional jobs first – let’s use an example of the job of cutting a piece of wood, there are far more functional jobs than first meets the eye.

This is an example of what you’d be looking at from Question 7.

We could split the job into consecutive jobs along the Value Line – with 5 – 15 being the functional jobs that we assess at this stage.

1. Realising you need a saw (identify value)
2. Thinking of the ideal saw (create value)
3. Looking for the best saw
4. Choosing and buying the saw

—–

1. Unpack the saw
2. Learn how to use the saw
3. Store the saw
4. Get out the saw
5. Plan the cut
6. Adjust the saw
7. Start the cut
8. Operate the saw
9. Complete the cut
10. Clean the saw
11. Pack away the saw

—–

1. Maintain the saw
2. Decide if and when to buy a new or better saw

All the time there are the continuing jobs of “ensuring safety and “getting help if required from customer service.”

But these jobs go beyond the purely functional. For driving a car for example there may be 4 jobs, all happening at once –

1. Look successful
2. Get there safely
3. Save money
4. Be green

Now let’s look at the other jobs – in our example we look at a 50 year old man using an electric saw to cut and make things around the home.

Emotional jobs (Questions 9 and 10)

1. Enjoy making things
2. Feel of use to the wife and family
3. Takes pride in finished articles

Psychological jobs (Question 11)

1. I know I can rely on my saw
2. Another less thing to worry about
3. No need to worry about money as it’s cheaper
4. Making things is interesting

Social jobs (Questions 12 and 13)

1. A good saw shows I’m serious about DIY
2. Show friends handy work
3. Make things for family
4. Help wife with things she needs making

Time/convenience jobs (Question 14)

1. A good saw saves me time
2. The self sharper saves me time
3. Quicker doing things myself which my saw allows me to do
4. Avoid getting help in
5. Avoid having to buy things if I can make them

Financial jobs (Question 15)

1. Save money through DIY
2. A good long lasting saw saves me money in the long term
3. The self sharpener saves on blades

So you can see there’s a lot more to using any solution than meets the eye! Jobs just like value happen along lots of different dimensions.

As you can see, each Ultimate Goal (for example sawing wood or getting from A to B) usually has several jobs required to complete it and in most cases each job has about 10 outcomes to complete it well. The outcomes always define the success of the job, and hence contribute to the success of the Ultimate Goal to varying degrees. There are usually 50 – 150 types of outcomes per Ultimate Goal, split amongst all the jobs.

Step 1 – Part 9

Ensure that your data for the jobs and outcomes has everything included below, if it does, ask some questions to patch it up where necessary!

• Exact functional benefits sought (e.g. features, performance).
• Exact psychological, emotional and social benefits sought (e.g. trust, esteem, status).
• Exact time and convenience benefits sought (e.g. service, ease)
• Exact financial benefits sought.
• Exact functional detriments sought to be avoided.
• Exact psychological, emotional and social detriments sought to be avoided
• Exact service and convenience detriments sought to be avoided
• Exact financial and detriments sought to be avoided

And finally, the

• Priority and importance of benefits sought and their satisfaction with these and detriments to be avoided

Step 1 – Part 10

Now we look at how the consumer looks for solutions.

Part 10 is the first part of our questions concerning others components of the Consumer Value Line.  Specifically, as well as using the value in the product, we still need to know about their experiences along each part of the Value Line and the Value Factors (jobs/outcomes or features) they seek from it.

Some things to watch out for

• If features are stated, record the feature but ask – “What would or does that feature let you achieve?” As with all outcomes you must get data in measurable and concrete terms.  You need to know how something is either minimised or maximised by a specific amount. In other words from your side, what job or outcomes was the feature allowing them to do and to what level?
• If you need clarification, ask them how well the job/outcome would have to be preformed compared to current solutions out there.
• Don’t let consumers use vague immeasurable terms.
• Re-read about the data analysis problems you read earlier, – you have to dig down to the information you need in the format you need it.

So at Part 10, we now look at the process of the consumer looking for prospective solutions.

On the Value Line:

• Consumer Value Line – Identify value – create value – look for value – choose value – get value – use value – evaluate value – sustain value

• Product Value Line – Identify value – create value – communicate value (level and focus) – communicate value (effectiveness) – deliver value –support value – monitor value – sustain value

Looking for solutions – Look For/Communicate Value (how consumers find solutions to the value they need)

1) What part did you play in finding solutions and did other people get involved?

• Who were these other people and how did they get involved?
• If other people were involved spilt up 100 points between them and yourself for influence on looking for solutions.

2) Were you looking for solutions or did you hear about solutions first before looking?

• Where did you first hear and/or find out about possible solutions?
• Name and rank all the places you heard about and/or found out about possible solutions from 1^st to last in terms of usefulness.

3) What made you look for new solutions?

• Where did you first look for new solutions?
• Name and rank all the places you heard about and/or found out about possible solutions from 1^st to last in terms of usefulness.

4) Where you already using a solution before you started looking?

• If so, what was your loyalty status with the solution you were using – unsure, experimenting still, ready to defect, unsatisfied satisfied, very satisfied?

5) Which place you looked for solutions was best and why?

• Name the 5 main factors that made it the best place to look for solutions, spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10.
• In what 3 ways could it have been better?

6) What would be your ideal place to look for solutions?

• Name the 5 main factors that make it the idea place to look for solutions, spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10.
• How close was your experience of looking for solutions compared to your ideal?

7) How did communications you saw and received from companies play a part in looking for a solution?

• Which communications were best?
• Name the 5 main factors that made them the best, spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10 for the best ones.
• In what 3 ways could they have been better?
• Which communications were worst?
• Name the 5 main factors that made them the worst, spilt 100 points up between them, rank each out of 10 on importance, and give each a satisfaction score out of 10 for the best ones.

How does where you look for solutions affect the following –

• How other people see you
• How you feel
• How you think
• Time and energy
• Finances

9) How has how you look for and hear solutions here changed in the last 5 years?

10) How do you think it will change in the next 5 years?

For example – Google, supermarkets, websites, the Yellow Pages, dealers, classifieds, adverts, radio and so on are all routes to market – places people look for or hear about solutions. Our aim here is to find out where people look for solutions, what they like best about these places, and if at all, how they could be improved. This helps us to choose routes to market to focus on and to possibly develop new routes to market that others may not have considered but serve the consumer better.

As well as gaining traffic for your website through Google’s image search, it makes sense to optimise your images as this makes your site faster and can positively impact your SEO in other ways.

Just as for content, when it comes to image searching, Google likes to deliver a really good experience to its users. It therefore issues guidelines for optimising your images and promises to rank your images higher in its result if you follow them.  Google recommends you provide it with a sitemap with URLs of your images (you can do this through Google’s Webmaster Tools) in case it doesn’t find all of them through crawling your site.

1. Avoid embedding text inside your images

This is recommended because search engines can’t read the text within your images.

2. Name your images well

This helps Google understand what the image is. A lot of digital cameras name images with undescriptive file names, such as DSC00001.jpg which tells Google nothing. ‘car.jpg’ is better than ‘DSC00001.jpg’. ‘red-car.jpg’ is better still. ‘red-ferrari-2009.jpg’ is better than that. And so on.

3. Use descriptive ‘alt’ text

Alt text tells Google something about your image. In addition, users who are visually impaired, and people with slow internet connections, may not be able to see the image and will get the alt text instead. So a good image description in the alt text is good for SEO and good for user experience too.

A poor use of alt text:

<img src="red-ferrari-2009.jpg" alt="" />

A better use of alt text:

<img src="red-ferrari-2009.jpg" alt="red car" />

A much better use of alt text:

<img src="red-ferrari-2009.jpg" alt="2009 Red Ferrari" />

Don’t ever fill your alt text with keywords (‘keyword stuffing’). Not only does it provide a poor user experience but Google will easily detect it and penalise your site in the rankings as a result.

4. Ensure images are in context

Google will pay attention to what else is on your page when deciding how relevant your image is, and whether to rank it well. If your page is about red ferraris and your picture is of a red ferrari, you’re sending a clear and consistent message to Google about the picture and it can be confident the picture is indeed a red ferrari.

5. Optimise your images for speed

Use software like fireworks to do this. Faster pages will be ranked better in Google – again they make for a better user experience.

6. …but ensure they are still good quality

Although Google can’t ’see’ the quality of your image, if you present a clear and good quality image, other websites are likely to link to it, a benefit in Google’s ‘eyes’.

7. Specify width and height for all images

The user’s web browser can start rendering the page as long as it knows the dimensions of your image. So this speeds up your page and improves user experience. Google does pay attention to page speed for rankings.