Here are some marketing drills and exercises you can use.

The Red/Blue Drill
Testing Your Customer Focus
Get four marketing documents, representative of different kinds of work (for instance, a planning document, a positioning document, a brochure and your web site). Using two different-color highlighters, go through these documents and highlight in one color words that refer to you, your products or your company; then repeat the process, highlighting in the other color words that refer to your customer.

A customer focused marketing organization would produce the results where the page is filled with customer-focused words, and is almost empty of product focused words.

The So What Drill
Determing the Real Value of Your Product
Here's an exercise you can do to gain a real understanding of what value you bring to your customer. It's easier with a partner.

One of you answers the question: "what does your product (or company) do?" You say "So what?" Your partner has to answer that question by explaining why his previous answer has importance to the marketplace. When he does, you say "So what?" And your partner has to answer again.

This goes on until you reach some absolutely fundamental value for which there is no answer to "So what." And providing that value—whatever it turns out to be—is what your product or company really does.

The What They Do Drill
Finding the Right Path to Product Evolution
Figuring out the direction to take your product is difficult. It requires time, and process, and research. But you can't commission research until you have some set of hypotheses you need to validate. Here's a way to develop them.

Pose the question: "what do our customers do when they buy our product." Start from the moment they determine a need to the moment they discard your product for whatever reason. To the best of your ability, chart every step, every movement they take. Not just as it directly touches you, but as it touches on that total experience of which you are part.

Now, for each discrete step you've been able to chart, ask yourself: is there some way this can be made easier or better for them?


The Marketing Synapse Drill
Finding the Hidden Marketing Opportunities
Your marketing dynamic comprises many individual moments when you have a receptive marketplace to which you can present a message. We call these "marketing synapses." Synapses occur constantly, and many of them are hidden. Here's a way to uncover them.

Examine your buying cycle. From the moment the customer determines a need to the moment they discard the fully consumed product. Track each movement within that cycle—every moment of communication about your company or product. Ask yourself who the actor is, what action they are taking, what the best outcome for that action might be, and if that outcome has any marketing value to you.

Create a table with the following column heads:

ACTOR

ACTION

OPTIMAL OUTCOME

MARKETING VALUE

Now, take each individual moment in the buying cycle and break it down into the granular elements it comprises. If you determine that the optimal outcome from the moment has marketing value to you, then you can allocate budget to reach that outcome—the more value, the more budget.

Here's a sample that illustrates how you might track the simple moment in time when your technical specifications are reviewed by an engineer to make sure they're compatible with existing infrastructure.