S14 EP13-16 BUILDING IN FRONT OF YOU: THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY - WILLIAM EASTMAN

How To Determine If Your MVO is Enough, Too Much, or too Little?

• Early Beliefs and Assumptions
• How Long Do You Stay The Course
• What Is Your Offer Missing or Overkill
• Where Are We Today

EPISODE 13: What Did We Believe To Be True
Last week (Episodes 9-12) we covered the process for building your MVO (Minimal Viable Offer). This week the focus is on mistakes and lessons learned from trying to make the early assumptions work.

The problem for potential hosts, as we experienced running a terrestrial radio station, was the lack of access to media due to its price point. Focusing specifically on business owners / entrepreneurs, they lacked the opportunity to use the power of the medium because of affordability. We were the second strongest station in the area, 10,000 watts, and serviced an area of over 1 million potential listeners. Our math determined that it didn't take many sales from hosting a show or advertizing on the station to pay for access.

We tested the idea out by offering varous packages for new hosts, any where from free to 1/3 of what terrestrial would charge. During this three month period we didn't pay attention to the nervousness of being on the air and how it inhabited some guests and host; bad mistake.

To restate our original beliefs, we thought if our target population could become well known brands by having their own shows and advertising on the station selling every slot would be easy.

EPISODE 14: How Long Do You Try To Be Right?
Our process for testing the offer:
The First Offer 1.0: Get-On-The-Air
Our first shock occured when tracking the performance of shows; the number of listeners and their location. Over time we noticed no change in the numbers and when inquiring with Hosts about their network of people, they didn't promote because of the fear of sounding stupid or unprofessional - so the show was not being used to support their marketing and sales efforts.

The Second Offer 2.0: Becoming a Professional Host
Although in the first version of the offer Hosts received training, the issue was not our confidence in them, it was their confidence in themselves.

We wouldn’t put an inferior offer on the air so the initial training satisfied our production quality standards and the rest the Host would learn from doing. We failed to adequately address their self-confidence and expanded the process to build enough confidence to bring prospects and clients to their listening audience.

The Third Offer 3.0: Becoming a Professional Podcaster
This was a simple and logical next step. Since the majority of IBGR’s shows are live, we don’t engage in post broadcast production of the recordings. If the LIVE show also serves as the podcast, it is simple to expand the onboarding process to include professional podcasting.

The Fourth Offer 4.0: Becoming a Professional Content Creator
Given today’s internet world, marketing and perhaps everything has become content creation. We used to talk about dynamic websites that needed new content perhaps twice a week. Now it is new content daily and even several times in the same day.

Addressing this demand we realized what a great opportunity to use our media platform and content production process as our solution. This moment led to the last element of our MVO, not sure we can call this a MVO anymore, creating a marketing agency for the Hosts and Advertizers.

EPISODE 15: What Were We Missing?
The problem we didn’t solve was both a brains and hands issue. Although at the end of 13 weeks the Host would have 52, 12:30 podcasts and 30-50 pages of show notes, they still didn’t effectively deploy those assets - either during their season or after.

Instead of scratching our heads and thinking bad thoughts about our clients, we had to realize the offer was still incomplete. At this point, if I was totally honest with myself, that if I knew we were building a marketing agency, I might not have started the business.

We had to start a marketing agency!

There I said it. We had to build the capacity to handle some to all of our Host’s marketing responsibilities otherwise we couldn’t hold accounts. This is part of the painful process of building a winning offer. We started with our assumed MVO (Minimally Viable Offer) based on our experience from terrestrial radio. The first offer was marginally successful. From that point on we kept experimenting with the MVO and enhancing it until it covered the entire content creation to broadcasting process.

EPISODE 16: The Current Offer
Now before I pontificate on this is our final iteration of a MVO, this is our thinking to date. When we do another BIFY (Building In Front of You) is Season 16 or 17, you'll receive another honest analysis.

The Offer

1. When you are qualified as a Host or Sponsor, part of the process is assessing your greatest need - marketing, sales, or influencer.
2. We will audit your online presence to find missing areas for messaging.
3. We will collectively build a plan that supports or assumes most of the Hosts marketing responsbilities.
4. We will provide 30-35 qualified and warm leads to preload the shows.
5. The Host will go through the onboarding process to create a professional show, podcast, and source materials for new marketing collateral or creating a book.
6. All Hosts, active or inactive, are invited to a weekly 'Inservice' huddles to share latest performance data and training on using IBGR platforms.
7. IBGR will actively support weekly shows through social media to increase listeners and traffic at the Host's website.

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​Just typing this makes it apparent how far we were off from the original assumptions and how much more we needed to do. As for time, the stubbornish of the founders drove us to try to make something work that was insufficient. How many of you are there or been there?