How to start your distributed business
Know your business
You have to be familiar with what you do, where you do it, whom you are doing it for and why are you different from others. In this article, we briefly talk about the importance of market research, user testing, product branding, and business positioning. This series is not intended to be a launch-your-business book, but I wanted to touch base on those areas where a distributed model can shine, compared to traditional businesses. First, let’s talk about market research.
Doing market research is a must to minimize risk. Like any other product or service, yours can be tested before its launch.
There are many use cases for you to do some initial research on. You are launching a new product or service or expanding your office to a new location while keeping the business operations distributed. This book is not a UX or market research guidebook though so I only cover those aspects of market research that can be different when you are a distributed business. We will discuss initial desktop research, online user testing, and product positioning strategies.
How to do desktop market research
As a distributed business, your market is where you want to be active. Before entering the market, I would strongly suggest doing some initial market research to minimize the risk of entry. There are three critical goals for every market research.
First, is the market you want to enter ready for you? Even if there is no apparent need for your service or product, would they be interested in buying it?
Second, is your product or service vital to that market? If you are at this point, you might know if your product or services solve an essential problem – hence it is crucial for the market. However, does this problem exist in the market where you want to enter?
Also, third, do you have competitors on the market and what are they doing as of now?
All in all, you want to test the needs, the customer insights, and the market insights.
There are many options to do this right, but keep in mind: not just businesses but markets have limitations as well. The more limited a market, the more likely you need to use local support for market research. Markets are limited by the stage of their development, language, and geography. Doing desktop market research for the UK market from the US – is much more comfortable than doing the same for let’s say the Polish market. You can also skip the whole national market approach and focus on a global product, which can be bought from anywhere by anyone – but if you want to test different markets, you need to keep it in mind when you need local support.
I want to highlight that as a distributed business, and you can do pretty much anything online regarding market research. Do you want to test if there is a need on the market for your product? Why not try to check how many people are searching online for a product like yours? How many people are following topics related to your service and what are they talking about? Online conversations and consumer habits are pretty much transparent now, and you need the time and effort to gather relevant insights from them. You can use social media monitoring tools for a quick test run to do all the research you need and check the results and insights on one dashboard. Finding competitors is also can be easy and straightforward online. Also, in the end, if you still need help, hire local support: a virtual assistant with knowledge of the local market and language or a local market research business. They can be super valuable to gain in-depth insights into a specific market or industry.
How to test your business
User testing is vital for those who are building a new product or launching a new service, and they want actual feedback from possible customers. There are many options on how to do user testing, but before you jump into it, you have to determine three things first.
Who is your target audience? You have to know and profile your ideal customer. It helps a lot on the user testing research because either you use a 3rd party service provider or go out and test publicly on a forum or community, you have to know whom you are expecting to answer and provide feedback. It also helps you to ignore anyone who’s not in your target audience.
How unique is your product or service? Do you need to explain it before you can gather actual feedback? How can you pitch it in a few sentences so everyone can understand it right away? In the following chapter, we will talk a bit about positioning, which might help to clear things up on this as well.
What is the goal of your user research? Do you want new ideas? Do you want feedback? Do you want customer opinions and insights? What is the ideal situation that you want to walk away with after successfully testing?
If you already have a user base and your product or service is an addition to many existing ones of yours, asking for feedback and insights for a little discount incentive from your customers is a must. If you did it right, you already have a social media following community and a newsletter community under your brand. Ask them what they think about your new product or service.
If your product or service is entirely new or you are launching your company from scratch, turn to remote user research services. These companies offer you the chance to speak with actual would-be customers remotely.
How to build a public image/positioning
Positioning your company is crucial to your future success because ultimately, your position as a company will define your place in the market. If you don’t have a clear vision about yourself, what your company does and for whom you work, you will lose sight of your progress. However, positioning as a distributed company means much more than that. It will define your workflows and also the very foundations of your company structure.
First, positioning matters because, with that, you can distinguish yourself from your competition. Also, as a distributed company, your positioning or brand image will be the first selling point for customers. As you don’t have a shopfront or you might not do any robust personal networking, your online presence is the only thing that keeps you in the loop. You should always maintain, change and rely on it.
There are three strategies to position yourself as a company. Of course, these are general concepts, so you always have to apply or combine them to fit your particular business needs.
The industry leader. This approach is excellent for those who can claim the such quality of service or expertise that can be fitted with this strategy. No matter your competition, you can argue that your business is the leader or expert in the field. However, there are two problems with this strategy: without relevant background, the leadership claim can’t be fitted, and second, this is the most common approach. It is hard to become an industry leader if you become one, and you might not need to claim the title at all.
Industry pioneer. It is more fitted for those companies that have a creative, out-of-the-box, and innovative approach to their services. The innovative initiative is the very essence of your position, and you can share how differently you do the work. Hint here, by stating that you are a fully distributed company, and you are already a special one amongst others.
The expert. It is excellent for those who are not dealing with an all-rounder approach and only focusing on one thing. If you are a digital production agency, you might be familiar with 360-approach, where you do pretty much anything that is digital. With the expert approach, you can do just one or maybe two types of work, i.e., you are a digital agency that’s focusing only on email marketing. The narrow focus gives you a competitive advantage, and as you are focusing only on one thing, you can claim expert status.
You can also combine the industry leader and pioneer categories or the expert and pioneer categories to get a more solid position.
However, positioning doesn’t stop here for a distributed company. A market position also affects you as a company. If you are transitioning from a traditional setup to a distributed company, you can streamline your operations with a new positioning approach. If you are an all-rounder digital production agency, you can narrow down not just your focus but your team as well, and only work with a small group of experts focusing on one thing.
We have talked about transparency and its importance before, and I want to highlight that transparency also helps with positioning. With a transparently shared approach, you can design and publish thought leadership materials that can help you to claim the desired position on the market. Any inbound marketing materials you push out, whitepapers, webinars, surveys, blog posts, etc., all of them are tools in your hands in positioning.
Having a solid vision of where you are and how you approach your industry will help you to attract more clients and raise more awareness about your business. With a stable position, it is also easier to market yourself online. Positioning your company should come after you have a clear vision of the market and your business model’s viability.
Liked this post? Share it:
