Marketing problem-solving concepts I use that you need

Whether you're resolving an issue for yourself, a customer, or a team member or identifying fresh challenges within the business, you'll encounter problems of various shapes and sizes.

It will enable you to:

Define the problem

Produce potential solutions

Evaluate potential solutions and implement solutions.

The more successful you can be at solving problems ( better, faster, cheaper)  the more successful you will be.

Here are simple 8 problem-solving frameworks to carry around with you:

1. Master First Principles

Think like a chemist and boil a process down to the fundamental parts that you know are true and build up from there.

First Principles is really the practice of deconstruction. Picking something apart. Disassembling. Deducing.

It removes assumptions and conventions and lets you get creative when problem-solving. 

Go deep with 3 steps:

• Keep asking why:  Use the rule of 5 to get a few levels deeper

• Challenge everything: Get different perspectives for levels of reasoning. Get in the habit of doing your due diligence and get out of the habit of the previous way of doing things. Expose assumptions by getting the specifics, get evidence to see if they're credible or not, and get perspective from other people. 

• Deconstruct and reconstruct:  Deconstruct an idea into its fundamental parts, reconstruct the parts into something better, test and repeat until you have a better solution

2. Measure vs Magnitude

Two components determine something's value to you:

• Magnitude: The value of something at a specific point in time.
  Example: Paid ads, email blasts.

• Measure: The period over which that something provides value. Example: Organic traffic, case studies 

Normally we have a bias towards thinking about magnitude (the launches, spikes etc), but when making decisions, what really matters is ‘measure’ as they build over time.

Both magnitude and measure are great and important, but they have very different purposes and uses.

3. Awareness/The Customer Journey

Not all leads are created equal. A marketer’s job is to meet people where they are. Every person has a different journey, and the best thing to do is help them along the journey and teach them along the way.

The prospect awareness goes into five distinct phases:

• Most Aware: They know your product and want the deal.

• Product-Aware: They know what you sell but aren't sure it's right for them.

• Solution-Aware: They want a specific result but don't know your product provides it.

• Problem-Aware: They sense a problem but don't know the solution.

• Completely Unaware: They know very little or nothing.

Turning someone from completely unaware to most aware is called ‘the customer journey’.

You can reverse-engineer the customer's journey to your product or service by mapping it out.

It will vary for each business, but the goal is to:

• Identify the key stages of the customer's journey, customising the 5 awareness stages to fit your customers.

• Understand what customers want to achieve at each stage.

• Identify the touch points to help customers achieve their goals at each stage and guide them to the final purchase stage.

4. Cost-Value Balance

The problem:

• Spending a ton of money on ads to acquire a lead.

• Spent time nurturing them

• They're finally in a place to convert and pay only to ask“A bit expensive, do you offer any discounts?”

Pricing should be determined by the perceived value, not merely the cost or profit margin.

Customers need to feel they're receiving a great deal.

This is the Cost-Value Balance, it's crucial for understanding what makes a deal compelling.

A 1:1 Cost-Value Balance means customers get what they pay for, but it doesn't give them a compelling reason to choose your product or service.

A 10:1 Cost-Value Balance ratio makes customers not only stay but also become advocates.

If customers cancel due to high costs, it signals an insufficient Cost-Value Balance.

Instead of immediately lowering prices, get creative on how you can show more value. Examples:

• Plug and play Templates

• ConsultingA Done with you service

• Courses

5. Idea minimalism

The simpler and less something is, the better.

Reject complexity, minimise assumptions and fight expansion at all costs.

Just like product, marketing expands over time - more and more is added to it. Another channel, another tactic, another automation.

The more you add on, the more it’s difficult to maintain.

The goal in marketing is NOT more, it’s better.

Better systems, better leads, better automation. Not more.

Reject complexity when simplicity will do. The simplest explanation is preferable to one that is more complex. Simple theories are easier to verify and execute.

Simpler is better as it relies on fewer assumptions.

A lot of Marketing is about educated guesses, you don’t know something will work, you have a ‘pretty good idea it might’.

Minimising assumptions helps you be more right more times and less wrong less times.

6. Addition by subtraction

Both product people and marketers share the habit of overexplaining.
(product people: overexplain features, marketers: overexplain benefits) 

The minimum path to value is about figuring out the simplest and quickest way to help someone grasp enough information to decide whether they want to use your product or service.

If you removed everything that wasn't crucial for someone to feel confident in making a decision, what would it be like?

The more choices you have and the more complicated they are, the longer it usually takes to make a decision. As time drags on, the chances of actually making the decision tend to decrease.

This concept is relevant to any multi-step process, like funnels or onboarding flows, for example

Take inventory of every single step between the input from the user and the output you want to get them to. Such as actions users take

Remove all non-essential elements: Do an audit of all the steps and ask yourself “Is this essential to get someone to the end goal”. The goal is to stress test everything and only what’s truly essential will remain.

Reconstruct and iterate: simply fit choices for the user by breaking down complex tasks into smaller steps. Avoid overwhelming users, keep it short and simple. It may take a few iterations and going back to point 2. 

More with less. Can you improve a system or process by removing elements instead of adding them?

Create a path with the minimum number of steps and actions required to see the value of your product or service.  

7. Opportunity costs

Opportunity cost is the cost of the next best option. Think about both short-term and long-term opportunity costs.

Short term: returns realised immediately (e.g paid ads)Paid acquisition channels almost always outperform organic acquisition channelsLong-term: compounding returns realised over time (e.g. referrals, SEO)organic acquisition channels almost always outperform paid in the long run



3 examples of Opportunity Costs:

Short-term vs long-term: Achieving long-term goals requires making uncomfortable short-term decisions, and short-term happiness may necessitate sacrificing for long-term gains. Long-term marketing strategies often involve investing in delayed benefits rather than immediate returns.Inaction vs. Action Costs:
Doing nothing can exceed the cost of doing something. Time is finite, you only have so much of it and it gets spent at the same rate consistently. Waiting to start marking for a year, is a year of progress lost that you can’t get back.

Time and lesson costs:
Most often the best strategies/ tactics are the ones that you think “Why didn’t we start doing them sooner” -start doing those sooner rather than later not regret not doing them or at least chipping away and starting to do them. 

8. Probability Analysis

This is trying to forecast using data and logic - the probability of a particular outcome occurring.

Our brain is wired to take shortcuts when it comes to complex decision-making such as making multiple assessments of both the probabilities and outcomes of investment. 

Understand your Risk tolerance which is your confidence in failure or uncertainty 

How to assign probabilistic thinking:

When assigning a probabilistic value to an option that could get you to your end goal, you need a process around it:

Look at historic values/trends
“Have we achieved this before?” “what can we use as a baseline assumption for this goal?”Look at seasonality or shifts in buying behaviours “is this goal realistic for this time of year” Look at track record -  how accurate have you or others been in the pastHow often has this occurred in the past? If it never happened before, it may be unlikely to happen in the future

Both estimating the probabilities and outcomes involve a great deal of judgment. 

Better judgment comes from gaining experience and compounding knowledge.

Use Probability Analysis to make better decisions based on what you know and your level of confidence. 

TL;DR

Problem-solving is essential for success

• Frameworks include mastering first principles and understanding the customer journey

• Emphasises simplicity, strategic thinking, and customer-centric approaches

• Balancing cost and value, embracing idea minimalism, and considering opportunity costs are crucial

• Probability analysis involves forecasting outcomes with data and logic

• Promotes better judgment through experience and knowledge

• Overall, enhances problem-solving skills for effective decision-making.