Aaron Hoos

The following is a case study derived from working with a client: BizTrade, the Community-Powered Business Exchange.

PROBLEM: The client approached me because they were dramatically changing their business. For several years, they had worked in the highly competitive business brokerage industry, helping business owners who wanted to buy or sell a business. But they were changing to a community-driven model and were figuring out what it looked like, how it worked, and how to communicate it.

SOLUTION: First, we worked through how the business was changing and we created numerous information assets to communicate it to all parties — essentially communicating that the current business brokerage model was broken and that a new model was required. This work included press releases, web copy, and ebooks. Next, we worked through the business model itself and this went through numerous iterations before finally settling on the model you see today. My role throughout the process was to provide the assets to be used to inform and instruct key targets (including clients and related professionals) and to create content strategy that would feed this model with high-value business content to attract and engage users.

RELEVANCE TO THE BUSINESS DIAMOND FRAMEWORK: Content strategy is a key activity of the Business Diamond Framework. Each part of the Framework needs information assets to communicate to those outside of it. BizTrade’s Leadership Function Diamond needed content to keep stakeholders up to date. BizTrade’s Support Function Diamond needed content that would instruct users on how to buy memberships. And BizTrade’s Value-Add and To-Market Function Diamonds were the basis on which I created the content strategy that would move them out of their old business model into their new business model.

The following is a case study derived from working with a client. To preserve confidentiality, I am only describing the problem and not the client.

PROBLEM: A client approached me with a problem. Their organization had invested thousands of dollars to hire a company to create 3 five minute training videos for their new product. Unfortunately, the result (after pre-paying for the work) was extremely poor quality and insufficient for their needs. They had potentially lost thousands of dollars for worthless videos.

SOLUTION: We talked about what their needs were for these videos (ultimately to train their sales people) and I analyzed the content in each video and redeveloped a storyboard that salvaged significant elements of the videos. I also developed a script that was read by a professional voice artist. Collaborating with other professionals, we recrafted the video by chopping up and repurposing the videos, and then adding a new voiceover. For a small additional investment, the client was able to salvage what was once lost.

RELEVANCE TO THE BUSINESS DIAMOND FRAMEWORK™: I’ve done this kind of work (in various media) with other clients, too, and I’ve found that the most frequently wasted assets are in the Support Diamond — typically training material intended to help different areas of the organization. A lot of investment is put into the content and then it goes unused.

The following is a case study derived from working with a client. To preserve confidentiality, I am only describing the problem and not the client.

PROBLEM: A client came to me with their need to raise prices. They’ve had prices set for a while now and it was time to raise them to keep up with inflation and the cost of hiring qualified staff. I had been hired to simply write an email to announce it, and the email was going to be a quick statement (like pulling a bandaid off as quickly as possible). However, I proposed an alternate idea that they used which involved some strategic changes in their offering followed by a more detailed marketing effort.

SOLUTION: We created tiers of service designed to express their value in different ways. We upped the ante on each tier so that the new levels of service offered additional compelling value to each customer (thus softening the impact of the increased price). While there will always be some backlash when raising prices, the message can be configured in a more positive tone by adding value at the same time.

RELEVANCE TO THE BUSINESS DIAMOND FRAMEWORK™: This was very much a Value Chain Axis effort because it meant an across-the-axis shift in thinking. However, it did require some Leadership Diamond work (in communicating the  overall positioning) and it involved some work in the Support Diamond (in delivering on some of the value-added changes).