by Clay Ostrom | Jan 28, 2020 | Brand Strategy, Building Your Brand, Industry Trends, Messaging, Positioning, Startups
< Back to The Campfire This article was featured in the March 2020 issue of Foundr Magazine(click to view the piece) No matter how great your product or service is or how much funding you have, every brand starts at zero when it comes to their audience.Zero...
by Clay Ostrom | Feb 19, 2019 | Brand Think Pieces, Entrepreneurship, Psychology, Startups
< Back to The Campfire You’re at your desk. You’re deep into a problem. You’ve stared at it for hours. You’ve hacked away most of the obvious nonsense. You’ve got it down to the core. And now you’re stuck. You need to figure out: That right combination of words...
by Clay Ostrom | Sep 11, 2018 | Customers, Marketing, Psychology, Startups, Strategy
< Back to The Campfire Whether you’re a startup or you’ve been around for years, talking to your customers is a critical practice. It provides a level of insight into your business that you can’t get through surveys and analytics alone. I recently worked on a...
by Clay Ostrom | Jul 18, 2018 | Brand Teardowns, Elements of Value, Jobs To Be Done, Marketing, Psychology, Startups, Strategy, Teardown
< Back to The Campfire The 10X Rule for innovation sets a bar that’s simple to understand but very difficult to achieve. The rule roughly states that in order for customers to switch from a current behavior, they need a new option that’s 10X better. The value of...
by Clay Ostrom | May 16, 2018 | Marketing, Psychology, Startups, Strategy
< Back to The Campfire As business owners, we all make assumptions about how our customers think and feel. But when those assumptions are wrong, customers will struggle to see the value of our offering. To validate our assumptions, we do things like: Talk to...
by Clay Ostrom | May 9, 2018 | Customers, Jobs To Be Done, Positioning, Psychology, Startups
< Back to The Campfire There’s a well known idea that you can classify any business into one of two camps: Vitamin or Painkiller. Vitamins provide long term benefits. They’re an investment that will help you make progress on larger goals. Unfortunately, the delay...
