Tara Hunt has a most excellent post today on Geoffrey Moore’s seminal concept. Seems like she is having some nice debate with entrepreneurs and marketers about the framework.

As often is the case, Tara is right. Marketing evolves in stages, and you can’t go from one until it is time to do so.

Relationships matter, customer feedback matters, creating a killer product that solves a customer need matters even more.

While it will undoubtedly make the rogue one shudder, I have found Mr. Moore’s book to be very helpful in getting entrepreneurs to focus their companies by creating positioning statements in a variant of the structure he suggests.

We provide {product/service class} for {the target market} so they can {statement of need}.

All of this based on relationships, feedback, and good product. It makes early stage companies think about what they want to be when then grow up.

Off to Savannah in the morning for my “Geek Marketing 101” presentation. Should make for a good post before the week is out.