FAST CLASS: Rethink What You Sell and Who You Serve

Whether you’re in packaged goods, apparel, food or digital, your dirty little secret is that your customers are most likely disengaged. So what can you do? Buy new customers? Sure, but you can’t buy their engagement. There’s no amount of advertising trickery that can make people return to your site over and over again, use your app every day, make repeat purchases or spread the word about your product.

But take heart! There are businesses out there that have come up with a new, insight-driven path beyond the tired old story of begging customers for a few seconds of their valuable attention. Brands like REI, Slack, and Airbnb have figured out how to engage in lifelong, two-way love affairs with their customers, while the rest of the marketplace struggles.

In this course, you’ll learn how to become one of those companies by:

• Shifting your R&D, product development, digital and content marketing focus from the product you sell to the people you serve.
• Understanding what your customers want and need and where to reach and engage them.
• Conducting competitive analysis that sparks innovation, avoids “me-too” product development, bulletproofs your business from disruption by upstarts, and optimizes for employee engagement.
• Selling a transformation rather than a product.
• Realizing that your competition isn’t other companies, but rather obstacles on your customers’ journeys.
• Focusing on your customers and their problems.

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR:

Tara-Nicholle Kirke is the author of The Transformational Consumer: Fuel a Lifelong Love Affair With Customers by Helping Them Get Healthier, Wealthier, and Wiser.

She is the CEO of TCI, marketing, content strategy, and leadership development firm that creates transformational experiences for conscious leaders, businesses + customers.

Tara is the former VP, Marketing for MyFitnessPal and Under Armour Connected Fitness, where she led a team that grew the platform to over 100 million customers through brand, growth, engagement, content, and digital/social media, and media relations. During her career in Silicon Valley, Tara has created brand, growth, media, and content strategies for brands like HGTV, Trulia, ING Direct, Lookout Mobile Security, Chegg, Eventbrite, and many, many more.

She has been featured in The New York Times and was recently named the #1 woman Silicon Valley tech companies should be naming to their boards by Business Insider.