Your Chinese Menu of Fractional AR

Last week I wrote a small piece on the pros and cons of using FTEs vs. contractors for your AR needs.?

What can an AR consultant or agency do for me, you might ask, when AR is a long-horizon, long-term ROI strategic play short on quick wins?

Well, AR quick wins are actually not as unachievable as you’d think. That is, if you buy into the “fractional AR” concept. What’s fractional AR?

It’s the same concept as fractional CMOs, fractional CTOs (my Brilliant ex-colleague Marc Adler makes a killing with that one), fractional CFOs, and fractional CROs. Highly experienced and proficient experts in their field who come in, help you solve, manage or orchestrate a specific problem, and quickly get out of your hair. It’s quick, efficient, cost-effective, and highly measurable. In other words, perfect for this day and age.

So here’s my Chinese menu of some of the top use cases I can think of:

1 - Competitive SWOT analysis: leverage the right analysts to give you an unbiased “out of echo chamber” analysis of where you really stand in the market, gaps, and what competitive levers you might leverage. Can also answer “why are my competitors always placing better in these reports”?

2 - M&A guidance and advice: leverage analysts to recommend potential targets and approaches to either acquiring or partnering with other market players.?

3 - Strategic offering guidance: leverage analysts for specific targeted advice on things like optimizing a practice or product offering. Find out what customers are really saying about you and what they really need and expect vs. what you think they do.?

4 - Product launches: leverage analysts before, during and after a specific product launch to avoid missteps, guide messaging, market fit, and de-risk the whole thing.?

5 - Messaging: review corporate communication and/or marketing messaging content with several key analysts. This can include re-branding, new go-to-market initiatives, new partnership announcements, product launches, reorgs, etc.?

6 - Category creation POV: de-risk your strategy by reviewing a problem statement and POV with carefully-selected open-minded analysts who focus on emerging tech or have shown a propensity to “see around the corners”.?

7 - Win/loss analysis: Run your win/loss analysis by the analysts and try to figure out (or confirm with the analysts) why you’re losing deals and how you can stop that nasty habit.?

8 - New market segment/industry/geo/ICP: leverage analysts to help you penetrate a new market segment, geography, or industry vertical, and/or understand how to best target and message to a new ICP. Sometimes you’ll even discover a new ICP or industry you didn’t even know you could or should be selling to.?

9 - Product roadmap: run a product offering roadmap by analysts and have them help you validate and prioritize it from both a demand/timing and investment perspective.

10 - Simplification: enlist the analysts to help you simplify (or modernize) business models, product portfolios, ineffective processes, or subpar operating models.?

11 - Evaluative reports: engage with the analysts when a Magic Quadrant, Wave, or Marketscape process is about to start. Although the time to start engaging around these reports is 365 days a year, it’s better to have a competent harbor pilot to sail through the many pitfalls.?

12 - Report relevancy: which ones matter, which ones are nice to have, and which ones you can afford to blow off: a quick AR analysis can put your mind at ease with a cost-benefit analysis.

13 - Vision and strategic planning: you think the market is headed one way and are about to pitch your board and possibly invest a boatload in that assumption. Why not run it by the analysts to validate the premise?

14 - Pricing and commercial models: ask the analysts if yours are better than your competitors. If not, who’s innovating in those areas and doing better? Hint: probably those you’re losing deals to in #7.

15 - The right stuff: are you talking to the right analysts? Have an AR pro evaluate and analyze the analysts you’re investing in to ensure an optimal ROI payoff.?See pitfall #1 in this excellent article.

16 - Perception: Run a quick project to ask the analysts point blank what they think about your company or brand. Find out if they recommend you (related to #15) and if so, to what organizations and under what contexts and situations.?

17 - Marketing content: enlist analysts to collaborate on content creation like videos, papers, blogs, webinars, or commissioned research (like Forrester TEIs).?

18 - Demos: work with the analysts to refine and optimize your product demos.?

All of these quick yet invaluable engagements can be achieved in a few sessions, and provide immediate payoff. You don’t need full time AR staff to design, organize and run these initiatives. You can run one or more in parallel. You can use these to offload work from your existing AR teams. It’s convenient, cheap and high-impact.?

Check out the fAR - Fractional AR - section of my website for more details.

Now, are you ready to order? ??