In Short

You don't always have to be the biggest to be the best in your market. Sometimes, knowing your audience and catering to their specific needs lets you stand your ground among the largest competitors.

Virgin Voyages Service Offering

1. No Children. So space that normally would be used for watersides, trampolines, daycare facilities could be used for different bars, restaurants, trivia, karaoke, coffee shops, a boxing ring, and a cross-fit gym
   
   
2. First Class Dining. All the restaurants were included. They were first class with menus designed by 5-star Michelin chefs. There were no buffets and the food selection offered something for everyone and had specialties like full gourmet coffee shops with trained baristas
   
   
3. Catered Amenities. The amenities / fitness classes were all catered towards adults in my demographic. I did 3 days of HIIT training with a South African rugby trainer – it was intense, but it matched the level I wanted

Meeting Different Customer Preferences

Now Virgin’s service offering mix is not for everyone. On the other ship, I met many, many people who came on board with their families. Sometimes I’d be seated next to them in the large dining room and hear them speak volumes about their respective experiences. Their families booked a vacation for roughly 4 times the number of people than mine and the variance in amenities for teenagers, adults, and younger children was a perfect fit. If these entire groups were allowed on board the ship I was on last week, their children would likely complain of boredom. Different services for different customers.

Like our professional services, cruise ships, travel, and vacation properties are a services-based offering. There are commonalities between cruise lines and how we treat our clients at Conversion Store. Like us, Virgin Voyages is the niche player in their industry…

• They don’t own a portfolio of other brands
  
• They have a smaller amount of resources (just 3 ships as of this writing)
  
• They service a specific niche clientele
  

Niches in Professional Service Offerings

We’re also a niche player, but in the Marketing Automation industry. Our focus is to build experiences that help create qualified, revenue-generating leads in Marketo, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales and Marketing leaders at mid-market firms. Similarly, Virgin Voyages offers relaxing, enjoyable yet mature experiences for middle aged adults.

Notice that we’re focused on mid-market and not big enterprises? Because large enterprises have different needs that we’re not well-suited to handle. Could we do it? Possibly if we resigned from most of our other engagements and dedicated all of our resources towards that project.

Instead our focus is on delivering that same level of intentional service that makes Virgin Voyages a great cruise… so we pick the MarTech tools that fit a mid-market budget and we recognize that our clients don’t have unlimited funds to throw at a problem. Nor do they have time for the large number of onboarding / exploratory meetings required to meet and gain buy-in from all of the stakeholders in a large enterprise. They need experience-led action to generate revenue in a short amount of time.

I’ve met with Enterprise CMO’s who want a “Big Four Consulting experience”. They’re willing to pay a premium for that, but they have requirements with aggressive timelines and large volume metrics that fuel those needs. I’ll almost always send them to Deloitte, BDO, and Accenture because that’s the right fit for them.

But if you’re a CMO or a CRO with limited budget and needs to Go To Market with Marketo and Dynamics, then maybe we should probably talk… https://bit.ly/4156KAZ