Worksheet

Market Core

Who is the customer, what else could they choose, and where do we meet them?

How to use it

Each area of the Market Core gets its own page. Its working parts are set out as prompts — not a form to complete, but the things worth having a view on. The last part of each page lists what the area touches in the other cores, because a position taken here usually commits something there.

Read about the Market Core

The Omnigoal · Market Core · Who is the customer, what else could they choose, and where do we meet them?

Market Opportunities

Where demand exists that the organisation is not yet serving — sized honestly, judged on fit as well as attractiveness, and narrowed to a list short enough to act on.

ForDate

  1. Sizing

    How large the opportunity actually is, built from the bottom up instead of taken from a report, and stated as what is reachable rather than what exists.

  2. Growth and direction

    Where the demand in the market is heading and what is driving it — evidence for the organisation’s own choice of direction, not the choice itself.

  3. Opportunity assessment

    Attractiveness and fit, judged separately.

  4. The shortlist

    What the organisation has decided to pursue, and what it has decided not to.

  5. Entering new markets

    Once an opportunity is pursued: which market to enter first, by which route — export, licensing, partnership or subsidiary — and how commitment is staged as the organisation learns the market.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Partners (Business Core) — Where a market is entered through a partnership, the partner is chosen and contracted there.

  • Business Core — An opportunity requires a value proposition and the capacity to serve it, which is where fit is actually settled.

  • Goal Core — A pursued opportunity becomes a long term goal or it remains an observation.

  • Competitors (Market Core) — An unserved opportunity is unusual; establishing why nobody is serving it is part of the assessment.

  • Time Core — Whether the opportunity is available now is a separate question from whether it exists.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Market Core · Who is the customer, what else could they choose, and where do we meet them?

Competitors

Who else serves the same demand, what they can actually do, and where they are heading — read from evidence rather than from reputation.

ForDate

  1. The competitor set

    Who is actually competing for the demand — direct rivals, substitutes, in-house alternatives and inaction.

  2. Capability comparison

    What each rival can actually do, on the dimensions customers weigh.

  3. Reading their strategy

    What a competitor is trying to become, inferred from where they invest, who they hire and what they decline.

  4. Monitoring

    The few developments that would change a decision here, watched deliberately.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Brand Core — Positioning is argued against this set, and against the frame the customer actually uses.

  • Business Core — Capability comparison is only interpretable against a clear reading of your own competences.

  • Market Opportunities (Market Core) — Why nobody is serving an apparent opportunity is usually answered here.

  • Data Core — Monitoring is a measurement programme and decays without an owner.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Market Core · Who is the customer, what else could they choose, and where do we meet them?

Audience

Everyone the organisation could serve, and who among them it actually addresses: how they divide into segments, what one of them is like up close, what each is worth, and where they can be found.

ForDate

  1. Segments

    How the audience divides in ways that predict behaviour and permit separate treatment.

  2. Personas

    The recurring types inside a segment, assembled from evidence, not from a workshop.

  3. Segment value

    What each segment is worth: what they spend, what they cost to acquire, and how long they stay.

  4. Where they are

    Where each segment can actually be reached, in what state of attention, and at what cost.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Business Core — What the audience is trying to get done is analysed in the value proposition; this object settles who and where.

  • Brand Core — Positioning is aimed at a segment, and a position for everyone is aimed at nobody.

  • Marketing Channels (Market Core) — Where the audience is determines which channels are even available.

  • Customer Journey (Market Core) — Where they are is a standing fact about them; the journey is a sequence they move through. If the sentence would still be true in a year when nobody buys anything, it belongs here.

  • Data Core — Segment value requires the acquisition and retention data to be held at segment level.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Market Core · Who is the customer, what else could they choose, and where do we meet them?

Customer Journey

The path from unaware to bought, and the process the buyer was already in when it began: what the stages actually are, where people stop, what moves them on, and how much of that can honestly be attributed.

ForDate

  1. The buying stages

    How the decision forms between first awareness and purchase: the transitions that move a buyer on, drawn from buyers’ own accounts, including the months in which nothing observable happens.

  2. Their own process

    The process the customer is running that has nothing to do with you: its phases, the formal requirements that bind them, what those requirements ask of you in return, and the points at which you can enter it at all.

  3. Drop-off

    Where people leave, in what proportion, and why.

  4. What moves people forward

    What actually causes progression between stages, established by asking buyers instead of inferring from what was clicked.

  5. Attribution

    How credit is assigned across touchpoints, on a stated model, with its limits recorded.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Omni Core — How the decision forms is mapped here; what it is like to deal with the organisation, across the whole relationship, is mapped in Customer Journey Mapping.

  • Marketing Channels (Market Core) — Attribution findings are what channel budget decisions should rest on.

  • Audience (Market Core) — Whose process this is — a phase map without a segment attached describes an industry rather than a customer. Where they can be found at all is settled there; this object is only about the order things happen in.

  • Market Timing (Time Core) — The phases of the customer’s own process are where the windows in market timing actually open and close.

  • Business Core — The pains and gains behind a stage transition are analysed in the value proposition.

  • Data Core — Journey measurement requires instrumentation designed for it rather than assembled afterwards.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Market Core · Who is the customer, what else could they choose, and where do we meet them?

Marketing Channels

How demand is created and reached: which channels are used, what each actually costs and returns, how they combine, and how any of that is known.

ForDate

  1. Channel selection

    Which channels are used and why — matched to where the audience actually is and to what the message requires, not to what is available.

  2. Channel economics

    What each channel truly costs and returns, including production, management time and the effect on other channels.

  3. The mix

    How channels combine and in what sequence.

  4. Testing and incrementality

    Whether a channel contributes demand that would not otherwise have arrived, established by withholding it rather than by observing it.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Audience (Market Core) — Where the audience is decides which channels are available at all.

  • Brand Core — Each channel constrains what the identity and the narrative can express.

  • Business Core — Acquisition cost is a contribution question and belongs in the same arithmetic as margin.

  • Data Core — Incrementality testing is a measurement design, not a report.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Market Core · Who is the customer, what else could they choose, and where do we meet them?

Content

Everything the organisation publishes: what it is about, what shape it takes, what it costs to make, when it goes out, and how long it stays useful afterwards.

ForDate

  1. Pillars

    The few subjects the organisation keeps returning to and wants to be known for, chosen so that a body of work accumulates into a position rather than into a stream of unrelated pieces.

  2. Formats

    What the organisation actually produces, and what job each format is doing — which audience, which stage of the journey, and what it is meant to change.

  3. Production

    What each piece costs to make, including the research, review and approval that dominate the total, and how much the organisation can actually get out of the door.

  4. The calendar

    The publishing rhythm, what is scheduled against it, and the fixed points in the year worth planning around.

  5. Reuse and lifespan

    How long each piece stays useful, and how much of it can become something else.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Brand Core — The verbal and visual systems govern how every piece is executed, and what the pillars may claim is set by the message architecture.

  • Customer Journey (Market Core) — A format’s job is defined by the stage it serves and the transition it is meant to cause.

  • Business Core — Content is made by people with finite capacity, and approval is a process step with a queue in front of it.

  • Time Core — The publishing rhythm sits inside the organisation’s wider year and competes with it for the same weeks.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen

The Omnigoal · Market Core · Who is the customer, what else could they choose, and where do we meet them?

Sales Channels

How the transaction actually happens: which routes to market are used, where they collide, what each needs in order to sell, and which of them earns its cost.

ForDate

  1. Route to market

    Which routes the organisation uses — direct, partner, reseller, marketplace, self-serve — and what each buys in reach, margin and control.

  2. Channel conflict

    Where routes compete for the same customer, and the rule that settles it.

  3. Enablement

    What each route needs to be able to sell: what the offer is, who it is for, what it costs, and what to say when asked something difficult.

  4. Channel performance

    What each route delivers against what it costs, including the cost of managing it and the margin it takes.

What this touches elsewhere

  • Business Core — Partners as a relationship are managed there; this object covers their role as a route to market.

  • Monetisation (Business Core) — Channel margin comes out of the same price, and a route’s cost belongs in the margin structure.

  • Brand Core — An indirect route presents the brand on your behalf, usually with material you did not write.

  • Omni Core — The customer experiences one organisation regardless of which route sold to them.

The Omnigoal · theomnigoal.com · CC BY 4.0 · Andreas Baggesen