We feel the need…

Here at True North Labs, we pride ourselves on offering pragmatic solutions to our client's needs. These can vary from improving on suboptimal ingredients from other suppliers, hardware issues, branding concerns or, indeed, entire go-to-market challenges. Still, we are always focussed on bringing workable solutions and entering into successful strategic partnerships that bring great products to market.

Over the last few months, we've decided to shape our efforts around the concept of "need-states" We wanted to share why this strategic approach is working for us and why we hope it might make us the ideal project partners.

What is a need state?

Unfortunately, our (primarily CBD-driven) category somewhat lags behind our FMCG cousins, and you won't hear that many companies from this industry talking about need-states. We think they should be. A need state is basically the primary consumer motivation or rationale that goes into a purchase decision – driven by that consumer's need at the time. Sounds obvious, right!? But not that many companies think about WHY consumers buy their products! As a potential partner to brands in this space, we've loved the challenge of taking on this thinking on clients’ behalf, and it’s led to the new sales and marketing approach we take.

One obvious way of thinking about this approach is to question: why do consumers buy CBD or other adaptogen-based products? Maybe for health? Better sleep? Muscle recovery? All these and more… Our strategic approach has been to classify and prioritise these motivations and ensure that we can swiftly develop solutions that meet consumers' needs. In a world where the best brands are doing this, we're already seeing some clear shared interest in this approach and are working with some great clients to build excellent brands – and products – shaped by these principles.

Our top reasons to take a need-state-driven approach:

1. It’s a consumer-led approach, forcing us to be mindful of their motivations for buying products and respond accordingly.

2. It helps us focus and ensure that we strategically diagnose what our core offering is and should be– and why.

3. It drives a consistent approach to our sales efforts across our European and Global teams.

4. Finally, it helps us speak to brands’ needs and address their issues with greater clarity and strategic direction.

If you'd like to learn more, or you have a challenge this approach could help unlock, as usual, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us at hello@truenorthlabs.ch

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Alternatively, you can contact us here and let us know your details

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