Marketing a product is always tricky business. Step into a marketing discussion and it invariably ends with, “Should we really be spending so much on marketing? Isn’t there a better (read: cheaper) way to do this?” Now observe the marketing head honcho whose responsibility it is to get the product into the hands of users. He or she will scrunch the shoulders into a compact shape, ready for the tackle. You instinctively know the two tactics that will be used: First, he or she is going to talk about the need the company has to get its brand under the nose of users and next parade the marketing figures of successful competitors in the hope that reluctant bean counters will write the marketing cheque from sheer fright.
I don’t know if you noticed, but the head honcho just used the two key tenets of marketing we can all learn from:
You can market something only when there is a need. Figure out why someone needs something. Then fill the gap.
There are lessons in what others have done. First observe; if necessary, follow.
These are seemingly simple – and obvious – guidelines for successful marketing. But over the years I’ve noticed that techies make several marketing mistakes that can be easily avoided. These should serve you well if you are planning to release a software product for the first time:
- Don’t sell anything that is half baked: If you think the product is not ready, don’t waste time and money marketing it. Good marketing can’t fix a bad product.
- Don’t sell anything that the customer doesn’t need: Stop trying to convince others that your product has more features than competition. Focus instead on how your product meets customer needs better.
- Don’t blitz the customer with jargon: Chances are that the person about to buy your product doesn’t understand a word of technology. Would you buy a product you don’t understand? The same applies to your customer.
- Don’t believe you are the product’s ideal user: Often, a product begins by trying to solve a problem its user experienced. Over a period of time, this leads to the mistaken impression that the developer is the best use case. Remember, you are not trying to sell to yourself.
- Don’t bulldoze the customer with information: Don’t think a thick brochure or a 60-minute slide presentation that explains everything about your product can sell better than a sentence or a paragraph. You know that no one has time (otherwise, why would Twitter be such a killer of an idea?). Now make your marketing strategy understand that.
- Don’t spend marketing rupees without a sales process: This is a problem typical of start-ups. You may go and spend on fancy collateral, online media, cute videos, a stunning website, mobile marketing and discover you have customers but no sales process in place. By the time you wake up, the customer is gone.
- Don’t sell to customers who don’t have the budgets (or think of innovative business models for them): You can sell, but only if your customer has the budget to buy your product. In really crude words, target your customer better. If your customer doesn’t have the budget think of innovative business models that can co-opt the customer (outcome oriented pricing, co-ownership, pay-as-you-go, rental, profit sharing, etc).
- Don’t believe that marketing is maths: Just because you can measure some metrics doesn’t mean you can completely manage marketing by applying a couple of formulas. You can bet Steve Jobs did not have a metric to measure his ability to market Apple products. So, use instinct, see what works for you. On the other hand, don’t ignore the story marketing metrics are telling you!
- Don’t ignore the mistakes: Even a company like Google has seen hundreds of failures. Remember Google X? It was a version of a Google home page launched in 2005 that was made to look like a Mac OS interface. The bottom of the page said, “Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you.” Google removed it within a day of launch. Can’t imagine Google wanting to do anything with Apple today, can you?
- Don’t slash prices: The idea of marketing is to sell and make profit, right? So why hurt yourself by slashing prices? Instead, keep pricing realistic and competitive (unless you hold a monopoly in the market, in which case, why would you be wasting your time reading this?). With right-pricing, your customers will know you are in the market competing with your product, not with a price tag.