Author: animeshjmathur

Marketing does not work on formulas

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

I have the biggest challenge with people who use spreadsheets to work on a target and then break it down with formulas. If marketing or product management was so formulaic, no product would ever fail.

If you check my team also, you will find them telling you that my fundamental question is “Why will it happen”

Spreadsheets are very good, especially for making lists and milestones. However assuming that the market you operate in will behave like a formula in the sheet is fallacy and targets will never be met.

The reason for that is markets and customers have a mind of their own. As I have mentioned earlier also marketing is applied psychology.

While the demographics and psychographics will list out typical characteristics, each of these people in the B2B segments, operate in an environment, where they interact with different functions. Each function has different priorities.

Unlike the consumer market where the risk is low for most of the items, when it comes to B2B technology products there’s a lot of perceived risk and people don’t like to change the status quo.

Since technology changes so fast one of the first inertia points for the customer is – am I investing in the right technology, how will it impact my other operations. Then come other questions like, what if it doesn’t work, what if this company sinks etc.

For the product management folks its critical that they take into account all these inertia or resistance points. Think through as deeply from the customer’s point of view, write an autobiography of the customer.

You can’t do this if you take a broad spectrum of the market. That is why it’s important to identify a niche in the market and then a market in the niche. Then actually go out and meet customers and understand all the reasons, why they won’t buy, then continuously improve your offerings.

Never rely on spreadsheets to govern the actions for your product but use them to govern the milestones.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Time is not money…relationships are money

collaboration, Habits, Karma, relationships, Uncategorized

Yesterday I  heard the  amazing statement above, that I could not stop myself from sharing it with you.

All my life I  have heard that time is money because it is one resource which cannot be replenished so you should use it very wisely.

I have worked on improving my ability to utilize my time and am continuously looking for ways to leverage my time. I stopped driving my car for health reasons, but now I feel that driving a car is not the best use of my time and I take a cab so that I can make better use of my time.

I delegate tasks to my team members so that I can work on higher value tasks.

Yesterday during the training from Ilovemarketing mastery program,  I heard the coach from Strategic Coach talk about this. She explained this concept so well.

All time is not equal.  The time spent in building relationships pays many times over compared to any other time spent.

As a matter of fact Richard Koch in his books also talks about this in the 80/20 rule.  While I have read his books but this time the way this coach explained was so awesome that it hit me.

Being in marketing I have always prided myself for the relationships I have cultivated but I realized after this training that I could have achieved an even higher level of success if I had built even better relationships.

Most of my success in my career has been because of the people who supported me and believed in me and therefore gave us business. My own capabilities maybe limited but these relationships multiplied those so many times over

See how you can spend more time on building relationships by first giving because as Joe Polish says Life Gives to the Giver.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Eradicating the Writer’s block

Affirmative action, confidence, Evolution, Habits, Human Brain

For all of you who have been reading my blog posts over the last two – three years,  you would have noticed that I used to disappear from writing for months on end.

I would keep contemplating forever for the perfect piece, for the perfect English,  for the perfect graphs.

Which ended up me not writing anything.  And I used to feel lousy also because I was not writing.

Today again I was feeling the same situation.  I  had a very long day in office and I was exhausted.

But then 2 things came to my mind which I have been following over the last 2-3 months.

These are 2 pieces of advice.

One is from Joe Polish who says being prolific is more important than being proficient.  If you will practice enough you will automatically become more proficient- something in line with the 10000 hour rule for mastering any skill.

The second piece of advice came from Russell Brunson in his book Traffic Secrets.  He quotes Gary Vaynerchuk in the book, on how he’s built such a huge following. What struck me as critical was his comment about “thinking like a reporter” who has to put just one news report everyday.

I have taken this to heart and started writing these quick posts which you can read while standing in a line at Starbucks or while your sandwich is getting ready at Subway.

How this has helped me is that it has eliminated the pressure on me to write the perfect piece. Instead now I write about whatever is going on with me during the day or on whatever I am working. Also because I am writing consistently, it has improved my confidence, my brain now resists less, and it is on the way to forming a habit.

I would suggest the same for any activity, be relentless, be prolific, do the small things continuously and they will become a habit.

Till next time

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B Messaging – sequences

Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Product Management, Sales, segmentation

The job of a cold email is to get a response to validate the quality of the database. That’s it. As I have been ranting, over the last few posts, therefore these mails have to be extremely short and to the point.

Once someone responds, you can start a sequence of mails. Dean Jackson has a very interesting term called “offering cookies” to educate and motivate propsects.

However one key thing I have noticed in B2B marketing is whenever you are launching or marketing a new product, there is a lot of resistance/inertia in the mind of the prospects to change.

The reason for this is the amount of sanctions and approvals, people have to take, from multiple stake holders to get a new thing in place. So people don’t like to bother about software or solutions or technologies which will, at best, offer some incremental change. This is even more true if its for an internal process. So one basic thing to keep in mind is to see how your product or service can dot he job differently and therefore give a dramatic improvement of an internal process.

If its for a customer facing item they may still be open to things which are incremental, if they think, that it will help in better customer acquisition of customer retention. Therefore in these situations, more than the technology part, you should look at the impact on business in your communication.

To work through this inertia or resistance you will need to keep sending a sequence of mails to increase the awareness of the product/service, to drive in a wedge of dissonance with the existing setup that they have and to share case studies on how other adopters have used your product or service.

I have seen cases where we have targeted prospects for more than year – which means at least 18-20 touches, before they even thought of talking to us.

There was a time when people would offer whitepapers as magnets to pull prospects to see their level of interest. Today in the technology/IT arena everyone is offering so much content via YouTube and other social media channels that putting “gates” to see the level of interest can be worthless. This is however my opinion.

As I tell my team, I am also telling you – the market is the final judge. Pls test and see what works in your market. If offering whitepapers via “gates” helps gauge the level of interest of a prospect in your market, by all means go ahead and do it.

However doing a sequence of touch points /messaging is absolutely imperative in B2B marketing. So don’t get disheartened if even after sending out 4-5 mails you don’t get a response.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!