Marketing lessons to be learnt from the success of Singapore

Create a “pull” with differentiation

As I mentioned in my last post , Singapore is such a small country in the middle of the Indian Ocean and yet it has gone on to become one of the richest nations with one of the highest per capita incomes. One of the things that I emphasised, in the last post, was how Singapore has leveraged its assets.

This time I will talk about how it has gone about creating differentiation for itself, one of the key attributes for success in marketing.

To ensure that tourists keep coming into the country, you have to keep coming up with things that are not available in the vicinity, so if tourists need to see that thing, they have to come to Singapore only.

Let me take my example only. As I had mentioned, in my last post, I had been going frequently to Singapore and yet this time when I went, I had found, so many things had changed. One of the things that I wanted to visit , was the Universal Studios at Sentosa. Reason. We don’t have a Universal Studios showcase and rides anywhere close to India. I would have to go to Los Angeles in the US, to show my family, the Universal Studios. For me, with Singapore, Universal Studios was in my neighbourhood. So it made sense for me to go to Singapore. 3 tourists got added. Similarly there is the F1 race track. The Lego museum etc.

There was a time that there was the Night Safari and the bird park, the aquarium etc. in Singapore. But a lot of countries, now have these attractions and if you have visited the aquarium in HongKong or Toronto, you may not find this very different. So to ensure that there is something different for the tourist to see, they have the Universal, the Marina Bay attractions etc.

Can you imagine creating a whole zone for fans of the movie Avatar. At the Marina Bay, they have created the zone. Even people who have not watched the movie Avatar and knows about their characters, tend to go there, just because everyone else has talked so much about it. No where else will you get this creation

There are a lot of small nations in the Indian Ocean, but none of them , has anything which can get me to visit them. Singapore has created the differentiation by bringing in so many tourist attractions at one place, that people find it convenient to go there. Indonesia/Bali have natural beauty, Thailand has beaches, but so many entertainment points at one location, that’s only in Singapore.

Now if you add, the English speaking population and the absolutely secure environment that the country provides to tourists, it makes for a default destination to visit.

In marketing, people will keep coming up with me-too items to reduce your advantage. If you have to sustain your competitive advantage, you need to keep coming up with ways to show ho you’re different from the competition. If you can differentiate clearly, in the eyes of the customer, you have a “winner” on your hands.

Till next time then.

Succeed by differentiating.

Carpe Diem!!!

Entering a new technology based B2B business – Part IV

B2B, differentiation, Marketing, niche, segmentation, Technology

Identifying the addressable market

In marketing there is a statement that is thrown around a lot – “find a niche in the market”

This is a very powerful statement. It clearly helps to identify a piece of the market , that you can “own”, if you are successful. It’s always better to own a small pond than to be a small fish in the ocean. Even P&G which has multiple billion dollar brands in its stable, has clearly identified niches for each of its products. So the statement is absolutely current.

I will just like to put a small caveat to the statement and make the statement read – Find a niche in the market and also find if there is a market in the niche.

Let me explain this with a real life experience. When I had just joined a company, fresh out of University, I was given a product which was basically about selling process control equipment . It was a very sophisticated product for its time. We created a solution using this product which we executed on a couple of sugar plants, very successfully. So I was given the responsibility to go out in my territory and target all the sugar plants and sell this solution, because we had found a “niche” in the market, which others were not targeting.

The solution which we had executed, was done on a very large sugar plant, while most of the sugar plants in my territory were small capacity plants. In addition these plants didn’t even have electric panels in the boiler room, so how would they even install such a sophisticated process control equipment. (This led me to create a Maxim for myself – if there’s no road in the town that you are going to sell, you don’t try to sell a luxury car.)

Coming back to the topic at hand – what I realised was that we had a niche in the market which none of the other process control companies, at that time, were targeting, but the market was just made up of 10 odd companies that we could sell to. No one else could afford us. So eventually we wasted a lot of energy and eventually got out of the market.

So now whenever we talk about identifying a niche in the market- in which we want to target our product or service – I want to always check how much is the addressable market. Combined with the questions that I raised in the first 3 parts of this series, if you don’t find an answer to this question correctly then you will waste a lot of time and money.

In the technology based businesses, especially if you are getting in a new technology, you also need to identify if there are enough companies who are using the earlier version of the technology or if there’s requisite infrastructure to incorporate your new technology. To give an example of this, if you are bringing in a SaaS product, one of the pertinent things to check out is – do they get enough network bandwidth across all their offices, so that they can utilise a SaaS based model. If you are trying to sell this product where network bandwidth infrastructure itself doesn’t exist, then even if you have identified a niche in the market for your SaaS product, you won’t be able to succeed because there aren’t enough companies who have the bandwidth to utilise the product.

This is a critical piece in planning your marketing activities. Let me know how you go about identifying the addressable market.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

P.S: In case you would like to get my checklist for launching a new technology based product or service in the B2B market, drop me a message.

Making a Difference

Affirmative action, differentiation, Lifestyle

I was listening to an interview of Sir Richard Branson of the Virginia brand today. It was a fairly dated interview, I think about 10 years old. I found it on ilovemarketing.com.

There were three things which stood out for me in this interview. One was the fact that the whole philosophy around which Sir Richard Branson operates is how can he and his companies make a difference in the world.

Even when someone asked him for advice to entrepreneurs, he mentioned about how you can keep increasing the circle of influence where you make a difference, as your company grows.

The other thing which stood out was his emphasis on protecting his time. These people who were interviewing him had all paid a quite a handsome amount to his charity to get an opportunity to interview him. But on the clock he politely closed the interview.

The last thing which I was amazed about was his focus on his family. I have not known too much about him so didn’t know anything about his family. But the way he spoke about how he always ensured , inspite of the fact that he has such a huge business empire, that the family was together was a delight to hear.

If people who run such huge companies can find time to be with their families and also do good and make a difference, then we should be able to also do small bit to the society in which we live.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Working backwards from the customer result- Part 4

Assumptions, Customers, differentiation, Marketing, single target market

Till now we have looked at the Future Reality tree, then we have highlighted the unsaid assumptions so we don’t miss a ‘snake in the grass’ which can mess up our plans. Then we identified the various use cases for a simple regular item like engine oil for cars.

Now let’s move forward with the example of the engine oil for cars. We identified OEMs (brand owners like Ford, Mitsubishi etc.), service stations and gas stations.

Lets take first – Gas stations. There could be gas stions which are right in the heart of the city and there could be those which are on the Inter State highways. Both sell to retailers who come to fill gas and may ask for a top-up. But the ones on the highway will fill a larger amount of gas because they may be traveling long distance. Can you think of how you can package your engine oil sales with the higher intake of gas….

On the other hand the person who is taking gas in the city may not get his engine oil filled because he can send his car for service during the week end. So the gas stations in the city may see a lower number of people asking for engine oil versus the ones who are traveling long distance and want to have a hassle free ride.

For the product management person, it is now important to figure out the kind of packaging she will do for these 2 different kinds of gas stations , the kind of pricing options, the kind of promotions…..there are so many ways to get creative to figure out how you can work through different markets within in a niche also.

But if you think of only engine oil as the niche then it becomes difficult to think of differentiated strategies. The moment you think from the end result – a person wanting a hassle free long distance ride you can start getting creative.

One person whom you should listen is Dean Jackson on his podcast morecheeselesswhiskers.com and another podcast that he does with Joe Polish ilovemarketing.com. Just listening to them will get your creative juices flowing.

Till next time then

Carpe Diem!!!