Single Target Market – again

differentiation, differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

I can’t stop myself from seeing the magic of focusing on only one small segment of the market.

Today I was working on one offering after my team had yesterday isolated 3 possible segments based on data. Based on data I was to work on identifying the right niche for this product.

I have mentioned multiple times earlier and would like to recommend the podcast at Morecheeselesswhiskers.com. By far its one place where you will see how Dean Jackson goes about analyzing single target markets.

Coming back to my experience today. I first eliminated 2 of the markets because there was nothing to create a common strategy.

Then I came to what we club – as BFSI – Banking, Finance, Securities and Insurance. As I stated thinking about the geographic differences that can come into these customers. So I decided to stick to just North India.

As I started to think of the conversation going on in the minds of my audience I realized that I was thinking of the marketing heads, the CTO, the CIO. All 3 would have different things which keep them up at night.

While these differences not enough , I realized that even the marketing head of an insurance company would have different concerns than the marketing head of a securities company.

So now we had brought down our single target market to just the marketing head ds of insurance companies in North India. However I still have a nagging feeling that I may need to splice this further. But we will leave that for another day.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Personal Differentiation- Part II

B2B, differentiation, Marketing, Product Management, Sales

I look at marketing and sales being part of the same activity group. While sales is done face to face or via phone, in person, marketing is done without being in person.

That being the case, while there has to be differentiation with respect to your products and services, when marketing, when selling the customer should be able to clearly see a value in interacting with you as a person.

In my last post on this topic I listed some points to make yourself more endearing to customers.

If you can be remarkable in your ability to deliver value to the customer, the customer will remember and refer you also.

But the key is that you need to be very good.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Personal differentiation

B2B, differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, relationships

This post was actually starting with nothing to write about. Suddenly a thought flashed across my mind.

I keep talking about continually marketing to your prospects and customers in the B2B space. It can be with your own products or with your partners’. But be in touch always.

But you need not always be making offers to your prospects or giving them more information.

Sometimes just a hand written thank you makes a more personal statement. In B2B selling, in most cases still, you need to have a relationship in place before you can sell anything.

As Mark McCormack used to say – all things being equal people buy from friends . If you have not read his book What they don’t teach at Harvard Business School and its sequel….they are gems. So much wisdom in such small reads

Which brings me to another thing which I have found useful to give, is a non-standard gift. Copies of paintings, books etc.

Sometimes your product has differentiation which is very unique. In most cases in technology marketing its rare. You create your personal differentiation in front of the customer by doing these small things

Some organizations do have a amount on the value of gifts that are considered inappropriate. You need to be cognizant to that. But within that you can be creative and give gifts which have a high recall value….sometimes much much higher than what your marketing webinar would give.

In B2B especially and otherwise also relationships matter. So keep working on that.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B Buying Processes in technology -II

B2B, differentiation, Marketing, Product Management, segmentation

While I keep talking consistently about segmenting the market and identifying niches, I also talk about identifying niches by use case rather by demographics and psychographics.

Typically in B2B buying especially when you are selling (I am using this term in a very broad way) to mid to large size companies there’s an hierarchy of positions within departments. In typical sales situations you want to identify a decision maker and then message to them. Unlike an individual or family buying a low value item where decisions are taken on the spot, in case of decisions which require substantial investment in technology buying, there are always multiple layers

In B2B buying there’s a someone who can say yes and a lot of people who can say no. However in most cases the decision maker herself does not evaluate the options. She typically would ask someone or some people in her team or make a cross functional team to evaluate the options and bring them to her and then she takes a decision.

Now this is where it gets tricky for the Product Management person. The decision maker does not evaluate options. The people who evaluate the options in today’s day and age are hidden because they do more than 60-70% of the sorting using the internet and reach out to specific companies whom they have shortlisted. So even if you have the most elaborate technical product, if you didn’t come in front of this team and this team does not evaluate you then you don’t stand a chance.

So how does the Product Management person identify the persona to whom the messaging has to be targeted. That’s what makes the B2B buying process complex for the marketing folks.

When you choose a very small segment of the market to target , the advantage is that you can do iterations in your messaging, you can actually interview prospects who didn’t buy from you and other things to identify what is resonating with your market and incorporate the learnings very fast.

This is not an easy task at all. Once you are able to “crack the code” as Dean Jackson puts it, you can scale in that market very fast.

Even now I have to learn so much in each new product we launch. Its never easy to say that because I launched a security product last year successfully I will be successful for a new AI product I am launching this year. While the frameworks can be in place and evolving, the learning is always new. But that’s what makes it interesting.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!