Importance of the ecosystem in marketing

Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Product Management, Technology

I have been harping for a long time, in case you are coming out with a new product/service in the market, you need to check for the availability of the ecosystem in the technology market space. So if you are Google or Facebook, you cannot expect to enter or dominate the market if there is no internet connectivity.

I have also written earlier about how Thomas Edison was among the few people who had systematised the concept of testing in his New Jersey Labs . There were hundreds of people testing various aspects of his inventions in parallel. He was not testing things serially which is more time consuming.

Incidentally while the light bulb is attributed to Edison, there were at least another 20 odd people who were building the light bulb at the same time.

What is important to remember is that Edison understood the concept of the ecosystem for the success of the light bulb. If there was no electricity, the adoption of the light bulb would not happen. I guess his experience of working with the telegraph company, had given him this background.

For those of you who don’t know Edison was also among the original promoters of what we know today, as the General Electric company and it was called the Edison General Electric. So while the light bulb was being designed, they were also designing the electric network that would get the electricity to the homes of the people so that there would be an immediate market for his invention.

Edison was the perfect marketing / business person who understood that the ecosystem is most critical when getting a new concept into the market.

Even today, there’s so much noise about different technologies that are hitting the market. What is important for the technologies to succeed is the infrastructure or ecosystem to be present in a very stable condition. If the ecosystem itself is shaky then you won’t be able to get the new technology launched successfully. This is one of the most critical lessons in product management which people miss.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing is Education – Part 5

differentiation, education, Marketing, Methodologies, Positioning, route to market, travel, Trust

In my first 3 posts I was talking about the concept of how education can elevate your position in the market. I have used consultants as examples, I have used Indian brands also. Yesterday I wrote about a French perfume company. Today I will talk about an internationally well known tourism industry brand Trip Advisor.

The best thing about TripAdvisor is that it never tries to sell you anything. You can go look at people’s reviews of hotels, places etc. You can figure out what people liked about a place, what were the best spots etc. All of this is very conveniently put up front. As a matter of fact if you will search about a given location or a hotel in a location – you will typically find Trip Advisor in the top 10 searches on Google. And this inspite of the fact that most of the other search results will talk about the cheapest fares etc.

Initially I used to look at the Trip Advisor ratings for a hotels. What were the other travellers talking about. Slowly I got hooked to the idea of going to the site for everything when I was planning a trip to a place which I had not visited in many many years.

Trip Advisor has a sister site called Viator. So while I was searching for the best places to visit, tickets and other possibilities in New York I also got an option to buy the Travel Pass from them. Guess what, I bought it from them.

If you go on the web to search, you would get a lot of deals giving the same pass at lower rates. But because Trip Advisor has created such a trust relationship because of their education and unbiased user reviews, I didn’t think of even looking for lower options. Now its a standard practice for me to see what Trip Advisor or Viator are offering , what are the user ratings and then buying it from there.

Now does it mean that everyone who comes on the TripAdvisor site also ends up buying from them or their sister site. Absolutely not. And that would be true of all education based methodologies. Not everyone will buy from you. But that would be true for any methodology / positioning that you use. You could choose to have the lowest cost methodology for your positioning, but you would still not get the whole market to yourself. These companies differentiate themselves with the education they offer and create what Jay Abraham calls as position of Pre-Eminence.

Since I like to work with and give business to people I trust, all the examples I have given, till date ,are of companies that have used education to create that trust with me.

Till next time then. See how you can use education to create a marketing pull for your product or service.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing is Education – Part 4

differentiation, differentiation, education, Marketing, Positioning, route to market

How many of you have heard of the perfume brand ….Fragonard

When we think of perfumes, the typical names which come to our mind are Nina Ricci, Channel, Givenchy, Boss etc. Fragonard…never heard of it, or at least I had never heard of it.

When we went to Paris, we had taken the Paris Pass. One of the coupons as part of the Pass was the visit to a perfume museum where they would show you how perfumes are made.

So we decided to take the tour because we had never seen perfume being made. They had various language guides and the moment they had a large enough crowd they would start the tour. Our guide was tremendous. Inspite of the fact that she was French, she spoke very clear English and explained the complete history of how the initial perfumes got made, then how the various flavours and fragrances are created etc.

After the history and the processes she spoke about how perfumes evaporate, how they should be kept, what kind of containers should be used, and the concentration levels if the perfume has to last long on your body.

All this information you need to understand was biased towards what they were offering. This is not to say they were giving wrong data. They were however showcasing data that got you oriented towards their offering.They also took up the issue of not doing mass advertising to create a brand awareness, head-on, and eliminating it as a objection, as part of the education process. This differentiation of using education rather than showing models has kept them in good stead. They have been in business for more than 100 years I think.

All the queries were so masterfully handled by the guide, it was as if she was an amazing teacher.

At the end of the tour then she came up with the offer, since we had spent time visiting them, only at that time (limited time / scaricity )from her (reciprocity)- because she had given all this education free of cost to us, quite a few of us ended up buying a lot of perfumes.

My family and I had not gone with any agenda to buy, we still ended up buying more than Euro250 worth of perfumes. And the bigger fact is that we didn’t have a buyer’s remorse, that we had been tricked. We were actually feeling so happy that we got such good perfumes.

As a sidebar – the perfumes are really good, they do last much longer than the other brands even in the hot weather of India because the concentrate level is much higher than others. Also since they are packed in metal containers , unlike most other brands which are packed in glass, these last much longer in the bottle also.

You see the benefit of the education they gave me, I have given you the exact things they taught me about what should be seen while buying a perfume. They have made a permanent client. Whenever I go to Paris, Fragonard….will be on my list of places to visit to buy perfumes.

Can you see how you can utilise education to create a strong image in the mind of the customer.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Precision like the Swiss – how to use it in your marketing

Marketing, messaging, Methodologies

When we were kids, we were always told about how precise the Swiss were in terms of their engineering and how a Swiss watch would be accurate for years to come….those were the days of the mechanical watches. As you roamed the streets of Geneva during those days , you could see shops where there were people with magnifying glasses on their eyes, putting in the various gears of the watch.

Now I went back to Geneva after a very very long time about two years back. Those watchmakers are gone. I wanted to showcase those watchmakers to my wife and son but couldn’t.

However what has not changed is the precision that the Swiss follow in all walks of their life. As usual, I had made Geneva my base and bought the Swiss Travel Pass which allowed us the use of all their train, bus and boats. If you are short on time and want to visit multiple places, the travel pass is the most convenient thing.

Everyone knows how beautiful Switzerland is and how safe it is etc. etc.

I am not sure however if anyone knows or speaks about, how synchronised the whole transit transport system in Switzerland is. You get only 3-4 minutes between interchanges, but you can be sure that you will catch all your linking transport. And this is not only about trains or only buses, but all the trains, boats and buses.

One day we decided to go to Interlaken from Geneva. After reaching Interlaken and admiring all the beauty from the land level we took the …..to the restaurant on the highest point. After having our lunch over there we decided to take a boat ride on the lake – all three of us love boat rides. When we reached the boat station, the next boat was not until about 3:30 PM ( I don’t remember the exact times now). The whole tour would take about 2 hours. So I was worried that we would not be able to take the train back to Geneva via Berne from Interlaken. We then started thinking in terms of avoiding the boat ride because otherwise we would reach Geneva past midnight. While Geneva is very safe, I generally have a fear of being so late in a foreign land.

Now this is where the drama comes. The steward at the boat was extremely friendly. Before he started boarding I got talking to him, sharing my dilemma. Once I told him the final destination he made out a itinerary for me, so that we would get a ride on the boat as well as not reach Interlaken at midnight.

So we got on the boat. After about 25 minutes of a boat ride in a chilly winter afternoon in Interlaken, at the second stop he asked us to get down. Right opposite the docking area was a small station. The challenge with the small station was that there was very little English so we were not sure if the train that was coming us would take us. But the steward had given us the train number and the destination.

So exactly in 12 minutes or so the train arrived. We sat in the train to reach the mainline station where would catch the train coming from Interlaken. The challenge – there was only a 3 minute gap and the platforms where the two trains were going to park were quite a walk. But our train reached there exactly as promised. We moved at a brisk pace to reach the other platform and to our surprise, the train we had to catch was just entering the platform as we reached.

I haven’t seen such precision, such attention to minute details across different transport systems in different cities like I saw it there.

Its things like these which make Switzerland such a “hot” tourist destination.

Why all this story – because if you can anticipate in advance how will each of your marketing pieces work and what will be the next steps and who will do what, when the prospect takes which step, then your whole system will work smoothly to get customers into your funnel and pass them on.

If on the other hand if any of the pieces are mis-aligned, then , there will be friction in your marketing which the customer will sense and you will delay his buying.

Till next time see how precisely you can match all the moving parts.

Carpe Diem!!!