Competition is a good thing

competition, Marketing, Positioning, scaling, Technology

In marketing if someone tells you they don’t have competition – then either there is no market or our person does not know where to play.

In the technology field you may have a window of opportunity of say a few months or maybe a year with your new product, but if you don’t see competition even on the horizon then you could be in the wrong market and that’s the scariest piece for a product management person in the technology field.

Most technology products or services are not born out of a specific need in the market. Most of the times companies keep tinkering and integrating various sub-modules to create a new product which the Product Management people are supposed to take to the market and convince their sales people to sell.

When you compete, a few things happen

It means that there’s a definable market. You can choose a niche within that market where you may have less competition or where you define the niche. Your positioning improves because someone has already taken one slot in the market.
It also means that you can aspire to pick up a larger piece of the market at a later date, so its not a FAD which will disappear as it came
Competition also helps you fine tune your product or service better. Since you see the challenges the competition is facing in providing the same product or service, you can account for it already
When you fight against a better competition you also hone your skills

I always get scared when I don’t see competition, even if its coming from a technology which is “n-1” from what we have, because then we know that there’s a market for the “n-1” at least. We just need to find enough people who have got disillusioned with it.

On the other hand I always admire how big companies like say P&G, Unilever or IBM etc. like to look at picking up a bigger piece of the market. They have such systematised methods to scale. I get to learn so much when they are in competition or when we join hands with one large company and compete against another large company. Its the best place to see how manager’s react , how decisions get made.

As they say, when you play a game against a better competitor you come out the winner either way – if you win, you win, but even when you lose you learn of the multiple things that you didn’t know off.

So always welcome competition.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Testing…more testing …and even more testing – Part II

Positioning, Product Management, segmentation, Testing

I wrote a post, a few days back, on this topic for identifying the right message, the correct strategy, the correct segment etc. with respect to marketing.

I was wondering if I was being too headstrong in insisting on this.

I just realised, that the nations who were able to bring Corona / Covid19 under control faster also relied on this. While keeping a safe distance and wearing a mask are the only deterrents to catching the Covid19, for the people who are involved in pandemic control, the only method was to test and see how the rate of growth of the pandemic was taking place.

The faster and higher the number of tests being done, the faster the identification of the possible infections , the quicker the response to isolate the people and quarantine them, thus reducing the opportunity for the virus to spread.

On the manufacturing floor also the higher the tests you do in the process, the lesser is the chance that the final product will have defects and will need to be scrapped.

When I visited Paris recently, I visited one of the perfumery companies and they showed us the process of launching a new perfume and how multiple tests had to be conducted to ensure that it did not react with people’s skin and the kind of audience reactions.

For releasing any vaccine they have to go through multiple rounds of tests.

So my rant that the only way to figure out what would succeed in the market is to test, then do more more tests and then even more tests, is actually a standard practice in all kinds of domains. I therefore don’t understand why people in marketing are averse to the idea of having a very serious process of testing their segmentation, niche, messaging etc.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Testing….more testing…even more testing

Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation, Testing

A lot of times people ask me what is the headline that I write so I will get a response. My answer generally is I don’t know. And they look at me and…..but you have been doing marketing for 25 plus years.

I have a checklist which kind of acts like a framework but inspie of that I still make different versions of my emails and ask my team to test. Once something succeeds, then we use that as a control, to tweak the content or the subject line…only one variable at a time.

The reason for this is the market has a mind of its own. I cannot claim to have better wisdom than the consolidated wisdom of the market.

I was not born with this modesty. I actually have a massive ego.

But the market has taught me , after so many failures, that I cannot think I know everything, that I cannot predict success of a product or a message. That I should only follow one rule and that is to test and keep testing to improve.

Incidentally this is also true of stock markets. Most of the successful veterans will tell you, that they have frameworks on how they invest, but they cannot predict how a stock will move .

Especially if you are in the technology product management field, you have two variables to handle.

The underlying technology and the product you have built on it…..Cloud as the technology and your service management product as an example
The market’s perception

As I have mentioned many times earlier, in marketing perception is reality. So if someone thinks that Cloud is not a secure technology then they won’t use your product even though you have a great product.

Make testing as the bedrock of all that you do so that you fail fast , learn, adapt and become successful.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Product Management in technology markets

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

I have written and emphasized so much on segmentation and nicking. On starting with a single market only.

The very nature of the technology industry is very dynamic. Which means when you have built a product using some components, you have a use case which you think is where it can be utilized. However when you take it to your existing customers for their feedback – these are also called beta sites – you realize massive adoption problems.

However the same product in a different segment gets adopted very fast. This is where segmenting by usage becomes very useful.

If you can list the possible usage in different industries then take one, do a survey and then if you find resistance move to the next, till you find the industry where your services can go into production.

Then target to dominate that industry as you continue to identify the next industry where you can utilize the same service.

For a product management person this is a critical factor in the technology sector. In the consumer segment adaptation of the same product may or may not happen. But for the technology segment, where a lot of investment goes in building new products and the window of opportunity is very small, the product management person has to really push for various use cases fast

With small changes you can make the product or service specific to a given industry and then capture it.

But you always have to start small, fail fast, learn fast, adapt and move to the next segment.

Since marketing is more applied psychology, the faster you learn, the higher is the possibility of success in technology marketing.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!