Product Management

Single Target Market – Once Again – Testing

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, messaging, Product Management, single target market

In my post yesterday I wrote about how deep these three words – Single Target Market -are, for a product or marketing manager when they are launching a new product or service.

Even if you have a checklist based on which you identify a Single Target Market, you still need to test if there’s actually a need for your product / service in that market. “You have identified a niche in the market, but is there a market in the niche” I don’t remember where I first read this quote but its absolutely critical.

Before that you will need to test if the message that you are conveying resonates with the market. You will need to test if the medium you are using, actually takes the message to the market which people notice.

So testing, as I emphasised in my posts multiple times earlier also, is absolutely critical for your success. You may do as much analysis sitting on your desk, its only when the “rubber hits the road” that you realise how good your actual planning isarke.

If you have thought through the Single Target Market really well, then you would have also hypothesised about the conversations going on in the mind of the prospects at different stages in the buying cycle. However whether what you have sent out as a message is resonating or needs to fine tuned can only be figured out as you start playing in the market.

Similarly you may decide to send out pamphlets, to the audience, but the audience prefers to see a message on the social media platforms, that also needs to figured out.

Last but not the least – there’s a lead time – for any market to convert. In the case of B2B the lead time is actually very long – sometimes even upto two years. Reason being most B2B buying happens after a lot of effort where multiple departments are involved. So there’s lots of inertia as well as processes that need to be closed before another vendor is brought in. In addition until and unless the incumbent vendor has really messed up, the companies you target will not like to consider someone new. If you have a new technology which the existing vendors don’t provide, they may still consider you, but the process is still very long.

For this you need to have a lot of marketing stamina to not only test but also for conversion of prospects.

So while the Single Target Market can make your market entry strategy very structured, you still need to prepare for doing testing and tweaking your message or your medium.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Single Target Market – Once Again

Marketing, messaging, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

These three words are so deep in their meaning if you are in any way involved with Product Management or Marketing.

While classic marketing talks about identifying a problem in the market and then coming out with a solution. In a lot of cases , especially when it comes to technology marketing, as new technology starts becoming available you work on building new use case scenarios and then going out to the market to sell it.

In these cases you have the ability to fine tune the product for specific markets, but inherently you don’t have the ability to create a brand new product after identifying a product. Start-ups do have the ability to identify niches in the market where problems are unsolved and create from scratch. For most of us who work on the quarter by quarter revenue targets we have to look for the segments which have a problem , that our solution can solve.

For these situations the Single Target Market is the most important item in my view. Its one step deeper than just segmentation which is taught. Here we are also looking at going further down the segmenting exercise with the usage involved.

As an example you may have a product which is a car stereo. Lets assume that it has the ability to connect with 8 speakers and therefore the segment becomes only those cars which have the ability to have 8 speakers. Now if you are getting in new with this product – you can go to the OEM who is making the car and ask them to incorporate it into their car. On the other hand you can take this same car stereo and sell it to the “after market” dealers as a replacement of faulty stereos.

The messaging you have to do to connect with the 2 different types of markets is different. Now lets go to target the “after market” niche further by looking to say a specific state like California to start with, versus looking at a state like Georgia. The accent of the message is totally different. So now you are targeting the auto shops which provide repair services for cars of the luxury kind in a state like Georgia.

Each time I try to do a Single Target Market analysis – I learn a little more about how you can get a finer market to target.

Why is this important – all your advertising, messaging, triggers, the logistics of reaching your market- everything becomes easier and more focussed, which leads us to success.

Till next time then…..

Carpe Diem!!!

Dissatisfaction is progress in the market

Lateral Marketing, Marketing, messaging, Product Management, segmentation

Do lions get dissatisfied or for that matter zebras or giraffes. My guess is “No”. Lions and zebras and all the other animals have more or less remained as they were more than a 100000 years back. The lion in the image above still hunts its prey when it feels hungry and then just goes and rests with its family exactly what its ancestors did a hundred thousand years back.

Humans have evolved over that same time. One of the reasons is the fact that we had real estate in our head, due to which our brains could grow and evolve and are still evolving. In one of my earlier posts I wrote about how scarcity is the mother of all development. If we don’t have food, we try to find ways to grow food, we create GM seeds so that pests and weather don’t impact them. If we don’t have water we seed clouds or desalinate water from the sea.

I will qualify that while scarcity causes us to think of solutions, its the dissatisfaction with the scarcity which is the mother of all progress. If we are not dissatisfied with the fact that we are short of something and we need to find ways to get out of the situation, we would never move from being cavemen to what we are today. Not being able to find food would have made us look for ways to build weapons that could be used to kill wild animals and help us not get killed.

But its this same dissatisfaction which cause us to feel bad, feel low etc. Its what gets us emotional about issues. And the negativity with the issues causes us to also do negative things like arson, robbery etc. So its a double edged sword.

Marketing and product management is all about finding the dissatisfaction in the market and providing a solution. If you can clearly identify different areas of dissatisfaction, you can segment the market in different ways. Quite a lot of times the dissatisfaction is latent…..nobody knew they wanted a car versus a horse carriage.

But yes people were fed up of dirty taxis, high fares & tantrums and someone thought of ride sharing without owning any taxis.

However more often then not you don’t create a product or service from scratch. You have to mould what you have, by adding features or deleting some, to meet a specific need of a specific segment of the market and then carry your messaging in a way that the market gets it. I would highly recommend you to read Lateral Marketing by Philip Kotler to learn the frameworks of how you can create new segments/uses by making subtle changes in your products.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Single Target Market- once again

B2B, differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Product Management, route to market, segmentation, single target market

This is such a major piece in any market plan that I  cannot lay enough emphasis on the topic. I have already written a lot of posts on just this one topic , but there’s so much at stake in your plan with just this one concept that its critical that you get this right.

Some would call this segmentation,  some would call it finding a niche.  Call it by whatever name,  the idea is to start in a minimum viable piece of the market, learn everything and then expand. Never ever try to address all segments at once.

You can segment by geography- so choose only one location to start, or you could look at a vertical industry to start with if you are in the B2B market.

One useful way to find the Single Target market is also by usage. Suppose you have a service and as an example say you decide to focus on New York City. But NYC has 9 million people. So you could then either break it down by identifying the neighborhood because different parts of NYC have different buyers in terms of paying capacity.

You could then go further down to see if your service is for first time users, or for emergency usage, or a a replacement service etc.

Once break it down to such granularity each interaction with a prospect becomes a learning and you can quickly understand and test different messaging, different media etc. so that you can quickly dominate the market.

If you are in anyway responsible for product management and going to launch a new product or service or in marketing in a similar situation first get clarity on this aspect.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!