Perception – II

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning, Product Management

Yesterday I spoke about the advantage of creating a Perception / Position in the mind of the customer and how a clear positioning can help you get premium.

Since my focus is on Product Management in technology products and services, within Marketing, I always like to focus on the differentiation and positioning one can create for the product.

There are an immense number of examples I will share with you on this in the future posts, showcasing how technology products/services own a category.

This post however looks at the downside of creating a strong positioning.

Once you take the position in the mind of a customer, it becomes very difficult to change that perception.

If we look at history Digital Equipment was the company which was positioned as the “mini” computer company. When the mainframe computers were associated with the IBM’s of the world Digital created a perception of being different with a “mini” computer. DEC PDPs were the computers which any company longed to own. They owned the Mini Computer category.

DEC however no longer exists today. The reason for that is – DEC was the MINI Computer company. When computers became personal, people didn’t associate DEC with that market and they got completely annihilated.

When you own a product category and the technology related to that category is nearing “end – of – life” then it becomes very difficult to migrate into a different category. This happens because of 2 reasons in my opinion:

Internal – the management of the company still tries to push their existing products/services because the are incentivized on pushing that.
External – because the position you hold is strong in the minds of the customer – they can’t see you in a different position and don’t believe you have those capabilities

Most managements don’t read the writing on the wall, some read it but are not able to take a tough call.

For a marketer, its a double edged sword especially in the technical world where the technology is changing so rapidly. Should they work and put the effort into creating and owning categories or should they be a generalist and try and attract everyone.

I will still place my bet any day on creating a positioning / perception/ differentiation so that your product/service can stand out and customers see you defining that space. Then making a sale become easier, making profits become easier.

There are other aspects to creating the differentiation which we will take in future posts.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Perception

differentiation, Marketing, Positioning

One of my early bosses gave me a mantra – in marketing perception is reality.

Once a perception has been created in the minds of people its very difficult to dislodge it. I was giving an example of doing pricing, to a new entrant into my product management team. How based on the perception that has been created for the brand it can command a premium pricing

This discussion actually started on what’s the right way to do pricing. One method that is simple to use is Cost ++.

However the market may find that very high on one extreme of the spectrum or you may end up leaving money on the table at the other extreme.

That’s when I gave her the example of how a washing machine brand which has German origins is able to command almost 70% higher premium in the market because of the perception that the German brand would have better engineering and quality.

Some people also tend you the word Positioning in lieu of Perception. There are some semantic differences but at a broad level they are similar

There was actually a very nice book by the name Positioning by Jack Trout and Al Ries. If you’re in marketing or intending to get into marketing this is one of the books you definitely need to read. This book gives a phenomenal number of examples of how once a positioning of a brand has taken place in the minds of people its very difficult to dislodge it.

A few days back I wrote about differentiation. When you differentiate your product or service you work to create a different perception or position in the minds of the customers.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

WHO NOT HOW – more than 7000 years ago

collaboration, Habits, Leverage

Dr. Benjamin Hardy — one of the most prolific writers on Medium has co-authored a book WHO NOT HOW. He has co-authored this book with one of my favorite thinkers Dan Sullivan.

The basic premise of this book is that if you leverage your relationships, you can solve all kinds of problems more easily as well as much much more quickly.

I finished reading this book yesterday and saw the immediate applicability all across my life.

But what surprised me when I was going through the book was the fact that two of Indian Mythologies’ the Ramayan and the Mahabharat are completely about WHO NOT HOW. Both are huge texts and its not my agenda to go into a religious discourse but if you see the key architects of these texts you will immediately see the applicability of this rule.

In Ramayan — Lord Ram’s wife Sita is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana. Lord Ram and his brother Laxman are travelling in the forest helter-skelter trying to figure out where Sita could be when they come across the Monkey King Sugreev and his able chieftain the Monkey God Hanuman.

In true “give” before you “ask” form that Dr. Ben Hardy suggests —Lord Ram first helps Sugreev get his kingdom back from Bali and then the complete army of monkeys ably led by the Monkey God Hanuman help identify where Sita is and then with their help Ram and Laxman fight with the demon king and kill Ravana and his generals.

If it was not for the Monkey God Hanuman they would have not been able to identify the location where Sita was held captive by Ravana. They used the Monkey God’s key capabilities to fly long distances and get an aerial view to isolate the location in Lanka. After that if it was not for the monkey army — who created the rock filled walkway in the sea — Lord Ram & Laxman would have not been able to cross the Indian Ocean to get into Lanka and fight Ravana

Lord Ram did not instruct them how to do their jobs —The Monkey God Hanuman and his army of monkey were good in their jobs and were wanting to get Lord Ram to succeed…. exactly as Ben Hardy talks about the “WHOs” that you need to choose and not micro manage.

If Lord Ram and his brother had tried to do everything on their own they would have taken a much longer time to first figure out the location and then go about trying to get there.

I am sure if you try to think about it, most of the major achievements in the world would not have happened without a WHO being involved. And this is not ONLY a vendor — customer relationship, that we are talking about. Its about also relationships where there are no payments getting made.

Till next time.

Differentiation

differentiation, Marketing, Sales

Bigbasket is a grocery and fresh fruit and vegetables delivery e-commerce company in India. I order stuff from them via their Mobile App

I was ordering the monthly stock of groceries, couple of days back on their app.

I ordered my standard brand of multi grain flour, biscuits etc.

My wife had asked me to also order mustard sauce. I don’t have a preferred brand of mustard sauce. So I searched. There were basically two types of mustard sauces- American Mustard and English Mustard. And every brand had these two.

To top it, I don’t know the difference between the two.

So I randomly decided to look at American Mustard sauce.

Now comes the interesting part….between the various brands that they had on their catalog, the only difference I could see was price…..maybe if I had tried to go deeper I would have found out some things. But at least I was not able to see upfront and I did not have the time to explore, so I kept scrolling down.

Suddenly I came across a brand which was clearly showing 96% fat free. Now please understand I don’t know if others are also equally fat free or not. But because I appreciate things which have less fat I ended up buying it. I didn’t think of price.

As a practioner of marketing I am always looking for seeing how companies who don’t have a brand, differentiate their products to make them stand out. Otherwise for most people if they don’t see the difference the only way people choose is on price.

Having a well recognized brand helps make you stand out. But if you’re starting new, the only way you can survive is by being able to differentiate your business.

On the other hand if you differentiate, then you will appeal to some people who will then not think of price when they buy your product or service. Slowly you then build your brand because of the differentiation.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!