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!!!

B2B Buyer’s and the ecosystem

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Positioning, Product Management, segmentation

I have written earlier about the “infrastructure” that needs to be in place before you can place a new technology solution in the customer environment. This infrastructure also akin to the ecosystem which exists in nature which helps everyone survive and grow better

If that be the case, then who would the customer contact for a new technology that she’s hearing about.

If you have niched your market well, then you would know most of the market participants.

If you have niche your market well then you might be able to anticipate the questions that will come in the mind of your prospect.

If you can anticipate these you may also then be able to anticipate who would be the existing vendor/partner that the customer may want to talk to. Can you think of building a partnership with this company to get a quicker entry into the ecosystem.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Become a vending machine for your customer & own the ecosystem

Marketing, Marketing Ecosystem, Positioning, Product Management

Today I was taking the Breakthrough DNA training for Profit Activator number 5&6. This is a training run by Dean Jackson. I have written about Dean multiple times earlier also and highly recommend his podcast “morecheeselesswhiskers “.

Dean has systematized the marketing process into a 8 step process called Breakthrough DNA.

While doing the training I had an epiphany on how a technology services company could utilize the concepts being taught in the training .

I have been talking about the”infrastructure” that needs to be available to make any technology useful. So if you don’t have telecom bandwidth then SaaS based solutions cannot be successful.

But if you look at it another way, if you could become a vending machine (another idea from Dean Jackson and Joe Polish) for your customer .

If you identify what comes before, what comes after and what comes during the usage of your service and you become the supplier of that service through your partners, then not only will you be able to grow your business more rapidly, you will also reduce the resistance points for the customer.

Even if your product or service is not the center of the universe in your ecosystem, by following this strategy you can move the ecosystem in your direction.

Let’s say you sell “backup” software. You could sell the tape drives and tape libraries. You could provide multi layer backup via cloud and sell the customer the cloud service and so on. This way your business grows rapidly and the customer has the comfort that since you are putting everything in place, it will work.

I will definitely think on this aspect more for my own areas, suggest you also think.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!