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!!!

Boredom in marketing …. cause for distraction – Part 3

Distractions, ideal customer, Marketing, messaging, segmentation, single target market

People have such a low attention span these days, that, anything that even remotely screams marketing, gets thrown into the delete mode even without a second thought. With electronic messaging this is even more convenient.

So while electronic messaging via email or via social media can get you very targeted audience, sometimes almost free, they also have the highest “ignore” rates.

While one of the reasons for the “ignore” is the massive number of unnecessary emails or messages people get, the other is because the messages don’t speak to the prospect in what’s important to him. So while they are trying to scan your subject line / headline , and if your message is boring, an alert pops up on their cell phone and they get drawn into it and you have lost that small window of opportunity.

Understanding what is going on in the mind of the prospect is critical – what conversations she could be having, are critical to ensuring that you are not boring. You can do this kind of specific messaging only if you have segmented the market so well, that the conversations start to become evident.

In any given market segment there will always be the early adopters, the laggards, the fence sitters etc. What is the use case that you are targeting will decide within the segment what is your Single Target Market to start your messaging with. If you are targeting the replacement market then you go with a different kind of messaging, while if you are targeting the early adopters you need to be looking at how your message can play to their vanity of being early adopters.

Creating messaging is a very time consuming job and requires a lot of subtle changes in the language. Whenever I have tried to get something out in a hurry, because the team was in a hurry, those campaigns have bombed for us. And the time which I saved at the beginning has actually resulted in a much larger waste. Boring messages, motherhood statements, just get people to select delete because of the plethora of other distractions which exist.

Till next time then. Don’t let your marketing get boring.

Carpe Diem!!!

Boredom in marketing….cause for distraction – Part 2

B2B, Marketing, messaging, Triggers

In the first part we spoke about how marketing is all about applied psychology. So to ensure that the prospects read and respond to your message they have to get curious about what you send to them.

When you are marketing to consumers, you can have different nuances like comedy, location and other things to make the prospect curious about your offerings. However when you are marketing to B2B customers the messaging has to be a little more formal. The remaining part of the post is focused on B2B messaging and how to make it more interesting for the recipient so that they don’t get bored and move to the next item.

One way, to ensure you are not boring, that I have written about multiple times earlier, is using triggers. These could be related to the industry in general, the company in particular or the person specifically. The more specific the trigger, more the chance of getting a person interested.

In B2B messaging, the concept of triggers, works best when you’re doing one – on – one messaging. A person could have joined new, a person could have got promoted, a person could have moved to a new department within the company. The CEO of the company could have set new priorities. Or the price of oil going up could impact the company positively or negatively. You will need to have people dedicated to working on tracking these triggers for your list of prospects.

You then need to mold your message about your offerings and make it relevant with the triggers. If you’re using FedEx or a similar service you could even deliver an oversized package to draw the attention of your prospect even further. On the other hand if you’re going to use email then the message has to be short and should invoke curiosity.

We will discuss in more detail next time.

Till then….

Carpe Diem!!!