April Dunford just presented Startup Marketing 101 at DemoCamp Toronto. Great ideas from the ‘marketing and your startup’ point of view. I’ve often said that product managers and product marketers care about much of the same market data, they just do different things with it. The idea of minimal feature set came up in April’s presentation – this article talks about product management, agile, and initial market acceptance.
In the previous article on the Conversation Ecosystem, I introduced a hierarchy of increasingly valuable conversations. Some great feedback from you inspired a better visualization.
The industrial age is behind us. It was surpassed by the knowledge economy, rapidly evolved into the attention economy. Successful companies realize that attention comes as a result of conversation. We’re now in the conversation economy.
Blue Ocean Strategy provides an interesting reactive analysis of companies and markets. Personas are used to understand your customer’s needs. Combining the two provides powerful proactive insights when positioning your product for market success.
Is your market competitive, or concentrated? What’s the difference, and how can you be objective about it and not just subjective? The United States government uses a measure called HHI – the Herfindal-Hirschman Index – as an objective measure of how competitive a market is. They use this measure to determine if a company is operating monopolistically, or to determine if a merger needs to be explored from an anti-trust perspective. The ask the question: would the merger create an anti-competitive market?
You can use this metric to get insight into how competitive your market is, and to gain a better appreciation for trends in your market. Read on to review the competitive landscapes and trends for email, search engines, browsers, and internet service providers.
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Our previous article looked at the economics of a Freemium business model. One element that is key to making a strategy that involves “free” work financially is growing your user base. One way to get that growth is through a word-of-mouth marketing campaign. This article looks at different elements that characterize or affect the successfulness of a viral product – from a product management perspective.
Ever scratch your head and wonder why you can use your favorite application for free? How can a business actually make money (and stay in business) when they offer their product for free? This article looks at the freemium business model, to see when it makes sense for a company to offer it. The freemium model is one where the company offers two (or more) versions of a product. The basic version is free to use. You have to pay for the premium version. The goal of this article is to answer the product management question, “Should you create a freemium business model?”
We just wrote about the importance of understanding your non-customers. That doesn’t mean you should neglect your current customers. If you do, you’re in world of trouble. Even if you don’t abuse your customers, maybe you’re taking them for granted. You’re losing some of them every year.
A lot of people stand up a variation of “If you build it, he will come” (from Field of Dreams) as a copy-writing hook for whatever they are about to tell you about creating products/services/whatever. We’re no better. We’re going to tell you that there is a big difference between the people who buy your product and the people who use your product.
If you build what he thinks he wants, he will come.
Actually, we need two catchy quotes.
If you build what he actually needs, he will come back.
For good measure, let’s plug my recent article in The Pragmatic Marketer, Maximize Your Word of Mouth Marketing: Turning Users Into Fans with a gratuitous quote.
If you build it right, he’ll bring his friends.
These quotes (the first two) highlight the differences between buyer personas and user personas.
Microsoft has a product called Zune that is a competitor to the Apple iPod. They just recently announced their second release – the new version of the Zune. Since Apple already dominates that market, Microsoft qualifies as a follower – how are they approaching the introduction of a new product to compete with an 800 lb. gorilla?
Read the rest of the article…
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These articles are written primarily for business analysts and product managers. Hopefully they help with thinking, doing, and training. Welcome aboard and let us know what you think!
