A good product is one that solves valuable market problems. To be successful in the market, a product needs to solve the problems that the right customers are willing to pay to solve. To know if those customers are willing to pay, you need to understand how they perceive your product relative to alternative solutions. If you’re new to the series, head back to the intro article on comparing products, and catch up with this article, where we look at pulling together the information about which customers are important.
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Category Archives: Marketing
Important Customers – Comparing Products Part 5
Is Your Market Fragmented or Concentrated?
Market concentration – or fragmentation – is an important big picture view of your market. Insights into the nature of competition for your customers will help you make decisions about your product. But only if you correctly define your market.
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Minimum Market Acceptance
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.
The Conversation Circles
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.
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The Conversation Economy
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.
Personas Make Blue Ocean Strategy Proactive
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.
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Measuring Market Concentration (Competition)
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.
Viral Product Management
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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.
Freemium Business Model
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?”
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Losing Your Current Customers
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.
Posted in Marketing
Tagged acd ups, customer service, existing customers, Kristin Zhivago, managing customers, Saeed Khan
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