The Smart Consumer
Undoubtedly, the relationship of the product with the consumer has changed radically in a short time. At present, before buying a personal computer or a car, a consumer goes online to find, compare and sometimes even just buying into the same process. We all have the ability to access the network to learn more about the product we buy and who makes it and where sold.
The consumer's relationship with the company's point of view of purchasing is much more mature now so that ways of approaching the consumer to be more mature. This is an idea by Philip Kotler makes us see the process of maturation and learning as consumers have suffered in recent years. New technologies have encouraged everyone to choose how to interact with business and the level of information everyone needs to take a particular decision.
The change creates opportunities
This is an excellent time to remember that story of Spencer Johnson, MD "Who took my cheese?". A story about four characters in search of cheese where the cheese is a metaphor for what you want in life and the maze where you spend your time trying to get what he craves.
That said passage to summarize the ideas that passed the book:
1. Having Cheese makes you happy. Tell cheese, or work, or business, or customers ... Put the name you want.
The naming or how to name your company or product.
People need to name the things we have around us, and in the same way each of us need a name that differentiates us from others, a name that we give a specific identity.
His company's true, your company will not exist until it has a recognizable name, and of course its brand strength to not take that name is not provided with identity, personality, values and experiences.
The process of creating a name or naming begins with a review of the sector and competition. A time to think of a name for your business the first thing is to look at your competitors, do Internet searches and see how its named in the sector to enterprises in other parts of the world and try to understand why.
Marketing for times of crisis
Intensity and expected duration of the current crisis is forcing a debate on the consequences that will bring in all areas of the company, including marketing. In general these tests are made from a unique supplier (how it will affect their marketing budgets, what tactics will prioritize ...). I prefer to start talking about the impact of the crisis on shoppers and their impact on the strategies of the suppliers.
Customers in the crisis also produced uncertainty and budget cuts: rising risk aversion and the search for security, there is less money to explore new technologies and postponing any investment that does not have an immediate and measurable effect on the business (preferably in the form cost reduction) and a rapid pay-back. As a result, the approval of investment committees increase their size and purchasing cycles are stretched to infinity.
Competing against The Status Quo
For those who are dedicated to sell complex products to business customers is sadly often alleged that the "opportunities" to make sales because they eventually lost by the prospect makes the time pass without taking a decision or explicitly decide to do nothing.
This means that the winner is not a competitor of ours or a replacement or alternative option or a solution developed internally, but the status quo, inertia of leaving things as they are. This option is to eventually rival the numbers of any one product, but unfortunately many do not insist on marketing strategies to take this into account.
What customers need?
Many people believe that the process of developing new products is broken and, indeed, any activity between 70 and 90 by a bad performance would be considered out of control from all points of view.
And although there are many reasons attributed to this failure (organizational, cultural, technological, ...) some of them have a much greater weight. In "Winning at New Products" Robert Cooper cited as the two most important factors for the success of new products (due to their impact on profitability) to the following:
Internet has revolutionized the marketing of software products
A recurring theme in this blog is that the Internet has transformed the marketing of technology products and in no industry has been so evident as in the software business. The software is a product unique for several reasons:
- Costs are dominated by the first unit, with marginal costs that can be negligible, even if they customize the product.
- Facility for collaborative development, including teams from loosely coupled, and that has led to the open source phenomenon.
- In many categories of software phenomena commoditization and availability of free products that make the users are less willing to pay for it.
- High product complexity, which makes it difficult to learn, use and communicate their benefits and that may impose barriers to the adoption and change.
Who has taken my IT buyer?
The marketing of IT products is undergoing a radical change. At a time like the present one in which business executives expect that technology is increasingly critical to its success and IT managers consume most of their efforts on maintaining systems with more than 30 years old, it is normal makers involved with business and even a "bridge" to his fellow-time systems to incorporate new technologies to improve their processes, or give them advantages over their competitors. And that means that marketing must take into account this shift in influence buying.
Technology markets and positive feedback
We all agree that the markets for technology products are often characterized by instability, unpredictability of its evolution, the ability of competitors to block market access, the ability to dominate the end product and lower profits for the generous the winner. And much of this behavior is due to the effects of positive feedback that occurs between actors in these markets and the economists known as increasing returns on the demand side. This positive feedback is responsible for a product that is beginning to evolve to succeed sole better (and that one with a bad position tends to worsen their situation) and is the cause of market movement, for example, to a certain operating system or a DVD made from among several competitors.
Competitive intelligence: those who do not know you could end up
Competitive Intelligence is a systematic process of observation and collection of relevant information about the environment of the company, followed by their processing, analysis and dissemination into the decision-making. Depending on the object of his analysis Competitive Intelligence can have more focus on the market, competitors, customers, the economic, technological, regulatory, legal, etc.. In any case, the ultimate goal is to obtain information on which to base the company's shares. This is a key aspect that makes the Competitive Intelligence is not only a more or less passive, but a proactive activity that enables it to detect threats and opportunities to discover and act accordingly.