Archive for product management
The Difference Between Lead Generation and Demand Generation
Posted by: | CommentsI’m often asked to describe the difference between lead generation and demand generation. It’s not uncommon for the terms to be used interchangeably, but they are very different. Let me explain.
Lead Generation is about a single buyer.
Demand Generation is about a market of buyers.
Lead Generation is tactical.
Demand Generation is strategic.
Lead Generation is reactive.
Demand Generation is proactive.
The Stages of Awareness
Posted by: | CommentsProduct marketing managers are often asked to create or increase the awareness of a product in the market. The belief is that awareness equates to leads.
Buyers are complex beings and go through stages of awareness as I’ve outlined below. An awareness of these stages (pun intended) helps to understand why the trade show you did last month didn’t result in a gazillion leads.
No Recognition
The buyer has no idea that your company or product is an answer to their problems. You are wearing the Cloak of Invisibility.
Aided Recognition
Provided with clues, buyers can recall your company or product, and that it might be an answer to their problems. You still have work to do.
Unaided Recognition
Buyers recognize your company or product without help. They understand it’s an answer to a problem they are experiencing. The door is open to dialog.
Preference
Given multiple choices of vendors/products, buyers will prefer to buy your product as an answer to their problems. You are the ‘go to’ vendor. Congratulations.
Loyalty
Buyers will consistently choose your company or product over others, even when they have had a less than ideal experience. This is nirvana.
Rejection
Rejection is the opposite of Loyalty. Buyers will go out of their way to avoid your product. For whatever reason, real or otherwise, they think your product sucks. You need to fix this perception.
Launch Clinic Top Product Management Blog for 2012
Posted by: | CommentsStrategic Product Manager listed Launch Clinic as a top product management blog for 2012 – booya! Thanks, Stewart!
Hopefully this whole ‘the world is going to end thing’ doesn’t pan out and I’ll earn my way onto the list for 2013.
How to Say ‘No’ Without Getting Fired (part 3)
Posted by: | CommentsMarketers struggle to say ‘No’ to requests they know are frivolous. Sometimes it’s just easier to go with the status quo than make waves. But admit it: you (and your team) do a lot of extra stuff that is a waste of time and resources.
Part 1 was about linking everything you do in marketing to the goals the CEO values.
Part 2 discussed the importance of knowing your buyers.
The final installment of “How to Say ‘No’ Without Getting Fired” is an exploration into one more thing effective product marketers need to know: the buyer’s process for making a purchase decision.
Buyers follow a process that leads to a purchase decision
Why should anyone in Marketing be concerned about how buyers buy? Your Sales team takes care of that, right?
Salespeople are expected to know how buyers in an individual deal make a purchase decision. Marketing should know how buyers in a market segment make a purchase decision.
First, there are patterns (steps) in the way buyers in a market segment arrive at a purchase decision. The pattern is logical and predictable. Second, there are different buying roles that get involved in making a purchase decision, and they get involved at different times in the process for different reasons. Third, is the two previous items sets the stage for identifying marketing gaps that can facilitate a purchase decision, and help prioritize marketing projects.
According to the Corporate Executive Board…
“57 percent of the purchase decision is complete before a customer calls a supplier, providing a large opportunity for Marketing to influence the early stages of the purchase process.” – http://www.executiveboard.com/sales-marketing/challenger/insight-led-marcomm/index.html
Where do you go from here?
Three things are needed to confidently say ‘No’ to frivolous marketing requests without getting fired:
- Having a clear understanding of business goals and how they relate to what you do
- Mastery of the people who influence a purchase decision
- Knowledge of the purchase decision process
Saying ‘No’ Without Getting Fired is about knowledge not power. Oh and it makes it much easier to say ‘Yes’ with confidence too.
iBooks Author: A Game Changer for Marketers
Posted by: | CommentsToday Apple announced iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, effectively disrupting the business of school textbooks. I wrote that the “Apple iPad Will Be a Game Changer for Education” when the iPad was originally announced, but it didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure that out. iPad-based textbooks in the K-12 marketer are well within Apple’s distinctive competence.
iBooks Author a Game Changer for Marketers
The implication for marketers is immense. Let me get the conversation started…
- Deliver rich, interactive marketing collateral where you can not only create a persuasive message but a persuasive delivery to match
- Create game-changing product documentation
- Develop instructional materials that actually teach
- Self-publish thought leadership books without the need of a publisher
Stop what you’re doing, go to the Appstore, and download iBooks Author. Get to know it and how to use it. It will change the way you go to market and give you a competitive advantage (professionally and personally).
What are your ideas? What could you do with iBooks Author?
Pragmatic Marketing Mixer in Austin
Posted by: | CommentsPragmatic Marketing is hosting
an informal networking mixer at Gabriel’s Café on Tuesday, October 18th at 5:30pm.
Gabriel’s Café is located within the AT&T Executive Conference Center on the UT campus (hook ‘em horns).
Y’all come and hang out with us.
Does an increase in Awareness increase Revenue?
Posted by: | CommentsI was asked recently if I knew of any empirical data that shows the relationship between an increase in awareness and an increase in B2B sales. I don’t and so I started by searching online. I found anecdotal evidence at best.
Then I started to question my conventional wisdom that awareness comes first. That is, if potential buyers don’t know we have a solution to their problem, how would we ever get considered? Awareness drives interest, right?
I came to the realization that this kind of thinking is flawed, especially selling technology products. This is not the 70s with salesmen in white shirts, blue suits and red ties dialing for dollars. We are in an era where the majority of buyers find us by using their favorite search engine. It’s no longer a shouting match of advertising and direct marketing. This type of buyer behavior isn’t new. What’s new is that it has become mainstream.
So if buyers seek us out, how could a contemporary awareness campaign work? Are there situations where this makes sense or is it a waste of money?
Why do we “generate awareness”?
The question to be asked is where does the need to generate awareness come from:
- Sales makes a call to a prospective buyer and the buyer states they are unaware of the company and/or product;
- Our product portfolio has expanded and the customer base is unaware we can solve other problems for them; or
- We are introducing an innovative new approach to solving a problem
We can measure awareness through blind awareness studies. We can obviously measure revenue. The challenge is connecting the two measurements to draw a causal conclusion. If an increase in awareness drives interest, then it would be logical to conclude that interest would correlate to revenue. The stone tablet of marketing says it’s so, yet I am humbled by the fact I can’t point to any reliable body of work that supports it.
The order of operations has changed
Let’s assume for a moment you want to buy a waterproof digital camera because you are taking your family to Hawaii for a vacation and it would be cool to have underwater photos (interest). You could go to a camera store in your town, but most likely you’ll search online using the keyword phrase “underwater cameras”. You’ll review the search results, perhaps refining them a little to get a list of manufacturers that provide underwater cameras (awareness). Then you’ll follow the links to the manufacturers web sites to get an idea of what each camera can do and at what price. Before you purchase, you’ll look for reviews of the cameras to see what others are saying about it (evaluate). Finally you’ll try to get the best price based on how you like to buy, and then make a purchase (buy). If you really like the product (or not), you’ll write a review (reference).
What are the implications to marketers?
The implications are significant to marketers. It means we need to shift hard toward developing great content that buyers can find with a message that is clear and compelling. Every day we have buyers that go in and out of our sales process and we don’t know it’s happening. I call them lurkers. Unlike window shoppers – which implies they aren’t going to buy – lurkers have an intent to buy but they haven’t engaged with us yet. They are researching our product along with our competitors and finding references through what others are commenting about (good and bad).
The other implication is measurement. Marketing teams are asked to demonstrate a return and for some traditional activities, like generating awareness, this is getting increasingly more difficult to justify.
Why ‘educating the market’ is a last ditch effort
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Sooner or later you’ll be asked to ‘educate the market’ (if you haven’t already). It’s a last ditch effort to generate sales for a product your company has spent a lot of time and money developing, only to find that no one wants it. You conclude the problem couldn’t be the product. It must be the idiots in the market who “just don’t get it”. Clearly they need to be taught about a problem they obviously are too stupid to realize they have.
Product marketing managers beware when you’re asked to educate the market because you may have entered a race you can’t win. First ask your colleagues what problem the product is supposed to solve and then question if anyone actually wants the problem solved. If there is no real evidence, push back. The force will be strong on this one, Luke, because the money has been invested and a return is expected.
How could you go wrong with a face thingy to keep from getting soup all over your face? Who doesn’t want one of those! I wonder if they have them in camo?
Bonus question… any Pragmatic Marketing alumni care to take a shot at the Marketecture for this baby?
Update: Changed ‘know’ to ‘no’ in 1st paragraph. Thanks to Mitch Glasser!
Where is the ‘product’ in a product launch?
Posted by: | CommentsPut another way, if a product is something that solves a customer problem, then a ‘product’ is all things necessary to solve that problem. Sounds simple enough but often confusing in technology companies where our ‘product’ is defined as the thing we’ve built, but the customer’s expectation (buying criteria) can be very different.
From a product launch perspective this narrow definition of product sets the stage for chaos, confusion, and blame, much of which is placed on the product marketing manager (often the job title responsible for product launch). Let me take a software example and look at the bill of materials that might be needed for a contemporary technology product. We would need the thing that we built and it should have all the things that make it a useful product with a delightful customer experience. Things like help, documentation, quick start guide, etc. We thought through the things our customer needs to use the product.
Then we need to think about the steps necessary for our customer to get to the point where they can have that delightful experience. If the product is complex enough that implementation planning and services needed, who will do that? We may need to define a step-by-step implementation process. Is this process something we charge customers for or is it something they can do themselves? Does our product have any prerequisites? Is that something we provide or will we need a partner to fill that requirement?
Now we need the things necessary for us to make it a business, like a price, a way for accounting to book the sale, a plan to pay our salespeople, and a transfer of knowledge to our customer support team.
Then we need the things to help us communicate to the target customers in our market aware that we have an answer to their problems, like buyer personas, positioning/messaging, and a go-to-market strategy.
Where companies get in trouble is they mistakenly define their product as the thing their development team built (using criteria) without considering what their customer is expecting to buy (buying criteria). When the development team is done they throw it over the wall to the product marketing manager to launch. If it’s an incomplete solution from a buyer’s point of view it makes for a difficult sale, revenue expectations aren’t met, and the blame game starts.
We can get so caught up in the excitement of creating that we lose sight of the fact we’re running a business.
“Pragmatic” is the word of the year for 2011
Posted by: David Daniels on December 16, 2011 | Comments (1)Merriam-Webster named “pragmatic” the word of the year for 2011. So nice to feel like one of the cool kids for a change.
Pragmatic – advocating behavior that is dictated more by practical consequences than by theory or dogma
Are you taking products to market by theory or dogma or by practical consequences?
See also: Effective Product Marketing and Product Launch Essentials