Indeed, not every business is market-led when it comes to product innovation, operations or just internal processes. Some companies are much focused on being product-led because they believe they are the best at what they do and their products alone can influence customers to change their preferences to go for what they are selling.
Some even believe they can easily create a demand for their products with a strong budget to push the uptake of the product through advertising and promotion. Remember, all these efforts only after a product is out of the “oven” and has hit the market as opposed to prior market sensing in determining if the product is what the market needs.
Without a doubt, that product ought to be trusted by whoever is offering it and even be used as a main channel for acquisition or retention of customers. Certainly, not a divergent way of doing business but simply placing massive reliance on the product itself as the features are attuned to the needs of the market. Certain products can be instant hits and be received well by the market despite the fact no market or consumer research preceding or informing their development. An interesting fact, however, is the success rate of these products never surpasses those that went through a rigorous research process and development.
Again, this is not to argue till the end of time that products that have gone through ample research and development can never fail. They still do but their failure rate is much lower. Remember, for a business, a product or service is only valuable if not it attains rapid growth. Moreover, a return on investment needs to be there for that product to be offered and used by the clients and thus earning widespread adoption. So, my argument really is, if at all the decision is to be product-led in achieving growth or profitability, certain fundamentals ought to be guaranteed.
- There has to be careful monitoring of user on-boarding checked against set acquisition targets. Vital clues such as why the product performance is above or below expectations should be collected for analysis. The analysis typically informs tactics for reinforcements or anomalies to addressed – either the product itself is a problem and does meet user expectations or the adopted market strategy to push the product or service is a misdiagnosis.
- The same product might be distributed to different demographics or psychographics, segmentation and user identification then becomes a must-do and follow. The tactics or marketing efforts should vary in terms of messaging and a specific demographic is to be reached in communicating benefits of the product and getting the product in their hands. A robust proactive outreach has to be part of the tactics.
- There has to be an overwhelming understanding of the value of the product being sold to the customer by the company itself. What is value? That is the amount of pula that the product is likely to generate. The pula is exactly how much the client is willing to pull that product off the shelf. Why? Because of the need for the product or just how it makes the buyer feel matters a lot.
Afterall, necessity is the mother of invention. The market can create the pull factor, the marketing needs such a product and a business stepping forward and designing that product or a push on the flip side of a product or service being with heavy marketing machinery for positioning purposes and generating a necessary demand or tactics.
Let’s interact:
Twitter: rremanake
LinkedIn: Gomolemo Kololo Manake
e-mail: gomolemo.manake@icloud.com
