Challenges in B2B product launch...

You think launching a new product or innovation in B2B space is easier? ready with a detailed industry gap analysis, found an opportunity & come up with a solution to fix the gap? It also sounds easier compare to B2C products, because there are less number of people to pitch your product, take to market, go live!

YET - B2B products are as harder to launch & be successful, I have tried to list a few... based on a recent research that we have done in B2B space:

• Current Process - are you changing the existing process, that business are using currently? for them to adopt your product - if yes, think again... might have an uphill task in convincing the potential customers
• Savings - is your pitch mainly on cost savings to the business? be sure that you have done a complete research & understand is the cost line item you are replacing is on the top 10 of the cost line items for the business
  
• Payment Cycle - assume you will be a paid product for the businesses, you should be aware of the payment cycle of the businesses in the industry - helps to know what is the money needed for WIP & be ready for such a cash flow
• Literacy of People - are the target users in business literate with the tools or technologies you are using or proposing? if no - then you might waste & break your head with people not willing to learn or use the tool
• Industry - last, but an important one... is the industry you are targeting shown a sign of adoption or willingness to look at new products, open for change, backed with legal (formal or informal) compliance to ethical practices

I still think B2B market has better chances of succeeding on innovation, profitability & target revenue realization... rather than living in virtual money or valuations of B2C market (at least for the tech companies)

-Bhaskara

Target Users for Social Media Marketing

Internet Users are the target for social media marketing; snapshot of 2009 online user metrics in India is as given in section below. Social Media Marketing is about finding the genre specific vertical or website that can provide the target users to position the product / service.

India Online User Metrics

• 47 million people online, regular users reaching 38.5 million
• 4 million users access internet on mobile phone
• 4 out or 5 online users are 19 - 35yrs
• 91% of regular online users - search or buy online
• 20% have bought online in past 1 year

are they mass or class users for your product?
Social Media users are your quality / class users that you want to reach & communication the message, it’s not yet a mass media in India – because of the much smaller user base on internet compare to TV, Radio etc., It can help you reach students in Bangalore, who are passionate about movies – a focused smaller set of people that have a higher chances of receiving the message & considering to purchase or recommend to other users.

how is the conversion ratio of aware consumers to purchase?










Traditional Media has a smaller conversion ratio in consumer consideration to purchase funnel, because the nature of advertising is mass, we need more impressions to reach the target awareness stage of the product & achieve the required recall rate. Social Media can provide a higher conversion ratio, if the right social media channel is chosen for communicating your product / service message. Also, it’s a shorter cycle of money spends – as the performance metrics of the campaign can be viewed on a daily / hourly basis & corrective actions can be taken quicker than traditional media.

Right selection of online channels to promote your product / service can yield good return on investment, social media marketing is an emerging trend / topic in advertising industry - that has gained a significant share of advertising in US Market... but in early stage of use (only limiting to technology related products / services) in India.

-Bhaskara

What is Social Media Marketing?

This is the first in series of post about "Social Media Marketing" - we will cover the basic definition of social media marketing, how the media differs from the traditional media... that we are aware of & used extensively for marketing currently. In subsequent posts, we will understand the suitability of social media marketing for India market.


Wikipedia: “Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures.”

Marketing has been inside-out (one way) approach – to broadcast the product message to the consumer with & expect the user to listen, consider purchase of the product. Social Media Marketing is use of media that is capable of two way communication, engage consumer in a dialogue, hear their review comments, spread your product message among their network – along with increase in product sales, you would also get feedback from consumers.

Traditional Media








Television, Radio, Print are the traditional media, currently used for marketing the products / services, characteristically it adopts the “law of few” (scarce resource) that leads the products / services to fight for limited media available to broadcast their message, pricing. Demand to Price elasticity is driven by the quality of the program on the media.

Social Media






Internet & Mobile Phones are the two main constituents of Social Media and it differs in availability of scale, does not have the problem of few, less elastic demand curve compared to traditional media. Specific / narrow target user social media channel can be found or created to market the product, a new channel creation has lower entry barrier.

Bing is favorite rest of world... other than US?

Is Bing catching up as "decision" sorry, the "search" engine of choice by people all over the world? Looks like yes as per this non-scientific poll by Time.

Interesting only US State that is in blue, for Bing is Iowa, all other states have a "leading" Google choice as favorite search engine.

Rest of the world's 81% liking for Bing, makes Bing the winner in this non-scientific post.

I Personally love Bing search - it gives me the results I need & in a structure format that makes me easier to navigate to the destination... not having to spend time wasting to look for my destination on the map (may we say the search results page on web is a map?)

The coolest thing that I like on Bing is the "new image" for every day... that keeps me informed about a remotest island that I never heard or some interesting facts of a place that I have lived in or visited.

I'm not a microsoft fan, but a supporter of innovation, new products, early adopter... I truly believe Google is suffocating as search engine & will be getting into catchup mode, if they don't change soon.

Wait... I thought people in US were early adopter's, but why are they stuck with Google, while rest of the world has embrace Bing?

-Bhaskara

AD theme in recession...

US and probably most countries in the world is going through a tremendous change during these recession times, what used to be unique product based positioning & marketing... is moving towards advertising on "price" - price based competition is the one of the first consideration for advertisements, below are some examples of TV Ads...

• Subway - $5.00 footlong sandwitches
• Hyundai - Offering $1.49 /gallon gas for the entire year
• KFC - $5.00 for chicken, side & drink
• GM is becoming "green" from the traditional blue.. to give a new message
  
• Chillis - $20.00 3 course menu for two people
• Walmart - continues to give the message of everyday low prices
  

and every street has at least one store in NY, has one of the following boards...

• going out of business
• everything is 80% off
• buy 1 get 1 free

How does the world of advertising change in these recession times?
First thing that happens in time of recession for advertising is cut in budgets & change of positioning & message for the product to something more valuable, less price, better over the competition etc,

How do you innovate in advertising your product?
It should be back to basics...

a. re-think the competition for the product, as because of new macro-economic conditions the marketplace might have changed, could be competing with a #6 company in the market

b. understand the new value of your product in the recession, new economic conditions might mean different to your consumers...

c. change your advertising strategy, start with a clean slate in the communicating the message to the consumers

the list can keep going to innovate, position and marketing of the product.

-Bhaskara

Adverisements claim that cannot be verified

Indian Advertisement industry seem to be taking quick & dirty approach towards gaining traction & improving sales... Horlicks used to keep "high standards" for their advertisements, but off late seem to have given up & taking an easy route by using some health reasons or facts (that cannot be verified) for advertising the product.

Regular Horlicks:
Horlicks runs this ad as showing in a school the kids were made in two groups & only one group was given Horlicks, while others regular milk... showing after 6 months, kids taking Horlicks were stronger, sharper & taller. This AD was accidentally telecasted in UK by Nepalese Channel & GSK got into legal tangle with UK government and had to ban the AD:

Youtube Video of Banned Horlicks Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PzL0bIdFYg
News in UK Media - row over Horlicks Ad: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080646/Row-ad-Horlicks-makes-children-tall.html

Why can't the advertising council in India watch out for such ADs that don't make sense & ban them, instead of letting them use false promises to sell their product?


Womens Horlicks
Jan 2009:
Horlicks launched their Womens Horlicks with a nice advertisement, showing how women are busy at work & home taking care of others, forget to take care of themselves... I really loved this launch & I thought it was giving the right message - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWvolkt-FH4

June 2009 :
Horlicks has now launched a new AD for women horlicks that show, one in three women are suseptible to weak bone related joint pains or fracture & recommend them to drink Horlicks. How are the going to prove this point? Is it this easy to make claims about health that does not even require a research backing & detailed explaination... before ADs are approve?

ps: Sorry, could not find a video of this AD on web.

What is the bad in these ADs?
These brand are lacking a long term strategy, perspective & creating advertisements that is creating some form of scare or inferiority complex, if you don't use the product... it only helps people to bond with it, until the deficiency is covered & then people will move on.

Brands should rather consider giving the positive message about the product in the AD, encourage people to relate with the product to their real life.

-Bhaskara

Idea: Webmail, read receipt?

Has there been a time, you sent out a blast email to 100's of your friends or colleagues (mostly to their personal id's - webmail) & wondering, who all read the email?

It seems to be a simple solution that Y!, GMail, Hotmails of the world can implement, by using the same concept as GoogleAnalytics does to keep count of people who have visited a website. Let me describe this in detail below... (hope GMail developers read this & implement :))

1. Every Y! or GMail user should have an ability to enter their GoogleAnalytics (or similar tracking software) code, that should report their email read metrics

2. Email Compose - should have an option, "Do you want to know, if the receipient read the email?" - this option can be chosen by users, who need it

3. Y! or GMail - read email web page (that displays the email), should use the GoogleAnalytics solution, with the senders code

4. GoogleAnalyics - Javascript code will take care of sending the reader analytics, that can be later analysed by the sender on his Google Analytics account.

Good idea... do comment, if you think was a stimulating thought!

-Bhaskara

Data Provider Partners...

If you are building a new software product, say "changing" the way a certain industry works from being manual to be automated, one of the biggest challenges is to show the value in the product to prospective buyers. It's a chicken & egg problem - "no proven data, hence no customers - no customers, hence no data"

I have been thinking about this & found one possible approach to solve this... read along & give me your comments.

• Design / Architect the product using as much possible inputs from the industry experts, do user interviews, work in the domain for a while (if you don't have exposure) etc
• Build a prototype to show, while speaking to the industry veterans, it helps in sharing the idea / concept much easily - than just speaking about it
• Customers may not signup, because of lack of confidence right? Try to engage them as "data provider" partner, collect all their current manual data & upload into your system
• Anonymise (remove the company name, demographics etc) the data - as much possible and use this as base to run through various business flows, make sure the software is working as expected
• Also - use the data collected (anonymous) as suggestions or boundary conditions data to new or trial customers (whom you have been finally able to convince to come onboard) - they would be happy to see, that system is providing some guidance!

It's not the complete solution, but a possible approach that can be useful for enterprise products.

Thanks
Bhaskara