Validating Market Opportunities

There are times where technocrats, bitten by the entrepreneurial bug have a particular idea and they would like to develop it. But once they develop the product, they have difficulty in getting the product across to the masses. Only a few early customers trickle in. This is because they have not really validated their idea. Only when the market feels the need for a particular product, will the masses end up buying it. Else, the product will be languishing without any takers. 

For a company practising Product Management with well defined roles of product planning and product marketing, these problems will not occur. This is because the product management function envisions the product strategy, new product strategy and new product development and also for the emerging markets for the company. They would always validate the idea before development and will also have a detailed product positioning strategy. As a part of product marketing, the marketing strategy will take care of the positioning and relevant directions to the marcom teams.

A product manager needs to be a friend of the end user and buyer. We need to keep in mind that the buyer is different from the user. The product marketer communicates to the buyer about the values he will be getting and the product is designed keeping the user in mind. If the product manager does not heed the market and designs a product keeping a closed view, there are high chances that the product will not be accepted by the masses.

As to the best ways to validate the market opportunity, it would be going to prominent customers (Existing and new) and talk to them regarding the pain points that they face. A lot of secondary research will also go into finding new opportunities. The question that the product managers should always have in mind is that if they build it, will the market buy? Answering that in each phase of the product will work wonders for the product. There should also be internal evangelising amongst the company to accept the product.

If the product is not taking off, then the strategy will have to be revisited and if this means going back to the market, then it has to be done. There are no two ways about it. The product manager will always build products for the market, more specifically, the end user.

Confianzys is a pioneer in Product Management space and has helped in evangelising it to Indian companies. Its mission is to help companies conceive market-driven breakthrough products and achieve global scale.

Benefits of practicing Product Management

“What is product management?” Product Management consists of 2: Product Planning, which is customer advocacy and product marketing, which is articulating business value. Product planning covers market requirements and product marketing covers product positioning strategies. Practising product management may not guarantee absolute success but not practising it will guarantee absolute product failure.

It should be noted that the product management as a function should report to the CEO and not to the marketing team or the technical team. Reporting to the marketing team will make the product management team a very tactical and not a strategy oriented division. Reporting to the technical team will limit the vision of the product management function in envisioning products for the market.

A product manager does not solve the problems in the market but rather transfers it to his product architect. The architect is the one who envisions the product and features. The product manager must always stand for the customer and get to create products for them. Otherwise it will not be accepted by the market. The product manager needs to interact with all the teams in the company, i.e Development team, Sales and Marketing, but he is not in charge of those activities.

For a great product strategy and new product strategy, a Product Manager is vital person. The product management practitioners are responsible for the product planning and product marketing. Product positioning is another important responsibility for the Product Manager and there are certain companies which advocate profit and loss for the Product management function.

Confianzys is a pioneer in Product Management space and has helped in evangelising it to Indian companies. Confianzys Consulting has helped companies with institutionalising Product Management function in their companies.

It has also associated with Blackblot for Product management certification. Confianzys has helped companies equip their teams with Product Management training and has partnered with Blackblot for Product management certification Product Management certification. This helps the companies to have better qualified employees and hence better productivity. The product manager training course helps the employees with industry proven best practices and templates.

B2B Marketing:Reaching Late Adopter Organizations

In a recent post, we revisited the well-known Technology Adoption Life Cycle model (TALC) that slots potential buyers based on their speed to adopt a new technology. When it comes to companies or any other organizations as buyers, is it possible to apply the TALC?

Definitely. What’s more, organizations may be late adopters despite the presence of a reasonable number of early adopted individuals in their ranks. Haven’t you been frustrated with the slow progress at some government departments, despite the presence of a few keenly interested officials?

It is generally understood that innovative technologies reach late adopters through the influence of early adopters and the early majority. In the case of organisations, late adopters may however be influenced not only by early adopters, but in other ways too.

Pushed by competition: This is the classic early to late adopter flow, where competitors gain an edge in customer loyalty, productivity and/or profitability using a new technology. For example, public sector banks in India that were slow to invest in online banking for retail customers have been forced to do so because of private sector banks making it part of the deal. Late adopters soon reach a situation where they may begin losing customers (and profits) if they don’t implement a particular technology. Customer surveys and other kinds of market feedback may help to amplify this.

For instance, if we look at the market for ERP, the adoption rate of SMEs is very slow in India. In a global competitive market however, even SMEs need to upgrade to better processes. One of the reasons for SMEs to adopt ERP has been increased competition from large firms looking to expand beyond their traditional customers, and thus encroaching on SME territory. Software companies have even begun targeting SMEs by changing the design and structure of current ERP tools to suit the needs of the SME market.

Pushed by customers: In the FMCG sector, contract manufacturers had to put in place new packaging technologies such as vacuum-packing, when such technologies were adopted by the brand-name marketers who outsourced to them. Selling the end customer on a new technology can help drive demand faster.

Pushed by regulators:  In the airline industry, aircraft manufacturers and airlines began using TCAS, a collision-avoidance technology, decades after it was originally made available. The reason was mandates from the American aviation authorities following some spectacular mid-air collisions. Regulators are difficult to influence, but at least reaching their awareness helps to put your technology into consideration.

The lesson for the B2B product marketer is that apart from direct bombardment at potential buyers, building traction with other, key players in the ecosystem like analysts, end users, regulators, industry veterans and market researchers may be critical to reaching a wider market.

Confianzys is a well-known, product management, customer Management, product marketing, market research company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing. For more information please visit. http://www.confianzys.com

The Market Plan And The Marketing Plan

Here’s a simple exercise for you: Google for ‘Market Plan’. All 10 results are likely to be definitions of a marketing plan, information on creating a marketing plan or examples of marketing plans. Like everybody else, Google too is unable to distinguish between a Market Plan and a Marketing Plan!

A Market Plan is a critical document in the product planning process, that encapsulates a team’s understanding of a particular market (size, opportunity, characteristics), of different customer segments within that market (geographical, demographic, behavioural), of key entities in the ecosystem (customers, competitors regulators) and of relevant problems in the market (product, technology or customer problems). It also looks at the company or business unit’s competencies for addressing specific customer segments and problems, in a SWOT analysis, and identifies goals in that market for the company to tackle.

In summary, the market plan helps the team move from a vague idea of a “promising market” to a more specific assessment of exactly how promising it is, and what makes it promising (and challenging).

What it is not: a map for capturing the promise of that market. That is where the Marketing Plan comes in. The marketing plan begins where the market plan ends – with business goals relevant to a particular market. It is meant to be a highly actionable plan with key strategies to address the goals, the budget needed to implement those strategies, the programs to be carried out as part of those strategies as well as how the product is to be presented to potential customers (positioning plan and key marketing messages).

Confusing one for the other is not an academic problem. It means that in practice, you’re likely putting the horse before the cart – carrying out marketing programs without a clear enough understanding of the market. Some teams can’t wait to get on with the “real work” of capturing the market – short term profitability pressures and company structures often reward the doing rather than the thinking. But, rushing to address the market without knowing what it needs, is a recipe for disaster, as companies have found often.
In early 2010, we at Confianzys undertook an assignment for one of our clients to construct a market plan and marketing plan for their Enterprise Software Product. The initiative was triggered by the failure of the product to consistently meet market-needs and generate revenues in the existing markets during the last six years of its existence (the focus markets were East/West Asian). The peaks and troughs were hurting the entity and expansion to new markets was a major challenge. The knowledge of market problems, opportunity, competition, buying drivers and other key criteria were sub-optimal and mostly relied on Sales feedback.

The next big Sales goal for the company was to expand to the APAC market, but this time around, only after thoroughly understanding the challenges / requirements of the market they planned to serve. A mix of 15-20 prospects (across all segments: Enterprise, Mid Market and SME) were interviewed before building the Market Plan and this led to identifying the right Value proposition and addressing the problems faced by the Customers in that market. The same was well communicated through a sustained marketing campaign.

Confianzys is a well known business consulting, product management, customer Management Company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing.

Product Management, Product Marketing

Direct marketing deal with communication with the consumers without any intervention like press or electronic media. It is thought to be most effective tool for marketing of small business ventures. Main forms of direct marketing that we see today are door to door leaflet marketing, direct mail, telemarketing, email marketing, voicemail marketing, broad cast faxing and marketing via coupons. Or we can say also direct marketing is a form of advertising that reaches its audience without using traditional formal channels of advertising, such as TV, newspapers or radio. Businesses communicate straight to the consumer with advertising techniques such as fliers, catalogue distribution, promotional letters, and street advertising.

Direct Advertising is a sub-discipline and type of marketing. There are two main definitional characteristics which distinguish it from other types of marketing. The first is that it sends its message directly to consumers, without the use of intervening commercial communication media. The second characteristic is the core principle of successful Advertising driving a specific “call to action.” This aspect of direct marketing involves an emphasis on trackable, measurable, positive responses from consumers (known simply as “response” in the industry) regardless of medium.

Direct marketing is attractive to many marketers, because in many cases its positive effect (but not negative results) can be measured directly. For example, if a marketer sends out 1,000 solicitations by mail, and 100 respond to the promotion, the marketer can say with confidence that campaign led directly to 10% direct responses.

There are many channels of Direct Marketing like:–

Direct mail:  The most common form of direct marketing is direct mail, sometimes called junk mail, used by advertisers who send paper mail to all postal customers in an area or to all customers on a list. Any low-budget medium that can be used to deliver a communication to a customer can be employed in direct marketing. Probably the most commonly used medium for direct marketing is mail, in which marketing communications are sent to customers using the postal service.

Telemarketing: Another common form of direct marketing is telemarketing, in which marketers contact consumers by phone.

Door-to-Door Leaflet Marketing: Leaflet distribution services are used extensively by the fast food industries, and much other business focusing on a local catchment. Business to consumer business model, similar to direct mail marketing, this method is targeted purely by area, and costs a fraction of the amount of a mail shot due to not having to purchase stamps, envelopes or having to buy address lists and the names of home occupants.

Confianzys is a well-known, product management, customer Management, product marketing, market research company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing.

Simple Marketing Strategies to Increase Your Business

Marketing is the most common problem that people running or starting small businesses ask me about. Typically, they say something like, “I’ve placed some ads but they just don’t seem to be doing anything.” – In other words, not bringing them the customers, clients or sales they desire.

Marketing is More Than Advertising But marketing and advertising are not synonymous and ‘placing a few ads’ is never going to draw the kind of business a small business needs to be successful. Marketing is a process, not an event. It involves planning marketing goals and implementing (often a series of) marketing strategies to achieve them.

Now that doesn’t mean marketing has to be a complicated process. But it does mean you have to know what you want to achieve and get out there and work at it. Here are six simple marketing strategies you can use to increase your customers and sales.

Simple Marketing Strategies

1) Offer some free classes related to your products and/or services – in your home, in a rented venue or through a local education institution such as a Community College. Target specific audiences or events, if appropriate. For instance, someone with a beading business might offer special workshops on Beaded Christmas Projects or Beading for Girls. A yoga instructor might offer a class such as Yoga for Men.

2) Join local business organizations and networking groups. Many, such as home-based business groups, are inexpensive to join. And the marketing benefits are huge. Once they get to know you and what you do, the other business people in your group will mention your business to others and may even give you referrals. Local business organizations are also great opportunities to create and participate in some cooperative marketing strategies, such as holding special Market Days or other events.

3) Create or become front and center in a charitable event. You can get huge amounts of press for events like this – which can translate into new customers. One local artist has painted paper grocery bags which he is selling with all proceeds going to a selected charity, for example. But you don’t even have to go to the trouble of creating your own event; many charities have established events that you can become a very visible part of by becoming a sponsor.

4) Join and use Twitter. If you have time to get to know and use a variety of social media, do. But if you only have time for one, Twitter is my pick of all the social media out there because it’s so quick and easy to use.

Confianzys is a well-known, product management, customer Management, product marketing, market research company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing. For more information please visit. http://www.confianzys.com

The Discipline of Product Management

Product development is the process of designing, building, operating, and maintaining a good or service. Software and Internet companies use a product development process to ensure that they are not just manufacturing a technology, but creating a product that people will want to buy and continue to use. To be sure, a base technology is at the heart of the product, but product development ensures that the customer’s voice is not lost in the rush to an exciting technology. Product development adds things like pricing, marketing, and customer support to the technology to create a complete product.

Without a product management philosophy and discipline, an IT organization becomes focused on the technology instead of the customers and is often organized along technology lines rather than in ways that benefit the customer. Ultimately, an IT organization must serve its customers or it will go out of business, either because the customers go away or because they complain to executive management until the organization is changed.

Product development is performed by a multi-disciplinary team whose goal is building, operating, and maintaining the product. Team members may include product managers, software developers, project managers, product operations engineers, customer support managers, software quality assurance engineers, user interface design engineers, marketers, financial personnel, and graphic artists.

The product manager serves as the leader of this cross functional team. While the product manager does not necessarily function as the operational manager for these people, she does lead, coordinate, and supervise their work toward the end goal of making the product a reality, launching it, operating it, and managing it throughout its life cycle.

Product management as a discipline is about what the product should be. Product managers are advocates for the customer’s needs and desires. A large product might have numerous product managers working towards its success at a variety of levels, all the way from the junior product manager writing specifications about single feature sets to a product strategy director who has overall responsibility to executive management for the product direction. A product manager’s responsibilities include the following:

1) Defining and planning product lines and product enhancements

2) Managing product contracts and sales

3) Setting strategic direction based on customer needs and business goals

4) Interpreting strategic goals into operational tasks

5) Making proposals to senior management regarding implications of proposed plans

6) Serving as a representative to internal and external clients. Taking the lead in establishing tactical plans and objectives

7) Developing and implementing administrative and operational matters ensuring achievement of objectives

    Evaluating risks and trade-offs

9) Proposing contingency plans

10) Analyzing business processes and creating applications to improve or support those processes

11) Branding

12) Working with graphic designers to create look and feel

13) Defining navigational flow and user experience

14) Defining feature sets and scooping releases

People not familiar with the discipline of product management frequently get a product manager confused with other players. For more information please visit. http://www.confianzys.com

Product Management, Product Marketing and Training Process

Every business starts with a plan and if you try marketing products without any marketing strategy you will get discouraged. You should always create a product marketing strategy to be used for your product to be launched.

Product marketing is a way of telling prospective buyers what is the product all about. It is where you give information of the product such as the use of the product, the quality and the price. The main goal of marketing products is to make a pitch to the prospective buyer and make the product appealing to them so that they would purchase it when launched in the market.

Your results or outputs can be very lucrative when you implement this product marketing strategy. You should have knowledge that this product marketing strategy is only an outline. Your results always depend on how much competition is for a particular product/brand. But don’t get discouraged there will be some time required for you to be in top.

The Product management process can be understood as it is the voice of the customer as well as deliver information about the market to the internal departments or operations that require this information/input.  So, it becomes very much required for a company to understand that what the market is saying and what it requires. This strategy can lead to a good product management and product marketing as well.

If a company does good product management for their products, it can create some great advantages and success for the product. Through product management you can have good idea about the supply and demand of that particular brand/product.

Product Management Training:

Confianzys is the official business partner of Blackblot’s comprehensive high-tech product management training program in India. The training program illustrates notable best practices and processes used by top technology companies to create successful market-driven products and services.

Responsibilities of a product manager in an organization:

• Specify market requirements for current and future products by conducting market research.
• Drives a solution set across development teams (such as Engineering, Marketing, and Sales) through market requirements.
• Reviews engineering deliverables; represent Product Management team in product design reviews.
• Manages core aspects of the product life cycle from strategic planning to tactical activities.
• Works with an experienced Product Management team to plan the product’s roadmap, execute product launch activities and follow up on existing product releases with the field.

Some great features of product management training provided by confianzys are:

• Designed to provide students with all three job necessities: knowledge, skills and tools.
• Delivered in a highly interactive mode, allowing attendees to participate and provide personal input as much as possible.
• Extremely practical and interlaced with various historical high-techs case studies to promote a deep understanding of topics

Reading marketing tips and strategies are very essential not only to marketers but also to business minded people. This article is all about launching a new product in the market. It can be very effective for a company as well as for marketing executives.

At Confianzys we are striving to provide better and effective results based on market research, marketing research, product management and product marketing. For more information please visit. http://www.confianzys.com

Business Consulting Product Management Customer Management Training and Marketing

It is very much important that people who want their online business to succeed begin by taking a multi-pronged approach so that they cover as many possible places to perform marketing as possible. Business consultants are supposed to be experts in their particular field. They may specialize on a specific aspect of business or a specific industry, such as management, finance, operations, human resources and development, research, etc.

Their primary role of product management is to make companies truly market and become customer driven by listening and ensuring customer input is used internally in the organization to improve the business. It is sometimes skipped that these activities are part of promotion, which is one component of a true marketing function. To define the message, you must first define the product and then define the benefits that the product delivers. The aim of product marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.

Interacting with the customers requires patience and expertise so as to ensure that the customer is fully satisfied. The queries or doubts of the customers vary from one call to another, and each of them needs to be responded carefully. One of the most important functions of a CRM, Customer Relationship Management system is that it stores information about your customers. This is something that is essential, not only for being able to contact them easily but also for documenting their ordering history. At the same time the system saves you time and money, it can make your customers feel more empowered than if they simply call in and must be taken by the hand by a salesperson.

Confianzys provides training on customer relationship management in India. There is a great opportunity to learn skills related to market and product as well. Through Confianzys you can be a part of product management, customer management training program in India.

Confianzys does a detailed understanding of your mission, value proposition, product development, technology adoption and competencies to identify the gaps for establishing a sustainable competitive advantage. It is then that we cherry pick the right alliances that would add value to your current and prospective customer base, while allowing you to focus on product enrichment. Confianzys focuses on helping technology product companies by providing consulting, training, coaching and operational interventions in the Product Management, Customer Management and Marketing Management areas.

Confianzys is a well known business consulting, product management, customer Management Company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing. For more information please visit. http://www.confianzys.com