Category Archives: Marketing

The Better Product Fallacy

Posted on October 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

From a previous post there was a summarization of “Trout On Strategy“.  This is the kind of book that stays with you even though it is fairly short.  One of the ideas that has been floating around since reading it is that having a better product does not mean that it will be successful.  In other words, just because your product is perceived as being better inside the company, does not mean that customers will perceive it that way.

Jack Trout points out the only reality of what makes a product better exists within the mind of the consumer.  It is wrong to assume that building a superior product to the competition will be enough.  It is a mistake to think that by only pointing out the “truth” through sales and marketing will provide a market win.  The truth is that most consumers already think they know what is the best and that even though the products they use may be “inferior” there is little chance that they will change their minds.

Just think about Coke and Pepsi.  Pepsi fought for decades to convince people that Pepsi tasted better.  Instead of getting market dominance, they only got second place to Coke.  Later they realized that their opportunity came from targetting the “Pepsi Generation”.  So, it is not so much about direct comparison with an existing product that wins but rather positioning the product into an area that the current competing product was a weakness with.

It seems to be a common mistake for companies to focus on building a “better” product.  In the distant past Citrix was convinced that multiuser OS/2 applications was where the action was.  The engineering team worked very hard to produce what was in many ways better than the original OS/2 implementation.  They truly believed they had a product that could take on Unix for multiuser terminal users and win.  Unfortunately both the OS/2 and Unix market did not think so.  It was very difficult to convince people and even more difficult to translate this into revenue.  It was not until Citrix embraced supporting NetWare, DOS, and Windows 3.1 with remote applications that things began to turn around (WinView).  The turn around was largely based on customer feedback and the weaknesses of anyone else being able to produce a multiuser DOS and Windows system (without being based on DOS or Windows).

It is a hard lesson to learn with any company and even any product.  Engineers (and even executives) tend to fall in love with certain technologies and products.  This love can translate into the belief that it is the best possible solution.  The trouble comes from thinking that the battle is based solely on merit and that everyone thinks like an engineer.  Obviously this is not true.  People need to see what makes it different with a focus on an obvious weakness of the currently leading product.  What a producer sees as a difference that is better might not perceived that way by the customer.  For example, just by making it slightly faster or slightly cheaper is not going to get anyone that excited.  The difference has to be shocking and obvious.  Most likely it has to be a difference where the competition does not do anything even close to the same.

We tend to be most impressed by things that act differently (but better) than previous products.  Once our mind has latched onto that new product, we tend to shut out the newcomers unless they repeat the same pattern of being impressed.  For example, most Google users would not switch to Live search simply because they see no real benefit in doing so.  On the surface, they basically look the same.  It really isn’t about “better” if someone already has the mind share of that particular product space.  It’s more about ignoring the product strengths of competitors and targeting the weak spots extensively.  With Google, a number of weaknesses could be pinpointed if someone really wanted to attack their market.  The same is true of any product.  The key is becoming best at something the competitors cannot do or will not do.

I will end with a brief quote from Jack Trout that shows how difficult the challenge is to change minds:

The single most wasteful thing you can do in marketing today is to try to change a human mind. Once a mind is made up, it’s almost impossible to change.

 

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Trout on Strategy

Posted on September 24, 2008 | 1 Comment

Some books get straight to the point.  Jack Trout, marketing guru, wrote a book called “Trout on Strategy” within the last few years that summarizes his experience with marketing over his very successful career.

There is not a high degree of content but it is easy to mistake simplicity and shortness with a lack of value.

Jack Trout is perhaps most famous for his views on positioning.

He starts out talking about too much choice leading to consumer confusion.  This aligns with Barry Schwartz’s book “The Paradox of Choice”.  As a result of this confusion, it is very difficult for companies to come out ahead unless they are perceived as being different in some valuable way.  The point is that any company is going to need a strategy to survive.

There is enough wisdom contained in this book that it would take several posts to discuss them.

Instead, this post is just to introduce some relevant ideas with the hope that future posts might wander over to the other areas.

The first idea to cover is that what marketing is really trying to do is to gain mindshare with the consumer.  It is commonly accepted that consumers only have so much room for product information and that consumers also do not like being confused.  There tends to be a desire to rank products relative to each other in a given category and usually competitors are viewed as having specific attributes.  The messages that have the most success are based on simplicity and newcomers have the most success with a message relative to existing category companies.

It is a common mistake to take on a competitor head on.  It is much wiser to find weaknesses with the competitor and focus on the attribute that can be used against that weakness.   Consumers see value in something the competitor cannot or will not do.

Trying to be an end all solution is only going to end in defeat.  Consumers prefer going to specialist than to generalist.  This makes more sense from a medical perspective ( patients would not go to the GP for everything).  Jack gives a great example of GE trying to convince companies that they can be the one stop provider for an entire power plant.  The power company refuses and points out that it wants the best provider for each category.  This is a hard lesson for any company looking to expand its business.

Customers do not always know what they want of even why they bought what they did.  This idea makes surveys and other customer interactions less valuable when developing a competing product.  Jack basically states that it is a myth that a consumer driven model will provide all the answers to success.

It is hard to accept that people do not like changing their minds.  He points out that it is much easier to add a relative point than to build an entirely new one.  Human minds have trouble grasping information not relative to what it already knows.  Accepting this human nature provides a much more accurate model for building the marketing story.

A company that specializes is much more likely to succeed and be understood by customers.  Customer undertstanding and simple marketing are directly tied.  The transition from product concept to actual product requires being seen as the expert with the best product.  It does not mean that the product is actually the best performing or the best tasting or the fastest.  It just means that the consumer believes it is the right choice based on the evidence that the main provider knows what it is talking about and only does that thing well.

Logically, the reality of the situation is defined by what the consumer thinks.  Reality is not based on any facts.  Facts are not going to make a successful product.  Facts are for science and the human mind is not based on science.

What seems to be true based on this advice is that a new company needs to be different in some way in order to succeed against the current companies in that field.  It has to stake a claim on a new aspect of the field in order to get the attention it needs to survive.   Once it has a foothold, it needs to continue on a path that is simple and well understood.  Once more momentum builds, it needs to keep showing that it is the expert and that consumers would benefit in its differences.  It needs to reduce its desire for growth for the sake of satisfying “Wall Street”.  It also needs to keep its roots with the customers intact.  Consumers gain a solid performer that can be trusted and the company gains a life and provides work for many employees.

I would recommend reading this book just for understanding the dos and donts of marketing.  Even for those of us not in marketing, it is still interesting.  It’s always good to hear from a specialist.

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Shawn Bass at Geek Speak Live 2008

Posted on September 10, 2008 | Leave a comment

Earlier this year, Citrix created a new track as part of Citrix Synergy in Houston.  This track, which was called “Geek Speak Live”, was intended to address the more technical aspects of Citrix products.  Not only that, it was intended to be largely driven by outside speakers.

The new model was very successful and addressed a gap in the standard Citrix events.  Traditionally Citrix has not satisfied the needs of the most technical administrators, analysts, and resellers.  The typical statement heard is that Citrix events are too marketing based.

“Geek Speak Live” was Citrix’s first serious attempt to bridge the gap and bring the technical community online.  Much work was put together by the evangelist group to try something different.

Keep in mind that Citrix’s VDI offering had just been released (XenDesktop) just earlier on the first day.  Later that evening, Shawn Bass gave a presentation about the limitations of VDI.  I just discovered this week that his VDI speech is available from Brightcove.  When this first happened (quite a few months ago) it caused a stir within Citrix.  Some people saw it as inappropriate, especially based on XenDesktop just being released.  I didn’t have enough evidence to judge then.  From the general reactions inside the company, it had seemed that perhaps Shawn had gone too far.

However, now that I have seen Shawn at BriForum and have seen this video, I would conclude that the initial stir was a misunderstanding.  Perhaps people saw Shawn as bashing VDI when really he is just trying to warn about the current limitations.  He is trying to deflate the hype curve and make people realize the true value of VDI.

Shawn is a very clever and passionate person.  He strongly believes that the truth be told.  This was obvious during BriForum on the topics he covered there.  If Shawn is telling you to watch out for something, then it would make sense that you should.

Another aspect of this that only through constructive criticism will products improve.  VDI is destined to get quite a bit better in the next few years.  Shawn’s observations highlight the areas that need the most improving.  As he said during the session, VDI should not be seen as a panacea.

Based on several comments during BriForum, technical people are hungry for technical content.  They, in general, are fed up with marketing messages.  Along with that, they want the freedom to express their opinions.  They want honesty and they want to be heard.  So many times, the word “refreshing” was mentioned at BriForum compared to the typical iForum format.  It is very good timing that Geek Speak Live exists and the hope of everyone is that it will continue for the next Synergy/iForum.

The key message that was repeated often is honesty is always better.  If the product has limitations, then those limitations need to be known.  Customers who are misled will remember the deception and be unlikely to try it again.  Expectations set at the right level are more likely to lead to a long term relationship.

A good analogy is dating.  You can start off by pretending to be something that you are not.  You might even fool the other person for some time.  Eventually your true self is going to emerge and the party is over.  On the other hand, if you are only you and confess to your weaknesses, it is the other person that decides if they can handle it.  You have given them the power to choose versus trying to misled them.  If they decided that they don’t like you for who you really are, then it was not meant to be.  It is far better to know up front than to make it to a much a later stage where everyone has wasted their time.

In this way, it is better to be straight forward.  The customer will respect the honesty and be more likely to trust what is being said.

Having written all this, it is now time to say that Shawn had a lot of guts to say what he did.  Brian Madden thought Shawn was either brave or naive to give such a presentation.  However, Brian also confessed that “Shawn is my hero”.  Potentially Shawn could have damaged his relationship with Citrix.  I have heard nothing to say this is the case.  I would interpret the results something like this:  Citrix opens floodgates, Shawn takes Citrix for its word, Citrix realizes it might have opened too wide, Citrix then realizes later that this is the price of allowing open communication.  Truthfully, I see this particular incident in a very positive light.  One of the most dangerous things you can do is believe your own hype.  Sometimes you need someone to remind you of this fact.

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Positioning Marketing

Posted on May 3, 2008 | 8 Comments

Positioning

Marketing is a fascinating field.  Ever since my close up exposure to early Citrix marketing, I’ve always wondered how these things really work.  There was always a taste of what it was, but never any really deep understanding.

Recently I searched for marketing related topics and found one that really interested me.  It is called positioning marketing and is used primarily to shift how consumers think about particular products or companies.

Surprisingly it is a fairly new field having been created in the late 1960s.  It probably needed something like television to really catapult the possibility of doing this kind of marketing.

Wikipedia has a brief description of positional marketing that is a good starting point.

In marketing, positioning has come to mean the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization. It is the ‘relative competitive comparison’ their product occupies in a given market as perceived by the target market.

Re-positioning involves changing the identity of a product, relative to the identity of competing products, in the collective minds of the target market.

De-positioning involves attempting to change the identity of competing products, relative to the identity of your own product, in the collective minds of the target market.

The original work on Positioning was consumer marketing oriented, and was not as much focused on the question relativity to competitive products as much as it was focused on cutting through the ambient “noise” and establishing a moment of real contact with the intended recipient. In the classic example of Avis claiming “No.2, We Try Harder”, the point was to say something so shocking (it was by the standards of the day) that it cleared space in your brain and made you forget all about who was #1, and not to make some philosophical point about being “hungry” for business.

The growth of high-tech marketing may have had much to do with the shift in definition towards competitive positioning.

Positioning is all about changing how you look at products and companies.  In many cases the products and companies do not change.  Rather, marketing is responsible for portraying the product or company in a different light to cause a mind shift in the consumer.

The most likely benefit comes from isolating the product/company away from the competition by providing something that the other companies cannot provide or as well.  Echoing the thinking of “Good to Great”, marketing is responsible for identifying the “Hedgehog” philosophy of how to sell the image most successfully.

Companies are constantly re-adjusting their image based on new opportunities or threats.  Most companies see this process as a sort of battle that occurs between new products or services.  Probably the most important realization is that the thoughts of the company/product become more important than the actual true benefit/performance provided.  Obviously loyalty will overlook a newcomer even if they are better.  Loyalty comes from thinking which comes from marketing image.

There are two people credited with popularizing the concept of positioning and their names are Al Ries and Jack Trout.  I went looking for more information on them and they have spent their lives refining this model and trying to convince companies how important this is.

Please watch this video from Jack Trout.  It summarize his exploration of marketing and strategies for business success through marketing.  It stresses that business needs to focus on marketing and innovation.  Marketing is seen as a differentiator from other companies.  This all makes sense once explained but someone like me does not find this kind of advice as being obvious.

Jack has a column on Forbes.com that covers different topics that he cares about.  As an example, please read “Differentiate or Die“.  Once you get a feeling for what he is saying, you can see the value of the advice.  His experience in the business has led him to form many conclusions that clash with popular marketing thinking in some companies.  He gives a good example with Coke being so focused on the “show business” angle of advertising and losing touch with differentiation.  Jack calls this a lack of focus.  He does have a point.

Perhaps I enjoyed this topic because it is so different from what I normally do.  Obviously I’m way behind the understanding of someone trained to do marketing from the field or school.  However, I do have a good sense for knowing which teachers to listen to and apply.  Jack Trout is certainly on my list now.

To summarize, positioning is used to convince customers of the relative value of something they can buy.  It essentially is the art and science of getting you to think a certain way about a thing that makes it different from everything else you know but yet be relative to what you know.  Said more simply, positioning is about putting the ideas in your head about what relative value the product or service has.  It can’t be the same as something else otherwise the consumer will most likely pick what they already know.  However, you can refer to the other product so that the consumer knows why they should pick you instead.  It sounds easy to explain but it is not.

The ultimate goal is to find the spot of your brain that does not have any current opinion and give it one.  The idea is that consumers don’t like mind conflict on the same topics and will better receive a new product when it comes with a new story.  Something radically new would be perceived as being too risky to try so that is why being relative to other products is so valuable.

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