I had attended a 2 day marketing workshop by Prof. YLR Moorthy of IIM-Bangalore sometime back. I had prepared this summary and forgot to post it for some reason! Prof. YLR is an amazing person and I guess I got to know about more products and brands in these 2 days from him than in my entire lifetime! Here’s the summary of what I learnt:
- It is all about the 7P’s of Marketing (product, place, price, promotion, physical evidence, process and people) + 7 pillars of wisdom (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning, Differentiation, Value proposition, Punchline and Niche).
-
Any product (or service) should relate to the
- rational benefits (e.g. 8KMiles brings down the cost of your outsourcing by over 50% or No cap-ex, invest based on ROI)
- emotional benefits ( One of the examples quoted in the workshop was some about some tea that talks about being handpicked and completely organic from North Africa and that buying this particular tea will help a poor labourer in N. Africa to have his meal or using 8KMiles and leveraging the on-demand cloud based infrastructure for my project will help reduce “X” amount carbon footprint which is equivalent to planting “y” trees) and
- self expressive benefits (e.g. I freelance in 8KMiles and so I’m a guy who has complete freedom and control over my life)
- Segmentation: Dividing the markets into logical groups based on common customer needs. (Characteristic: Low standard deviation within and high standard deviation across segments). Need to know who the customer is. The best way to segment is to draw the pen picture of the customer. E.g. pen picture of a Ready to Eat product (Overloaded housewife, bored hosteller, happy family needing a change once in a week, overseas traveller, harried office going woman)
- Targeting: Picking one or more Segments that you can handle. E.g: Infy’s target customers – Fortune 2000 companies – CXO’s (total of 75K), Business heads (total of 55k) and IT heads (total of 75K): Total of 200,000 target customers. Don’t care about anyone else.
- Once the segments are identified, we can then target that segment through Positioning
-
Positioning: Stacking the benefits in a certain (right) set of sequence. It is a brief statement of what we can do.
- Positioning is done by contrast
- A well positioned brand owns a word in the market
-
Which position to choose should be based on:
- Customer (address a gap) –> connects
- Competitor –> contrasts
- Competence –> plays (in the mind)
-
Communication mix (5 ways of reaching the target that should result in positive WOM): 1. Direct Marketing 2. Advertising 3. Personal Selling 4. PR and 5. Sales Promotion
-
Reference Books:
-
The business of Software – Michael Cusumano Cusumano, offers an in depth study of what it takes to succeed in software. Of particular value are critical questions to contemplate:
-
- Do you want to be mainly a Products company, or a Services company?
- Do you want to sell to Individuals, or Enterprises | Mass market, or Niche market?
- How horizontal (broad) or vertical (specialized) is your product or service?
- Can you generate a recurring revenue stream that will endure both good and bad times?
- Will you target mainstream customers, or do you have a plan to avoid the chasm?
- Do you plan on being a Leader, Follower, or Complementor?
- What kind of character do you want your company to have?
Cusumano also offers eight Critical Success Factors that are necessary for Software Start-ups to succeed as a business and raise investor money:
- Strong Management Team
- An Attractive Market
- Compelling New Product, Service, or Hybrid Solution
- Strong evidence of Customer Interest
- A Plan to Overcome the “Credibility Gap”
- A Business Model Showing Early Growth and Profit Potential
- Flexibility in Strategy and Product Offerings
- The Potential for Large Payoff to Investors
-
- Positioning – The battle for your mind – Al Ries & Jack Trout
- Successful Sales Promotions – Pran Choudhary
- For God, Country and Coca-Cola – Mark Pendergrast
- Platform leadership – Michael Cusumano
Posted by paddy 