NASSCOM EMERGE Community Catalyst for Growth of Emerging & Start-Up companies

I am curious to understand this. Are you saying that you have developed these 5 products without thinking of a marketing strategy?

Or do you have a broad strategy and are looking for the forum members to help refine it. In that case please do share your strategy.

Arvind

Dear Even I would be in the same line to ask you what Arvind is Asking 

A Big ?

We have done the initial market study but not in-depth. We started developing them as a project but in between we get in touch with the people have good experience on the Products. The touch was a short time so we couldn't able to make the detail plan but good products were developed. So I can say that the market study is started after developing the product.

I was in Bangkok to showcase these to the international community & based on their feedback we have done some changes as well.

We are still figuring the refined strategy to market the same. I am now dedicatedly focusing on this so any experienced advise/help is welcome as we are novice in product marketing.

What could be the key step to plan Product development.

Ideally product development should be market led - either you see a huge gap in the market / pain point that your product can fill or you see a large market and a gap in the pricing / business model / niche segment that you can exploit. So it is a bit surprising to see investments in 5 products without a well thought out marketing strategy in place.

Nevertheless, the silver lining may be that your portfolio of products is within close proximity of each oher - CRM, CSM and HRM. My own take is that all three offerings are in well contested spaces with multiple offerings targeted at diff segments/geos/models.

A good starting point given that you will be competeing with multiple existing players is to study the competition, build a 2x2 matrix and target your own positioning - what is the statement that will best describe your offering and differentiate yourself. Once you identify this and test with a few early prospects, find a market segment that you can target and compete with and go for it.

Good luck.

Arvind 

Thanks Arvind for giving a clear and simple way and i become more confident.

We are a Product and Projects mix company but most of our products have taken shape after we took one project in the Industry. 

We search for Blue Oceans (Uncontested Markets) http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com

to put it in a simple way we analyze the market size, existing product offerings, Gap and again our Core.

Look for Blue Oceans!

Thanks Again Arvind

Ami Verma

 Thanks Arvind.

It's a Useful Advice. Look forward to more based on the More Details Below.

We were thinking the following strategy.

• Market Study
• Comparison of Features with the Key Available Products
• Comparison of Cost with the Key Available Products
• Consumer Segment
• Support Mechanism
• Up gradation Plan

I also want to share a simple thing which is based on very initial study.

In the Market many CRM products are available. I have checked that the Features we are offering are higher than most of them Cost is also lower.

The Key point to notice is that Mid Market has huge demand for this & the features of current products are not matching at the level of requirement with cost.

Knowledge Management is still emerging in India & high requirement at the Mid & High Segment.

Please correct the Strategy & Advise what else we need to concentrate.

Hi,

Can you please share your vision along with little background of your org as well.

thanks

AVL Sastry Mellacheruvu

Thanks Mr. Sastry

Profile - Remiel Soft is 6 year old software solution company. We are Product & Project mix company. We are Pioneer in SharePoint Development. We have done projects with Big Corporate (ITC, LG, Alstom, Baxter), Governments (Govt of Punjab, Ministry of Urban Development, Govt of Gujarat, Supreme Court, NCRB)  and International (KPMG, UK & Canadian Company). We are gold Partners of Microsoft. We have Great Products (CRM, Issue Tracker, Knowledge Management, School/Institute ERP, KPI, TNI). Finds attached the brochure for more details.

Vision - We started with the big dream to establish a big software company & without having any innovative product. The confidence was on the service side. In my career I had realized the gap in the services provided by the company. I am happy to say that all our clients are giving us a very good repeat business & happy with our services. From last one year we were struggling to define the vision & mapping it to our action & strength. So we have planned to focus on Products and on Key projects. I am sure by March 2010 we will have the new vision statement ready.

In line with the suggestion provided by one of the contributors, Product Planning has to be 'Market Centric". Please check the attached document for specific details. For more related material, you may check the links provided below.

http://www.confianzys.com/thought_papers.html

http://confianzys.wordpress.com/

Since the products have been developed already, barring the returns, I would say, you should first position the product in the market, for that, shouldn't it be a good idea to release the beta version with your key accounts?

you would certainly get a feedback on the product - either online or offline.

then you can refine the product and then release it to the specific market segment. Probably this would help to start with. The main aim is to position the product in the market.

Apart from this - I presume that you've had enough Competitors Intelligence.

who are your internal Customers? they should be experts from the industry.

Amrit: I feel comparison of features / cost might not reveal a true picture. A product might have features in  abundance, but the actual users might never need those features. I am not saying features dont play a role at all.  You might want to study the current offerings in the industry & identify a gap which users are yearning for. The USP of your offering will be fulfilling that particular gap in addition to other strategies that you will have.

Regards,

Madhu

Skelta BPM Software

I read the article about the characteristics of a product & listed them below. (Based on the article from Guy Kawasaki)

• Deep - It shouldn't run out of features & functions in a short time of Usage.
• Indulgent - It makes you feel special after you buy.
• Complete - Everything Counts (Documentation, Customer Service, Tech Support, Blogs)
• Elegant - Should have elegant User Interface
• Emotive - It should incites you to take action

Looking for more features to add to this list. These feature could be helpful while planning to develop the product or building the marketing strategy. What could be the key turning point for a product. I was thinking about the IPod. When Apple Launched the product even they were not sure about this level of success. Lot of players were in the market before that & so many companies have launched after that but are not up to that success though they may have more features than IPOD have. So what should be base strategy for product Launch ?

Hello

Im with Madhu. While enetring a product market, it is very important to understand the existing competition, and identify a niche/USP for yourself. Service is definitely attractive proposition. But when you make products out of solutions , will you be able to manage volumes and service levels at same time.

Regards

Abhijit Jorvekar

Quick Heal Technologies

Thanks to all for the responses.

I am rephrasing the question from Product Strategy to more related one for startup companies issue. I met many entrepreneurs in the session organized by Tie on Saturday 23^rd Jan. All were having the product but looking for two things. One is How to market the product & other is how to get funded.

What should be the product marketing strategy for a firm who is in early phase of business & not funded?

They were not in the situation to invest more on Marketing fronts. What should be the 10 things to do and same time what will be the pitfall he should take care. The market study has done & comparison note has been prepared but how to target the right audience with cost effectiveness. The next big challenge is to get the companies to evaluation of the product.

One thing that I have learnt in by brief slint with product marketing is that product definition should focus the market needs, with at least 3 actual customers identified and develop case studies around their requirement to be used during product definition phase. that way getting the market feel as well as fundng becomes easier.

Product or Solution both are market offerings. Product requires parameterisation and customisation. Solutions calls for the same.

Both require market and user group focus. Specific user groups- who are in dire need of the features ready available. Look at the market segment, which requires some features as mitigation to their troublsesome and urgent pains.

When you have identified thirsty prospects, based on pain relief, both are welcome. Whatever name you call them does not matter.

Both call for consulting based sales. Reference user sites are great way to scale up based on success stories and good and bad lessons out of that.

More the installation base, more will be consolidation of features that takes it towards so called product shape.

Either way it is market design and user group targetting. Build traction till you can afford to select market type, you do not wish to be in, with topline and bottomline zooming. Product or Solution or Project jobs definitions and discussion vanish slowly.

All the best

Your question of "What should be the product marketing strategy for a firm who is in early phase of business & not funded?"

Here are some steps (I am sure you have already done some of these). I have highlighted multiple steps here - including sales and marketing. So pardon me if I don't sound like a puritan!

* I presume your product is generally good, addresses several pain points of the vertical(s) you're serving and is fairly competitive (WRT features and pricing).

* Have a clean website - listing your products and services, ensure you have several relevant keywords on the pages and ensure you appear on various Internet search results.

* Define the geography where you're selling - India, Asia, Asia-Pacific, USA etc. Ensure the product(s) are localized.

* Run some online advertisements (Google / MSN / Yahoo Search Marketing) (paid for and fairly cost effective)

* List yourself in some relevant Internet directories (paid and free)

* Offer free demos / free evaluation copies of the product / free subscription for limited time

* write and publish some relevant white-papers ideally highlighting your products and how they generally compare with others equivalent / prevalent products. Case studies shall come later once you have one or more clients.

* Start harvesting relevant "cold" prospects

* Start e-mail campaigns with the above prospects, start harvesting "warmer" prospects from here. Repeat these 2 steps.

* The key is going to be getting that first client for each one of your products, then to get the 2nd and so on. Please don't think about funding until you have a few clients and have a proven set of products and not just done some academic exercise between 4 walls. I see having the first client as a "paradigm shift" as you're going to feel so good and will have a clearer scope for the future.

* Keep a clear pricing policy, a rough road map for all the products - once you have one or more clients the road map would have to be adjusted to address their current and future needs and beyond.

* Don't be surprised if your product(s) look different a year or two from now from where you started after signing up a handful of clients.

* Let me warn you, it is not going to be easy but I suggest you persist!

* Please note there is a paradigm shift between reading about swimming and actually swimming, so you just need to jump into the water (and start swimming) however cold it may seem! Make sure there is some one around to rescue you if you drown!

* Please note you need to figure out an optimal path for yourself as you move forward, there are no cook books for what you should do next from a given point as the path is different for each. There are several pitfalls and mine-fields where you can blow yourself up but you have to work hard to ensure you make lesser number of mistakes than successful moves to keep afloat and to continue moving forward.

* This is kind of what we did and we have 40 clients now from the USA and India after a handful of years!

Hope this helps, Good luck, Amrit!

Regards,
Siva

I think these tips are very relevent & useful. Thanks for sharing your experience Siva

regards

Salim

Thanks Siva - Experienced Detailing on the Topic. Request for more detailing on Emailing the Prospects. Suppose if we have to target US & Europe the key question is whom to send the Mails & Getting the right email database.

Thanks Raja - Indeed Good Insight on the Topic

Look forward to more experiences from other honorable members of the Group. Now at the next level we will get into the operational challenges of the start-up companies while implementing the suggestions.