1. Intro
Most people love to eat. But did you know that one of the best ways to enjoy a delicious meal is to use a “bite lip crayon”?
A bite lip crayon is a simple, edible tool which makes it easier and faster to eat food you love. It also helps with the second most important reason people love to eat.
So, why do people love to eat? The number one answer is that they enjoy the taste. They like the way it tastes, smells, looks and feels in their mouth. This is how they know when they have eaten something good. And it’s also how money works too.
And this is why we need marketing: it helps us understand what our customers are saying about us and what we can do better so we can build our brands more effectively. So if you want to increase your brand’s market share and make more money – then marketing is essential for you too!
2. Bite Lip Crayon
Bite Lip Crayon is a brand of crayons, sold by Scholastic in the US. Bite lip crayons are designed to fit the mouth of a child and have made it into the top 1 million products sold on Amazon.com in 2015.
In 2009, Scholastic launched Bite Lip Crayon at the age of 3. The concept was to create a product that would be easy to use and affordable, with a style that would be comfortable for young children to use. The product is available in three versions: those designed for children aged 3-5; those designed for children aged 6-8; and those designed for children aged 9-12 (the latter two being 2 years younger).
The product has been successful and well received by consumers (in 2016 Scholastic had around 39% of annual sales from Bite Lip Crayon), but not without controversy or criticism from some quarters and competitors such as Paper Mate (who developed their own version).
As you can probably gather from the name, these crayons are meant to be used with lip prints (or bite prints) which are an essential part of the design process for creating artworks or comic books called comics. Currently there is no controversy about this aspect though there has been some debate about whether it should be legalised due to its association with sexualisation of females and underaged girls.
3. Bite Lip Crayon in Action
The iPhone is one of the greatest products of all time. It was a game changer in so many ways and with so many people, but there was one thing it wasn’t – a product that did anything more than talk to other products.
Apple could have — and probably should have — added a few more features to their app, but they didn’t. They added features that they knew they could sell (like Touch ID) and they didn’t let go of their focus on the core experience: making your iPhone do something you can’t do on any other device.
This is still true today. Apple isn’t adding features or changing the user experience to make them better; they are adding things that can be done better than on any other device (and people want them done faster). Their focus is clear: make your phone do what it does best, and make it do it well. In fact, Apple has just introduced a new feature called Continuity which will make watching shows on the iPhone even easier than before, both through AirPlay Mirroring and by using Siri (or if you have an iOS 10 device with iOS 9 support, Continuity).
If you are selling something different then Apple is selling, then you need to figure out how to turn those differences into product-market fit too. You will be competing for users who don’t want things like stock photos or pre-written articles or apps that aren’t as good because they don’t know what you offer yet. If your app doesn’t handle metadata well enough yet, then your users won’t trust it until it does; if your app doesn’t handle audio well enough yet, then your users won’t use it unless there are compelling reasons for doing so; if your app doesn’t handle video well enough yet… oh my god…
You need to figure out how to turn those differences into product-market fit too. You can never win by just being better at one thing — everyone wins when every single person uses everything you’ve created perfectly aligned with their needs and wants (and remember: even if you aren’t able to meet everyone’s needs perfectly right now, this isn’t going to change any time soon either). This isn’t about margin optimization or maximizing profits; this is about creating value for everyone right now by offering a great experience at every step of the way (including before launch).
4. Conclusion
We hope that this post has been of some help to you. What we’ve shown you is a common way to approach product marketing. We have a number of other posts discussing the same topic, if you are interested in learning more about it.
As always, we welcome feedback and suggestions for future topics. You can reach us at [email protected] or on Twitter @marshandall