1. Intro
So, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably figured out that I’m a big believer in marketing and the value of testing the market. There are some other things in the world of marketing which I am less sure about, though.
One of them is how frequently to test. You should test your product at least once per month. This is especially important when you are launching a new product and should be repeated when your product gets old (i.e. when it no longer has any use) or when you need to update your product on a regular basis (e.g. when adding features or fixes).
Another thing I think is important but harder to measure is “survival rate.” The idea here is that if you do lots of testing (i.e., run extensive tests with small groups of users), you will usually find out what works best for a given user population and that will translate into better overall performance for a given feature set or platform (i.e., better overall user satisfaction).
Therefore, figure out what kind of results you want to see from your marketing efforts and then stick to them as closely as possible, using whatever methodologies (or tactics) that seem most appropriate to the task at hand: surveys, focus groups, usability studies, etc., although ideally all three should be used in an integrated fashion so that you can get meaningful insights from all three kinds of tests at once (see also our article on “Three Ways to Do Market Research”).
For example, let’s say we want sales figures for our software products which are used by thousands or tens of thousands of users every day across several global markets and two industries: IT enterprises and consulting firms whose customers use our software for everything from data management to mobile phone support. For simplicity sake, let’s call our two industries “IT-consulting” and “IT-enterprises.” We don’t care about what industry each group belongs to so let’s just say they consider themselves “IT-consulting customers” and “IT-enterprises customers.” We also don’t care whether they are based in offices or homes as long as they have regular users who come into their offices during regular business hours every day (which is what we consider important enough for us). So let’s put these two groups together under one umbrella: “IT-consulting
2. Uncovering the Blemish
Most companies do not want to admit that they have a blemish. They want to hide it, and they are doing a great job of concealing it, even from themselves. So, they will often do what is called “doing it by the book”: “We have no marketing budget, so this is just how we think we should behave.” This approach will result in their product being viewed as ‘good enough’ and the blemish never being uncovered or addressed.
First of all, a company needs to be honest with itself about its product. If you are buying a product by some other means than your own, then you should be honest with yourself too; whether that means describing your business model on your website or letting people know who you are in social media (unless your business is really unique). But at least let people know that you are trying something new — and don’t pretend otherwise!
Second, if you have been hiding something for some time then there is no harm in looking into it. In fact a good idea could be to take an honest look at what lies under the product-market fit which allows them to sell it. It could be an issue of pricing and subscription models or anything else that might mislead customers into thinking they bought what they wanted when they didn’t. Maybe there is a problem with delivering updates quickly enough? That will leave customers feeling like perhaps the product isn’t as complete as it seems and might give them pause for thought before buying again — regardless of whether there is anything wrong with them and their users now!
If you still have doubts about whether you need to fix something then maybe you don’t need to fix it at all? Maybe your current marketing strategy works perfectly for what you have done so far and isn’t really needed? Then why did you decide now was a good time to launch anyway? Do you really need more users on Facebook? Or less? Couldn’t it just because Facebook changed their newsfeed algorithm that suddenly made people connect more easily with certain content but this would actually increase traffic on other sites first (and bypassing Facebook)? You may just need some fresh ideas about how to market your brand or products; this may mean changing things up slightly but definitely taking a good hard look at things before jumping into any major changes!
3. How to Repair the Blemish
More and more, companies are considering hiding defects in their products in order to keep users happy. But can this be a good thing?
People seem to have the same opinion:
There’s no consensus on this subject.
The main arguments against it are:
1. It is easier to solve than hide the defect 2. It is easier to hide the defect than fix it 3. The way we approach a problem is harder than solving it (because there is no solution and we must arrive at one) 4. The way we approach a problem is harder than fixing it (because there isn’t one)
In my opinion, these arguments are invalid; however, I will leave that for another time and focus on why the argument against hiding defects is quite legitimate. To understand what I mean by this comment, consider our car accident from earlier in the article when we discussed different kinds of mistakes that might turn out to be fatal for us as a company:
There are two kinds of accidents that can happen if we don’t fix them soon enough: 1) We may have an accident 2) We may not have an accident at all So, if you were driving on a road where no accidents had ever been reported before today’s incident, what would you think you would see? You would see… A car coming towards you at high speed with an obvious defect. An auto manufactured by some evil corporation that was made without care or concern for its environment or people (i.e., they didn’t take care of its part of their business). A car made by someone else with some other defect that was not visible until now (and probably not even then).
That said, I do think a lot of people make mistakes like this when they are just getting started with software engineering — because they usually don’t know what kind of problems will show up later and how quickly they will surface; so they fix things before they need fixing, which often leads to delays in fixing them and delays in convincing users about them being fixable . To give one example: after learning that “Xpadder – Xpad support keyboard driver” conflicts with certain games on Windows systems , I immediately ran into two problems: 1) Although “Xpadder – Xpad support keyboard driver” adds support for the X60 series keyboards , it does not add support for all games written for those keyboards ; 2) Some games wrote for
4. Conclusion
One of the things that have been most encouraging about the last year is how many new and promising companies are coming out of stealth mode. They are either (a) working on a patent or (b) working on something that looks like a patent but is not one.
In the latter case, I’d like to say something different:
Don’t be afraid to “hide the blemish.”
I imagine it would be very hard to find a group of highly educated engineers who think they know what they are doing when it comes to patents. But if you can get them to think of a product or idea in another way, it might be possible for you to convince them that this isn’t just an “idea.” Don’t force your customers into thinking about your product in terms of “ideas,” instead tell them that the product is the solution and show them how their pain fits into it. Teach them why and how it will work for them before you even talk about what it does for you.
It may sound trite, but trust me: It works.