A great product sells. Period. … but if it’s not?
So, you have just decided to invest a significant amount of your time (and money) in designing and developing a brand new product potentially used by tenths of thousands of people through the Internet. Having read up a lot about how to make your product succeed, in this case you decide to apply it, step by step. Buying “the whole package” you are pretty confident that you will have a good chance to create something used by a lot of people.
Trusting your intuition, you choose an innovative technology that you love, to create your software. You set up an on-line community to support the use of your tool, you create an account under a social CRM platform to be really transparent to users, you create your website as a blog so you can talk directly to your customer base.
Everything is ready to go live and you remember that you forgot one of the most important things of all: marketing. So, you work really hard to set up a web marketing campaign in order to spread the word as much as you can. You monitor, measure and estimate; then again you integrate Google Analytics into your product and define marketing goals that you can check.
Finally everything is ready to go live. The product has been developed and tested, so you launch!
An even more intense period suddenly starts: blog posts, emails, newsletters, social networks, customer issues, … Days goes by, and you start getting a strange feeling about your project: just after a brief moment of using your “incredible platform”, people start loosing interest. You have done some great marketing on-line campaigning, so people know a bit more about your innovative idea, but you keep feeling that something is missing. Users sign up to your platform, they use it for a while and then they leave it.
Why? What’s wrong?
What about your plans of getting rich and famous quickly and spending the whole day on the beach? You keep an eye on the Page Rank of your website and it’s awesome (7 is a great value), even unique visitors seem to be really good. That means that your marketing actions have been a success, so what’s the problem?
I can tell you right now that you can keep asking yourself the same question over and over, but if you cannot get more data from your application you probably won’t get any answer – at least related to where your users leave the application.
As anyone who decided to bet on this business, you probably based your business model on some kind of freemium – a basic but limited service for free and the full feature version to be payed. If you are not selling enough user accounts, you cannot pay the bills. But then again, if you cannot afford the web hosting service, probably you’re not doing so well and …
Now… I can keep telling you the whole (and very long) story, but there’s a much simpler way to get an answer: “a good product simply sells”.
That’s it. All the rest can help a good product to sell quicker or to gain a burst in new customers. But let me tell you again: if your product is a good one, it sells. Period.
I’m not telling that you will always make tons of money, but you should definitely make a good quantity of it.
On the other hand, a bad product does not sell and spending time on web marketing and advertising won’t change it significantly. Of course, making your product known could get you some good sales, but trust me it won’t last.
So how can you distinguish a good product from a bad product if you start your business with a pretty expensive (on-line) advertising campaign?
Pretty simple, as soon as you stop investing in advertising and marketing, the sales of a bad product will get less and less. A bad product can sell if supported by sustained actions, but it won’t be used by the customers in the medium term and even worse they won’t suggest it to others to use this service or tool. No word of mouth, no viral effect, … In the business of software-as-a-service, you typically charge small fees for your services and then you need a large number of users to make your business a hit. For that reason customer loyalty in the long-term is fundamental, because you need a lot of time to gather the minimum customer base to be profitable.
Fortunately we can all learn from our mistakes and a product can get better with time if we allow it to grow. There are probably many ways to get this result, but the best I know is to listen to your customers day after day, talking to them, being in their shoes and becoming one of them.
I think that all of us should learn from Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and master of this discipline.
This post is really pleasant to read and provides energy. But it seems a bit far from the reality of companies and also from areas within the company you manage, if I may. The post reflects a contagious enthusiasm, positive and cheerful and this is certainly nice, but I do not think that the most important thing of all is the marketing or business itself, and it will seem strange, even people. I think the most important thing there is, but it’s absolutely immaterial. And from it arises the enormous importance of everyone. I do not think that business reasons are based on this and if the foundation is not solid, it is unlikely that the building is standing except for short periods. Hoping that you or someone else important understand this really important concept sooner or later, I greet you warmly.
Hi Paul – I’m not sure I understand your point.. , however, what I do through this site is to share my personal experience in start-up initiatives, nothing more. Create and launch a new product in “software as a service” on the Internet, is something I’ve done and I actually do. When you are focused on a new venture, it is something really important to you, probably “the most important thing” on earth – at least for the amount of time it takes to go live. Being ethical and a good guy in your life – including work life – is not the antithesis of that. I’m convinced that smart people, ideas and hard work – and not necessarily in this order -can change the world.
Have a nice day
I apologize, sorry Massimo, I wasn’t clear enough in my previous post, thanks for your attention. I think it’s a good initiative to create a blog based on optimistic basis about principles for business start up strategies. As you probably will agree with me, I think it’s also even more important not only preserve the company over the years and today without support, we all know, it’s not easy, but more essentially, I think, is try to ensure a good lifestyle for the employees and the full company itself.
I think this basically depends on the company’s business vision of the managers who manage the company: the highest and most altruistic ideals they have, the better will be for the company I think, because these ideals inevitably reflects on how to manage the business goals within the company, focusing less on personal goals and more on general profits that reflects on all employees as you probably agree.
I say this because the start up of a particular business and its expansion are probably really important subjects, but how much do they cost? Are there any other important topics related? For example, we’ve just created the company, but what about “The backbone”? I mean, those who formed the backbone of the company, representing at the beginning its base and allowing the company to start, to grow and develop, do they have enough support, visibility, opportunity for future growth? Do the managers of the company think about these subjects? There is an uniformity within the company or there are areas of invisibility with employees whose work and talent are hidden? There is meritocracy that allows offices to grow up or business roles are static for business convenience? There is the knowledge of the various roles and abilities of employees, I mean the knowledge of their professional skills, their growth path, their attitudes and their desires, or not? The company’s aim is basically economic or individual attitudes and human aspects are considered and how much? The company also looks for personal growth, in which way? There is a relationship, a dialogue between leaders and employees and what we planned about this at start up? People are considered as simple resources to bill or more? Were taken into consideration suggestions from employees or they are considered as things of poor value as really often happens in nowdays companies? The work environment is nice and uniform across the company we’ve just opened or simply determined by the main figure of one leader in the office imposing the environment? There are unjustified privileges? I think a blog about business company and startup strategies should also talk about these basic topics to be more complete for a business that lasts over and over time; I think every company can improve its vision as well as its profit that I consider to be important but not the most important thing, nor even for a company or a person since the business is not an object, a commodity that lasts forever. The value, esteem and appreciation of people often remains, business often change rapidly as a pendulum. Even the Roman Empire fell, but at the time they believed would stand forever dominating Europe and the whole world: as we all know, everything has a beginning, a peak and a sunset, more or less brilliant: everything is tied to a cycle.
I also think that the world can be changed but I consider it to an higher level, I mean about those basic principles that are above ideas or great works. In a more subtle level I believe that someone could do much more than we usually do today: it’s not just a matter of substance, we tend always to think in our minds more concretely, according to shapes and objects. But we all know there’s something more behind. For example, great scientists such as Nikola Tesla had a more advanced working objective focused on the good of all humanity in a disinterested way, not only for a business project or personal or company ambition as we know. I wanted to bring these ideas to your attention, really hoping they can help your blog to grow.
Best regards, Paul.