Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Seth Godin recently noted that “your difficult boss, customer, prospect, voter, student… probably not stupid, probably just uninformed. There’s a huge difference.”

Of course, launching a new product is always a challenge. That’s all about “new” people, “new” information and “new” processes. Which means lots of information has to be developed and communicated (Note: “communicated” isn’t the same as “published” or “advertised.”)

So, here are a few quick sanity checks for you:

What you think is your best target market may turn out NOT to be...(I’ve seen this more than once with start-ups.) Those folks you’re bombarding with commercials, ads, and sales calls aren’t stupid…they simply don’t care.

OR, the product isn’t quite as stable as you thought. Customers do things you never dreamed. If it can be broken in new and unknown ways, we’ll do it.

And, we’ve got an uncanny knack for finding bugs buried deep in your process or product. (I’m a - sigh - master at this with software. I’ve grown used to hearing “Gee, we’ve never seen that before.” from tech support people.)

OR, you’re launching something that’s a new category. So, there you are at an “educational sale.” The marketing challenge here is - as I’ve written before - making it simple without being simple-minded, giving people enough to get them interested without overwhelming them with techie data.

Sometimes you have to accept some people, regardless of IQ, will never “get it.” So, don’t waste time and money chasing the wrong people (something the political candidates could learn.)

P.S. This is also why - at one critical point in a major product launch during my corporate days - I found myself writing step-by-step operational manuals. Nobody else around to do it - and wouldn’t do any good to launch the whiz-bang multi-million dollar “leading edge” thing if my tech support center didn’t have the info necessary to handle customer calls. Your employees may not be stupid, they just don’t know.

Related Post: Are You Communicating Or Telling?

Tags: marketing, small business marketing, marketing troubleshooting, entrepreneur sanity check, product development, business development