Marketing Now

When your product is introduced to the market you need to describe it, or position it, in a way that’s accurate, clear, concise, and makes one want to buy it. Many companies make the mistake of providing a description with too much information. In these times, where we’re being bombarded with all sorts of complicated messages from all directions, less is better.

Start with the product positioning statement for internal use that’s a description of the product, its benefits, what is different from the competition and how you want the customer to perceive it. Then create a short statement for public consumption that supports this.

A client created an earphone that works like an earplug to seal out surrounding noise. It also reproduces sound more accurately than any of its competition. The positioning was “Exceptional sound isolation and highly accurate music reproduction.” In eight words they were able to convey what the product does and its benefits. Think Outside’s keyboard was positioned as the first full-size keyboard that fits in your pocket. Both are simple, understandable, accurate, and with no exaggeration.

The clever new Flip Video, a $150 video camera that takes video more easily than any other product, has become a huge hit. Its message is “Shoot anything, share everything”-quite an improvement from the typical, spec-laden messages of conventional video cameras.

As a reviewer I receive scores of press releases and announcements of new products each week. If I can’t understand what the product is, what it does, and who wants it, within 30 seconds, I move on. I’ve found that the longer the explanation, the less useful the product. Creating the message is even more important with technology products loaded with features. A recent product I worked on was a pocket-sized device that has cellular data connectivity, live TV, a GPS, a music player, a camera, a picture viewer, and an Internet browser. We described it as “A pocket device with mobile TV and precise navigation,” focusing on two of its strongest features.

Failure to position your product the way you’d like it to be viewed in the marketplace means that others will instead. First impressions can be difficult to change. The Apple Newton MessagePad was positioned as the first device that would recognize handwriting. Much of Apple’s messaging for a year prior to the introduction kept reinforcing this. It set expectations that could never be met.

Unfortunately, no one with full knowledge of the product had care fully thought through this positioning. Would it work with all types of handwriting? Only printed words? How could it read handwriting that we can’t even read? Apple’s engineers really believed their hand-writing technology would work, but they naively failed to realize the complexity of the problem for certain situations. marketing wanted to highlight the product’s uniqueness and built their PR on this unique attribute that they heard about from the engineers. When the product was introduced it could never meet the high expectations set for it; it became the butt of jokes and never recovered.

If the Newton MessagePad had been positioned as the first pocket-sized tablet computer or the most powerful device you could carry in your pocket, without focusing on the handwriting recognition, it would have been much more successful. Users would have accepted the need to print carefully or could have used the onscreen keyboard.

The lesson is that how a product is marketed and positioned can make or break it.

Related Posts:

• The Marketing Component: Establishing Price
• The Marketing Component: Customer Service
• The Marketing Component: Public Relations
• The Marketing Component: Market Testing
• The Marketing Component: Product Definition

Source: Phil Baker, Praise for From Concept to Consumer, Pearson Education, Inc. New Jersey, 2008

Republished by Marketing Now