Archives for "Product Strategy"
More of a good thing: Extending your product line without inventing a brand new product
Marc wrote recently about the motorized bicycle that is the latest addition to the Volkswagen product line and a way for the company to extend its brand into an adjacent market. And while innovation is often at the heart of new product development, it is worth pointing out that building a product line can be done without new invention. By varying peripheral product features, cosmetic details or packaging it is possible to use your existing technology and quickly expand your product line to reach new markets. Take Camelbak:
The company, an Arena customer, started making hands-free hydration systems for mountain bikers and motocross riders, “allowing them to drink without taking their hands off of the handlebars in technical terrain.” Since then “Camelbaks” have become popular for use while hiking, running, snowboarding and skiing in addition to cycling. They typically consist of a capped pouch of water with a long tube and bite valve, enclosed in some wearable form factor.
From this simple concept, Camelbak has built an incredible range of similar but specialized products: more than 90 hydration pack styles for recreational and military use. The company dominates the market through good use of technology (easy-to-use bite valve, rugged materials, easy opening and leakproof cap) and a willingness to customize its product for new sports or situations. Camelbak makes a pack for refilling other packs (the Squadpak, 25L capacity) for use by a military unit, packs specifically designed for women, packs for use while skiing in sub-zero temperatures, packs for use under body armor and even a variety of “mini” packs (50 oz) for kids.
Another strategy is the purely cosmetic. Take Envirosax. These reusable shopping bags fold up into compact snap close packages. Envirosax has built its brand by offering a wide array of colors and graphics. Same bag design – different looks to appeal to different market segments.
You can also vary packaging and pricing. In addition to slight product differences, Superfeet uses color, pricing and packaging changes to sell its insoles to multiple market segments. The packaging and pricing for the product targeted at women differs from that aimed at athletes, “on their feet” professionals (doctors, nurses) or industrial workers. Inside the box you will find the same core product, with minor tweaks for the specific user segment.
These three companies have built on their primary product offering and diversified into adjacent markets without inventing a whole new product. Their strategy isn’t for everyone, but it might be worth considering whether your technology can be reused in new form factors or colors or marketed in a new way to appeal to other user groups. Who knows, variation on a theme might lead to your own empire.
Brand mobility: Volkswagen shows it’s not only about cars
According to Marty Neumeier in his excellent book, The Brand Gap, a brand, simply put, is “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organization.” But all too often, when considering a product roadmap, companies become hemmed in by what they perceive to be their expertise without realizing just how many things can contribute to people’s gut feelings. In so doing, they lose out on lateral opportunities in nearby market segments with perfect brand overlap.
Consider Volkswagen’s recently unveiled concept for a motorized, foldable bicycle. When announcing its first ever two-wheeler at the Auto China 2010 exhibition in April, VW’s chief of research and development, Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg was quick to point out that Volkswagen’s “focus on mobility” extends well beyond cars. The implication is that VW intends to take advantage of the room under its brand promise for more integrated solutions for getting you around, regardless of whether an automobile is involved.
At the same time, VW is careful to not distance the concept too far from its core brand values. The bike’s 12.5 mile range is clearly designed for short day trips (after having driven somewhere perhaps?) and with a top speed of 12 mph or so, it’s certainly not intended as a replacement for a car. And then, as if to leave no doubt about the symbiotic relationship between the bike and its cars, they show how the bike folds up to fit neatly into your VW’s spare tire compartment.
Next time you are planning your product roadmap, consider what adjacent customer experiences are there for the taking if you just expand your product offerings into them.
Read more on Autoblog Green.
Listen up! The web is speaking. (Is it your product they’re discussing?)
Anyone building products for the public or handling product service should check out this blog post chronicling a woman’s battle for appropriate customer service with a washing machine company—and how her public complaints to social networking sites got results. Her story is both hilarious and a great object lesson about the power of social media in the marketplace.
Every day, thousands of bloggers post about the minutiae of their lives, including their interactions with the products that your company builds. Some bloggers have hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers, and their stories carry weight in a way that no advertising campaign can—they are the judgment of the masses for the masses. Twitter, Facebook and blogs give the market a new outlet for complaints, accolades and general product feedback. An influential blogger can make or break a product. Think Oprah’s Book Club, only on the internet—those books sell, baby!
If you’re not already monitoring what’s being said online about your product, service or company, you may wish to start. You can choose from a proliferation of free and paid tools that search social networks, groups, blogs, boards and other consumer-generated media (CGM) platforms for names or keywords associated with your product.
When you’re ready, you can start engaging in the conversation too. Participate in the networks and social media platforms relevant to your market or try a tool like GetSatisfaction.com, which provides a venue for dialogue between customers with questions or problems and other customers and company representatives.
At Arena, our marketing team monitors internet activity by setting Google and Twitter alerts and using web analytics tools. We also have discussion forums where customers can talk to each other and a presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Feel free to check out what we’re doing as an example…just know that we’re still figuring it out too!
“We have this product idea…it’s going to change the world!”
When I was a design consultant, potential clients would tell us all about how their cool new products were going to take over the market.
Sometimes a company’s product really was cool and new–though it was doubtful it was going to make its mark in the manner envisioned. Occasionally a company was so enamored with its ideas and its technology that its team was unable to step back and see other potential uses or markets for the product.
Heather Fleming from Catapult Design has put together a list of 5 justifications people tell themselves when developing technology and products for people in need. Many apply to product development in general, not just product development for the third world.
Maintaining perspective when designing a new product is important. Projects can be so exciting and full of discovery that it is easy to get carried in new directions. It takes discipline, but by periodically evaluating your work, you can make sure the product you’re developing still meets the needs of the market, the goals for the project and the objectives of your company. It’s the difference between developing great products and developing products that could have been great if only…
Exactly who said this was a good idea?
My Pragmatic Marketing mug stares at me every morning with the same stark reminder:
Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.
It’s a nice grounding statement, and more constructive than my Onion mug. But my mug delivers more than caffeinated goodness—it delivers a message that I need to step back whenever I get excited about a new idea, technology or cool feature and ask, “Does anybody else care?” Or, more specifically, “Will anyone pay money for this?”
After all, we don’t want to end up with the software equivalent of Smuckers Goober, Whizzers cordless power scissors, or the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Personal Tank. (Although I’ll admit that each of these products fascinates me in some way (cough, cough, Christmas present)….)
All product companies face the same challenge: coming up with what to build—which means figuring out which market problems to solve and for whom. Our product happens to be software, but the challenge is still there—and our approach to gathering and processing market intelligence is one that can be used by product companies of all types.
It’s a process that can be summed up in 3 steps:
I promise to expand on those steps in future posts [UPDATE: now available--use links above], but as long as we’re on the subject of Christmas presents for me, I’ve been wondering: How did the iPod Dock/Toilet Paper Holder make it off the sketchpad and into the market anyway?
Interested in products? You’ve come to the right place.
Welcome to the official blog of Arena Solutions. If you haven’t heard of Arena, the quick version is this: Arena serves small and mid-size manufacturers by providing on-demand software (also known as software-as-a-service or a SaaS solution) for managing bills of materials (BOMs), the engineering change process and supplier communication.
In other words, we help companies get their products to market.
To make sure we give them help that’s actually, well, helpful, we’re constantly trying to understand everything we can about what it takes to design, develop, manufacture and ship great products.
That’s how we’ve ended up here—with a blog about all things product. We all know there’s no magic formula for building a winning product, so we won’t pretend we can offer one. But what we can offer are observations, opinions, research, learnings, experience and maybe even some wild imaginings from time to time.
We’ll talk about strategies, processes & tactics, particularly the ones that help successful companies do their thing. We’ll share our observations on global trends, market demographics and industry news, and we hope you’ll share yours too. We’ll point out problems when we see them, propose solutions when we have them and ask for your opinions on it all. We’ll highlight successes AND snafus, as there’s a lot to be learned from both.
Innovation? If you’re a small or mid-size manufacturer, innovation is most likely at the heart of your products and the core of your strategy, so we’ll be talking a lot about that too. The discussion may sometimes veer toward the academic (it is a meaty topic, after all), but real-world examples will abound. We love cool products, and we’ll share them when we find them. We may even throw in the occasional what-were-they-thinking examples of innovation gone wrong…just for good measure.
Let us know what you think.
Please join the conversation and help us make the blog a valuable source of information and a lively forum for discussion.
Now let’s talk product.
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