The marketing superstar must know the answer to many critical questions. The answers are essential to proper market segmentation, product positioning, pricing, selling, advertising, and crafting marketing action plans. These questions are especially important for new products.
Lazy marketers don’t know the answers, they hunch the answers, or they ignore the questions. Lazy marketers are lousy marketers. Often lazy marketers don’t know that they are lazy. Take this test and find out.
PRODUCT
- Why was the product developed?
- What is the product’s raison d’etre––the reason it exists?
- What is the marketing reasoning behind the product?
- How big is the market?
- What are the product applications; how ad where can it be used?
CUSTOMER
- Why should the customer buy this product?
- What unfilled need does the product now satisfy?
- What objections will the customer have regarding this product?
- What selling strategy should the salespeople use to overcome each objection?
PRODUCT BENEFITS
- For every notable feature, answer the question “So what?” Why should the customer care?
- What is the benefit(s) that the customer will get from each feature?
- In specific quantitative terms, how will the customer’s business be improved, and how will the customer’s personal well-being be improved, or both?
COMPETITION
- What is the customer using now?
- Why is the customer buying that other product?
- What is the disadvantage(s) of the customer’s current product or the methodology that this new product overcomes?
- What are the points of difference between this new product and the competitive offering?
VALUE
- In dollars and cents, what is it costing the customer to go without this product?
- How are the calculations figured?
- Based on the dollarized value of this product, how will it be priced (to value), and what differential will that represent versus the competitive product?
- What is the customer’s dollarized return on investment?
TESTIMONIALS
- Who else is successfully using the product––now or in the past? What are the details of that success?
- What evidence is available to prove to the customer that the product claims are true?
You must know the answers to these questions. Your answers must be correct, thoughtful, based on facts, and home worked. If you don’t know the answers to these questions, go into the marketplace, ask and listen, do the nitty-gritty work, and get the answers. If you don’t know the answers, your success is at risk. If you don’t really care about the answers, you are a lazy marketer. Lazy marketers lose.
Don’t be a lazy loser.