Monday, August 3, 2009

Two Great Marketing Propositions

In marketing every day one comes across new fundas and jargon. I believe that some of this gyaan is able to strike a chord with your heart. Today I will be talking of two such things which struck a chord with my marketing perspectives. One of the revered marketing gurus delivered a lecture on these on Ted.com, which is a legendary platform where masters of different genres share their own perspectives.
We also know about product diffusion curve. We have innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards. As a marketer one tries to get the attention of all these categories. It was argued that we infact don’t need to spend our money and time to attract members of every category. We can achieve our purpose if we are able to target innovators, early adopters. Now this may sound trivial, in the sense that everyone knows about it. But have you ever wondered how many marketing managers actually implement this? My hypothesis is, “very few”. There are difficulties involved in identifying true adopters and innovators but as they say nothing comes for free. One has to spend time and money to find these people and market your product to them. There are few things like innovative product high on differentiation which is taken for granted here. If we can identify these people and market our product only to them, they will make sure that the product is propagated to other categories because of their innate characteristics which compel them to preach about the stuff they own and like.
Now imagine a situation where laggards adopt the product before early adopters and innovators. This is invariably lead early adopters and innovators to shun the products as they are the leaders when it comes to embracing new products and ideas. They can’t see others taking their coveted position.
These two propositions were somehow able to convince me to the core. Your thoughts are invited.

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