Marketing an Innovative Product
| |
How do you market an innovative product/service? Is it the same as marketing a traditional product/service?
Marketing encompasses several aspects, and so you may well assume that the answer is a complex one. However, we do not usually like complex answers, so here is a simple answer:
Yes, marketing of an innovative product is the same as marketing a traditional product.
There! That should have taken a few people by surprise, and ruffled the feathers of several "marketeers".
| |
| Perfect |
Okay, perhaps that answer needs a bit more elaboration. If you market traditional products effectively, using every aspect of marketing to its fullest extent, then yes you would market an innovative product or service in the same way. In other words, if you market traditional products perfectly then you would use the same techniques to market innovative products.
So hands up, how many of us market our products perfectly? For example, that includes perfect techniques for:
- Market research
- Two way prospect/customer communications
- Advertising and promotion
- Branding and public relations
- Taking prospect/customer feedback seriously
- Evaluation, review and re-design
"But", I hear your cry, "what about sales and selling?". Well perhaps that is the test of perfect marketing: if your marketing is perfect the product (and marketing package) will sell itself!
| |
| |
Okay, so what if the technique you use for marketing is less than perfect? Well in that case there may be a difference between marketing a traditional product and an innovative product. Consider the above aspects of marketing. For well known traditional products some aspects are less important because someone else has already done them for you.
| Otherwise |
| Traditional |
For example, imagine you sell toasters. The inventors and early manufacturers of toasters had to do the following: market research, prototyping, product testing, gathering feedback from customers, explaining what the device does, advertising and getting PR for the product, and branding their companies. If the product you sell today is basically the same concept, and presented in a similar manner, then you do not have to worry about those marketing activities - they have already been done, and most of the findings will still hold true today. So all you need to do is promote your business and the way you sell that product. You are aiming to distinguish yourself from all the others that sell the same product.
| |
| |
On the other hand imagine you have created a new product: the micro-kitchen, a single product that deals with all aspects of food generation, storage, preparation, cooking, presentation, and even does the washing up and recycling afterwards. In this case, to do your marketing effectively you have to do all of the above aspects. You must do a thorough job of the marketing process to increase your chance of success in the marketplace. You have to inform and educate prospects, seek their opinions, determine the worth of the product, determine which features are liked and which are disliked, adjust the design accordingly, promote the concept, stimulate a desire in prospects, address their fears, advertise, promote, brand, get good PR, be passionate, be determined, be patient, be prepared to try alternative designs and strategies, respond quickly and effectively to unexpected problems, and more . . .
For a brand new concept there is so much to do when you bring it to the marketplace! But think about the rewards of success. Of course, the degree of innovation in your product/service influences how much effort needs to go into marketing.
| Innovative |
Your Input
Your input
Your forum needs you! Your forum needs your input:
- Ask a question
- Express a view
- Debate any aspect in this forum
- Add a forum improvement idea to the suggestion box.
Credits awarded for all participation.
Innovation Support Services
As a premium member of if++ you get the following complementary services:
 | Coaching, |
| Training, and |
| Answers. |
You also get a 20 percent discount on
Creative Solutions and
Genesis Time Auction bids.
|
Supported by Acro Logic:
i2 and
ideas
| |
|
|
|
