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Targeting & Marketing

Who are the workers or players who might find your product attractive? What is your value proposition?

Marketing comes early in a usage-centered approach to technology. Marketing involves gathering information about perceived deficiencies or opportunities for enhancements of the technology. If you can demonstrate that your innovation is sufficiently valuable (e.g., makes the task easier, quicker, cheaper, etc.), you are likely to attract buyers.

BlackBerry Quick Review Guide is also a marketing tool
BlackBerry Quick Review Guide is also an excellent marketing tool

A fitness-centered approach thus means that you are creating a solution or product specifically designed to answer the needs of the stakeholders or end customers. You are targeting a group of potential buyers. You need to provide the valuable technological asset to them. How do you find out what’s needed? Is there a roadmap?

The problem is that some technologies are so exciting some people will buy anything that allows them to try out the features. For a number of years, it seemed that digital watches would displace their analog counterparts entirely. Today, digital timepieces are hard to find in jewelry stores. Lessons from the APConnsulting, LLC Principal’s direct experience in this area will be presented in a case retrospective.

APConnsulting, LLC can help in two areas of marketing:

  1. You have a technology, and you need to determine how best to position it or incorporate it to create a highly attractive solution or product

    2.
  2. You have a technological solution or product, and you need to determine how best to enhance it with technology

Both areas involve analyzing the target audience. What do they currently need to do when they work or play? Workflow and task analysis, as described in Analysis and Design will provide the detailed insights needed to make an effective product or solution. But first, marketing must determine who that target audience is, their demographics, and how to determine which tasks, actions, or operations are critical in their work or play. We call this the Fitness-centered value proposition.

Thus, marketing must be involved early in the process to help define the roadmap. During the development process, marketing can revisit the target audience and assist in design tradeoffs. Finally, once the product is nearing completion, marketing can produce the comparison charts and feature lists that highlight the enhancements that are already known to be valuable to the target audience.

APConnsulting, LLC has direct experience working with marketing professionals to ensure that usage patterns and scenarios are a principal component of the value proposition.

 


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