If there is a feature or a characteristic of your product that consistently keeps your audience from buying, you have one of two options: change the feature, or change the audience.
Hiding the feature, on the other hand, is but a shortsighted and counterproductive trick. You actually want people to know about it as soon as possible, so that you do not end up wasting time with those who consider that a roadblock.
This is something marketing departments often get wrong.
As it often happens with complex issues, even the discourse around the current pandemic has been shrinked to a binary matter: economy vs (public) health.
And of course, as with any complex issue, there is much more to take into consideration. There is the problem of parents who are taking care of their kids full-time while also working. There is the problem of foreign students who can’t support themselves for the lack of part-time and seasonal jobs. There is the effect of high level of stress and anxiety on the general well-being, that clearly mostly affects those who already face difficulties in a normal situation (and not only in the US).
If we want to move past (and forward) this serious situation, picking a side is probably not the wisest thing to do right now. Let’s stay in the middle instead, let’s listen to and appreciate the various stories that are emerging, and let’s together envision a future where greys are not squeezed for the sake of polarization.
Customer focus is not a marketing thing.
Every day, in every situation, we deal with customers. Sometimes it is people paying us money for a service or a product, more often it is a person we feel might be better off with a different perspective or performing a different action. Of course, calling all of them customers is reductive (and inaccurate), but the point is, you do not need to be a marketer or a sales rep to understand and appreciate the importance of customer focus.
If you want change, you need to read their minds, feel their pains, participate in their efforts, respect their ambitions, and craft your message in such a way as to converge with their world view at the right time.
All that is left is being stuck. And nobody is driven by that.
Right is not a good way to describe your work and the work of your team.
Innovative, passionate, committed, engaged, consistent, challenging, concerted, exciting, inspiring, intentional, purposeful, additive, reinvigorating, ameliorating, thoughtful, driven. These are all better words to use when you talk about what you and your team are trying to achieve.
Do not settle for right, it is quite a capricious term.
Some products manage to make the internet buzz at launch, and that has certainly been the case with Hey.com, the new (subscription based) e-mail service by Basecamp.
I am probably not the right audience for it, and still there are three things they have done wonderfully. Three things marketers (and entrepreneurs) can learn from.
They have started with a manifesto. Hey is not a mere product, it is a way of life. A philosophy, as they put it. And that is just what you need when you are trying to refresh something everybody else is giving up for dead. They have plenty of bold statements in their manifesto (“they let email down”, “you don’t use Hey to check your Gmail account, you use Hey to check your Hey account”, “it’s time to push back”), and by being bold they are carving their own audience.
They present features in a way that is pleasant to watch, read and navigate. The animated pictures leave little to interpretation and get straight to the point. The language they use is easy to understand and relate to (“fix bad subjects withouth busting threads”). They address possible common questions instead of wasting space describing their technology. And you can use arrows to surf through the different features.
And finally, they have made the decision to let you try their product with no barriers (no credit card needed and no automatic charge after trial period). When you trust what you offer, you do not need to resort to tricks to inflate success.
Of course, the most important thing is that all of this (and much more) is consistent with a narrative Hey is building around its product. Other email services are old, clunky, shady, untrustworthy; we are new, simple, honest, empowering. Pick us.
Why not.
You've got this 