Designing a Market-Driven Product

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Written on 5:48 PM by Harry

In my previous post, I explained the importance of being market-driven. I even made an example out of the company I used to work for that was shut down because of "Insufficient Funds". To know more about this, kindly read my previous post.

Having explained the importance of market awareness, I believe momentum can be achieved by writing a topic still related to the previous one.

So how can you produce a market-driven product?

1. Fill a void. Find a problem and then exploit it. Make a product out of it. This process should take place during the planning phase, not during the development phase nor during the later phases. If you start right, you'll have a competitive advantage over your competitors.

Look around you. Everywhere you go, you see different sorts of problems that you can turn into goldmines with the right attitude and out-of-the-box thinking. Wherever you go, there's a vast number of voids waiting to be filled; thus a myriad opportunities for you to get filthy rich. Start right by filling a void.

2. Know your market. After you find a problem, next thing you want to do is to know who your target buyers are. Remember, a lot of companies fail because of the insufficient awareness they have of their market. You can achieve that level of knowledge that can contribute to you and your product's success by simply conducting studies. Surveys are probably the most famous strategy of getting to know your market but it's also a bit costly and tedious.

There is one technique, however, that's free yet effective, Persona profiling. Persona profiling is the term usually used by product managers when determining and sorting out the possible buyers. In Marketing jargon, this is called Segmentation. More about this on my next post.

3. Implement market-driven marketing strategies. Nowadays, there are myriad proven-effective strategies in promoting a product. Depending on the nature of product but for those that are based online, newsletters, whitepapers, a Website, PRs, are usually the most effective.

When writing content, articles, documents, or any form of messaging for any marketing material about your product, make sure that the content is focus on describing these points:

a. The problem (that your product solved).
b. Your product (what it is, what it has, and how it can solve the problem).
c. Your target buyers.

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The Importance of Being Market Driven

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Written on 7:44 PM by Harry

Being market-driven is easier said than done. Believe me, I learned this the hard way.

Just a couple of months ago, before the Butterfly (Morph Labs) took me under its reassuring wings, I was working as a technical writer for a much smaller technology company. Trivia: this company's corporate logo was also a flying creature — a bird ;) Working there was a great experience. The big guy was cool—he let me borrowed his DVDs— and smart, the home office was cozy and money-saving (free lunch), and the people I was working with were also all amazing, both as colleagues and as friends. At that junction, everything seemed perfect, until one day -- the big guy announced that the company is losing and is closing. Though the rhyming delivery of this news sounded poetic, and though I am a big fan of poetry, at that very moment, I lost sight of its beauty. All I could think of.....was Milk. :)

Aside from that reason given to us, i didn't know anything more about what really happened and what we did wrong as a company. That innocence lasted for a few months, and was only put to a halt a month after I started working here as part of the product management team.

Here's what we did wrong — we designed our products based on our capabilities rather than designing them according to the needs of the market. There were no more than 10 of us in that company. Obviously, our capabilities were extremely limited. There was no product management team who'll listen to what the market wants and who'll think of ways to meet those demands. No marketing team that can help put those strategies into action and promote them. There was only the development team who'll develop the capability-driven product. If you think about it, we were like a toddler who just learned how to walk wandering alone in the busy streets of Colon.

But still, basing on our very limited resources and capabilities, we thought we had an excellent product. It was trendy, easy-to-use, and it had a number of powerful and highly sought-of features. I really had high hopes from that product. Unfortunately, the market's interest took a 180-degree turn from what we hoped and worse — expected. So that's how important a market-driven mindset is, and that's how I was without a job for about a month.

In the competitive realm of technology, battles are often won in the awareness of the market's interest. The better you know what your target audience wants, the higher the chances you have of bringing home the bacon. Being market-driven is about identifying what dishes to serve based on what the patrons want to eat rather than the foodstuffs available in the kitchen. A market-driven company defines itself by the customers it wishes to serve rather than the capabilities it wishes to sell.

Everything is easier said than done, and this context is certainly not an exception. But pondering on the path and direction that Morph is taking, I can't help but smile, knowing that we are made up of well-experienced people who understands the importance of being market-driven.


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