Comments on: 14. How to segment the market for a new product

By: Mike Mace

Mike Mace — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:39:57 +0000

Thanks for asking, Chuck. You should not be checking every week. I have a lot more material that I’d like to post to this blog, but this format hasn’t been working — while traffic to my other blog (Mobile Opportunity) took off, traffic to this one never ramped at all. Since I didn’t have much time available, I have been focusing on the blog that gets more traffic.

But I do intend to come back to this one once I figure out how to make it reach a broader audience. Longtail managed to make it work, so I don’t intend to give up. The topic of the book is something that I care about a lot, but I want to make sure I’m reaching a reasonable audience.

I am very open to suggestions on approaches I should use.

As for how to track this blog, here’s what I suggest — if you use an RSS reader, subscribe to this blog. Then when I figure things out you’ll see the posts start back up (or I will post here saying where the content has moved, if I move it).

Thanks again for your feedback.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:31:22 +0000

Michael – it has been a long time since the last post. Will you continue with your book, or should I stop coming back here to check every week? What you have written so far has been extremely valuable and I hope you continue.

Chuck

By: Khurram Qureshi

Khurram Qureshi — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:51:11 +0000

Amazing stuff! I really liked the articles they are really addictive and informative. Talking about cluster of information in a quant study, what if you dont find a cluster or if its not a featured base survery then how do you group toghter the study?

Thanks
Khurram

By: anothr user

anothr user — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 13:27:54 +0000

Anothr feed track -Stop Flying Blind

One new subscriber from Anothr Alerts:

By: Mike Mace

Mike Mace — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 04:20:33 +0000

Hi, Jose.

You make a good point. The smaller a company is, the less it can afford to spend on market research. If you’re planning a hardware product (which typically requires a big up-front investment in development and inventory), I think careful segmentation is essential. Same thing if you’re creating an online service that requires a large engineering and marketing investment.

On the other hand, the approach used by a lot of tiny Web 2.0 companies is to just put the web app on the market and see who responds. There’s so little up-front investment required for a web app that you can just throw away your work if you get it wrong. But if you take this approach, you need to make sure you listen carefully to your users, and make any changes they want. This can be tricky, since the enthusiasts who talk the most may not represent your average customer.

Just as the Web has made software development cheaper, it has also made research cheaper. I think most companies could benefit from doing at least a little research, even if they’re small. But you make a good point that trial and error has its place too.

Thanks again for the interesting comment.

By: Jose Antonio Morales

Jose Antonio Morales — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:46:19 +0000

Hello Michael.
1. you could give a check on Yahoo Answers. That can be also a reference for some kind of market research. Microsoft have a service named Q&A.
2. I’m a small business owner in Slovenia. We are a team of 4 full time employed persons and some 6 external members. We are growing in a rate of 40% per year (revenue) but we are still under the 300K EUR. We can’t make a market research or a very long process to test our new products or services. Our strategy is focused on partners (Microsoft, HP) and with their support we reach potential customers. That means that we adapt our activities to what our partners need and we generate models for increasing revenue after we perceive the needs of them. Like a sample: MSFT needs to get in touch with small business, then we create a portal for small business sponsored by them and we offer our consulting services to them co-finaced by MSFT budget. Living our 4th year we have new challenges and we found how the market perceive our company. Now we are ready to target better, even though we are still offering a very wide set of services. That meand that we never segmented the market for a new service or product (too expensive for us) but we waited for the market to recognize in what we are more useful for them. Doing that we discovered skills, values and social needs that match with our organizational culture. Now the doors of better business are opening because of our passion and love for what we want to achieve more than any other thing.
I see that business oriented books are ignoring this kind of experiences from small companies… or very small companies.
I wanted to share this with you. Maybe some good idea would come from it. For sure if you have time to answer the post I will have the chance to learn something new.

By: 14. How to segment the market for a new product :: Newstack

14. How to segment the market for a new product :: Newstack — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 19:56:23 +0000

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