Why awareness of your solution is key to success
If people don’t know what your product is all about or its’ purpose, you will have a hard time selling it.
Google asking about a browser
In the streets of New York, Google has asked several people the apparently simple question: “What is a browser?”
See the responses and results yourself:
In many of the responses people confuse the browser with a search engine or even with Google.
It is clear that the browser is not identified as an important part of the Internet experience as it brings no apparent value or benefit to the user. The functionality is taken as granted, whereas search engines bring solutions or results which are recognized as a benefit or as being useful.
Awareness is a requirement to buy (and to sell)
In order to sell a product or a service like a browser that people are unaware of you need to educate people first and explain them the functionality, need and importance for them. It is a huge task to create the awareness and this rather simple evangelism will cost time and money.
If you have a product that is not recognized for the function or benefit it a long uphill battle lies in front of you: you don’t want to become the Don Quixote of your market.
Marketing noise creating awareness
Being first to the market requires you have to do the evangelism all by yourself or hope for a miracle.
Although early adopters can help to get your product into the market, the awareness needs to be created and to spread in order to make people buy or use.
In case of Twitter it was only thanks to Oprah Winfrey that mass market awareness and adoption was created.
The problem is that you will not be able to have Oprah talk about your product or solution on her show.
Thus you need other methods to expose your products or solutions to your market. You need to make a lot of noise to be heard amongst all the other marketing messages.
The tools to make noise in B2B are: Press releases, Website, Social media, White paper syndication, reviews, links and references – in order to name a few.
If the product has been on the market for a long time (just like the browser) it helps to be with several competitors offering similar products or solutions to the market. Sole yu will not be able to make the same amount of marketing noise. The several competitors will all together create more marketing noise than you on your own. This noise should get picked up by many more people creating the required awareness.
It is better to be with several competitors to generate more noise and create awareness, than to be alone.
The case study: LEADSExplorer
Currently email marketing is leading the market and widely used for lead generation and customer retention. People are aware and have a certain understanding about email marketing. Moreover you are interrupted daily by email marketing in your inbox and you can’t deny that it is somewhat effective.
The solution LEADSExplorer we provide having many benefits over email marketing, has several major problems from a marketing point of view:
- No unifying name
It could be considered as a part of an inbound marketing strategy of a company.
However most people don’t know what ‘Inbound marketing’ is.
- No high uptake in use (yet)
Once people see and experience what they can do with our service they’re enthusiastic, but that means we’ll first have to get their attention. Then make them understand our service in order to have them to start a free trial.
- Not spreading awareness
Once people start using our service, it is unlikely they tell about it to other people in their business because they’re afraid their competitors will pick up, losing their advantage.
In the end people cannot answer the simple question what is:
- A website inbound marketing service
- A Post-click marketing service
- An online lead generation for websites service
- A website visitor company name revealing service
- A website visitor identification service
Or any combination of the above (what LEADSExplorer provides).
Still we are confident: as there are several competitors in the market, eventually our combined marketing noise will be noticed and the benefits will be acknowledged.
How well are people aware of your products or solutions?
If you don’t know what a browser is then this video might help you:
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This is another great post. I’ve just discovered this site and wanted to take a minute to say thanks; the posts are right on the money. More to the specific point here, I had to chuckle at the browser question. People today are learning computers by point and click, doing what they have to do. It’s amazing what they don’t know.
As for product success, I believe in good old fashioned word of mouth. It still is the best seller.
Sometimes before you play the role of a salesperson, you have to play the role of a teacher. There are products out there where unless the public is educated in what niche is being filled, they couldn’t even care less. However, once the public has become educated, then you can put on your sales hat and start bringing in the money.