A Simple Marketing Quiz

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Seth Goden asks us to take a simple quiz:

There are a hundred people in a room, perhaps a trade show or a small theatre. What’s your choice:

  1. Sit in the back, watch, listen and learn.
  2. Cajole your way onstage so you can make a slick presentation that gets everyone on their feet, buzzing and excited, eager to do business with you or hire you.
  3. Set up a booth in the lobby that energizes and engages 12 of the people enough that they tell their friends, while it disturbs or mystifies two of the others and is ignored by the rest.
  4. Provide a service (like cookies and juice in a box at the exit) that many of the people there are appreciative of but few remember or talk about.

It’s an interesting question with a good answer. Go read it his short post now. (Hint: focus on your niche.)

Why Microsoft Is Struggling

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By most accounts Microsoft is struggling. Last week the company posted its first quarterly loss in its history; Nokia is selling hundreds of thousands of Windows Phone devices (not millions); the market share for Windows Mobile, a ten year old OS, is still larger than Windows Phone; and huge questions abound about whether the hybrid Windows 8, be all things to all people, is the right strategic choice.

Microsoft is in a tough place and I believe it is due to one core factor. When you are a product leader your job is to always play feature catch up. In the DOS/Windows days all Microsoft had to do was integrate the latest and greatest features other OS and apps did. It would ensure they stayed in the lead.

But when you are following you have to do something distinctively different to be recognized. Playing feature catch up doesn’t work and you can’t freeze the market by pre-announcing products. That’s the position Microsoft finds itself in now, a role it has never been in before.

It strikes me, though, that the company is still playing by the old rules.

The Gold Rush Never Started

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David Barnard, indie developer of fine iOS productivity apps, took an awesome look at Sparrow this week. He was able to closely compare it to his own development of Launch Center Pro. For those unaware, Sparrow was a highly publicized email client for Mac OS and iPhone. Most people loved its design. Late last week it was announced that Sparrow sold to Google, who promptly discontinued development. Lots of people (customers, developers, press, more and more) all chimed in on the good, the bad and the ugly of this.

David’s comments mirror my own productivity app experiences:

Sparrow did everything right. They built an incredible email app with broad appeal and released it into the hottest software market the world has ever seen. And yet it was a financial flop.

Keep in mind that this app, and David’s Launch Center Pro, are some of the most successful apps ever launched in the App Store. They are among the Top 0.1% of all productivity apps ever launched, and David’s response is that Sparrow was a financial flop. Read the post because he goes on to demonstrate exactly why it was a flop.

It is important to note that David’s post is geared toward productivity apps in particular, but here is his spot-on conclusion:

The age of selling software to users at a fixed, one-time price is coming to an end. It’s just not sustainable at the absurdly low prices users have come to expect. Sure, independent developers may scrap it out one app at a time, and some may even do quite well and be the exception to the rule, but I don’t think Sparrow would have sold-out if the team — and their investors — believed they could build a substantially profitable company on their own. The gold rush is well and truly over.

I’m not convinced, though, that there ever really was a gold rush in productivity software. Games [1], yes, but not productivity apps. A few of us have been able to scratch out a lower-than-market-wage living for the past few years but I think those days are coming to an end, too, for 99% of developers.

As I look ahead I am uninterested in one-off revenue applications. Without being paid to do so, I doubt I will ever write one again. [2]

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[1] And even there the games market is abandoning one-time paid apps for recurring revenue models using in app purchase.

[2] To my existing customers who will inevitably ask: yes, we are getting paid to write for Android. It will be a one-off priced product similar to the iOS version.

TAGFEE

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TAGFEE is a very powerful guiding principal from Rand at SEOmoz:

T: Transparent
A: Authentic
G: Generous
F: Fun
E: Empathetic
E: Exceptional

I think the thing I underestimated the most when building Infinity Softworks in the early 2000s was how much thought needed to go into the company itself. When working with more than one person, serious thought needs to go into what kind of organization it needs to be, what will be the guiding principals, etc. And then it is even more work to keep enforcing those.

Back then I just hired and figured it would sort itself out. Now I realize that good company culture is planned as strongly as the product.

(Thanks to Brad Feld for the link.)

What Are You Building and What Does It Do?

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Phin Barnes wrote:

I struggled to describe what we were building and what it did. I would say something that made complete sense to me and in return I would get confusion, doubt, disbelief and the silent nods of nothing. Either it was a bad idea or I was explaining it wrong. Being an optimist, I assumed the latter.

She goes on to explain how she formed this statement for her company at the time. It’s a good read.

I have found that I generally need a few of these of different length or aimed at different groups: a one sentence version, a short paragraph version, one that focuses on the customer with benefits and features, and one more that includes long-term vision for fund raising (if you are doing that).

Apple likes to use a simple form for their product statement: your differentiator, your solution, your audience. For instance, Apple described the Photos app to us as follows: Easy to use digital photo sharing for casual photographers.

Another example I recently found was as a comment to a blog post:

o WHAT: Equals is the ONLY___________________
o HOW: that _______________________________
o WHO: for _________________________________
o WHERE: in __________________________________
o WHY: who ________________________________
o WHEN: in an era of __________________________.

With an example as follows:

o WHAT: Harley Davidson is the ONLY motorcycle manufacturer
o HOW: that makes big, loud motorcycles
o WHO: for macho guys (and macho “wannabees”)
o WHERE: in the United States (mostly)
o WHY: who want to join a gang of cowboys
o WHEN: in an era of decreasing personal freedom.

This one is very heavy-handed and makes for a long statement I would never remember to say.

Traditionally, I have found it very hard to get across a product in a single sentence but I’ve also found that when I could the product was ready to ship. Before that… keep working.