Failure to research customers can be costly
Darlene Mann, serial entrepreneur and General Partner of Onset Ventures, has some wisdom to share with new entrepreneurs.
“In 1990, I was a director of product marketing at Verity, Inc., which made sophisticated software for document search and retrieval. We made the assumption that our product would be managed by high-caliber technicians at the companies that used it, but because of our software’s complexity, it was difficult to set up and maintain. We thought the product was important enough to our customers for them to justify using highly-skilled personnel to run it, but actually our customers felt they had scarce resources and that it was difficult to get people with the skills needed to use it. In fact, we had only one customer that successfully installed the software on their own: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs. A clear sign to us that maybe you did have to be a rocket scientist to use it.

Our solution was to reengineer the software to make it simpler to install and use. We did that, and the product was very successful, but the delay cost us a year and we lost significant repeat sales early on because we didn’t do our homework. Had we simply started by asking ourselves and our customers the questions we should have, we wouldn’t have wasted all that time and money.”

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Marketing for the social entrepreneur
Social marketing generates awareness of a social entrepreneur’s venture by using concepts borrowed from commercial marketing.

Here are some key points:

• The ultimate objective of social marketing is to influence action
• People take action when they believe benefits outweigh costs
• Effective social marketers base their message on an understanding of the target audience’s perceptions
• Target audiences are seldom uniform in their responses to marketing efforts, and should be partitioned into segments
• Social marketers must be aware of the constantly changing marketplace and rapidly adjust their marketing strategies and tactics accordingly
• Marketing efforts must incorporate the 4 Ps:
• Create an enticing Product (the outcome of the program);
• Minimize the Price the target audience pays in the exchange;
• Advertise in Places that reach the audience and fit its lifestyles;
• Promote the exchange creatively and through channels and tactics that maximize desired responses

To summarize:

• Action is the objective
• The target audience is the focus
• The exchange is critical
• Segment markets
• Use the four Ps
• Analyze and beware of competition
• Monitor and be flexible

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