Product Market Fit: Will The Dogs Like The Dog Food?

Product Market Fit: Will The Dogs Like The Dog Food?

Market opportunity analysis using simple guerrilla market research can help you make decisions quickly on a new product concept or other idea.

Market Opportunity Analyis. Will the dogs like the dog food?

Bella the wonder dog.

New products and services are the lifeblood of every company. Many marketers, however, are unaware that fast, low cost guerrilla techniques for market opportunity analysis can be a great starting point in the ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ decision process.

Collecting Unbiased Customer Data

The first thing to understand is that business is a social process. Consequently, to do this successfully you will be spending more time dialoguing with people and less time on the internet. What you need to know is still in people’s minds, not published on the web.

However, allocate a small percentage of your total research time to web searches to develop a baseline understanding of what is already available.

Market Opportunity Analysis: The Internet Part

Establish your beachhead by searching the web for current offerings and substitutes in the targeted market space.

This?approach is lean-thinking and is a low-cost?alternative for?more traditional market research methods.

This paper?includes:

  • A detailed guide for finding market information
  • A 5-point model for strategy development
  • A simple process for arriving at an unbiased decision

“Will The Dogs Like The Dog Food?”

Click here to view and/or download this report.

Competitive Intelligence in Tech and SaaS

Competitive Intelligence in Tech and SaaS

Competitive intelligence…ready for the truth?

  • competition’s getting tougher in 2023
  • alternatives and substitutes exist for your solution
  • one or more competitors may have advantages over you

I work often with competitive intelligence.

And it’s caused me to ponder why some clients get it, and some don’t. Why do some clients grow steadily and others do not?

The answer? Steadfast refusal to do competitive intelligence.

My clients are mostly tech and SaaS companies. All have good solutions. They’re awesome at technology.

But clients that languish often are not paying attention their competition. They think:

 No one has a product like ours

We don’t compete with those companies

All we need is better marketing

Yet, they ignore existing competitors and new competitors in their market space. Also, they don’t see an immediate need for a course correction.

Once, in  a meeting with a new enterprise software client, I laid out the competitive facts including the entry of a hundred new competitors in the past few years.

Also, that the client’s own sales would continue to decline in a fast growing market space.

Additionally, their same size competitors were growing an average of 23% annually.

But what was their response? Crickets, then visible anger. As well as a plethora of reasons why this new information wouldn’t impact next quarter’s revenue hockey stick, as forecast by the CRO.

Indeed I was told that Gartner, IDC, Forrester and all the others covering that market space didn’t know what they were talking about. Twelve months later their results were predictable and the CRO was gone.

 

Image of competitive intelligence chessboard showing digitized moves.

Artificial Intelligence will play a big role in assessing your competition.

What to do

If you’re a CEO or CMO, you must stay alert for changes in the competition.

Your CMO’s job is to recognize important changes in market dynamics instantly, and recommend a course of action.

My clients that grow steadily are always aware of:

  • existence and strengths/weaknesses of competitors
  • their own strengths and weaknesses
  • how to use their strengths against their competitors’ weaknesses

Size up your competitors regularly!

It’s human nature to get complacent, especially when we think we’re special. We all need to remember that every week can deliver a new inflection point.

A competitor:

  • gets additional funding
  • introduces a competitive solution
  • goes after your customer base

Here’s how I illustrate the current pace of change.

In 1990 most of us used transparencies for presentations. Creating them was a long and cumbersome ordeal.

Today we create presentations in an hour, connecting them directly to a big screen with an HDMI port on our laptop.

That is exactly what’s happened with market dynamics. In 1990, reviews of the competition were done annually and often glossed over. Why? Because the bulk of our competitors changed very slowly, and everyone pretty much marketed the same way. That’s one reason why American manufacturers got clobbered by new competitors from Asia.

Use competitive intelligence to fix it

Anyone can experience brain freeze when presented with facts counterintuitive to long held beliefs. That’s why it’s critical to challenge those beliefs at least several times a year, preferably monthly. Do it by asking these three questions in CEO meetings with sales and marketing leaders:

What moves did our existing competitors make last month?

Who entered our market space and how are they funded?

How and why should we address these new market dynamics?

I offer competitive intelligence services for tech and SaaS companies.

Marketing audit for tech and SaaS

Marketing audit for tech and SaaS

Why a marketing audit for tech and SaaS companies?

    As we move along in 2023 I’m seeing more clients ask themselves ‘why are we doing what we’re doing?’. They ask that because they haven’t done a marketing audit for their tech or SaaS company.

    As a tech CMO, I always start with “well, what’s working and what’s not?”.

    Many of them just don’t know.

    Young business woman pondering a question, used to illustrate a marketing audit for tech and SaaS.

    If you don’t where to start, look at the info on my web page about marketing audits. This will give you a current foundation on how to go about a marketing audit for tech and SaaS companies.

    There are 3 brief audio/video overviews plus links to The 2023 CMO Survey and The 2023 State of B2B Marketing Budgets.

    Disclaimer: Yes, this page was created for a marketing audit service I offer. But it will show you how the pros do it.

    Pie chart populated with human figures, used to illustrate market segmentation.

    Marketing audits must be tailored to market segmentation

    Why change? Why now?

    Marketing audits for tech and SaaS companies answer these questions. Especially critical in 2023, a marketing audit shows:

    ✔︎ where are we wasting money?

    ✔︎ how should I focus the marketing budget?

    If your company is a going concern, a marketing audit is an essential first step to creating a marketing plan. How can you plan for next quarter or next year when you don’t know what’s working, and what’s not?

    Marketing audits for tech and SaaS are different

    Marketing audits for tech and SaaS companies are different because the B2B buyer has very different motivations than the B2C buyer.

    Yet, the tech and SaaS buyer has very different motivations than the office furniture buyer.

    Buyer personas in different industry verticals have different purchase preferences. So your marketing audit must be tailored to your vertical.

    What works for office furniture buyers typically won’t work for tech or SaaS buyers.

    What is the state of your marketing?

    A systematic appraisal of your marketing is a sure way to help you explain the marketing budget.

    Every business is its own ecosystem. Marketing presents your ecosystem to the marketplace, with incentives to engage and dive deeper.

    The best way to determine the state of your presentation and incentives is to do a marketing audit for your tech or SaaS company.

    Of course, allocating resources to do a proper audit is difficult for many companies.

    That’s where market strategy consulting firms like mine come in handy.

    Most of our marketing audits cost between $10K and $15K, depending on your company size.

    We complete them in two weeks.

    Feel free to check out the details on our web page.