Why brainstorm for a name?

  By Purnima Varadrajan, www.ipott.com | March 6, 2012 - 11:00 pm | Branding, Case Studies, Checklist, Ideation, Pre launch
Leave a comment

There is a lot being talked about how you should select your brand name.  Lets quickly look at the few tips for selecting a brand name.

  1. The name should be easy to remember.  Not so easy that it can be easily forgotten :-) .  iPOTT has a finance software called INCOME. (Hey sorry to ask..are you serious about your product?)
  2. It is should be easy to pronounce (more…)

Target Marketing: To? Or Not to?

  By Purnima Varadrajan, www.ipott.com | March 5, 2012 - 7:00 pm | Case Studies, Marketing collaterals, Marketing overview, Marketing Plan, The Market
Leave a comment

From the earlier blogs on Target Markets,  a reader had a question on ‘what size of company should worry about target markets’.   Worry?   Ok, the general tendency of a startup or a growth phase company is to grab business from every quarter.   But we must be clear that the purpose of identifying target markets is for a focused and planned marketing. It is not to filter incoming business. The focus is required even to plan your marketing collaterals. (more…)

Product & Service : Top 4 questions

  By Purnima Varadrajan, www.ipott.com | March 3, 2012 - 7:00 pm | Checklist, Marketing overview, Marketing Plan
Leave a comment

While we have spoken about the “Marketing Overview : Top 5 questions” in our earlier post, we will look at the top 4 questions on the Product & service in this post.   The top 4 would be..

  1. What are the benefits of your product / service
  2. What is the USP of your product / service
  3. Which is your winning product
  4. Which product will drain your overheads

(use Boston Matrix model to arrive answers for 3 & 4) (more…)

Boston Matrix Model – for Software Product Marketing

  By Purnima Varadrajan, www.ipott.com | March 2, 2012 - 11:31 pm | Marketing overview, Marketing Plan, Tools
1 Comment

The Boston Matrix model (also called the BSG Matrix, Growth-Share Matrix, and variations around these titles) is a tool for assessing existing or new products in terms of their market potential, and hence planning on marketing activities.  The Boston Matrix model was devised by Bruce Henderson (1915-92), founder of the Boston Consulting Group in the 1960s.  But I can assure you that this tool can be used for strategic decision making even today. (more…)

What’s in the Marketing budget?

  By Purnima Varadrajan, www.ipott.com | March 1, 2012 - 8:59 pm | Checklist, Marketing collaterals, Marketing Plan, Website
Leave a comment

The most common mistake of a start-up or a small business is ‘not budgeting’ for marketing.    Investment is generally in technology, manpower, operation etc.,  but Marketing is “no no not now”  budget.  It is not understood that allocating marketing spend  is as important as allotting budget for rent or payroll.

There are many ways to set marketing budgets.  One of the most popular is to set a % of projected sales.    (more…)

Marketing Overview : Top 5 questions

  By Purnima Varadrajan, www.ipott.com | February 24, 2012 - 7:00 am | Checklist, Marketing Plan
3 Comments

Since we have been talking a lot around the concepts of marketing, its now time to put in place the checklist for the “market plan” .  Though this list is applicable to any kind of a product, we would like to focus on Software Product marketing.

Any company which aims at a perfect market plan, should answer every question with diligence.  Believe me there is nothing like the right or the wrong answer.  Also there is never ever a final answer.  The perfect marketing plan will always be changing. (more…)

Market Segmentation Blunders

  By Suma Reddy, www.ipott.com | February 22, 2012 - 7:30 pm | Marketing Plan, Pre launch
Leave a comment

Mass customization of software products targeting individual segments results in a highly targeted approach of providing adequate stock to the target market to avail. Sometimes, similar new products are introduced into markets without actually identifying whether the stock is exhausted or not. This results in cannibalization of products. The time of releasing products into market, the number of products being released and the segments where they are being released into matters.

One of the biggest reasons for cannibalization is when the criterion based on which segmentation is done is very narrow, limited and can easily be violated. (more…)

Are your Segments Refined Enough ?

  By Suma Reddy, www.ipott.com | February 21, 2012 - 7:30 pm | Marketing Plan, Pre launch
Leave a comment

Generally, software products can be targeted at different domains to perform different functionalities of a system. It could be an internet software product such as browser, a system software such as device driver or an operating system such as Windows, UNIX – its flavors or Macintosh. It could also be a highly specialized and cutting edge mobile application or it could be a game!

Looking at it from marketing perspective, to make it simpler, let us assume that there are two types of products – one that can be mass produced and one that is highly specialized. (more…)

Let’s Start With Market Segmentation!

  By Suma Reddy, www.ipott.com | February 18, 2012 - 7:30 pm | Marketing Plan, Pre launch
3 Comments

Market is heterogeneous. This implies that it includes all those people who share the characteristics of an ideal buyer, but in reality they may not be the potential buyers. For instance, when a product is being developed for the first time, its purpose and features may resemble the demands and expectations of a certain class or group of people. But in reality, this group may not exist in society and even if it exists, it may not be restricted to a certain place or region as such. People  relocate more often nowadays and this has resulted in a distribution that may not have uniform patterns. Hence there is a need to look out for this ideal population and group them in order to identify appropriate means to reach them. In other words, there is a need to create homogeneous subsets of the market and position the product accordingly for best response. (more…)

Important Steps to Ensure Before Selling

  By Suma Reddy, www.ipott.com | February 17, 2012 - 7:30 pm | Selling
2 Comments

Generally companies come up with interfaces to enable tracking of products. For instance, assume the product as a bundle is being sold in a supermarket. This is direct selling and barcoding maybe required to ensure that products are tagged and traced. This will help in maintaining account of sales, damaged goods or damaged packaging, missing contents, etc. It is often undermined by startups in initial stages on grounds of cost, but these are the little things which will improve operational efficiency in long run.

Tracking, Labeling and Packaging is even more important when the products are being sold on a wholesale basis. (more…)