The most important part of sales and new product development is something you can't see, you can't feel and you can't taste. You can't even factor it in a spread sheet -- buyer perception of your product. It's about how your product relates to his or her lifestyle and self image.
This all-important product attribute is the one you can't photograph but can control. The way you want your product to be perceived by the buyer should be determined while the product and sales plan is in the developmental stages, not after. In fact, when you change your basic product positioning strategy, you are essentially creating a new product in the consumer mind.
One of the reasons most product work goes awry is because marketers try to separate the perception from the reality of the product features in the testing stages. To consumers they are one and the same. The perception is the reality. If consumers feel that the product tastes or performs differently to them, then it DOES taste differently. It DOES perform differently. We can put a taste in the consumer's mouth and a glow on his or her face just as surely as we can attach a label to a bottle.
Despite what a great deal of research suggests, consumers want to believe your new product works. Give them a basis for believing. This can be a sensual tie-in, something they can see, smell, feel or hear. Give them the excitement of discovery. Show them something they can show-off to theirfriends. They want to think your product will help them do something a little bit faster, better or cheaper than they could do it before. They want to believe that your new frozen dinner will rival a restaurant meal even if, intellectually, they know that it won't.
Even an apparent consumer negative can be turned into a positive when we create a positive fantasy around it. Lightly flavored seltzers have been around since the sixties. Smart marketers learned how to position their product as a clean, upscale and natural alternative to sugarladen sodas. Same product, but it was the altering of consumer perceptions of what is refreshing that made it work in the marketplace.
The closer, physically, your product is to the competition, the more you have to play these "head games" with the consumer by creating a perceptual point of difference in the consumer's mind.
Here are some perceptual head-starts to get a jump on the competition.
THE EXCITEMENT OF DISCOVERY: Add the element of serendipity to the consumer's life. Allow consumers to feel they've discovered something in the supermarket. Cook up new uses for your product. Avon's Skin So Soft has evolved from a so-so moisturizer to a bug deterrent. So much for analytical studies into definitive consumer behavior.
Come back for another hot button in the next two weeks, or buy the revised Kindle book "Hot Button Marketing" by clicking on it.
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