Archive for June, 2008

Are your products aligned with market needs?

Posted by writer

Good product design is about understanding your market’s needs before investing huge amounts of money in your product development and launches. This becomes even more important now, considering the way media and the web has taken shape. Consumer’s are more aware, more vocal and much much more connected. They want their value for money. And you want your profits. So, try to use different tools to analyze your markets and adjust your product and ideas accordingly.

Here are some tips that can help you gauge your markets needs:

1- If you are planning a launch, use Survey Monkey to get initial customer feedback.

2- Join Social Networks and build communities there for your target markets. Allow them to share their ideas and thoughts with you and form a relationship based on communication with them.

3- Use Google analytics and Google Trends to research for trends in the industry and domain that you are working in.

4- Follow industry leaders and authority blogs to see where the future of your industry is heading. Make sure you’re not heading in the wrong direction.

5- Alpha test samples of your market to get early feedback. Incorporate those feedbacks and suggestions into making your product or service better.

6- Plan your launch strategies meticulously yet keep them flexible enough to adjust around the market demands. I have a detailed post on step by step launch plans queued up for posting soon. So stay tuned.

Designing events - its all about the creativity

Posted by writer

Planning events is just like designing. That is why whenever I have to pick someone for my team I look for those that have a good mental balance. Let me explain: The most ideal team members so far have been people who are meticulous planners (left brained) and highly creative (right brained) at the same time. This may sound a little too idealistic but its not. You can even get intelligent people and train them with mental exercises or activities to use both sides of their brains.

Planning events or businesses requires creativity. You need to find new ways of targeting customers, new ways of promoting events, new ways of building communities, new ways of planning themes. Everything works at a fast pace these days, which puts the customer expectation bars high. You can only expect to meet those bars if you can differentiate your services and products significantly and manage to stand out from the crowd.

So, instead of looking for best practices or easy way outs, take time out to design your events as if they were a painting. Paint out new ways of blending all of the different elements together to make picturesque memories.

Think: Backup plan

Posted by writer

Almost everything that we plan, whether big or small - needs to have backup options for contingencies. This doesn’t mean a backup bride for a wedding, but backup venues, backup caterers, backup entertainment folks etc. The reason why I am writing a separate post on this is simply because this topic deserves the attention it mostly fails to get.

I remember when Donald Trump fired one of the best contestant in his TV show “The Apprentice” only because she had failed to consider a backup venue option for one of the project challenges. A lot of people huffed and puffed about how ridiculous that was - people who quite obviously had no idea about the lives of business managers or event planners. Truth is, just like Trump didn’t give her another chance, nobody will let such things go by. Event management is about mitigating your risks.

Everything around us is unpredictable. You have to plan to the nth degree to make sure your events are raging successes. Flights can get canceled, it can rain, your beautiful outdoor venue can get crowded with bee swarms, your caterers can mess up the food - anything can happen. Although this uncertainty can hit the nerves at times, it usually helps keep managers on their toes with adrenaline pumping through them. Handling these situations is fun for some managers. Some may even consider it a natural high.

My message to you today is simple and yet very important. When making your launch plans, make sure you have the right backup plans in place. In some cases you may also need backup plans for your backup plans.

Building reputation and credibility

Posted by writer

This post is directed towards people who are launching products, offering services or simply providing their own event management services. If you’re running your own firm, you can focus entirely on getting business instead of pleasing supervisors. This usually equates to getting customers and making sure they are happy. The issue is that it isn’t always as simple and easy as it seems. Unless you are in a very specific niche, chances are you’ll have competitive sharks swimming in the water as well. Those businesses that thrive on reputation based sales become very competitive.

The good thing about today’s time is that you can channelize multiple forces to carve a stronger foothold on the market to make sure that you can get as much business as possible. Here are some quick tips to get you started:

Drive competition away

The best and surest way to earn reputation is to find what sets you apart from competition. What value does your product or service offer which is different and can be highlighted? Don’t restrict yourself - be creative.

Quality and consistency

Secondly, focus on ensuring quality and consistency in your services. I’d say, set high standards and consistently meet them. Your work has to be good, your services have to speak for themselves, your web presence has to be top-notch, how quickly and well you handle customer queries has to be right on. Don’t compromise on quality and wonder why your business is not where it potentially can be.

Endorsements

When you know your competitive edge and have provided high quality services, make sure you request for feedback and reviews from your customers. This is extremely important in building credibility in business. People trust what others have to say, especially if those ‘others’ are people they look up to. So, if suppose, Micheal Arrington says something good about a new startup, people will check them out.

If your product or service isn’t something people can find and write about themselves, at least you can request testimonials from your existing customers. You have invest time in building your reputation, it doesn’t just happen by itself.

Get more visibility - Create a following

All of that effort can go to waste if people don’t know about you. Once you have all of the other pieces together, you spread the word. Start a community and build a following instead of just marketing your services. Like anything else, you need to build credibility first. You can use different tools like blogs, microblogs (e.g. twitter) and social pages (e.g. facebook) to build a community of likeminded people (or potential customers). This will definitely get you more visibility and will help in building your reputation.

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