What I've learn from Mars Curiosity Rover and Marketing Plan

It’s the most exciting time in a product life cycle and also the most frustrating and tiring time, it’s the time when you decided to launch your product, before we discuss even deeper allow me to tell you a story that fascinated me.

The Mars Curiosity Landing

Sometime around 3 or 4 months ago NASA landed a 6 wheeler Robot unto Mars, what fascinate me is that: it takes 40 minutes for radio wave to from Mars to reach earth and it takes another 40 minutes from Mars to Earth and the whole landing from Mars atmosphere to the Mars surface is 8 minutes, so you can imagine NASA won’t know if the landing is successful or not. This means, NASA has to rely on the PLANS they made on earth before launching, NASA cannot interfere with the Landing process once it begun. Once the rover has landed NASA has to make sure that all the scientific gadget that curiosity has is adequate to conduct all the scientific research that is needed on Mars.

NASA gambles their million dollar of tax payer money on their PLAN and of course on the Curiosity ability to make autonomous decision to land – which is part of the PLAN also –

I can see by this time you already know where am I heading?

The Confession

I launched several mediocre product to the market before and my Launch PLAN was simple and naïf, it only took me 30 minutes to assemble a launch plan and I took me a split second to decide when to launch it, and then I rely heavily on market inputs to adjust my plans, which takes another split second to decide which way the product should go in the market, which usually it goes 180 degree turn over night, in summary I have pseudo-plans (my fancy words for crappy plans) , I adjust to the market and I called myself a true solid marketer !

Does this short confession of mine ring a bell? Have you did the same thing as I did? Sure you did, somewhere around the corner of your mind, if you are a marketer you did the same thing as I did at least once in your life time

The revealing Truth

I’m now a changed man! I know think of my Launch Plan even before the product exist! it’s true ! when you create a well thought product even before the product finish the development phase you already have this hunch, this mental picture of how the market will react, how the market will accept your product, by visualizing this product success, you already have a small peak to the launch plan, all you need to do is to make more complete launch plan,

And I do need to remain you, Marketing is not just launching a product or maintaining a product in the market, Marketing is a combination of the magical 4P – Product, Price, Place and Promotion!

You need to see your product the way NASA see Mars Curiosity Rover, think of Plan that is autonomous, that can adjust itself to the market – sure you’ll do the adjustment- but it will only takes small adjustment not a big one.

Yes this blog is asking you and myself whenever we create a Marketing Plan (it means the whole 4P) try to make a PLAN like NASA made, the PLAN has to be autonomous, when you launch it there is no coming back and put it in your mind you cannot or don’t want to make major adjustment ! The Plan need to be accepted by the market when you launched it, therefore you’ll need only minor adjustment

The Plan has to start from the day your product is still an idea!

You have to commit to your plan and distance yourself from making major changes to the plans once it’s executed!

Note: I tried to list down some pointers and after listing down so many points, all the points are exactly the same as a common Marketing Plan, what makes it different is your mindset, on how you imagine the execution will be.

Image source : Nasa

Customer Loyalty is not equal with prizes or gifts

The clock is ticking as I prepare for a product launch, thousands task pop up in my head, and one of those task is customer loyalty mechanism for the product-to be.

I look to my own personal experience to find the best loyalty mechanism, and I didn’t find something that is Ultra Amazing, what I found is something very basic yet we often forget. Allow me to explain it with a story

I recently was given an upgrade on my Credit Card, before I was just a common customer in the eyes of my bank, until that one fine day I received a package, a thick envelope, when I open that package I realized that my Credit Card has been upgraded, and I notice the phone number to activate my new card is different from the number I used to call, so I call that new number to activate my card, and I was shocked to find that, there’s no IVR, no machine answer me, a real life person answered the call, and how the customer service handled my request was amazingly fast and humane. 

Another experience comes from the banking sector, I have several thousand dollar of idle money that I want to deposit in Bank “X”, bank “X” have a branch nearby my house but instead of making the deposit at that Bank, I make the deposit  on the same Bank “X” but on a different branch, a branch that is 1,5 hours away from my house, why I make such silly decision !, it’s only because,  The bank customer service and teller, calls me by name, from the time I walk in to their doors, if they’re not busy, they’ll stand up and greet me “Good Day Pak Sander, anything we can do for you ? “ I’m not a Priority Banking customer and they greet me like I’m somebody important, that simple service touches me, I felt like a human being not just some random customer, that simple greeting won my heart and my money.

I learn 3 simple points for my product loyalty scheme

1.       If you use prizes for your loyalty scheme, you’ll catch bounty hunters that moves between products – you’ll catch bunny-hoping customer not loyal customer.

2.       Make the customer buying experience pleasant !, it’s doesn’t need to be luxurious.  e.g :  a simple digital queuing number that you can take from your home before going to the doctor will make doctor queuing much more pleasant

3.       Small stuff matters wins customer heart !, a smile, call me by my name, stand up when I approach you, give me  a glass of water, show customer that you really want to connect !

Show your customer that you "put a lot of effort" in maintaining your relationship with your customer, "buying" stuff for your customer is not "putting an effort" to maintain your customer relationship, it's bribing ! ,Bribes will work in the short run, but in the long run you'll find them moving to the next guy that offers more cooler prizes 

So what kind of loyalty scheme that I’ll be implementing to the product, the answer is absolutely “not prizes” but something that’s more personalize to each customer, can’t say what it is at the moment, but I do can tell you, it’s something that we “put an effort” not what we “buy” and I’m sure our customer can see that it comes from our heart.

 

Working fast and hard could be your downfall

We are accustom with working hard and working fast, some say we need to work smart, well I’m not going to the work smart topic, way too many articles talks about that smart working stuff.

We seldom thinks we need to work as fast as we can to be ahead of our competition and we also thinks we need to work harder take long working hour to become more efficient or to produce more, all in the name of “Staying ahead of the competitor”

Nothing is wrong with “Staying ahead of the competitor” what wrong is we almost never put the “burnout” factor into account.

What customer want is a product or service quality that comes from the heart, not from mindless robots !, and people who do their work from the heart is people who has positive emotion, while burnout people has negative or 0 emotion a.k.a mindless robots !

So how do you “stay ahead of the competition” without “burning out”? These are points that I think is applicable

1.       Know your customer and you shall find your niche!

There are no such thing as one singular market, even basic things such as rice or corns have niche markets, if you are doing exactly the same thing as what other companies are doing, then I should say you don’t know your market, if you know your market you’ll be able to pick a point of view that’s unique to your own business that no other business could imitate. That unique point of view will differentiate your self from the others and that means you are already ahead of your competition

2.       Target one (just one) unique proposition and Position yourself out loud!

You must be able to stick to just one position to the market, because the market simply cant except a product that has too many benefit, many products has tried the all mighty product approach and fails, it’s just how the mind works, and after you’ve decided one position in the market, you Market that market OUTLOUD ! Make yourself heard so you’ll create the “first in the market” protection to your product.

3.       Strategize for the long run, keep adjusting your tactics

You have to set a long term strategy what do you want to achieve in the next 5 years, and then create 1 year / 6 month goals and than set monthly objective. You adjust the objective and goals, this is how you make your strategy adapt to the market, what most fail companies do is they adjust the strategy then the goals and objective, by changing your strategy you confuse the whole organization, what you should do is keep the strategy statement and adjust the goals and objective not the other way around.

4.       Be true to yourself, be unique and grow with your uniqueness

Business is just like humans, we all in general have the same body parts, 1 head, 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 nose, 2 eyes, etc what differ from one human to another is the experience that we had when we make contact with a human being, the same thing applies to business, a business may sell the same product, do the same thing, have the same price, but the experience when interacting from one business with another is the key. Be True to yourself, be a business that delivers unique experience to your customer and grow with that uniqueness. Be a business that’s true to you of what you really care.

5.       80% Productive 20% contemplate

You know it as I do, we don’t have our “AHA” moment when we are hectic, we all got our great ideas when we are most relax, we get our ideas when we are driving home from work, or taking a shower, spending time with friends, or when we are reading a book. Try to set a time for that “AHA” moment, my rule of thumb is 80% hectic time and set aside 20% as a contemplate time, your contemplate time is a time when you can think deeply and let your imagination roam free, use articles, book, or pictures as a catalyst for your ideas, just roam free with you mind, and when you find a “creative seed” take that “creative seed” write it down in a piece of paper and think a way to execute it. Your contemplation time is your safety valve from getting “burnout” from you hectic day.

6.       Execute

Talking about strategy all day long don’t get the company moving, execution is key !, a good execution is not like flying a plane and turning on the auto pilot, no execution is on autopilot. You have to put your execution in sight daily, because market changes every day, if you are late to respond while the market is changing is like driving straight in a curve road, keep your eye on the road or you’ll crashed.

Staying ahead of the competition is not about running fast and hard ahead of your competitor, is about taking a unique route that no one else is taking, in short! Be unique, you may do the same thing and sell the same thing, but the experience is different.

Being unique doesn’t come from working hard and fast, it comes from a contemplation and self awareness, it’s about being true to yourself (business) of what you (business) really care about.

We Chat - Tencent Aggressive Penetration to Indonesian Market

If you guys haven’t heard, a new chatting application is entering Indonesian Market in its full speed, it’s called WeChat, it’s a Tencent product - the Chinese giant internet company-

If you go to their website :  www.wechatapp.com you can see it’s just like any other chat apps, but what I find interesting is how they are trying to penetrate the Indonesian market

I was enjoying my self in a mall in Jakarta, when I saw this big crowd in a small booth, my mind start to wander, what is this ? and guess what ? it’s a WeChat booth, but there’s something special with this booth besides they use pretty girls, They got Huawei handset and mediapad on their showcase , so WeChat collaborate with Huawei to sell handset and pre-injected Chatting applications – that is so brilliant !

If we Chat open a booth and sells apps only, they’ll be dead in the water, no one will take interest, but when the booth shows affordable Huawei smartphone and mediapad with pretty girls, people will certainly flock, not to mention the main feature that they are selling is the “shake” to make friend, yes you can “shake” your phone to meet new friends using WeChat, so can you imagine pretty girls with smartphone in their hands and shaking to passerby , it is truly a smart marketing move

I won’t go details with the apps feature - you can go to their website for a more details features specification- , from the brochure I took, some of WeChat features are :

1.       Voice message à if they crafted a timeline look it will surely becames voice tweet

2.       Location based à you can meet people near you

3.       Shake à to add friends

4.       Facebook connect

5.       Emoticon library

6.       Inbox message in the from of message in a bottle

7.       Foto sharing

8.       It support  windows phone, iphones ,symbian phone , and RIM will follow shortly

Btw from the info I heard in the “Digital Street” WeChat is now making a TV Ad to support its plan pushing WeChat to penetrate Indonesian Market, talk about limitless budget and aggressive marketing campaign, Tencent is aiming Indonesia with WeChat current as their first campaign.

Urgently Needed: Product Storyteller - Making your product successful

A co-worker which happens to be a dear friend of mine, ask the same questions over and over again: “Why can’t we built good product? And when we launched the product, it sucks! why ? “

After taking some time to digest that particular question, my mind wander to the very same statement that I used to make “We don’t have a product owner!” let me rephrase that “We don’t have a product owner that work by heart!” now the last statement is a bit harsh and a bit too high to achieve (or maybe not), so I’ll tone down abit.. Now my statement is “We need a Product Story teller! “

In Developing a product especially an IT Product, a product development involves several parties, Product manager, Project manager, Executor (Developers, Operators), and Business Person (marketing guy)

The Product Manager is usually the one who makes all the decision, a product manager will assess the product opportunities and manage how to build it.

The Project Manager will manage the timeline, coordinate with all other parties and make sure they meet the deadline and no problem is unsolved

The Executor, do all the dirty works

And The Business Person does all the budgeting and marketing activities, include promotion, etc

So if asked who in the organization represent the customer needs and benefits usually we all point our finger to Product Manager or to Business person, it comes to one of them.

Now, this is the problem

Who hold the product storyteller function ?, everyone in the team should be able to tell what a story what the product is all about, but a single person who act as the “All knowing about the product” is still very needed in the team. The product storyteller function is not about analysis is about combining all elements internal and external to one story, he/she speak in big picture rather than detail, he/she ensure all product features are working solely for the customer benefits in the language that is understood by the customer, thus creating a valuable customer experience.

So let’s put this product storyteller function at the Product manager, it seems like a good idea, but on the operational level, product manager daily routine bogged down its big picture vision, product manager is consumed in details, problem solving, product manager has no time nor the resource to think big picture and speak on fully on behalf the customer. Constant bombardment from technical and operation side will alter product manager orientation from customer benefits to “just get it done on time”. Product Manager has no time for curiosity, discovery and play that will lead to superb customer experience

What if we put this product storyteller function in the Business guy, business guy interact with the market therefore it must have near perfect knowledge of what the market need and what the customer expect, but business guy is always pre-occupied with financial numbers and projection, and sometimes it is very painful and confusing to talk to technical person. To understand the product you need to understand how it works, to understand how it works you need to understand how it made, if the business guy is not logical enough or the technical guy is not savvy enough in communicating its idea/process, it could be very tiring process just to understand the product.

This is the reason why technical person often fight business person, it’s lack of understanding and communication, Each side tells a different story and there is no one combining those stories, no one is persistently safe guarding 1 story, this is the role of Product Storyteller, Product Storyteller should be positioned in the company to break down walls, facilitate talks, discussion, coordination and collaboration, creating 1 story that gives superb experience to customer.

The Product Storytellers function, must have that “embedded will in its DNA” to relentlessly tell the story of the product to all areas in the company or maybe even outside the company, the Product Storytellers is the product evangelist, this is important because this practice will create a unison story in the organization which will put everyone on the same understanding page. The product Storyteller Passion will catch on to others, the passion will get challenged, and the Product Storytellers will fight and iterate on the product idea, creating a cycle of curiosity, discovery and play.

The Products Storytellers has to have a “T” shaped working characteristic, it has deep knowledge of a specific item and has broad interest and knowledge to other items, the "T" shaped working characteristic will enable the Product Storyteller to push collaboration between organization functions, he/she need to be able to communicate fluently with others and most important it must have endless passion to the product.

So does this mean we need a specific position for the product storyteller? I didn’t say that, we do know that we desperately need the function, where you want to put it depends on your organization structure.

Have Fun searching that one passionate, resourceful, creative, good storyteller guy as your product storyteller; p

One weekend with Indonesian Pre-teen and their twitter behavior

I’m sharing my experience hanging-out for 3 days with 50 middle class pre-teens in an Indonesian Summer Camp observing their mobile behavior, this blog will not be talking in numbers and facts, but I do believe the experience I had with 50 Indonesian middle class pre-teens will give us all valuable insights.

Before my weekend experience with 50 Indonesian middle class pre-teen, I always believed that :

Most of twitter user is using ubertwitter application, therefore :

a.       Most of twitter user will user blackberry

b.      Most of twitter user will be in the age range of 25-40 years old

This believes comes from a publication from salingsilang.com an Indonesian digital research agency that I saw in 2011, this believes stick in my head, until recently I had the opportunity to spend 3 days in an Indonesian Summer Camp with 50 kids 12-14 years old, from my interaction with them changes my perspective 180 degree,  my findings are :

1.       They used facebook and twitter as their main digital social network

2.       Their average twitter followers are  in the range of 300-400 followers

-Can you imagine a 12 years old have 300 followers in their twitter account ? I was shocked hearing this fact-

3.       They usually follow an artist in twitter and than send a request  “please folback (follow me back)” this is how they acquired many followers and it’s common courtesy to respond this request by following back or you’ll be considered rude and be left out from the rest of their peer group – as a pre-teen it is the last thing you want from your peer group-

4.       They are very reactive in their twitter behavior, re-tweeting is consider as courtesy therefore they re-tweet between each other, some by request some because they want to share information that they have.

5.       Their main handset preference is Blackberry due to BBM function (Gemini and Onyx), sometimes their parents wont allow them to have a blackberry, so they turn to Nokia X2 or Samsung and the less fortunate ones will use Nexian, very little pre-teen uses iPhone

They emphasize on GPRS connectivity, MP3, camera, twitter and facebook function, and Bluetooth (to share pictures and mp3 between handset) Touch screen is not relevant to them

The average handset price is around 700-2.5 million Rupiah, their parents bought them their handset, and some parents bought them second hand handset, which they don’t mind as long as they have those functionality.

My conclusion is twitter pre-teen market is a very “noisy and reactive” market which is mostly untapped, each pre-teen are able to acquire follower very easily with the “courtesy” behavior, with the right approach and the right conditioning, we can harness the “courtesy” behavior and optimize their strength in distributing contents and creating Word of Mouth.

And not to mention pre-teens are the early adopters of application and digital technology, using pre-teens as your basis to create your WOM strategies is highly recommended

The challenges is how to connect with pre-teens smoothly because any sign of over endorsement will cause a negative WOM within the peer groups , and  this peer groups is very powerful, treat them nicely you’ll reap great harvest, treat them badly you’ll reap a thunderstorm.

Have fun with your pre-teen twitter audience J

Ps : not much pre-teen that I encounter uses pinterest

THE IMPORTANCE OF DESIGNING YOUR FREEMIUM ITEMS

 Freemium is a terms most widely use in game or application developers, it’s a combination of two words which is free and Premium.

When a product is called Freemium it means user can use it for free and then users can buy a premium items or services.

70% of the apps or games in the market is freemium, and the freemium is getting famous, lots of developers look at freemium as the solid business model to generate revenue. Developers are putting their trust and revenue on a small 1- 2% of user that actually buy something from the freemium product.

So this is how the economics works

1.       You put your product in the market as Freemium, meaning it’s Free for any user to download your product, since it’s free you would expect to reach the holy grail number of downloaded application/games which is 1.000,000 download

2.       Since now you have 1.000.000 apps/game in the market, the probability from 1.000.000 million user will buy anything from your apps/games is a small 1-2%. So let’s say the number is 1% meaning there is only 10.000 people buy something from you

3.       From this 10.000 people the average nominal number of their purchase is around 1-2 USD. So from your apps you receive 10.000USD in revenue

The question is : this 10.000 USD is a 1 time hit or is it something sustainable ?, to answer this questions I will ask another question : “what kind of premium items do you provide ? is it a 1 time buy or is it something user has to buy repeatedly ?”

If you tell a user, you have to buy this premium product over and over again, the user will leave you out cold, so the strategy is to make them craving to buy your premium product over and over again, and to know that we need to know what kind of items are sold as Premium items

There are 2 types of premium items:

1.       Durable items : this is something that user buys and the items stays forever

2.       Consumable items  : this is something that user buys and it depleted when used

Seeing the two points I mention above, I can see your having your AHA moment. So when your user buy a building and it stays forever, most likely your user will buy it 1 time only, but if you sells let’s say a energy food to perform some super strength action that depleted after it’s consume, this is consumable items and your user most likely would want to buy another energy food.

According to flurry http://www.flurry.com/ the most item purchased by user are :

In order of their rankings :

Consumable goods : 68%

Durable Goods : 30%

Personalization : 2%

So if you think by selling clothes for user’s avatar is a great source for revenue, think again avatar’s related items are only purchased 2% , so if you want to generate revenue focus on selling consumable items, like energy, food, etc ,

The main point is, designed your virtual item as hard as you design your core engine, it’s where your revenue generates.

Have fun designing your virtual items.

My Mistaken Business Mindset

In every business to keep yourself up ahead of the competition or at least to maintain your position in the market is have something that is own by you and only by yourself, what I mean is you have to have your own technology or you have your own secret recipe or you have your own skill that nobody have, the bottom line is to have something that is not dependent to other parties and it’s your own.

Actually there is nothing wrong with this thinking, in my mindset for the industry I worked in, I focus my self in developing our own technology platform, but it is until I start to reflect on automotive industry.

Let’s say Toyota, the automotive maker , in a Toyota car, you can say Toyota build the car, but does Toyota build iit 100%, who build the tires ? it’s not Toyota, maybe it’s Bridgestone, who built the air conditioner ? usually it’s Denso, who built the sparkplug ? NGK, who built the car seats, the windshields, the steering wheels, the dashboards ? the lamps ? it’s not Toyota, maybe Toyota design the car and manufacture the chassis and the engine block and that is it. So maybe in a car, Toyota only builts 20% and the rest 80% is built by other parties, so in a way, Toyota is mostly an assembling company.

The same thing with Apple, Apple made their product in China, so does Sonny, Samsung also does the same thing except Samsung produce the LCD and also the chipset.

So my point is you can actually built a product and maintain your brand even though you only contribute directly as much as 20%, these days I don’t think you can build a product without collaboration.

Seeing this I can imagine Toyota shared NGK their engine requirement so NGK can also produce the right sparkplug that support Toyota engine performance, so does with Denso, I’m sure Toyota shared the cabin volume size and the temperature requirement and how the AC flow should be, so it’s all about collaboration and sharing information and that includes sensitive information. Collaboration is the key and secrecy - Business Intellectual property- is a part we can not ignore.

So what lessons that I’ve learned : now I’m thinking collaboration at almost every steps of my business and of course we need to find our core competency, something that differentiate us in the market and able us to face the competition.

Collaboration enable us to :

1.       Shorten the product development time

2.       Cut development cost significantly

3.       Enable us to respond to market faster

4.       Focus our strength on what we do best

5.       Use other products/companies strength to enrich our own products

6.       Grows the industry

Summary

Collaboration and Core competency

-It’s ok to create a product by assembling various products, even though 80% of its component comes from other companies, it’s how you design, package, distribute, and maintain the quality that wins the market  -

Plan Your Career - Skill you need for the future

We all still remember how naif and how excited we were to work at our first ever job, as we work and progress climbing up the corporate ladder we often forget or refuse to seriously think of how our life will be when we are at the age of 55 - the pension age -

At the age of 20-30, workforce tend to work long hours and willing to do work after hour, a simple "thank you" or "a treat to the restaurant" is enough to compensate those long hours of work for the employer, it's the age of exploration and excitement, "we care not of what the future hold, we only care what challenges to overcome today" - it's the hymn they all sang :D

At the age of 30-40, workforce has other priorities - that is building a family, focus on settle-ling down, no longer interested in working long hour, no longer satisfy with "thank you notes" or "a treat to the restaurant" , workforce start to think, start to weight the cost vs benefit of working, start thinking "there's more than this", workforce start thinking of having their own business, more free time for families, more variable revenues beside the regular monthly income - the world is starting to weight in-, the workforce feel they are not maximizing the talent they have.

At the age of 40-50 workforce has their past life played in slow-motion it's regret or pride, they look forward in optimism or in pessimism , there time is running out if they don't invest enough in building business network or business capital the have less options, if they invest enough they can reap the fruits of their network all doors seems to open wider and wider.

Seeing this, I try to create a simple infographic showing what skills is needed to plan our career and what problems and solutions that might appear in ones career from time to time.

Hopefully this simple infographic could help us all in planning our future.

if you have other comments or inputs please don't hesitate to reach me, let's have a discussion

5 people that I most respect and thus become my role model : Part 2 : Andrew Carniege - From rags to Millionare

For those who don't have any clue who is Andrew Carniege : Andrew Carniege is a self made millionare who worked as hard labor and slow but sure rise up and ended up a the world riches man in the world in the 1900's

I've searched and compiled his timeline and make comments, read it slowly and let your self be amaze by this man tired less effort in actualizing him self, compare his age and your age, compare his educational background and yours, and same as I, we will be humble by this man achievement in the world of horses and carriages and not Facebook and tablet as we live in

I'm humble by this man life story, and I've learn alot, and i'll fight as hard as Andrew Carniege has!

timeline source : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/timeline/timeline2.html