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Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Create Great Demo Videos of your iPhone Or iPad Apps

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013

Recently I wanted to create a video demo of my iPad apps. So I thought, I would just walk-through the apps and capture the screen on my iPad. It turns out that its not as simple as I thought it would be. While the desktops have a ton of screen-casting software, iPad simply lacks any of these sophisticated software.

When I googled for screen-casting apps on iPhone/iPad, I found a huge number of apps, but all of them are mostly whiteboard apps, that let’s you capture the screen inside their app (more useful for teachers.)

Searching some more, helped me find a few viable options:

Once I recorded by screen-cast using AirServer and QuickTime, then I used iMovie to do some minor editing and adding some annotations to the video. That’s it. I recorded the following 2 videos if you want to have a look.

Pricing and Positioning Agile related Tools and Services in Asia/India

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

Over the last few months, multiple friends and connection from US have asked me to share my experience with pricing Agile related tools and services in Asia (specifically India.) Following is my perspective:

Disclaimer: Asia is the most diverse and dynamic continent out there. Any reasonable generalization is bound to have loopholes. Take it with a pinch of salt.

Since the topic on hand is pricing & positioning agile related services and tools, let’s focus on senior managers at software companies, who are interested & responsible for procuring (or at least recommending) a service or a tool for use inside their company. These folks mostly belonging to upper-middle class or above. Its important to focus on these folks because we can draw the following behavioral patterns based on their profile:

  • 1. They are very value-for-money conscious. .i.e. while they are very price conscious these days they are also getting quite brand conscious. Feature-richness or “fully-loaded” appeals to them because they associate it with value-for-money.
  • 2. Premium pricing model works well with them. .i.e. price the product or service artificially high in order to encourage favorable perceptions among buyers. Exploits the tendency in buyers to assume that expensive items enjoy
    • an exceptional reputation,
    • are more reliable or desirable,
    • represent exceptional quality and distinction
  • 3. If they can’t bargain the price while buying, they feel they did not get a good deal.
  • 4. In my experience, Freemium model generally does not work very well. People will somehow find a way to stay on the free plan. Software Piracy is still a notable problem. Things like sharing a license with others is considered wrong, but people will still go ahead and indulge in it. May be because they don’t fully think through the implications or can’t empathize with IP related regulations.
  • 5. Price Discrimination strategy appeals to these folks. .i.e. pricing the product differently for different companies. Bigger discount for larger number of licenses is common. But doing something more like: bigger discounts for startups or discounts for specific verticals like Telecom can attract customers.

Based on my experience consulting and coaching IT companies in India, I would categorize Indian IT companies, who are interested in Agile, into the following 5 categories:

  • 1. Large Outsourced Services Organization (InfoSys, Wipro, TCS, CTS, HCL, MindTree, TechM, etc.)
  • 2. Large ODC (Off-shore development centers) for giant software product companies (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, McAfee, EMC, Philips, Dell, GE, Siemens, VMWare, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Aricent, Huawei, etc.)
  • 3. Large ODC for large non-software product/services companies (Banks and Financial Institutes [JP Morgan, Citi, RBS, Fidelity], Store Chains [Tesco, Walmart, Target], Transportation [Volvo, John Deere], etc.)
  • 4. Mid-size product and services companies (Directi, SlideShare, ClearTrip, Cactus Global, etc.)
  • 5. Startups (Eko, Interview Street, CommonFloor, HelpShift, OlaCabs, Olx, Zomato, etc.)

Category 1 is highly obsessed with process adherence & compliance. Typically they have an internal process & tool which all projects have to use. In addition, clients of most projects might have a different process & tool required. Teams end up using both. Most teams use different tools because there are concerns regarding how much transparency is healthy for an outsource client-vendor relation. They want only limited data to be shared with the clients. In fact in my experience, to ensure company-wide consistency and compliance, most companies even have their own home grown tool/solution to deal with this issue. If majority of customers are using a process/tool, its an easy pitch to the companies to use the same approach, provided there is an easy way to share limited info with clients. Using same process/tool could add to the company’s marketing/credibility pitch. These companies are price conscious, but if the value proposition (better customer acquisition) is shown, they have the budgets to buy the tool or service. Might require multiple rounds of negotiation. They are willing to commit higher numbers if bigger discounts can be offered. Fairly long sales process.

Category 2 is fairly process conscious, but certainly to a lesser extent compared to Category 1. For these companies majority of the process and tool decisions are made by their counter-parts from west. They do have a say, but are not going to make the buying decision. However they can sabotage the process/tool decision if it does not work for them. Because of the “distributed & off-shore” nature of work, their needs might be different from the folks making the decision. These guys appreciate higher attention/care to their specific needs. Sales process tends to be much faster than Category 1.

Category 3 is also very process conscious. They are predominantly cost centers. Any tool or process which can show clear cost saving, better accountability & tracking is a big hit. Buying decisions are jointly made, however offshore folks do have a big say. Typically these folks require quite a lot of customization to the service or tool to fit their specific needs. Sales process tends to be very long.

Category 4 is out of the startup mode, and are the “wanna-be-enterprise” scale. These are in my opinion the best companies to chase for process change and tool adoption. They have the right attitude to change. Typically they also have the cash and they generally don’t bargain much. They have a strong desire to scale and standardize. Perfect pitch for a Industry Leading Tool to come in and steal the deal. Again these guys don’t tend to bargain too much, but if you give them a discount it will help make the decision faster because they are still price conscious. These guys will do a very detailed market study & competitor analysis. If possible, they prefer to pick the best in category. Sales process tends to be either couple of days or 6+ months (extremes.)

Category 5 is the least process conscious. However are very efficiency & savings driven. They won’t even talk to you if they feel the product is priced and targeted at Enterprises. They would assume/feel the product is expensive and too heavy-weight for startups. A clear pitch for startups in your offerings is very important. These folks will hunt you down. Again very price conscious, but can be good brand ambassadors. Sales process does take some time.

Hope this helps. Also would be keen to hear your experience.

Facebook and Twitter Icons on Print Media

Friday, May 18th, 2012

These days its fashionable for businesses to have a Facebook and Twitter account. I can see how social media can help them. But what beats me is, every now and then, I see a billboard or a poster with just Facebook and Twitter icons in one corner of their printed ad. What does this mean?

Its like having visiting card like this:

Instead of:

 

How to Name your Software Product?

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

You are a startup and you’re building a product. It all sounds exciting until you sit down to decide the product name. Coming up with a public name for your product is one of the early decisions you’ll need to make.

What criteria do you use for naming your product?

I’ve used the following:

1. AdWords: When people want to find something similar, what keywords are they searching for? I would use Google AdWords to find keywords/phrases that people are already searching for. Look for related searches.

2. Competitors: If there are similar products in the market, what have they named their product and what keywords are they focusing on?

3. Unique Name: Based on keywords from the first 2 steps and your own preference, pick a few unique name that communicates the outcome achieved by using your product.

For ex: if I was building a product which helps me search and find my files, I would call the product Found instead of File-Searcher or something else.

Sometimes, you might need to search for synonyms or replace certain characters in your name to make it distinctly unique.

Choose an appealing name. Something that appeals not only to you but also to your target audience. Choose a comforting or familiar name that conjures up pleasant memories so customers respond on an emotional level. Usually long or confusing names are not favourable.

Also try to avoid names that are spelled differently than they sound.

4. Domain Name: Is a .com domain available for this name? Also what about other popolar TLDs? Personally I prefer getting a .com, unless your product naturally blends with some other TLD. Like talk.to You want to make sure your domain name is different enough from your competitors’ domain name.

People generally make mistakes while typing URLs, you need to make sure there are no stupid websites with small variations of you domain name.

5. Trademark: Might be worth checking if your product name is already a registered trademark owned by someone else in the same business domain. Esp. in the country where you plan to sell your product. In the US you can search trademarks on USPTO’s website.

6. Test your name: Its generally a good idea to present your shortlisted names to a few people and see their reaction.

7. App Stores: Even though all popular App Stores allow duplicate app names, it might be worth checking if other apps use the same name. .i.e. if you plan to build an app as part of your product.

Wikipedia has an excellent article on this topic called: Product Naming

 

Agile India 2012 Conference Badges

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Promote the Agile India 2012 Conference, by showing off these badges on your websites/blogs/etc.

 

AgileIndia2012_Organizing_Black_V2.png AgileIndia2012_Organizing_Black_CallOut_V2.pngAgileIndia2012_Organizing.png AgileIndia2012_Organizing_Black_CallOut.png AgileIndia2012_Organizing_Black.png
AgileIndia2012_Presenting_Black_V2.png AgileIndia2012_Presenting_Black_CallOut_V2.png AgileIndia2012_Presenting.png AgileIndia2012_Presenting_Black_CallOut.png AgileIndia2012_Presenting_Black.png
AgileIndia2012_Sponsoring_Black_V2.png AgileIndia2012_Sponsoring_Black_CallOut_V2.png AgileIndia2012_Sponsors.png AgileIndia2012_Sponsoring_Black_CallOut.png AgileIndia2012_Sponsoring_Black.png
AgileIndia2012_Attending_Black_V2.png AgileIndia2012_Attending_Black_CallOut_V2.png AgileIndia2012_Attending.png AgileIndia2012_Attending_Black_CallOut.png AgileIndia2012_Attending_Black.png

LinkedIn is getting good at Engaging their Users

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Over the last few years, while building products, I’ve really struggled to keep my users engaged. Its been hard to have your users constantly coming back to your product. There is a fine line between being too pushy and fading away in the background.

Today I was pleasantly surprised to see the following email from LinkedIn.

This email has the right balance. It makes you feel important and wanted.

Doing this kind of stuff in products is generally hard. Also I was surprised how they have figured out the related groups and suggesting those to me. Interesting!

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