MJ and I spend a lot of time talking about software development trends, the web (and the various buzzes around web 2.0). Robert Scoble blogged about the problem facing every tech company, and it got me to thinking. How much do people in the IT industry actually know about the trends in their own industry? (Infurious is not a web 2.0 company. We’re writing software for the Mac. We just happen to be passionate about innovation and shiny new toys :-))
I went around the office today (in the day job), and asked people here what they know about web 2.0, blogs, tags, etc. No-one that I spoke to had any real idea what I was talking about. These are not stupid people, nor are they ignorant, they just don’t read blogs or get involved in the web community. One person actually said “web 2.0, what’s that?” when he overheard me talking about it.
The point I’m trying (poorly) to make is that it doesn’t matter whether someone outside a target market knows anything about your product or trends, etc. It’s ensuring that people within your target market/industry do know about you, your product, your buzzwords or whatever. And that target market might not be what you think it is – it could be argued that most people in IT would be market for web 2.0 (I know it’s not a product, but I’m extending the idea of brand to include buzzword). And yet, a large section of the IT industry won’t care, even those who write web-based applications for a living.
Before identifying how to market your product, you need to know who you’re marketing to. I struggled with this while writing SyncBridge, because I thought the product was for people like me, where “me” means a software geek. MJ steered me right (after several discussions) that the product was for people like me, where “me” means a person who relies on a Mac for daily work – in our case, mostly SMEs in print, media, design, etc.
How do we intend to market to those people? I’ll leave that to MJ to post on another day 🙂
Technorati Tags: web2.0, syncbridge
Very valid points.
Somethings u get stuck within your techie world and realise that the REAL world hasn’t really got a clue what u’re talking about and look at u as if u’re a mad scientist and smile at u sweetly!
Lal