Blog by Matta Mayfielda.
When you know your market, but it is not responding like you think it should
Cause 1: The product / feature does not work good enough.
Very often version 1 of a new product misses it’s mark. Customer interviews and/or user analytics are the tools. Existing customers are the pool of people to investigate since they already trust you.
Cause 2: The problem to be solved is too small.
Just because a problem can be solved, does not mean it is worth solving. Learning, setup, maintaining, and paying money are all ‘costs’ of a feature/product. Likewise, if new prospects are not showing interest (f2f meetings and web analytics), then focus on existing customers. Why are they not trying to use the product? Interviews and analytics are your friends.
Cause 3: Users/buyers don’t understand the problem or the solution.
Educating existing customers is expensive– there are a limited number of messages you can send them before they ignore everything. New Prospects are even more difficult to get attention. This, however, is the one area that messaging/marketing/sales energy can improve. Before you deploy the forces, make absolutely certain that #1 and #2 above area all ok and check to see if there are ways to change the product to lower the education barrier. Eg. Cut back the functionality to the core value.
Your business was built on solving a valuable problem. Your follow-up work, were likely equally strong. However, there are a limited number of attractive problems that your company can efficiently solve. Your job is not to pick the best one, but to only pick the good ones.
Want to know more about this? Visit Matt’s blog: https://www.telekta.com/blog/2020/05/my-new-products-features-arent-selling-why/