ABC of Marketing — What You Can Do If Your Product or Service Doesn’t Get Enough Traction

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2innov8

10 min readMay 20, 2022

Less than optimal performance of a product or a service in the marketplace often comes down to an inadequate level of Awareness, Benefits, and/or Credibility (ABC).

Awareness

Level of Awareness about your company, its products and services across the totally addressable market, is measured by the percentage of entities within your target segment that have a good understanding about the following:

How customers can Benefit from your company and its products and services, and
Credibility of your company and its products and services — the level of confidence within the marketplace and the industry about quality, usability of your products and services, about sustainability and reliability of your company, about the strength of execution, the level of customer support, and so on.

What can be done if the level awareness about your company, its products and services is low?

Increase coverage in print and broadcast media, Google News, Apple News, etc.
Maintain references in the reliable open source outlets, e.g., Wikipedia
Encourage your customers and partners to submit authentic reviews in Google, Facebook, and other social media services
Maintain an active online presence with easy-to-find and easy-to-understand marketing content and materials
Increase references in market research reports and papers
Join marketplaces relevant to your industry (e.g., Capterra for software products and services)
Participate in trade shows and conferences that are relevant to your industry

The level of Awareness can be negatively impacted if your marketing materials

Are too long, confusing or hard to understand, or do not communicate crisply and clearly enough about what difference your product or service can make for your customers and how they can benefit from your product or service, or
Do not relate to emotional needs and feelings of your customers, e.g., do not make them feel happy, enthusiastic, passionate and excited about using your product or service, or fail to address their potential fears, concerns and worries, or
Do not support their potential moral values or philosophical beliefs, or their underlying drivers and motivations (“the why”).

Benefit

The Benefit your customers can achieve by engaging or partnering with your company and leveraging your products and services is about the difference your products and services can make for your customers, in comparison with

Other alternatives,
The total cost of ownership, such as
a) cost of acquisition,
b) cost of enablement/onboarding,
c) cost of ongoing administration and maintenance,
d) cost of disposing or transitioning to other products and services, and
The amount of effort required from customers to
a) acquire your products and services,
b) get enabled/onboarded, learn how to use them,
c) perform ongoing management, administration, maintenance,
d) discontinue using your product or service, and
e) transition to other products and services after they are done with your product or service.

What can be done if your products or services do not provide enough benefit or value for your target customers?

Perform Customer Value Analysis to identify
a) direct and indirect values
b) what-else and what-next cases
c) value attributes
Perform Customer Experience Analysis to identify
a) wasted time and efforts in customer interactions with your company, its products and services
b) unaddressed pain points, difficulties, challenges and obstacles in customer interactions with your company, its products and services
Conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) Study
Optimize your Value Proposition Design
a) add new features capabilities to your product and service design (e.g., to accommodate what-next and what-else cases)
b) streamline the customer experience (e.g., to eliminate wasted time and efforts in customer interactions, to address pain points, difficulties, challenges and obstacles in customer interactions)
c) redesign your product or service to address the results of the SWOT study
Improve your Business Model
a) eliminate wasted time and efforts in the existing processes and capabilities
b) develop/obtain assets to reduce costs and optimize business processes.

Credibility

Credibility ultimately comes down to

the level of risk your customers need to accept to engage or partner with your company and leverage your products and services
the level of confidence that the quality and sustainability of your products and services is good enough to achieve significant benefits to make an important difference for your customers

What can be done if your products or services do not have enough credibility?

Part 1. Reduce risks for your customers

Perform a risk assessment to identify risks that a typical customer may consider when they evaluate your product or service
For each identified risk, analyze
a) the level of likelihood (how likely that risk can come into play), and
b) the level of potential impact to a customer (if the risk were to materialize what would break?)
Prioritize risks based on the levels of likelihood and on the levels of impact
Develop an action plan to eliminate, minimize, alleviate or mitigate the higher priority risks.

Part 2. Generate verifiable content about performance of your product or service

Authentic customer reviews (e.g., on Google, Amazon, BBB, Yelp, industry marketplaces, such as Capterra)
Coverage in media about successful experiences of your customers with your product or service
Market research studies by reputable independent/unbiased firms
Customer testimonials about how they benefit from your product or service (how valuable is your product or service to them)
Data about
a) level of adoption by customers (size of customer base, market share, examples of customers) and
b) how long customers have been using your products or services.

Awareness & Benefits

Both (1) the level of awareness about how customers can benefit from your product and service and (2) the actual level of benefit or value — the difference your customers can achieve — by using your product or service must be high enough in order for prospective customers to consider acquiring them.

If your prospective customer is not aware of your product or service, or they are not aware of how they can benefit from it, then regardless of whether your product can actually make an important difference or not, they will unlikely consider it.

On the other hand, even if the level of awareness about your product or service is high, but the level of benefit customers can achieve from using your product or service is too low, customers will be reluctant to accept or buy it.

Both, a high level of Awareness and
a high level of Benefit from using your product or service
are required for your company to be successful in the marketplace

Awareness & Credibility

Similarly (1) the level of awareness about the level of credibility of the company and its products and services and (2) the actual level of credibility, each must be high enough in order for prospective customers to consider your products and services.

Engaging with an unknown company is a risk on its own. Thus if there is a low level of awareness within the marketplace and the industry about the company’s credibility, prospective customers will most likely be reluctant to start evaluating its products and services, let alone accept them even if in reality the level of a company’s credibility, or credibility of its products and services is objectively and justifiably high.

On the other hand, if the company’s credibility is low, in other words, if potential customers either perceive a high risk about using your product/service or they do not have high enough confidence about achieving desired benefits from using your product/service, regardless of whether the company is well known or not known at all, customers will be reluctant to accept or buy it.

Both, a high level of Awareness and
a high level of Credibility about your product or service
are required for your company to be successful in the marketplace

One approach to achieve a high level of awareness, to establish strong credibility and demonstrate sufficient benefit/value for customers, is to start with a very narrow focus — to target a small market with one product or service.

As an example, Tesla first started marketing its first car, named the ‘Roadster,’ in 2008. High touch interactions were needed to market this high price/performance luxury sports car to a limited set of high net worth customers — individuals who knew Elon Musk personally or were familiar with his previous success stories. In fact only 350 invitations were sent out for the reveal event. At the time there was not much awareness about electric cars, and an average car buyer did not have strong enough confidence to consider an electric car as a viable option when looking to buy. But the incredible owner/driver experience of the Roadster demonstrated the value and benefit of an electric car. The fact that recognized business leaders and celebrities enjoyed that car drew the attention of the media, which helped achieve a good level of awareness and a strong level of confidence about Tesla cars. That, in turn, enabled Tesla to start rolling out their next car, the Model S, to a slightly broader customer set, competing in the high price luxury car segment. Only after the Roadster and Model S became popular, when awareness of Tesla cars became high and the level of confidence in their ownership became strong, was the Model 3 car rolled out to the broader general market. Had Tesla started rolling out the Model 3 or Model Y from the day one, it may have been as difficult to penetrate the market then as it was for the Chevy Bolt.

In another example, Amazon started by selling books over the Internet. They were able to achieve awareness, establish credibility, and demonstrate the benefits and value of buying books online for consumers, such as cheaper pricing, no time or effort required to visit a physical store, easy returns and refunds, and strong execution. Orders were delivered quickly and on time with great customer service. As a result, an average consumer developed confidence about buying books online from Amazon, and understood well the advantages of online shopping. That enabled Amazon to become a marketplace for selling other types of products online. If Amazon attempted to sell all types of products online from the start, they could have ended up following the path of other e-commerce companies available at the time, like Yahoo Shopping.

In yet another example, Facebook was launched as a social network only for students of Harvard University (quite a small market). That helped achieve initial awareness, establish credibility, and demonstrate the benefits and value of its platform. The service was then rolled out to other colleges and universities, which helped further increase awareness and strengthen its credibility, before it was made available to general public — consumers, businesses and organizations. If Facebook had attempted to roll out their service to the general public from the beginning, they could have ended up following the path of other social networks available at the time, such as Friendster and My Space.

Benefits & Credibility

A level of credibility about how customers can benefit from using products and services can be defined as the level of confidence in whether

customers are able to achieve the difference (benefits) promised by the company
benefits that can be achieved by using products and services are as important as expected
risks of engaging with the company and using their products and services are low enough in comparison with the expected benefits
the total amount of cost and effort required to acquire, learn about, be enabled, and to use and maintain products and services is low enough in comparison with the expected benefits
engaging with the company and using their products and services can help achieve more and better benefits in comparison with other alternatives

Ideally, you’d want both

your product or service to be capable of providing strong, significant value for your target customers, and
your customers to have a high level of confidence about your product and service.

If the actual benefit or value from using your product or service is not sufficient enough, it will be hard to expect that someone will want to use it, even if the risk of using your product or service is really low, or even if potential customers do have high confidence that your product or service will work as described and marketed.

On the other hand, the lack of credibility about your product or service among your target customers (whether justifiable or not) will be enough to negatively impact your sales. If potential customers either perceive a high risk about using your product or service or they do not have high enough confidence about achieving desired benefits from using your product or service, customers will be reluctant to accept or buy it, even if in reality using your product or service could in fact generate enough value for them.

Both a high level of Benefit from using your product or service and
a high level of Credibility about your product or service,
are required for your company to be successful in the marketplace

Summary / Conclusion

Having all three elements in place is necessary (and potentially sufficient from a marketing standpoint) for your product or service to be successful in the marketplace:

The level of Awareness about your product or service must be high enough among your target customers,
The level of Benefit your target customers can achieve from using your product or service must be high enough, and finally
The level of Credibility about using your product or service must be high enough among your target customers.

Thus there is a need for an Awareness Strategy, a Credibility Strategy and a Customer Value/Benefit Strategy as a part of organization’s marketing and customer acquisition strategy to make sure that all the three prerequisites remain properly addressed.

Even if only ONE of these parameters becomes not high enough at any point in time, the performance of your product or service in the marketplace will likely NOT be adequate.

As an example, there is a high level of Awareness about the Netflix service, and consumers have strong Confidence about Netflix capabilities (the quality of streaming and user experience interacting with Netflix apps is very good) — thus the level of Credibility is high, however if the level of Benefit gets impacted by lack of desired content (or lack of an easy way to find the desired content) in comparison with some other video content streaming providers, and if movies and TV series end up getting consumed less from Netflix and more from some other competing providers, the number of Netflix subscribers may drop.