April Dunford

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• My market is security and performance. How can I find out if there is a real need for security and performance in mobile apps?

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    You need to talk to a lot of people about it. Do they get excited about it? Do you really think they will pay for it? What exists in the market today? When you look at the landscape is there anything there that would indicate that there is a market for what you do? You will never be 100% sure that there is a big market for what you provide but talking to folks is the best way I know to figure out if at least some people would get excited about it.

• i have the product which the niche market need but how can i convince the market that they can benefit from the product?

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    You need to figure out a way to clearly demonstrate the value you deliver. How you do that depends on the value and who you are communicating that to. For some markets numbers and statistics work well, for others you need to show demonstrations, for others you have to tell the story with video and customer references. It really depends on your story and who you are telling it to.

• I am entering a market that is already well established. Our platform has several "technology advancements" (The advantage of being the latest provider in the market) but only a few successful beta's. We have a minimum budget for marketing. Our business model is structured to have a good balance of a high level of service and a sound technology. What is the best path for market share? Is there a way to establish what market share targets should be or should we just aim for our own sales numbers

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    First of all you will need to start defining your technology advancements in terms of business value you can bring to your customer. Being first to market doesn’t mean much if people don’t want to buy it. You need to get a strong understanding of what value your product brings. Next you need to figure out what segment of the market that value really resonates with. That might mean your initial target isn’t the whole established market but just a piece of it. I’ve never worried too much about market share. I usually worry more about how many customers I need to get to be profitable and how many more we need to get to be wildly successful. In general wild success requires that you dominate at least a niche of the broader market. Figuring out what niche that is that you can be a winner in is the trick.

• Lining up some press conferences in the next few weeks. We have the support of the communities (employment centers and chamber of commerce) to promote and organized these events (invites and such). The goal of these conferences will be to announced the new app on the App store, show the app and it's benefits and pricing. People attending: medias, tv, newspaper and company owners. Did not do a lot of these, what else should I do before, during and after?

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    You sound pretty organized (it’s been a long time since I did a traditional press conference event like what you are describing). Here are some ideas. Firstly – you might want to pre-brief some select media in advance of the meeting so that they have time to prepare a story that can go to press the same time as your announcement. Secondly – you will want to have some materials on hand for the event to make it easy for media folks to create stories – product descriptions, screen shots, videos, customer testimonials, etc. on a CD would work. Thirdly – if you have potential customers at the event, give them a stong reason to buy on the spot. They have invested the time to go to your event – make it easy for them to purchase and ask for the sale. Good luck!

• I've built my social network and people seem to like it, the average time on the site is phenomenal but I don't know the procedure of introducing it to VCs, where should I market this, I've already made a facebook page but it doesn't help my long term vision

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    I’m a bit confused by your question. Are VC’s your target market or are you looking to raise some capital? The only way to get in front of VC’s to raise money is to go in and pitch them. You will want to be good and ready before you do and ideally you go in with a warm introduction from folks that know them and you. As to how to market a social network – that depends on who your social network is for. Look at your ideal users – where do they hang out, what do they read, where do they go? If you can define that then you can define how to get a message to them.

• What are your thoughts on giving exclusives to press? Whether it's been for funding announcements or new features/partnerships, I've found it hard to decide. You (and your CEO) want to get the press you want, but you don't want to burn any bridges. But then again, embargoes are broken anyway. So, how do you decide?

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    Surprisingly I’ve only been asked to give an “exclusive” a couple of times. Once I did it because the pub was unquestionably the most important one for my market. The second time I didn’t do it because there were other more important pubs that I also wanted to pre-brief. I’ve also only had an embargo broken a couple of times and both times I believe it was a mistake. The vast majority of publications don’t care that much about this sort of stuff. Others do (Techcrunch does or so I am told). I generally have not had any problems pre-briefing a ton of media outlets ahead of a release and having them honor a promise not to publish until a deadline. I personally don’t think this is as big an issue as folks think it is in actual practice.

• Do I have to contact every journalists to make sure that my press release will be picked-up after being on the CNW, in other words how much PR should I do?

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    In my experience, simply putting a new release on the wire doesn’t get you a whole lot of coverage. PR takes more work than that. The best way to get your story picked up is 1/ develop relationships with the key writers/bloggers/pubs in your space and understand what they need from sources, what stories they like to write, how you can help them then 2/ Develop stories (not product pitches) that they are happy to write about. How much PR should you do? It depends on your market. Do your prospects read and respect newspapers? If so, a newspaper article would be a good thing. Do your prospects read and respect certain blogs? If so, you should try to figure out a way to get covered by those blogs.

• What would be the first partnership step when introducing a new brand (Conceptual) to the oral care market? Would you expose the idea fully to a giant like Colgate and hope that they will partner with you?

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    I know nothing about oral care or Colgate but here are a few things I would think about. First of all – do you need Colgate to get started? If you don’t then you might just want to get started. Colgate will be much more interested in something that has some market traction than something that is just a concept. Next – is your idea easily executed by Colgate? When I worked at IBM we had a phrase we used when we talked about startups that came with just an idea that we would also build – it was a “simple matter of programming”. If there was a patent, a customer base, a channel, or something else we couldn’t just code then we were much more interested. Lastly – I would never go into a meeting like that without really understanding Colgate’s motivations. Find other people who know them, have met with them. What do they need that you could provide? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Are there potential deal makers and breakers? Also – a provisional patent might be a good idea.

• I am a technical person with no business education starting an e-commerce business. I lack any concept of marketing. Where do I start from to know how to market to people and learn marketing strategies?

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    Ah – like you I was once an engineering graduate with zero marketing knowledge! Here’s what I did – first I read a bunch of books (not a million – Kotler, Ries&Trout, Moore and Blank should do it). Those 4 books will give you more marketing theory than most marketers know. Then you do what the rest of us do – 1) Watch what successful marketers are doing and try to figure out what works and what doesn’t 2) Try a lot of stuff yourself and figure out what works and what doesn’t. The dirty secret of marketing is that the theory, although in my opinion very useful, isn’t anything without a bunch of practical experience. Marketing in practice for your business is where the magic happens. Good luck!

• How do I market my product to dealers that have been working with a company at the moment (i.g. Groupon)? Is an intuitive, comprehensive business brochure necessary to convince the dealers to enroll in my business?

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    As a person who has built hundreds of brochures, I can say with great conviction that a brochure is very rarely needed in any market. Except when it is. What I’m trying to say is that you need to talk to some dealers to figure that out. What information are you trying to communicate? What message do they need to hear? What is the best way to deliver that message? Sometimes you’ll find you need to talk to someone to make things happen. Other times a video is the best way to get the point across, sometimes a demo is totally required and other times, a good old brochure is just the ticket. Every market is different so you will have to figure out what works for yours.