Techneur.com

Whoa Buddy

A week ago, Reflect7 had planned its first media appearance. Going into it, we were definitely nervous. Not just because we were apprehensive to go on the record, but because our systems weren’t set. As it happens, our gracious host understood, and we were able to reschedule to a later date. So why did we delay?

1) Communication Systems
The most important aspect of any product is the ability to interact with your customers. If you don’t know what they’re thinking, you won’t know where your design implementation worked and where it needs improvement. The App Store has a place for comments and feedback, but it doesn’t let your customers know that you’re paying attention. When you tell your customers, “Hey that’s a good idea, we’ll work on that,” or “We didn’t do that because it would hamper this feature,” they know your listening, even if you’re not implementing their ideas.

Having bilateral communication also gives your customers the ability to affect the product. Where else in this corporate world can you give input that will actually be heard? When a user can connect with the creators of a product, it’s like an investment. The user will monitor it for a while to see if it grows.

We didn’t have these communication systems set (still getting there) and didn’t want to market to a mass audience until we were ready to communicate with them.

2) Event
With any media spot, it’s important to have an event lined up to keep momentum rolling. This event should somehow be linked to your product. We had a great event lined up that was set to use a cool new feature of our Husker App. Unfortunately, the programming for this feature was a little more time-consuming than we had anticipated. We could have just thrown a keg-party with a banner, but what reason would that give for people to use our product? None. With no event, we had no momentum. With no momentum, you’re dead.

3) First Impression
With our website still in its infancy, any sort of mass traffic would work against our favor. You only have one chance to make a good first impression, and if you’re a software company, you better have a decent-looking website. To the regular consumer, software is no different than webpage design; it all falls into some pseudo-geeky, programming category. If your website sucks, your first impression will suck, in which customers will conclude that your software will suck. Here’s some advice: don’t suck.

4) Wow Factor
If we would have held our media date, we would have lacked the “wow-factor” to get people excited. People would have concluded that our program can do everything that one can do on the internet. Although we’ve put the time and effort into organizing that info into a sleek interface, most non-programmers would ask, “Where are all of the cool iphone features? Remember when you first heard about Shazam and were like, “How the F did they do that?” That’s excitement. We want the same thing, which is what our new features are going to provide. Excitement is momentum. Maintain momentum.

5) Marketing Efficiency
When we hit our new media date, we should have at least five more football team apps ready that are all similar to Husker Fan. That’s five more apps to market during out media slot. That’s five more apps people will see when trafficking our webpage. And since the apps are similar, we can still maintain focus on our locally-based one, Husker Fan, and residually score points with people who want more. If you’re lucky enough to get a good media spot, make sure you’re leveraged up to capitalize.

What We Learned:
Pushing back an opportunity to showcase our first product was a hard decision to make but, ultimately, a necessary one. It all comes down to bilateral communication, making a great first impression, and establishing and maintaining momentum. If you can’t do these things, then hold off until you can.