Give Them What They Want

Found a great new blog today with a post focusing on “Is find a need and fill it bad marketing advice?”

This post really takes the same slant as my Need vs. Want post from a few weeks ago, but I think it might clarify the point a bit more.

Here are my favorite points:

• “Find a need and fill it … that is the key to successfully marketing a business.” – Someone who needs to be slapped around a little bit.

• People price shop for what they need, and even that makes them grumpy. People pay premium prices for what they want, and they love it.

I work at a company that markets nutritional supplements. You can imagine how many products that all of us feel people need, but they still aren’t great sellers. I’m convinced everyone on the face of the planet needs calcium supplementation, but it’s not really something most of us want, right? However, give people something that burns fat and allows that to eat whatever they want and they won’t gain weight, and they’ll go crazy for it. Cuz they want that.

Answering the question of “Will people want this?” is one of the fundamental gatekeepers of any product development strategy.

Thanks to David for pointing the way on the batch of links that included this little morsel.