The 4 Ps of Innovation

I was reading a blog by Scott Anthony on 4 Ps...... really interesting. Scott Anthony is the Managing Director of Innosight Ventures and has written three books on innovation.

Any marketer can quickly rattle off the so-called "4 Ps" of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion). Innovators should also be able to quickly recite the 4 Ps that capture their idea's potential: population, penetration, price, and purchase frequency.
Companies looking at a specific revenue target can simply multiply the addressable population, the penetration of that population, the price per purchase, and the purchase frequency to get to annual revenues. Typically he suggests people try to be quite precise about their target population, give their best estimate based on in-market analogies of the pricing and purchase frequency, then determine what penetration they would need to hit their targets.

This deceptively simple calculation neatly captures many of the elements of an idea's business model. Does the idea target a niche or a mass population? Is it an occasional or frequent purchase? What channel would support the target price point? What kind of support would be necessary given the purchase frequency?

Once you do the 4P calculation (and of course, if you add in a fifth — profit margin — you can look at profits instead of revenue), the focus shifts to finding systematic ways to determine whether the assumptions behind the calculation have any hope of being true.

The deep thinking that goes into creating complicated spreadsheets for ideas can be very useful. But it also can be a way to mistake motion for progress. Make sure you can answer the simple questions before you worry about the complicated ones.

(Image source: Business-strategy-innovation.com)

Emotional Response Marketing

Emotions are one of the most powerful influences we have. Think back for a minute and try to think of anything that you've purchased where your emotions haven't played a major part in the decision process. We use our emotions to help visualize ourselves benefiting from the purchase of a particular product or service. When was the last time you bought something that there weren't any emotions attached to the purchase? I don't think you'll find even one instance!

Emotions are brought to the surface by taking the benefits of your product or service and relating each one of them to a particular emotion. Since every product or service fills a particular need, you'll have to find the benefits and emotions of ownership for yours.

Here's a simple, three step process to help you define the benefits and emotions for your product or service:

1. List the Benefits of Your Product or Service
You want to be able to make a list of the benefits your particular product or service has to offer your target market. This should have already been done when you were doing your market research on your product or service. But if you didn't, take ample time here to know just what benefits your product or service is going to provide your prospective customers.

2. Take Each Benefit and Match the Emotions It Creates
Now take each benefit and match up the emotions that your potential customers are going to experience when they purchase your product or service. Remember not all of the emotions are going to be positive ones. You want to focus on the positive emotions as they are much more powerful.

3. Create Exciting Words and Phrases to Relate These Emotions
You want to create phrases and wording in your advertisements and sales letters that will bring out the emotions attached to the benefits in your prospects mind as they're reading your advertisements and sales letters. Remember you're tying to get on a personal basis with your prospect so don't forget to TALK WITH THEM & NOT AT THEM. Think as if you're sitting with your prospect and talking to them when writing your advertisements and sales letters so you'll be able to relate to them on a one to one basis. Use you and your, instead of me, or I in your advertisements and sales letters.

If you forget everything else, remember this: "The Buying Decision Is ALWAYS Based On An Emotional Response!"

(Source: Internet Marketing Issues)
(Image source: Drdavidwick.com)

Nuclear Liability Bill

Monday’s verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy case has made the present government to rethink against rushing to push the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, which aims at creating a regime for compensation and accountability-fixing in the case of a nuclear accident. I personally think that the nuclear liability Bill should not be pushed in its present form.

Nuclear power, which is the fourth largest source of electricity in India at present, accounts for just four percent of total electricity generation capacity. Within next 25 years, India aims to increase this to nine percent of the total generated power. As a society, we want certain benefits, and we want risk takers to figure out better/faster/cheaper ways to obtain them. But if we're going to walk higher wires, we need stronger nets. It is inevitable that system will grow more complex, and that human beings will continue to take risks to meet their immediate objectives. The decision makers need to address the complex issues in simple ways.

(Image source: Canarytrap.in)