The Constant Observer

Mahesh Murthy spent some time at Proto.in - he spent time telling start - ups about marketing strategies.

If you don’t have a product that is great, don’t even bother.
Marketing has to be built into the product.
Word of Mouth has to be built into the product.
That can come through a clear, deep observation of human behaviour and also intuition in my opinion.

Here's a SlideShow that might help:

According to Murthy, “The ultimate testimonial is a satisfied customer”

All advertising agencies, if Murthy's advice is anything to go by, then a lot of tech product stat ups are not coming to you. “If you need to advertise then you need to die”, he says. Technically he's right because if the product is great then word of mouth will spread and people will take to the product anyway.

Does your product solve a real world problem? This is taken into account in the above placed Slideshow as well.

Spend as much as possible on the product, spend as little on advertising.




Price:
Charge, and charge a lot.
When you’re small, have super premium products. According to Mahesh, Competition will not be worried if you are cheap. They will be worried if you are expensive.

The thinking is simple. Larger companies have more resources, more economies of scale and thus competing with them on price parameters is not necessarily the best way to upscale them. Companies with your competition have more than just the direct price they pay. They have switching costs as well.


For a while, Mahesh was quite generic often talking about the importance of great UI without giving any direct tips.



A Ppt which should help with respect to Social Media Design.


So Mahesh asked the question - Where do i get my first customer?
- Events
- Conferences – become a speaker, a media partner (have a blog! - call us)
- Go to places where your customers have stalls.
- Don’t pay for events/ conferences


According to Mahesh - “Your competence as a marketer is inversely proportional to your marketing budget.”

Rajiv also often says that when you are boostrapped, the most innovative ideas come out - and you find innovative ways to make them work.

Here's a few more tips:
- Be seen as a thought leader (Blogs, industry study, industry data, reports)
- “You can almost never be successful by following a trend”
- Choose a field where you are the trend setter
- Don’t start anything that is quoted as the ‘next big thing’ in the press. If its written about – it’s too late.
- Do not expect to be covered for the 1st 2 – 3 years of your life.
- Don’t ape.
- There’s almost no merit in doing a copy – paste company.
- Where there’s a need to being local and culturally relevant – then do that. But don’t do aped generic products.

No one can outline hot trend setters.

Be a great speaker. That's something you can learn from Mahesh Himself.