Here is a challenge - how can we sell million units of this product?

[inbakumar]

Hi All,

I need advise on how to market a cool, small electronic product in UK (see attached file for product info).

An associate of mine has obtained exclusive marketing rights in UK for the aforesaid product from the manufacturer. The product is far superior to anything that is available here in UK and offers high quality (I have seen it personally and vouch for its build quality/design). Its main rivals would be the iPod & Sony but it has better features than the iPod but will be priced about 40-50% less. However, it is a new brand and the distributor is a start-up with a marketing budget of £50-£100k.

The target is to sell 1 million units in year one.

The preference is to sell the product through retailers (but excluding outlets like Dixons).

How can we do it?

All types of ideas (both conventional and crazy) are welcome.

Over to you guys and gals.

[Pete Wailes]

If you want to sell a million mp3 players, you only need one thing. I'll tell you what it is, and then I'll explain why.
You MUST MUST MUST be able to play protected AAC files (the format iTunes downloads in).
At the moment, there's no way to do this, though there is a company working on it. Basically, you're not going to compete with the kind of marketing that Sony, Phillips, iRiver or Apple can bring to the table. They have the resources to out-market you any day of the week. What I would personally suggest is waiting until someone figures out how to play protected AAC, and then package that software with the player. That means that anyone looking to upgrade from an iPod Mini or Nano, but doesn't want to go with an Apple product, will go with you.

HOWEVER

If you are certain you want to launch now, there are a few things to consider.
Firstly, you're selling for a much lower price. This WILL alarm people, as people expect an mp3 player to be expensive, and a cheap one to be low quality.
Second, the biggest selling mp3 player (by a HUGE margin) is the iPod. So you need to show people WHY yours is better. What can you offer that the iPod can't? (Don't go for webheads and geeks with this. That's what iRiver did, making it a gadget fest, but it was too expensive, and no-one needed all its features.)
Finally, you need to do some kind of deal with one of the music download services. Downloading is fast becoming THE popular channel for music delivery.

If I were doing it, I'd do two things. Firstly, I'd go to Napster, and do some kind of deal with them.
Then I'd go to a large retailer, like Tesco or Asda, and do a deal with them for distribution.
Thirdly, I'd wait a while. Don't launch now, because youv'e missed Christmas basically, and peopel will have spent a lot of money and won't be looking to spend more on consumer electronics. Wait until at least February.
Finally, I'd send samples to magazines, ezines and websites such as The Register and Games Domain, and get them to review it.

I hope this gives some ideas and help. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the best or only way to do it, just that it's the way I'd go.
Pete

[barcyn]

I looked at your product description download and saw a spelling mistake! On the third line, should say "you" not "your"

Not pedantic; it's important to get things like this right.

Good luck

[inbakumar]

Originally Posted by barcyn

I looked at your product description download and saw a spelling mistake! On the third line, should say "you" not "your"

Not pedantic; it's important to get things like this right.

Good luck

Thank you for noticing it. You are quite right - it is attention to small things like that creates a big business. Much appreciated.

[inbakumar]

Originally Posted by Pete Wailes

If you want to sell a million mp3 players, you only need one thing. I'll tell you what it is, and then I'll explain why.
You MUST MUST MUST be able to play protected AAC files (the format iTunes downloads in).
At the moment, there's no way to do this, though there is a company working on it. Basically, you're not going to compete with the kind of marketing that Sony, Phillips, iRiver or Apple can bring to the table. They have the resources to out-market you any day of the week. What I would personally suggest is waiting until someone figures out how to play protected AAC, and then package that software with the player. That means that anyone looking to upgrade from an iPod Mini or Nano, but doesn't want to go with an Apple product, will go with you.

HOWEVER

If you are certain you want to launch now, there are a few things to consider.
Firstly, you're selling for a much lower price. This WILL alarm people, as people expect an mp3 player to be expensive, and a cheap one to be low quality.
Second, the biggest selling mp3 player (by a HUGE margin) is the iPod. So you need to show people WHY yours is better. What can you offer that the iPod can't? (Don't go for webheads and geeks with this. That's what iRiver did, making it a gadget fest, but it was too expensive, and no-one needed all its features.)
Finally, you need to do some kind of deal with one of the music download services. Downloading is fast becoming THE popular channel for music delivery.

If I were doing it, I'd do two things. Firstly, I'd go to Napster, and do some kind of deal with them.
Then I'd go to a large retailer, like Tesco or Asda, and do a deal with them for distribution.
Thirdly, I'd wait a while. Don't launch now, because youv'e missed Christmas basically, and peopel will have spent a lot of money and won't be looking to spend more on consumer electronics. Wait until at least February.
Finally, I'd send samples to magazines, ezines and websites such as The Register and Games Domain, and get them to review it.

Hi Pete,

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my request in detail. Much appreciated.

As for your point about protected AAC files - I haven't got a clue (I'm a middle-aged finance guy). I have passed on your point to the technical department of my associate.

I also agree with you that launching the product now is not a smart move. (The test marketing is doing fine in a selected geographical area, which is done for testing various marketing mix elements). The main launch will be in the Spring but there are a million+1 things to do first.

The main game plan is to co-exist alongside the iPod, Sony, Panasonic, Philips of this world but to take a significant slice of the market share that are left behind by these top 7 manufacturers. I have seen a recent Euromonitor report that suggests that the top 7 brands only account for 49.5% of the 'consumer electronics' market in UK.

It is true we do not have the marketing budgets of the top brands. However, big money not always win market share. For example, Google became the dominant search engine in a relatively short time essentially through word of mouth. On the other hand, Microsoft (MSN) is far behind in the search engine world despite having an enormous amount of corporate resources. Our quest is to find that 'killer marketing' method as we know that we have a great product.

You are right about doing a deal with someone like Napster. We will investigate that idea further. I know the manufacturer has already held some preliminary meetings with Sony.

As for your suggestion regarding talking to Tescos and the like, it is not something we plan to do at this stage. We will do it at a later stage but not now. The reason - we do not have the right bargaining power to deal with them. We first want to establish our brand in UK which will make them come to us!.

The main product attributes we would like to promote with this product are:

(1) Visual appeal (fantastic design, smaller size & weight)
(2) Good video playing capability (OLED screen)
(3) Touch screen operation
(4) A lot cheaper than iPod.

As you correctly pointed out, we don't want it to be a tech-fest. There is no point in saying it can hold 30000 songs (it cannot anyway!) as there is no need for it.

Once again thank you for your time and comments.

Regards,

[Pete Wailes]

The Google example is simply explained. The kept the the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid!)
MS went down the road of "lets whack on all these features that people can use and show them and they'll be impressed."
Google said "Let's make a kick ass search engine, and if people want anything else, we'll add it on behind that"
Hence Google does a whole shedload of things, like MSN, but what you see is the Google search bar, which is what people want. If they want the other features, they can hunt for them.
So to apply that to you, take the Pete's Phone idea. When I go looking for a phone I want vast battery life, ease of use, good signal and easy to use buttons.
So with an mp3 player, what u need to show is that it's got more battery life, easy to use, has great sound quality, it's intuitive, and I still stand by can play mp3, wmv protected wmv, like all non-iPods, and AAC and protected AAC (which no-one else can do). That'd be the ultimate mp3 player. Ronsil - Does exactly what it says on the tin. Good message for anything.
Pete

[www.t6c.co.uk]

How much will it sell for with what amount of memory.