As I was preparing for a conference call with a prospective client, I tried to boil down the kind of information I look for into a few questions. Here it goes:
- Why do you think prospects buy your product?
- Why do you think prospects buy your competitors’ products?
- What are the risk(s) your prospects face by not purchasing your product or that of a competitor?
- What do prospects have to know that they may not know already about your product?
These are fairly general questions aimed at getting insight into what a manufacturer believes is central to why people buy their product. I believe I use the answers to help formulate situations or scenarios which evoke the distinctive or compelling product features.
Good product simulation marketing is about providing the right context in which the product is used, not just a faithful reproduction of the device (in the appropriate detail). The goal is to evoke in prospects what it is like to use the product to solve a real-world problem, and hence determining the right set of context(s), based on marketing objectives, is essential.