How to identify the best market sector to target with a new technology product. Use a combination of web marketing and some ideas from 'Crossing the Chasm' to identify candidate target markets and then test those markets to see which has greatest potential.

1. HOW TO LAUNCH A
TECHNOLOGY
PRODUCT

2. • You’ve got a new technology
product and a finite budget.
•How do you launch the product
on the market?

3. 3
• When you’re launching a new product you
should focus on an initial group of customers –
your target market segment.
• “Crossing the Chasm” describes an approach for
selecting the most promising target market
segment.
• If you combine that approach with digital
marketing, you improve your chances of success

4. 4
Launching a new product
• A lot of technology startups know how to build a great product but
are not sure how to bring it to market
• One common problem is that the new technology has a number of
potential applications and the startup is not sure whether to focus
on one or else try to promote to all potential market sectors
• “Crossing the Chasm” is a classic textbook on technology
marketing
• The book argues there is a chasm between “early adopters” of a
new technology and the “early majority” (pragmatists).
• One of the requirements to successfully cross this chasm and reach
a larger audience for your product is to pick an initial target market
sector and focus your promotional efforts on it
• We recommend a variation of the approach combined with digital
marketing to increase your chances of success

5. 5
The problem
Why can’t I market to everybody?
• If you have a product that could be used in a lot of different ways, people
are tempted to try to market to all potential users
• You worry that if you focus on one group you will exclude the others
• This is wrong for a couple of reasons:
– Limited promotional budget – you have a fixed amount of money to spend on
promotion. Concentrating that spend on a clearly defined target group will
produce better results than spreading it thinly across multiple potential target
groups
– Trying to be all things to all people generally doesn’t work when launching a
new product. If you designed a car that tried to appeal to young families, men in
their 20s and elderly women, you would end up with a mishmash that appeals
to no-one. The same is usually true with technology products. You should focus
your product and promotion on one or two sectors for your launch.

6. 6
Target Markets
What is a target market segment?
• A market segment is a group of potential buyers for a product or
service that share some characteristics
• The most important characteristic is that they think of themselves as
being in a particular group and that they reference each other
• For example, information security officers in large enterprises
constitute a market segment if they think of themselves as working
in the same sector, attend the same industry events and
communicate regularly with their peers when evaluating solutions or
services
• A sector can be ‘horizontal’ if it crosses a number of different
industries e.g. the information security sector is horizontal because IT
security is deployed in multiple industries including finance, defence
and healthcare.
• A sector is ‘vertical’ if it is restricted to one industry e.g. ATM
transaction processing systems are only sold to the financial sector

7. 7
Choosing a target sector
How do you pick a target sector?
• You want to choose an initial target sector that is most likely to adopt your product
• We suggest a slight variation on the method described in “Crossing the Chasm”
Idea Generation
Filter ideas based on
criteria
Prepare propositions and test
market online
Filter again based on
feedback
Go to market

8. 8
Choosing a target sector
How do you pick a target sector?
• Brainstorm as many plausible uses of the technology as possible,
in different sectors . Write up the best candidates identifying
target customers and the benefits of the solution. Write a typical
scenario describing how the solution would be used and specify
the unique differentiators of your technology versus competitors.
Idea Generation
Filter ideas based on
criteria
• Filter the ideas using standard criteria such as the potential size of
the market for the candidate application of the technology; how
quickly you could generate revenue from it; the level of
competition; how credible you would be entering that market
segment. You do not have to be exhaustive, but you are trying to
pick winners, so avoid a market which is small, or where you have
no experience or credibility. Use a table (see next page) to score
the ideas during filtering. Pick 2 to 3 top candidates.

9. 9
Choosing a target sector
Filtering your ideas
Example – using a table to score competing scenarios
Scenario Market Size
(10 = Good
1 = bad)
Nearness of
revenue
Competition Our
Credibility
in this
market
Product
fit for this
market
TOTAL
SCORE
1. Use Scenario 1 10 10 10 10 7 47
2. Use Scenario 2 5 8 8 8 10 39
3. Use Scenario 3 2 7 5 5 5 24
4. Use Scenario 4 10 2 9 3 9 33
5. Use Scenario 5 10 2 7 4 9 32
6. Use Scenario 6 4 10 10 9 10 43
7. Use Scenario 7 2 2 4 3 2 13
8. Use Scenario 8 8 10 5 5 5 33

10. 10
Choosing a target sector
How do you pick a target sector?
• You can test market a product early and at low cost using
digital marketing. Develop some web pages and product
collateral and use pay-per-click ads, email, social media and
PR to generate web traffic and potential leads. Pitch the
proposition to some real candidate buyers too using
storyboards to illustrate how it works and the benefits it will
bring.
Prepare propositions
and test market online
Filter again based on
feedback
• You should now have a sense of which of the candidates show
real potential. Your choices at this point are to (a) select the
most succesful proposition and go to market, (b) revise the
propositions and test again or (c) going back to the start and
generating a new set of potential uses of the technology,
based on what you learned during the test marketing.

11. 11
Choosing a target sector
How to test launch
• When you have identified a potential application of your technology that shows real promise,
prepare and execute a test launch – i.e. a launch where you are not committing all your
resources
• Use your website, email, pay-per-click ads and social media.
• Create a “landing page” on your website that describes the proposition and proposed pricing in a
compelling way – check out other SaaS or high tech product launch pages for comparison.
• Your landing pages should emphasise the benefits, make the pricing clear, and describe how the
product can be used e.g. with a video or storyboard slidedeck
• Drive traffic to your landing page (using pay-per-click ads, social media and email initially, later
SEO) and monitor the reaction
• If you have lots of visitor signing-up and expressing an interest in your beta launch then this is
pretty good validation – proceed to the next phase of a full launch
• If there are no registrations, think about what might be wrong and test some hypotheses. For
example, test some alternative landing pages with a different pricing model to see if that works,
or try highlighting different benefits and features. If nothing works, switch to the next potential
application of the technology and do a test launch for it too.

12. 12
Good resources
Here are some suggested resources (we plan to add to this list)
Links
• Unbounce - http://unbounce.com – tool to build landing pages that you can use
when launching a product
• Lincoln Murphy’s blog Sixteen Ventures - http://sixteenventures.com/ - advice on
pricing, SaaS freemium models
Books
• “Crossing the Chasm”, Geoffrey A. Moore – you don’t have to agree with everything
in it, but it is recommended reading, especially for technologists with no marketing
or sales background.
• “Lean Startup”, Eric Ries – iterative development and testing of new products
• “Landing Page Optimization” – Tim Ash
• “Getting Real”, Jason Fried et al – advice from 37Signals, the people behind
Basecamp

13. “ We have seen for ourselves how a solid
strategy has helped to drive traffic to our
site and generate sales leads.”
Caolan Bushell
Business Development Manager
Mergon Group
Barry Rooney
Chief Operations Officer
Siemens ITSS
“Motarme delivered real,
measurable results in a short
timeframe – sales and contacts from
our target audience at Tier 1
companies.”
Joe Lynch
General Manager
IMEC Technologies
“Generating leads online is now a
central part of our sales strategy.”
About Us

14. What We Do – B2B Technology Marketing
Motarme helps business-to-business (B2B) technology companies
generate leads online and convert those leads to sales. We provide
marketing automation, website design, digital marketing and PR
services.
• Lead Generation Consultancy
• Marketing Automation
• Web Marketing and Web Design

15. Thank You
Motarme Marketing Automation
T: +353 1 969 5029
M: +353 86 383 8981
W: www.motarme.com
Twitter: @motarme