Why Understanding Customer Shifts Is Key to Beating Competitors and Growing Smarter
In a world where user needs are constantly changing and the business landscape is in a perpetual flux, it’s imperative that organizations stay in the loop on how these needs and operating conditions evolve. While there are several benefits to maintaining a comprehensive understanding of the broad market such as strategic decision-making or reducing risk, the primary value of market intelligence lies in:
- Uncovering whitespace opportunities with a view to introducing new products and services that boost revenue, and
- Creating and maintaining a competitive advantage through a thorough understanding of competitor offerings.
In this edition of our newsletter we explore the impact of market intelligence on business outcomes. Particularly, I will use a case study to detail how crucial it was for a well-known U.S based corporation to understand shifting customer preferences in a specific customer segment, and how that information helped them build new features into their long-term product roadmap, ultimately leading them to capture missed revenues once the features hit the market.
What Was The Scenario
The client in this case was a Fortune 500 corporation which specializes in web conferencing technology. The company’s web conferencing technology was very competitive in the enterprise and mid-market categories but was struggling to win over market-share among small businesses. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies transitioned from in-person to remote work arrangements, the web conferencing industry experienced a surge of innovation. This shift in circumstances stimulated a wave of advancements in the field, allowing organizations to adapt and facilitate effective virtual communication. Our client, the Senior Product Manager, was under pressure to understand how to compete and which features to build into their product roadmap – decisions that would be crucial in the race to win market leadership in the small business segment.
Spoiler alert: It had A LOT to do with product-market fit.
What We Did
Through an analysis of extensive interviews with users and decision-makers, supplemented by secondary research, we successfully isolated the issues that caused reluctance from small businesses in adopting the software. Our research uncovered the following results:
- Low integration with applications used by small businesses – We learned that the web conferencing technology integrated very well with its own suite of apps, but there was a lack of integration with apps from other vendors. This was a key decision point for smaller businesses that used these apps routinely for tracking workflows and reporting.
- Lack of collaborative features – Our client was losing market-share because at the time, they were not well adjusted to the pandemic-era level of collaboration required by small businesses. As a result, competitors with less clunky architecture and easy-to-use interfaces were winning the race
- Product pricing and deployment – Our client’s product had a prohibitive price point for small businesses, which contributed to a low subscription rate. Additionally, deployment and set up times lagged significantly behind the competition.
What They Got
As a result of our analysis, the development team revised their medium and long-term product roadmaps to incorporate features that were more suited to small businesses which allowed them to compete more effectively and win over more small business accounts. The client increased its integrations with a focus on tools that were most commonly used by small businesses to enhance its appeal in that segment. Additionally, the client adopted a new pricing strategy that incorporated product bundling to offer greater value to the small businesses.
Takeaways
Having regular market intelligence is not only crucial for understanding your consumers but also for gaining insights into your competitors’ strategies and actions. Contrary to some assertions, the purpose of this exercise is not to copy their tactics so you can ‘beat them to the punch’. Quite contrary, the main purpose is to position yourself apart from them while solving consumer pain points in a way that makes your product or service unique. This approach empowers organizations to discover their unique and enduring value proposition that remains difficult to replicate. By doing so, they secure a sustainable advantage that sets them apart from others.
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