Part 1: its a fine day
This post is about creating a new set of metrics to measure the success or failure of your marketing efforts. It’s about measuring and comparing market share, total downloads, etc.
We all know how important metrics are for marketing: in fact, metrics are one of the primary ways that we can “get our heads around” what we’re trying to do with a product or service.
In this post I will consider metrics that have been introduced and adapted to new markets as well as some that are not yet fully defined but maybe could be if they had been more widely known (or if they were more carefully defined and developed). If you have an idea for a new metric (or think you know one), please let me know!
1. Market Share: This is the measure that tells us how many people are using our product. For example, if 7 out of 10 people who download your app on Day 1 purchase it after Day 2 then we have a high market share. If you don’t see any downloads from day 1 then you might be low on market share, so it’s better to focus on acquiring users early rather than later!
2. Total Downloads : The number of downloads for your app, where each download represents one person who downloaded it (assuming there is no advertising). To get a sense of how many people have downloaded your app (and which ones) you should track these downloads as well as average user engagement/engagement rate (if applicable). Ideally all this data should be available in Excel format so you can use it to compare apples with apples to determine value opportunities.
3. Average User Engagement: This is the percentage of users who engage with your app over the course of their time with it (usually represented by counts per second). If only 5% of users engage with your app at any given time then this metric will tell you whether or not there is value in continuing to work on improving engagement. For simple apps this could easily be accomplished by analyzing daily/weekly averages over a period of some weeks or months; for complex apps such as Facebook mobile apps or mobile applications built for other platforms this would require either an analytics platform built into your product (such as Google Analytics) or even custom software written for that purpose which can gather and report all kinds of very useful and relevant metrics like user profile information, click intent data, etc.).
4. User Profile Information: This metric measures the value
Part 2: its a fine day
This is the second post out of two about product design. In the first, I talked about what I consider to be the three guiding principles of product design: simplicity, elegance and inspiration. This is a continuation of that discussion, in which I talked about the importance of clarity and simplicity.
In this post, I want to talk about how we can make our products more elegant as well as more inspiring, which requires us to think differently. The three ideas are:
• We don’t need to do anything fancy when it comes to presentation
• There are no “rules” for good design
• We should focus on making our products useful (meaning that they will have a clear value proposition) rather than pretty
I’m going to start with some stories from my life — ones that helped me form these ideas — and then try to apply them in real-world situations. After all, they really aren’t rules; they are merely examples of how we can take a simple idea and make it compelling by applying certain principles — if only we know where to look for them. So let’s get started!
Part 3:
This is the third part of my series on marketing products. If you haven’t read the previous two parts, go back and do so. However, I have a few points to make in conclusion:
• The value of early feedback. When you first began your product launch and marketing efforts, there was no market demand for your product — and that’s exactly where it should be. While it may take some time before you get recommended by other users, this is better than not getting any recommendations at all.
• The importance of testing (and then iterating) on your strategy. This applies to both algorithmic and non-algorithmic approaches to marketing a product (as well as tools).
• The value of building a small team instead of outsourcing everything to contractors or “friends & family” (e.g., when you have only one employee on the team). Having only one person working on your product isn’t good for morale or productivity unless that person is doing exceptionally well within his or her role — but having more staff can help with both issues (see below).
• The importance of perspective — especially for new companies. It takes time before we can know exactly where we should be aiming our marketing efforts, particularly when there are only a limited number of stakeholders involved in what we are doing (our own employees vs customers vs potential partners vs investors vs others). This is especially true if there are no clear objectives associated with our goals: how long will it be until we know how many users we need to reach? How long will it be until we know how much revenue we need? How long will it be until we know which features matter most? How long will it take us to learn whether or not our approach is working? We also don’t need to think about this stuff right away; after all, our goal here is simply finding out if our approach works! But I do recommend being mindful towards the end when people start asking questions like “How much ROI do you think you can achieve from this approach / from this budget?”
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203609 is a fine day,” I say. “It’s the day that the sun is shining, and there are many good things to do on this fine day. You can go out and play golf. You can work at your desk and think about things you want to accomplish tomorrow. Or you can just relax; that’s perfectly fine too!
I’m just saying: take a break today!