REmarkable Product

The Ecosystem you build around your Product and your Business is what will create value and enable a remarkable performance.

The Difference from a Remarkable Product to a Great one is in how well developed is its Ecosystem.

Most likely, from early on, when you were defining your proof of concept, you thought about Marketing, how you would build your brand, and how you would do customer service. If you have that taken care of in your Great Product, you have half the work done.

However, to get it to a remarkable position, there‘s much more than the basics.

Being remarkable is about what assets you add to your product that increase its value.

The aggregation of those assets is your product ecosystem.

The five most important remarkable product’s assets that must always be your daily bread and butter:

Business and Product Culture
Business System
Products (yes, more than one)
Branding
Intellectual Property

1. Business and Product Culture

This is about your Management and your Team.

Does your product have someone behind it that is passionate and can translate your business culture to everyone around? If you recognize that person as being you, then you’re ultimately responsible for your Business and Product. And you’re responsible for everyone in your Team.

Then, the people you’ve chosen to be with you. Are they trustworthy, or you’ve hired bozos because you didn’t have enough cash and hoped for the best?

If you’re not at the wheel in this journey, and if you hired someone that doesn’t know the road, you probably know what’s going to happen.

2. Business System

Operations and your Marketing Engine.

How efficient is the system that provides value to your customers? The way your customers get what they paid for is one of the two pillars of your Remarkable Product. They must get it efficiently and enjoyably, without hurdles or roadblocks, and again in a trustworthy manner.

The other pillar is your Marketing System. How efficient is it, and how are you able to extend and optimize it. What have you considered in your Marketing Budget? Did you build an Engine that drives you, customers, daily? Or you did some SEO and ran some Adwords campaigns? Without a high HorsePower Marketing Engine, there’s no way to achieve a Great Product and neither a Remarkable one. Remember your product must be remarkable for your customers but also for you in terms of ROI.

3. Products

Gifts, Products for Leads, Core, Products for Customers.

I’m afraid the product you’ve just built is not enough. It might be giving you an excellent return, but it’s ultimately underperforming.

You must build your product ecosystem by providing value to your prospective customers for free. Nowadays, everyone expects everything (nearly for) free, so why not meet that demand? Create gifts and micro products that your leads can get at nearly no cost. This will get them to your door more easily.

Then, after you had them commit to your core product, make sure you build products that add more value to your main product. These can be add-ons, extensions, upsells and so on. Just do it right.

These 4 cornerstones are the base of your Remarkable Product.

4. Branding

Vision, Identity & Ambassadors.

A lot is said about branding, but at its core is your business’s vision. What do you want to ultimately achieve?

Do you aim to be just a social media clone in a very small niche market? Are you aiming just to make a quick buck on the side? Are you aiming to help others, be a philanthropist or be the next Apple?

Whatever it is, you must state it clearly for the world to see. The vision you have for your product becomes your Identity. If you’re not comfortable with showing it to the world, then most likely, you’re not comfortable with your product or what you want to do. And that will not get you far.

Your Identity must therefore be solid, everyone must trust and love your product, and that’s the only way you’ll be able to start gathering ambassadors. No, ambassadors are not about influencers. They’re about associating your brand with others with higher perceived value so that you benefit from that value.

5. Intellectual Property

Content, Methodology, and Registrations.

The content you generate and that surrounds your Core Product is part of your IP. Often content is cheap to generate and can be reused multiple times to have your message delivered. You can hire or partner to have your content being produced, but keep in mind that ultimately you’re the one that will need to review it and control it.

If you got things right on building a Great Product, you have come with a process or way of doing things, and this is your methodology. This might be embedded in your product or it might be just the way you run your business. In either case, it’s valuable because it’s how you got this far.

You should therefore think if it doesn’t make sense to register it.

This is, in fact, your unique way of doing things or a new way of doing previous things. In any case, if it’s unique, it’s valuable, and it’s your IP.

The more you protect your IP, the more valuable your business and your product becomes.

Concepts Needed

If you read carefully, there are three main concepts behind creating a Remarkable Product.

The addition of Value

You need to generate value to your customers but also within your business. You do this by making sure your products transmit that value.

Trust

If you build trust relationships with your Team, your Customers, and your Ambassadors, you’re building loyalty and recognition. And you become perceived as a trustworthy Business.

Leadership

You and your Team must Lead. Take your time to hire the right people for your journey. Although ultimately you are the responsible and the Lead of your Business, you’ll not be able to do it all. You’ll need to have people who are also able to lead.

Ascending Transaction Model (ATM)

The Ascending Transaction Model is a product marketing strategy that relies on the fact that products by themselves don’t scale but the ecosystem around them is what makes difference in crossing the chasm.

The ATM is formed by 4 layers of products/services with different roles and business objectives:

1 – Gifts

The goal is to generate leads by providing moderate value products and requiring no commitment from the user.

2 – Products 4 prospects

The main goal is to create high value products/services that require low commitment from the users (email address for example) generating hot leads.

3 – Core product

The core product is were the business will require full commitment and deliver a full value solution and it is were the business will generate revenue.

4 – Products 4 clients

In the last layer the ecosystem of products takes advantage of the committed clients to cross sell, solve following/ongoing problems and generating recurring profit and support.