HACKER Q&A
📣 riazrizvi

Why don't we see more case studies in marketing of innovative products?


When you invent a new product, customers don’t know how to engage with it or categorize it, a list of features just doesn’t map into people’s lives. So they generally dismiss it if it’s too novel.

So why don’t we see much more of an investment of marketing effort on diving into how early power users are adopting it? Is it too time consuming, or is it a strategic decision to hold that information back because otherwise it would make you too vulnerable to competition in the early stages where you’re trying to find Product Market Fit?

Anyone got any first hand experience of regretting doing it?

  👤 martypitt Accepted Answer ✓
We're doing this at the moment, and it's really really tough.

People want to relate to things in relation to what they already know, and innovators can struggle with this.

Also, our experience has been that innovative products are often an evolution / paradigm shift of an existing idea. Given all the marketing hyperbole products use, it can make it difficult it articulate your point of difference in a way that differentiates from all the other marketing speak.

This article was shared on HN recently, which was cathartic, even though it doesn't provide any easy answers:

https://medium.com/angularventures/the-long-road-to-creating...

👤 ohiovr
Innovative products by their definition are very different from one another. So a case study into one is not going to reveal much about another. Honest focus groups might be better to reveal what product may catch on.