By Pam Didner
Marketing Strategist, Speaker and Author
Global Content Marketing
Twitter@PamDidner
“A business enterprise has
two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and
innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” Peter Drucker never
explained how marketing and innovation could work together to produce
financial results. David Meyer, Spok’s Director of Product Development, and Jay Miller, Creative Director of Mentormate, shared a great case study on how marketing and
innovation work together at MobCon.
Yes, it was all about that pager
Spok (pronounced as Spoke),
formerly known as Amcom Software, is a leading pager services provider.
Pagers?! Who is using a pager in 2014? According to Meyer, police officers,
doctors, nurses and select industries still use pagers, because it’s cheap,
fast and reliable. A pager is small enough that it can be clipped on your belt
or tossed into your purse. In addition, the signals to a pager can penetrate
the thick concrete walls of an operating room or the far-end corners of a deep
basement. In life-saving and urgent situations, you need a device that is
reliable to reach the right people, no matter where they are. Even though it
sounds so last-century, the pager is still an ideal and viable option.
Here is the reality
Yet, with the decline of pager
sales in the US, from 60M units in the 90’s to less than 6M units in 2013, Spok
recognized it had to CHANGE. The product development team needed to
“re-imagine” pagers. They brought Meyer in and started a small product
development team to design an updated version of the pager.
Re-imagining pagers: Oh, there is
an app for that
Since ‘almost’ everyone has a
smartphone, what about re-inventing pagers completely and making smartphones
into virtual pagers? This eliminates the need for additional, single-purpose
hardware and offers much greater convenience to their customers. The product
team envisioned an app that acts as a virtual pager. App development is all
about user interface design and software programming, which had not been an
area of focus for the development team in the past. They needed not only to
think differently, but also to completely modify their product design process.
Spok started to design a communications app for a team
of doctors, nurses and call-centers to care for patients from check-in through
check-out. It’s not an app to just send a one-way emergency beep from the call
center to a doctor or a nurse. The design team envisioned this app empowering
two-way collaboration within a team of medical professionals so that they can
provide higher-quality care for their patients. The app would integrate the
hospital’s contact list, doctor’s current locations, patient information and
more. The app would notify a team of relevant players about their patients,
when emergency arises. It also allows them to talk to each other about patient
status in an encrypted environment that complies with the need for privacy. No
longer just a virtual pager, the app is a collaboration and communications tool
for doctors, nurses, call centers and relevant team members.
Don’t jolt your sales and
marketing teams at the last minute
Consider this: a company had been
selling ‘pagers’ for over thirty years, then the sales and marketing teams are
asked to sell and market an app on a phone. The sales and marketing team needs
to be re-trained and re-educated on the new product and its features. They need
time to learn, adapt and energize. If Meyer waited until the product is coded
to educate the sales and marketing team, it wouldn’t give the team enough time
to internalize and provide feedback about the product. To avoid any surprises
and accelerate time-to-market, the sales and marketing team needed to become an
essential part of the product development process from the inception. Tweet It!
A deliberate process to engage
the marketing team
Spok aimed to launch the app at
their annual customer conference. The team, then, worked backward to create a
timeline for the app development. Since the new product looked vastly different
than their current product, the team created a process to update and engage
relevant stakeholders at each stage of product development.
Spok got the marketing team
involved in end-user research at the ‘discovery’ stage, in product feature
discussions at the ‘definition’ stage and developed the messaging and content
at the ‘design and develop’ stages. Marketing was no longer the last link in
the long chain; it worked as an integral part of product development.
Here is a nice visual of key
marketing deliverables at different product development stages:
Since this was a brand new
product, it was important to get executive approval at the initial discovery
stage to receive proper funding and resources. After the features were
tentatively defined, the product team shared a demo with management. The
marketing team’s active engagement allowed Spok to develop messaging and story
framework early. Tweet It! They even had time to create a teaser campaign to
communicate with their customers. Prior to the launch, marketing related
content was created for on-line and off-line communications.
The company also recognized that
they were transitioning from a pager company to become a software company. The
marketing team worked with executives to devise new branding and rename the
company. That strategic decision signaled their customers that the company was
making a bold move and aimed to provide cutting-edge products and services to
their customers. A new name, a new logo, a new direction and a new company!
Meyer’s key lessons:
- Innovation and marketing must work together to produce results. Tweet It!
- Educate key stakeholders during the product development stage and seek their input. Tweet It!
- Proactively engage marketing to create story and content. Tweet It!
- After the successful launch, the product team continues to tweak the app with new features suggested by end-users and other stakeholders. Pagers will continue to exist, but the company now sees an opportunity to grow too.
Relevant articles on marketing and innovation from Pam:
Marketing is Innovation’s BFF on AdAge (the BtoB section)
New is Old: What does it mean to be original?
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