As I listened to 14 different people tell me about their Apple Watch, I observed a pattern. Those whose job it was to think about the Apple Watch or who were early adopters who thought deeply about tech and the tech products they buy, were all much more critical of the watch. You could tell they evaluated it and thought about it deeply from every angle by their responses. Then I talked with teachers, firefighters, insurance agents, and those not in the tech industry and not hard-core techies. These groups of people couldn’t stop raving about the Apple Watch and how much they loved the product. It was almost as if the farther away people were from tech or the tech industry, the more they liked the Apple Watch.
(via Ben Bajarin for Techpinions)
This is a great lesson for people who make products of any kind. Stop trying to impress the pundits and the overly critical, and focus on the majority of people who actually use your product.
I’m not saying that pundits are always wrong or that getting rave reviews isn’t a good thing. But when that becomes the goal—to build something that will impress the tech elite, rather than everyday people—you can very easily end up with a product that goes nowhere. Because regular humans and people who spend all day thinking about technology often have different priorities.
The “best” product almost never wins.
As I said in my recent AltConference talk: Word of Mouth is still the ultimate form of marketing. Happy customers tell their friends and family, and pretty soon you have lots more happy customers.
Those happy customers are going to sell a lot of products for you. They are the people you want to impress. Figure out what they need and give it to them. Listen to them when they give you feedback.
Chasing all the awards and accolades is a potential distraction.
