The Power lies in the Positioning

Remember Segway? ??

I was fooling around, scrolling reels on Instagram (yeah, guilty as charged) when I saw this vehicle after a long time.

The two wheeled transportation device came on the market with incredible fanfare in 2002.

It was marketed as the Revolution in Mobility.

But it failed. Miserably! ??

Segway was supposed to be the fastest to 1B units in sale. It sold only 10,000 units in 2 years ??

Why?

Bad Positioning ??

Segway tried to be a product for everyone.

For anyone who could “walk” - And that’s where it failed.

When you launch a new product you have to find an unmet need, and position the new product to fulfill that unmet need better than anything else.

There has to be a clear focus on the product’s initial use, and the team has to work extremely hard to make sure the product does the necessary job brilliantly to fulfill that unmet need.

Nobody inherently needed a Segway.

Everyone was getting around by foot or by bicycle just fine. Segway failed because it did not focus on any one application, and develop that market as it enhanced and improved the product.

Selling 100 Segways to 20 different uses was an inherently bad decision. What Segway needed to do was sell 100 units to a single, or at most 2, applications.

So what could have been a good positioning? ??

The first market could have been using Segway as a

?golfer’s cart, or

?walking assist for the elderly/infirm, or

?transport device for meter readers.

If Segway had focused on one initial market, developed for those needs, and won that market it would have started a step-wise program toward more applications and success.

Thinking the general market would figure out how to use its product is a bad positioning strategy.

So if you find your differentiation and then narrow down a niche audience - WIN there. And the product will grow is my advice to most founders.

What’s your take? I'd love to know..

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Siddharth, or Sid, has worked for 3 organizations across 6 different states, selling everything from laptops to mobile recharges to SaaS products. He was handling brand and growth marketing for 15 countries at his last organization before he got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.

Three years in, he now leads a team more driven than him at Ad Momenta. You can find him talking branding, B2B marketing and growth at @sidgrover25 on Twitter and LinkedIn.

And if you are stuck with some your brand and marketing problems, say Hi @ admomenta.com :)