GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.
Marketability may apply to things i.e. goods or services or people. When it applies to people, we are talking about making them attractive to potential employers or clients. People may study for a degree to improve their marketability. This means that they believe that getting a degree improves their chances of getting either a job or a better job.
Are you looking for a non-clinical career job? Here is how to make yourself more marketable by building your personal brand.
When it applies to things, we are talking about their ability to be marketed or sold. If you are selling your house, you might improve its marketability if you convert the loft into a living area. In other words, converting the loft will make it easier to sell the house.
If you have invented a new medical device, how likely are the multiple stakeholders likely to buy, use or prescribe it? Will they choose it, use it or just lose interest in it? Is your product just another brown cow or is it a purple cow? Is your new product sufficiently better than the standard of care for doctors to go to bat with administration to change vendors?
SmallBusiness.Chron.com has the following definition of the term:
“Marketability is a measure of whether a product will appeal to buyers and sell at a certain price range to generate a profit.”
The business model canvas is a way to validate your hypotheses about the desirability, feasibility, viability and adaptability of your idea.
But, how marketable is your product and how do you determine marketability in advance? Of course, there are no guarantees the dog will eat the food, but here are some things to consider:
- Early on, startups must identify the market type in which they plan to operate. In The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steven G. Blank describes four different types of market:
- Existing market
- New market
- Re-segmentation of an existing market as a low-cost player
- Re-segmentation of existing market by employing a niche strategy
Winning in some markets is harder than others. For example, entering a “never been done before at scale”, like electric cars, is expensive and takes lot of convincing the early majority to buy it. On the other hand, the upside potential is enormous.
2. In markets where there are lots of stakeholders, personas and members of the buying group, like sickcare, you have to satisfy the jobs, pains and gains or each with a somewhat different value proposition for each one.
3. A “marketability evaluation” is what all inventors should have completed prior to attempting to market their invention. A marketability evaluation basically considers whether the invention is “marketable” within the current and future market. This is extremely important to you since a manufacturer will not license your patent rights for an invention that may be “really neat” but is not competitive with the other products currently on the market.
Here is a quick 20 Factor Invention Evaluation Form that you can complete yourself or have a friend complete. Remember, this form is only effective if you or your friend are honest with the scoring.
4. While you may have determined that your invention has a high marketability, the results are in the execution of your go to market strategy by your sales and marketing team.
5. Marketability exists in a particular moment in time and can easily change by competitive entries, and other threats.
6. The VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world demands that you constantly test your ideas and explore and exploit new business models and products and their marketability.
7. Complacency erodes marketability.
8. Markets constantly change. The modern marketplace is unlike anything seen before in human history. For example, eCommerce allows anyone to order practically anything from anywhere in the world with virtual currency, often with the help of a virtual assistant that personalizes its recommendations so that each person’s buying journey is unique. In this new age, previously reigning marketing paradigms like the 4Ps of marketing are also undergoing a transformation. Welcome to the age of the 4Es instead.
The “4Es” of Marketing are “Experience”, “Everyplace”, “Exchange” and “Evangelism”. Anyone familiar with Marketing theory will recognize that the 4Es draw their basic wisdom from the famous “4P” mnemonic in modern marketing theory.
9. Many startup founders have low marketing IQs
10. Different business models require different marketing strategies and tactics, e.g. direct to patient marketing v B2B v B2B2C
11. Dissemination and implementation among healthcare professionals is a complicated and often unpredictable process. It often takes many years.
12. Successful social media marketing involves finding the right influencers and “sneezers” to help your idea go viral.
If you are a physician entrepreneur looking for investors, or an academic entrepreneur trying to commercialize your idea with your technology transfer office, then the first three questions you will have to answer are:
- What is your intellectual property and other barriers to entry?
- What is the technical and commercial feasibility of your product?
- What is the marketability of your product?
If you fail to convincingly answer these questions, it is likely that you will not pass GO and collect $200. But, given the dismal track record of investor’s and inventor’s new product success and portfolio returns, the exercise might all be marketability theater and just a Wild Ass Guess, that, ultimately, will be tested in the marketplace.
Image credit: Pixabay
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Recently I came across an 
So what is going on here for Coca-Cola?
Innovation is everywhere. Or at least the word is. CEOs talk about innovation, every technology company claims to be innovative (or to want innovative employees) and now we’re even seeing advertisements on television talk about innovation. Even Nissan, which has had innovation in their tagline for two years now, has decided to change their tagline from “Innovation for All” to something new “Innovation that Excites.” Okay, it still has innovation in it. But, the fact that they decided to move from innovation being something that is democratic, to something that is exciting, is an interesting shift. Maybe now that everybody is claiming to be innovative they felt the need to say, “No, our innovations aren’t like everyone else’s, our innovations are exciting!”
Golf is a delicate and well-refined sport and leisure activity, with quality, confidence and professionalism at its core. The Rolley Golf offers freedom to golfers who want or need to maximise their golf performance and get exercise to maintain health, without hindering the consistent energy needed to complete a round of 18/36 holes. Some golfer need to relax during the back nine or simply do not have the time to otherwise get the most out of the memberships, given that young golfers need to typically invest 4 hours on average to complete a round (their through rate). Golfers can either walk freely with the Rolley Golf in power assisted trolley mode, utilize the Rolley Remote-Control, or green to tee or on a steep long incline utilize the unit in a swift Hop-On & ride mode. Rolley Golf boasts a compact and lightweight folding dynamic which rivals or betters the current power assisted trolleys which do not offer a hop-on aspect.
I have many loves in life – women, cars, golf and engineering. These passions help me notice opportunities. I spotted one on the golf course one day playing a round with dad, as one of his friends was a little tired (hungover) and tried to hop on his power trolley. This unfortunately did not carry him as he’d hoped but instead broke. Frustrated at the £800 he spent on it (about $1300), he started giving it the 7 iron. Through the shards of plastic and circuitry I got my eureka moment for a final year project – this was back in 2006. I developed the concept of a hop-on golf trolley during 2008/2009 as a final year project for my undergraduate course in Engineering Design at London South Bank University (LSBU). The chap with the busted up power trolley would soon become my first customer 🙂
I saw the second picture in this article (of a dog washing machine in Japan) over my wife’s shoulder during a leisurely reading of the Sunday Seattle Times yesterday. I think it was in the Parade magazine, and as I started writing this article I found the same picture posted two years ago 
Now, I can say with reasonable certainty that very few dog or cat owners really enjoy giving Fido or Princess a bath, and so the idea of a machine that you lead Fido or Princess into and shut the door and push a button to accomplish the job, sounds very appealing. It can be an incredibly messy operation fraught with danger and frustration (thus the rise of self-service dog washing places), but when you look at the first picture, is the emotional trauma of the experience something that dog or cat owners (or dogs/cats for that matter) could endure over the long term?
It was 