Marketing Light

I’ve seen a lot of Light therapy devices, and the biggest question remains. Is the market ready for Light therapy? Not the supermarket. Don’t expect Safeway to have light therapy anytime soon.

The question isn’t, is the consumer ready for it, or is light therapy a viable product. The answer to both is a big astounding “YES”. But is the market ready for it? A reasonable definition for Market is “the group of consumers or organizations that is interested in the product”. Are they interested right now, without any more information? No. Most consumers and organizations have never heard of it. Does the general population understand Light therapy so that they are ready to buy it? They understand iPODs, cellphones, and toasters, but do they understand Light Therapy, let alone DPL® Therapy.

Recently the iPAD became available. Do the people that bought it understand what it does? They may have ideas, but do they really know what kind of tool it is even in 2 months? I heard 200 million were sold the first weekend. Most people are only guessing at how useful it will be. They mostly say, Apple made it and they make really cool things now, and I want one. The market has been built based on awareness of Apple and cool products, and their iPOD/iPHONE technologies.

Should we stop selling Light Therapy devices until the market is ready? Of course not. How will the market be ready without any of the devices for sale.

I believe there are a couple choices in creating a marketplace. First, buy lots of advertising. Make the consumer aware. That is very difficult with Light Therapy as it seems to take 15-30 minutes for someone to understand what it is enough to buy it. More if you want them to believe it’s not a scam. A billboard isn’t going to do it, nor a 2 minute commercial.

The default position that seems to have happened is to build the market using good and knowledgeable distributorship, happy customers, and a healthy dose of door to door salesmanship. That way takes a lot more time. We’ve already seen a lot of companies come and go in this industry, because they fail to build that and sometimes they only pursue advertising, which isn’t enough at this stage. Companies think it’s an easy product to manufacture, just get a bunch of LED’s at your local Radio Shack, and build a system. Then they realize the sales conversion/training that must occur, and end up falling by wasteside with many others.

It’s going to be a long road for success, and only companies with high expertise, inovative marketing techniques and a good training platform to build good knowledge base will make it.

Let me know your thoughts on the subject.

This entry was posted on 23. April 2010 at 08:12 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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