Get your users onside

In the modern interconnected world, there are multiple alternatives for any given product you're looking to sell (or buy!). In order to be successful, you have to differentiate your product, so that customers are more tempted by yours than the competition. There are lots of strategies for achieving this, and lots of people keen to show you how to do it (for a price, naturally). But one of the best strategies is to get your users onside.

This was brought home to us recently when looking for a small video camera ("action" camera if you will). We did a lot of research, and eventually cam across the Mobius. At fist glance, this is just another cheap camera from The Far East. Sure, it got good reviews - but then so do many of its competitors. What was impressive was the development work being done by the user community. It's clearly been adopted by the R/C modelling guys, and there is a dizzying array of add-ons & upgrades. There are people writing config utilities for PC, viewers for Android and much more. The manufacturers have responded by writing new firmware, and making themselves very visible.

As a result, we can be fairly sure of a few things.
1. It's a good product - there are lots of happy users out there.
2. The manufacturer will be around to support the product for some time.
3. If you have an unusual application then someone, somewhere, has probably sorted it out & published the results.
4. Any problems will be well known, and you can decide whether or not they'll impact on your use.

So we purchased two.

If you can make this happen (and that's the problem), it's the best marketing strategy you can have. Hundreds of users discussing your product, and dozens of manufacturers making add-ons, all increasing the status and visibility of your product. And not a TV advert in sight...