IP Marketing Iterative Process: Checkpoints for the Marketing Plan

In recent posts on Marketing Intellectual Property, I have described the merits of implementing an iterative marketing process; validating your decision to invest your resources in commercializing a technology; developing your marketing plan; and executing your plan. Timely checkpoints are another essential element. These give you a chance to test and validate your assumptions, reflect on the feedback received, adjust the marketing plan, and communicate with your key stakeholders (management, inventors, etc.).

It is not uncommon for often unforeseen events to change the market landscape for a target innovation. For instance, the market value of an innovation can be affected by:

• Changes in the goals of political administrations
• Natural disasters
• National security incidents
• Major FDA product recalls
• Shifts in market conditions, from recessions to revolutions in technology
  

Schedule a checkpoint for every 30 to 90 days for each of the technologies that you are actively marketing to:

1. Reevaluate the approach you are using to engage target licensees.
   
   
2. Recalculate your anticipated return on investment from your marketing campaign.
   
   
3. Reassess your target markets for commercializing subject technologies.
   
   
4. Adjust online marketing materials as needed to answer frequently asked questions or even reframe the value of the technology.
   
   
5. Proactively update key stakeholders on your progress and plans for the subject technologies.
   

Conversely, consider whether technologies in your IP portfolio that were of limited value have become more appealing based on market or other events.

What specific events have you experienced that had a remarkable impact on marketing innovations in your technology portfolio?

–By Jack Spain

Posts in the “IP Marketing Is an Iterative Process” series:

#1: Introducing the concept of agile marketing
#2: Validating the “go” decision
#3: Developing the marketing plan
#4: Executing the marketing plan
#5: Checkpoints for the marketing plan
#6: Getting the deal