Jul 28 2020 28 mins
Show Notes
Pricing a new product is hard to do and requires that you step outside your comfort zone. We talk about freemium and why we don't want to build a free product. How we might figure out a good price. And the 4 Ps of marketing.
Warning. We say "pee" and "poop".
Fact Check
We discuss the"P's of Marketing", despite both having an MBA we cannot remember which they are. The term we are discussing is Marketing Mix, which is the 4 P's of marketing: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Developed by E. Jerome McCarthy in the 1960's, and has been a staple of any University Marketing class.
The term "Freemium" is used a lot in this episode, a good introductory read on the topic done by the Harvard Business Review. It is a concept introduced in the 1980's but gained popularity around 2010. Clinnect briefly considered this route with the product until we realized the product was too valuable with the minimum feature set to be a free product.
In this episode we delve into definitions around patient referral intakes, such as central intake vs pooled referrals vs directories, etc. The Canadian Medical Association uses a policy statement to define the use, however it does not take into account the use of algorithms, which Clinnect has now introduced this into landscape.
The pricing strategy exercise that we discuss at the end is the Van Westendorp Pricing Model. The exercise includes surveying potential customers to see where the "sweet spot" for pricing is, the questions are worded well to incite the right responses, yet you have the flexibility to tailor to your product. The final results are in as of the time this episode airs, but you will have to wait a couple episodes to find out!
Find Us Online
Angela Hapke - @angelahapke - https://www.clinnect.ca
Jonathan Bowers - @thejonotron - https://www.twostoryrobot.com
Credits
Produced by Jonathan Bowers and Angela Hapke
Music by Andrew Codeman (CC BY 3.0)
Transcript
[00:00:00] Jonathan: So I'm wearing, um, Hokas. I don't know if you're familiar with the brand of shoe.
[00:00:05] Angela: Nope, but they look very nice Jonathan.
[00:00:07] Jonathan: They have, they have these really thick, thick sole, I just don't wear them running very much. So they're just kind of sitting around and I thought, Oh, these shoes are good. Like they're good shoes.
[00:00:17] Angela: are good podcasting shoes.
[00:00:18] Jonathan: Yeah. So they're my podcasting shoes, I put them on before we record a podcast in case I need to stand. Hi, my name is Jonathan Bowers. I am the CEO of Two Story Robot, a software development company, helping Angela and CRS built a product. And my son just pooped in a potty for the first time.
[00:00:37] Angela: That's amazing.
[00:00:40] Jonathan: willingly. Well, so not willingly.
[00:00:43] He. Just before bath uh bath time is like my routine with him. So we go in the tub and he's bathing and he's kind of squatting in the tub playing around and he's pooped in the tub, three or four times. And I try not to make a big deal out of it, but when I do, I often like just kind of yell and it scares them a bit. So I tried not to do that when he started to grunt, as he was squatting down in the toilet, like, Oh, okay, let's get out, do a quick, dry off.
[00:01:10] And then we put him, put him on the potty and he sits there and plays with his toes and plays with the handle and and out comes, a poop.
[00:01:17] Angela: And Jonathan, how old is Zack?
[00:01:19] Jonathan: He's 17 months old now.
[00:01:22]it's pretty fun.
[00:01:22] Angela: so happy for you.
[00:01:27] I am.
[00:01:27]Hi, I'm Angela Hapke and I am the CEO of Central Referral Solutions. The company that has launched Clinnect and I cleaned poop out of my almost three year olds pants, five times in the last few days.
[00:01:46] Jonathan: Oh my goodness. Is this a regression? Is this some kind of anxiety induced thing because of some change in school or is it
[00:01:55] Angela: yeah, you don't, you don't know my daughter is pure, "I don't give an F. I am way too busy. Digging for worms and playing and in the sandbox to worry about the poop I've just had in my pants. " But then she's upset with herself afterwards. So we do have progress. The shame is there. Oh yeah. So we just want her to not feel that and just go poo on the potty
[00:02:31] Jonathan: So tell me, tell me, uh, how can I, how can I segue
[00:02:36] Angela: are we segueing from peeing
[00:02:38] Jonathan: and pooing pants?
[00:02:40] Into pricing. the three P's pee, poo, and pricing.
[00:02:45] Angela: I'm very sure I learned that in my MBA.
[00:02:47]Jonathan: I think it's product, um, product pricing and position no, position pricing and p-p-p-p . So tell me about pricing. So you originally originally Clinnect, maybe not originally, but one of the ideas was that Clinnect was going to, there was going to be some free aspect of, of Clinnect
[00:03:09]Pricing
[00:03:09] Angela: Definitely! We were about, um, just over a year ago. We were discussing this. And at that time, the whole freemium idea was, um, I don't want to say it was hot because it was a little bit old by then, but it was definitely something that was well understood and well used in the, in the, in the tech industry was the whole freemium idea.
[00:03:35] So we wanted to take that idea and shifted over to, um, healthcare software, which isn't really done except in more like the, the consumer, um, models.
[00:03:46]Then I had a few conversations with a few people about this. And while, you know, we had floated it by the, the users, the future potential users and they were all for it. but I had like a conversation with a, a bit of a mentor of mine and he had very strong opinions about freemium products and, um, he kind of just said to me, Angela, Why would you ever give anything away for free?
[00:04:13] Like, could you at least just charge 30 bucks a month for it? Why would you ever just give it away for free? I just think that model's so ridiculous. I kind of hit me a little hard because I was like, wow. Geez, everybody's doing it. That's what I thought we would do too. But it got me thinking in and about the users that I, that I have. And, um, it did make a lot of sense. I was like, yeah, honestly, to my customers, what is 20 bucks a month to them? You know, it's a few Starbucks coffees.
[00:04:46] Jonathan: Well, and I think, I think also if they're not, if they don't see the value in it enough to give up the 20 bucks. ...