The Gateway Tablet PC Non-Laptop Laptop Computer: A Great Tool which the Company Doesn't Know How to Market Very Well
It never ceases to amaze me. High tech companies seem utterly incapable of marketing well.
Marketing is aimed at would-be users. Technicians honestly do not understand marketing. It is beyond them. Technicians do not think like users, act like users, or beta-test with users. So, they pay the price: lower profits.
The technician thinks, "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door."
The marketer knows better. "If you build a better mousetrap, but you don't have a marketing plan, you will die alone and broke with a garage full of mousetraps." (Mac Ross)
A case in question: Gateway's tablet PCs. The whole world calls this type of portable computer a tablet PC. It lets you write your notes on the screen. The screen can be rotated to fit flat, covering up the keyboard, so that it looks like a tablet. This design really works as advertised. It's the perfect computer for college. It's a note-taker's dream come true.
I have rotten handwriting. The note-taking program in the Gateway computer recognized my scrawls immediately. Accuracy was high: on-screen cursive to digital text. Then I spent 30 minutes training it to read my handwriting. The program's accuracy improved.
So, what does Gateway call its line of tablet PCs? Convertible laptops. But their laptops are designed so as to make using them in your lap dangerous: a ventilation problem. The computer can burn itself out, though possibly not before it sets your pants on fire. (The manual is not clear on this point.) So, the company has named the entire line incorrectly. The product line's name doesn't match either the market or human biology.
I bought a Gateway C-140X. I paid $1,050 with a 3-year warranty. The computer was worth every penny. But it would be worth a lot more if Gateway had spent one extra dollar.
The missing tool is a DVD. A good DVD could get a new buyer up and running (safely) in 20 minutes.
I recently bought a $20 dog collar that had a first-rate training DVD -- training dog owners to train their dogs. If it's affordable to include a DVD with a $20 product, it's affordable for any high-tech product.
How many $1,000 products include a good training DVD? Almost none.
Do users read the user's manual cover to cover? Not often. So, tech companies that sell to non-technicians should bend to reality. "Do it the user's way." That'll be the day!
Most products offer more benefits than a user will ever use. So, a DVD should have two primary goals:
1. Get the average user up and running on two or three simple projects, thereby convincing him that (1) the product is practical; (2) the product was worth the money; and (3) it's worth the time it will take to climb the learning curve to master additional tasks.2. Cut off in advance the first three calls call to Customer Service, which 80% of new users with these three problems will call about.
If a company can save just one dollar by eliminating just one one-minute customer service call, a training DVD pays for itself. But most high-tech companies do not figure this out.
Why? Because technicians dominate the companies' in-house cultures. Technicians care most about technology, not sales; digits, not profits; impressing their peers, not impressing buyers. They strive to produce flawless features. They do not consider the first-time users' frustration. They say, "Wow! I can get this baby to sing!" They do not hear the first-time user's lament: "I can't even get this thing to boot up."
Microsoft is the most profitable of these companies, and Microsoft only barely gets the picture.
Microsoft Vista comes with a great built-in program: voice-recognition. Dictate into your Vista-equipped computer, and it converts your words to text or actual screen commands. Yet the program does not appear in the ALL PROGRAMS list. Search for voice recognition, and the search engine finds nothing. Why not? Because it's filed under speech, not voice.
What is the matter with the folks at Redmond? This: they are technicians. They are simply incapable of thinking as a user thinks. They load up Vista with user-pleasing goodies, and they don't tell the users the goodies are there. The ALL PROGRAMS list does not include all of the programs.
Gateway includes a DVD player with the computer. So, why not include a Get Started Fast DVD? This would cost maybe $1,000 to produce, plus $1 per computer. A salesman (not a technician!) could produce the master with Camtasia Studio ($300), a Plantronics headset mic ($60), and a camcorder ($200). The video would be a mixture of camcorder demonstration of the box, plus screencasts of the on-screen procedures.
The DVD could warn people of risks, such as "don't sit with the laptop in your lap."
It could tell them to charge their partially charged battery immediately.
It could tell them of note-taking tools in Vista that Microsoft doesn't mention.
It could tell them why there is no mouse included. (Why Gateway is not just being cheap -- a real sales job.)
It could show them how they can run their programs without a mouse or a keyboard: voice activation.
It could tell them how to get the registration number for Microsoft OneNote 2007. It's a free-form data base. But, after 25 uses, it guts itself if you don't type in a registration number. In its present form, it's a demo. So, must we buy the program? If not, where is the number? If so, how do we buy it? Microsoft does not say. Gateway does not say.
I am describing a "get started" DVD. Additional screencast videos on more specialized functions can be posted on the company's website.
Then they could produce a second DVD, plus on-screen videos, on "look what you can do with this breakthrough product." It would show what a tablet PC can do, not how to do it. There could be more than one DVD. Each should target a specific market: college students, businessmen, authors (oops -- sorry -- they are mostly starving).
This multiple DVD strategy would be pure marketing. Marketing is not a bad thing. After all, it helps to employ technicians. (When it comes to marketing inside a technology-based company, marketers must learn how to sell the concept of marketing to the technicians. In a technology-based firm, this task is not easy. It surely is not intuitive.)
My salesman was Ryan Moore. He was very helpful. Call him at 1-800-846-2042 (ext. 25001). Leave a message. Or e-mail him at ryan.moore@gateway.com.