Page 208 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

100 MAKE YOUR PRODUCT
EASIER TO USE THAN
EVERYBODY ELSE’S

The easier it is to use a product, the more likely it is that people will
use and recommend it. Making products easy to use is sometimes
not obvious—many technical people and engineers forget that most
of us have little or no idea about the technical aspects of the products
we use. Computer software is a fine example—most software is
extremely difficult to learn, and appears to become more complex
with every new edition.

That said, even the most simple day-to-day products can be made
easier to use—and this often means that a whole new USP can be
developed.

The idea

The British market for women’s magazines is seriously crowded.
Several hundred magazines compete for the attention of Britain’s
20 million women, so launching a new one is extremely difficult.

Glamour is a magazine aimed at the 20-something career woman.
This is a market that has been dominated by Cosmopolitan for the past
40 years, and is also the market that is most attractive to magazine
publishers, so Glamour would have a real problem breaking in, if all
its publishers did was produce a Cosmo clone.

Glamour is published in an unusual format, however. It has been
made handbag-sized. This means that it is easy to carry around
and read on crowded Tube trains or buses, while sitting in the

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