Any seasoned marketer will tell you that the cornerstone of great marketing is the product.

Flashy marketing ads and persuasive communication tactics can only take you so far.

Without a great product, you simply won't get customers returning for more.

But there's a challenge: great product innovation is not easy to come by.

Most companies take years to come up with new products, and even when they do, it's merely a small tweak to an existing range — leaving consumers unsatisfied and wanting to switch to other brands.

And then there's the issue of competition.

Today's market is remarkably more saturated than yesterday's.

For every product out there, there's likely to be ten other clones in the market— and this situation will only get worse with time.

In other words, marketers are in a serious dilemma: we want great products, but it's not easy to think of new ideas in this day and age!

Or is it as difficult as it seems?

Cue the Blue Ocean theory: an innovative approach to churning out product ideas that actually work.

The Blue Ocean Theory

First introduced in 2005 by renowned professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, the Blue Ocean theory is a strategy that helps marketers open up new product opportunities in their industry.

And here is its simple but elegant approach:

Essentially, the goal of a Blue Ocean strategy is for brands to discover and develop "blue oceans".

These are uncontested markets with high potential. Here, demand is created rather than competed for. As you might imagine, growth potential is high and costs are kept low.

At the same time, it is also used to avoid "red oceans" — which are oversaturated markets.

In other words, a brand will naturally garner more attention, fewer risks, and most importantly, increased revenue in a blue ocean market.

Oh, and did I mention it'll render competition completely irrelevant?

Take Cirque du Soleil, for example.

They were a brand that ingeniously redefined the circus and theatre industries by combining elements of both worlds and creating a new form of entertainment that appealed to a way bigger audience.

The results? A massive $1 billion in annual revenue by the brand alone.

For reference, the total annual revenue of all Broadway shows combined is only $1.5 billion — not a huge difference if you ask me!

That's how important product innovation is — and where the Blue Ocean strategy can come in handy.

Thus, if you're a product marketer and in constant need of inspiration for novel ideas, this might be useful to you.

Here's the Blue Ocean strategy, broken down into its four main actions:

Step 1: Eliminate

Have you ever questioned if all the features in your products are necessary?

No, seriously — give it some thought: are these features included to fulfill an actual consumer need, or are they inside just because it's always been done this way?

This brings us to our first step: eliminate.

The main objective is simple: evaluate your current product features and remove those that are no longer necessary for the product function or give any value to your consumers.

By doing so, you're eliminating bloated production costs — which will make your products naturally more competitive.

Now how can you go about this step?

Well, I find that consumer surveys are a great way to identify your key consumer wants and more importantly, find out what they do not value in their products.

Southwest Airlines is an incredible example of this.

Back in 2019, they discovered that their passengers would rather have cheaper flights than in-flight meals — and so they completely removed them, thereby significantly bringing down costs.

Who would have thought to remove meals on flights?

After all, it was something that everyone took for granted as a flight staple for the longest time.

But the brand dared to eliminate it — which benefitted them for years to come.

Step 2: Reduce

In the same vein as the previous point, we need to take out the clutter that's hindering us from truly focusing on what matters in our products.

Cue the second step: reduce.

Here, it's all about cutting back on features that are over-designed, overcomplicated, or over-engineered.

The main difference between this step and the Eliminate step is that some features identified here may still bring value to consumers, however, they're not worth the trouble in terms of inflated costs to the brand.

Analyze your products and consider which aspects are completely overperforming when compared to your competitors, and that might be of little value to your consumers.

If you need a great example of a brand that smartly simplified its products, it's Ikea.

Instead of going the conventional furniture brand route of selling products pre-assembled, Ikea reduced their need for manpower assistance by getting customers to DIY.

In one swift move, they not only reduced overall costs for both the customers and themselves, but they also gave customers a unique experience that they just can't find in other furniture shops.

Step 3: Raise

Now that we've removed and reduced all the unnecessary and overcrowded features in our products, the next step will be to add the good stuff.

But not just any good stuff — specifically the ones that can add a tremendous amount of value to customers.

How do you identify what these aspects are?

Well, this can be done either via benchmarking against the cream of the crop of the industry and/or simply asking your customers what's most important to them.

For example, if you have a sunscreen range, then naturally, one of the biggest pull factors would be the level of UV protection on your products.

From there, make it a priority to enhance this above-industry standard. In the case of market sunscreens, is SPF 30 the norm?

In that case, how about developing products that can give an SPF of 50? That'll give you an edge over many others simply by modifying this one feature.

However, take note that this step can only ensure that you stay on top of the competition in your industry.

To truly stand out, you'll need this last step:

Step 4: Create

In the previous steps, the name of the game was to optimize your product range to a point where they can seamlessly stand out from the competition and at the same time, bring your brand incredible cost savings.

This last step — Create — is where the magic happens.

It's all about introducing new features that your industry has not offered before, thereby completely differentiating your products from the rest and attracting new customers.

But how does one come up with relevant new features?

It's surprisingly simple — it can all be done with customer mapping.

Customer mapping is a process where you draft out every single step of the customer journey, from the point they identify a problem they have, how they search for a trusted solution, and even how they review the products.

It can look something like this:

As you can see, it pays to be incredibly detailed when mapping out your customer journey — because every minute point presents an opportunity for your brand to differentiate itself from the competition.

Uber's one of the best examples of the outcome of customer mapping — with the founders having realized that people felt that they were taking too long to hail cabs.

For the longest time, people were only concerned about the costs of private hailing, and every taxi service assumed that their customers were okay with simply waiting

But Uber said no, and the rest is history.

If you want to start customer mapping today, here's an easy-to-use template for you.

Conclusion

New product ideas don't always have to stem from pure Eureka moments.

By just following these four steps, you'd stand a chance to discover your blue ocean market in a simple and most importantly, easy-to-replicate manner.

Is your brand currently in a blue or red ocean market?

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