Marketing Memos

“Its [sic] not necessary to upgrade Acrobat 7 to Acrobat 10. The other option is to downgrade the Windows [sic] to Windows XP.”

I’ll assume for the moment that narcotics are provided free to Adobe’s technical support teams. The terminal quote above ended a support dialogue, initiated when an Adobe product commenced aborting after a laptop was upgraded from XP to Vista. Leave it to say that the support technician did not fully comprehend the complexity involved in reverting any operating system much less rolling back a laptop to a 10 year old OS. He also likely does not comprehend breakfast, water or autonomic breathing.

When anyone buys anything, they have a set of expected outcomes. A collection of such expected outcomes is a whole product definition. When a single expectation is not met, a customer is dissatisfied. When two or more expectations are unmet, customers begin looking for alternatives. When an Adobe support engineer with poor English skills suggests that their defective product be stabilized by reverting operating systems, one begins to applaud competitor decisions.

Technology products must address both typical and industry specific customer expectations. There are always the basics (price, functions, etc.) but also intangible aspects such as forward compatibility and support when stuff doesn’t work. For example, it is a given that Windows software application forward compatibility is reasonably assured (the fact that I can run MS-DOS scripts and programs to this day is rather astounding). Failure to adhere to basic development modes and assure reasonable forward compatibility (say from XP to Vista) violates an expected customer outcome.

Technical support is an intangible that earned a sorry reputation once global telecommunications costs dropped and people with thick East Indian accents named Dave began fielding your trouble tickets. American inability to effectively coach foreign support staff on matters like customer care and diagnostics was the core problem that exacerbated cross-cultural divides (how do you explain “the customer is always right” or “downgrading operating systems is very painful” to someone unfamiliar with the concepts). When support is missing, be it in terms of speed, accuracy or satisfaction, the customer’s expectations are unmet.

Crashing applications caused by simple OS upgrades that require downgrading is a multiple infraction and the first sign of eventual corporate failure.

Mapping your whole product (generic, expected, augmented or potential) is a required marketing strategy step that great companies take. You can omit non-essential expected outcomes, but never the fundamental ones. Failure to ensure delivery on expected product features leads to unhappy customers (who all have a public voice these days) and eventual financial downfall. In high tech, support is always an expected outcome.

The marketing lesson herein is that Dave, Elizabeth and the other folks working in Bengal?ru need to be educated on all customer expectations and given the leeway to make them happen. If not, we can on-shore their jobs, which would be a good move in the current recession.

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Launching a late-comer product into a maturing market is like pushing a salmon up Niagara Falls.

Some folks (with perhaps a bit too much time on their hands) have estimated that about $450 has been spent marketing each Nokia Lumina sold … which currently retails for $49 (with the ubiquitous two-year contract). You don’t need an MBA to see that this is not an entirely profitable go-to-market plan. The Lumina was the first serious attempt to lift Microsoft’s mobile market share, and managed push fewer than two million of them into users hands (though it is uncertain if this includes the number of devices Nokia gave to AT&T employees in an attempt to evangelize in-store sales staff).

There are about as many Android activations each day as Luminas now in use.

The marketing puzzle that Microsoft failed to solve was getting consumers to believe that WinPhones were better gizmos than iPhones or Androids. Like their server operating systems, WinPhones were presented via old school press releases, analyst product demos and lifeless online videos. Consumers, busy sharing notes about Android and iPhone apps, were not distracted by Microsoft’s “marketing” because they never heard it (or if they had rebooted their laptop 20 times that morning might have thought that a Microsoft phone would be equally frustrating).

The smartphone market is maturing in industrialized countries, with Android and iPhones thumping all competitors (have you seen anyone carrying a new Blackberry or Symbian phone lately). The smartphone market has become a two party system, and like in politics, cracking it is a challenge. For consumers to not instinctually gravitate toward one of the two major options, they have to:

Know: People need to know there is a viable alternative. The Libertarian party brags about being the most popular third party in America. Yet they have no widespread brand recognition even among the politically aware. WinPhones, even if the technology is great, have no mindshare in the market.

Believe: Knowing there is an alternative is insufficient. Buyers must believe that an upstart offering will be good enough if not great. WinPhone has not made anyone leap out of their office chair to proclaim its grandeur. Without belief there can be no evangelists.

Bet: Every action involves a risk/reward analysis. Even when I ponder the reward of eating a candy bar, I evaluate the risk of an expanded waistline. Adopting a mobile operating system for two years requires believing the experience is relatively risk free. When iPhone and Android users are constantly showing off their devices and apps, betting on WinPhone seems as risky as eating two candy bars.

The failure herein is not Nokia’s or AT&T’s. Perhaps they made poor strategic decisions, but Microsoft committed poor marketing. Entering late, offering nothing significantly different or better, and saddled with their reputation for BombWare, Microsoft could not generate anything remotely resembling buzz. This forced Nokia to cut the price of Luminas in half in hopes of moving as many units this year as Android moves this afternoon.

The marketing lesson herein is that customers now drive all markets, and traditional marketing approaches – though still important – pale when compared to creating differentiation, awareness and belief among buzzy buyers.

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When it comes to marketing, is your company a guru, sportsman or warrior?

This may not be an exhaustive list of psychologies, but these three traits cover most go-to-market plans and mentalities I have encountered in B2B marketing. They can be as individual as the CMO or corporate-wide traits. Each has its own operational MO and they apply well to different markets. Pitted against one another, any can win depending on the market they seek to exploit. With some overlap, market dominating mutts can be whelped.

Gurus: Passive marketing, which these days is largely typified by social media marketing, is nearly spiritual. It seeks to affectionately coax buyers to come forward — encouraging, not pushing. Gurus play the long game and seek actual relationships with customers, and are willing to take time, invest effort and wait for returns.

Sportsmen: These are people who keep score. Market share, quarterly revenues, and win/loss ratios. For them the thrill of marketing has little to do with happy customers or even market dominance. They are in the game for the same reason amateur rugby players give blood on the weekend — the thrill of competition.

Warriors: Total market domination, bordering on bloodlust, it what drives these marketers and companies. It is not enough to win; their competitors must be deposited in unemployment lines, run into bankruptcy and dumped in the dead pool.

Start-ups routinely choose marketing chiefs without regard to the type of drive they display which will, by the nature of start-ups, infect the entire organization. Start-ups in early markets can both afford and benefit from the guru approach. With few competitors and buyers requiring education, long evaluations and a lot of handholding, guruism has benefits.

Fast moving but not-yet mature markets require hiring sportsmen. Constant advancement is the goal because these markets are foot races. Since there is no way to wage war against multiple nimble competitors, start-ups in these markets need to grab as much land as quickly as possible to stake a beachhead.

Warriors tend to do well in any market, but thrive in crowded and mature markets. For them winning is everything and no (un)reasonable means of draining life from competitors will be ignored. Warriors can where white, black and gray hats and change headgear as needed. They can poetically sing their product’s value propositions one moment, then pump FUD into media ears in the next.

Warriors with any armament (budget) are the most dangerous competitors and have high success rates (Larry Ellison is a market warrior and has created a dark empire based on total market dominance desires). They actually enjoy reading about competitor failure and pop champagne when another goes nipples-up. Their eyes even look a bit sinister.

Ask yourself which phase of maturity your market is in. Then ask which psychology works best for the next few years and if your marketing squad is headed by the right personality type. If lucky, you hired a marketer with multiple personality disorder who can switch between guru, sportsman and warrior as needed.

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