Marketing Memos

Two cynical definitions of language neatly describe many marketing communications:

The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure …

and

The source of misunderstandings.

Marketing’s job is to charm people out of their money, preferably by articulating the true value of necessary products. Yet many marketing managers slip straight to snake oil salesmanship and leverage a ton of text and bunkers filled with buzzwords to attempt recruiting prospects. Misuse of language is a chief cause of unhappy customers and board members.

The first task in marketing communications is to promote value. Here at Silicon Strategies Marketing, we defined (copyright alert) value as “the intersection of need and differentiation.” Value intersections tend to be precise, and the language used to describe a particular value must be as well. Generalized and buzzword-heavy statements like “the most cost-effective, easy-to-use, and universally accessible” detract from precise value articulation. The results are customers who see no specific value and thus have no specific motivation to further investigate a product.

The lure of easy buzzwords is obvious. Clear market messaging is both science and art, and few folks (outside of Silicon Strategies Marketing that is) have both skills. Marketers lean on what seem like obvious value points, which is the problem. If the “value” point is obvious, then it is likely (a) universal or (b) universally claimed. Either way it violates half of the value equation, namely that your product is somehow different. Weak messaging also has the negative habit of putting readers to sleep, which makes communications even more difficult.

When crafting your value propositions, and from those your value headlines, take four steps, none of which are fast or pain free:

Understand the real value: Using our definition of value, be 100% sure that you have any. Keep in mind that the value delivered is likely different for each market segment and buyer genotype.

Customer language: Customers have their own language for their needs. Use their language, not yours, to describe the value you provide. This creates instant cognition.

Explore your thesaurus: These books exist for a reason. The word you dream-up to describe value may be good, but not precise. Find the best words.

Compare competitors: Make sure you are not saying what your competitors are. Doing so eliminates perceived differentiation.

On that note, I have to end this blog and create alignment to establish clear goals that expand diversity and empowerment in order to leverage organic growth in our new paradigm and thus create a win-win scenario.

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No marketing person has ever created a “need.”

It is an enduring myth that marketing creates needs, which in a moment you will see is simply impossible. Many marketers have found other careers after beating their heads against the wall that separates “need” from “want”, and marketing products in exactly the wrong way. This flat forehead syndrome exists because of myth alone, and it is time to slay it.

Needs are preexisting conditions. As Maslow so painfully noted, there is a stacked list of needs. Yet Maslow was mistaken about the definition of “need” himself, for as you ascend his pyramid, his “needs” become aspirations. Maslow may have maladjusted marketers by creating a false sense of what a need is. Food, water, shelter are personal needs. Accounting and inventory are corporate needs.

“Wants” are a different subject. When new products are created, they are never “needs” at first and thus should not be marketed as such. Take the case of some new enterprise software that adds a plus-one advantage for businesses. At introduction nobody needs this software because the basic needs of enterprises are currently being fulfilled. Yet if the software gives one business an advantage in the market, soon their competitors will develop a need for a similar solution just to remain competitive. For the early adopter there is a want and for the late adopter there is need. Over time, just as vices become habits, all wants evolve into needs – nobody “needed” a television when Farnsworth first foisted his invention on an unsuspecting public, yet everybody now needs a 70” flat screen.

Because needs exist, they must be promoted by marketers with comparative advantages to alternatives. Yet when buyers do not know they want something new, marketers must make people develop desire. Marketing of needs is more mechanical while dealing desires is an art. The former leans more toward the practical while the latter is almost completely devoted to emotional response.

Knowing if you are selling needs or wants is primal and will shape your go-to-market strategy better than your PR firm, ad agency and boss’s dicta combined.

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Spending money to compete toe-to-toe is dumb.

But this hasn’t stopped start-ups from doing just that.

Most start-ups are about as broke as college kids (and from the looks of their management team photos, may well be staffed with the same). They do need to spend money on marketing, but competing is foolish. For every face-off, someone loses face. Slugging it out with gorillas is fast suicide and shin-kicking many small competitors is the slow form.

In every market, you can outmaneuver competitors, even gorillas. By understanding the position of each competitor or how they approach buyers, you can compete without competing, which is more cost effective and more effective in general. SuSE Linux remains my worn-out example because it worked against the sitting gorilla.

Back when Linux was only starting to be seriously considered for mission-critical IT infrastructure, the U.S. market was owned by Red Hat and littered with also-rans, which included SuSE. Becoming the undisputed contender was our objective, and many things went into the process. One aspect though was understanding Red Hat’s communication plan and knowing who made IT decisions. At that time, CxOs were willing to use Linux for non-critical file and print servers, but little else. Yet Oracle, IBM and others SuSE partners were ramping up for a market revolution.

At that time, Red Hat was committing the classic marketing mistake of relying on what had made them successful in the past, namely talking to techies who took Linux into IT. In the typical IT hierarchy, techies had functional veto power over some IT decisions, but not the strategic ones. We decided if Red Hat wanted to talk to techies, we would romance CxOs by understanding their long-range strategic plans and articulating how Linux (especially SuSE Linux) could make their strategies succeed. While marketing did this, out PR team convinced the media that discussing anyone else aside from Red Hat and SuSE was a mistake and substantiated that notion.

The point of this example was that SuSE could have gone toe-to-toe with Red Hat, attempting to win the minds and hearts of techies everywhere. Instead we nurtured them with technical fodder while telling their bosses how SuSE would make business imperative strategic decisions possible. This did not guarantee sales, but it did guarantee two important things: SuSE would be on the short list and techies would have to justify why Red Hat was better than SuSE (and since CxOs knew that core Linux was nearly identical regardless of distribution, techies could not justify Red Hat).

You can apply the same basic strategy to positioning within a market or even a segment. Odds are there exist a dozen different viable positions within your market, and that most of them are vacant. Competing for the hot spot means restricting your market share and dominance because your competitors will get some of that business. Finding a position that you can dominate with little or no competition, then growing tentacles into other vacant positions allow you to grow more quickly and dominate the market, eventually squeezing the life out of your competitors.

Exploit, dominate and expand.

To use a football analogy, if your team did nothing but run successful three-yard plays every time, they would win every game, gaining twelve yards per every four downs. Market dominance is the same game played on a non-linear field. Run a safe play, get market share every play, then do it again.

That strategy would make even Lombardi smile.

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I once had HP, IBM, CA and a few other companies pimping my software.

This was long, long ago when my hairline was not retreating faster than a Baptist in a gay bar. I worked for a tiny five million dollar outfit and was brought on to implement their first real marketing department. After studying the market for a bit, it was obvious to me that our plug-in product survived only through partner-side adoption. Hence we carefully selected our partners (who collectively had more than 66% of each target segment) and promoted through them as well as directly to buyers.

We pulled prospects through direct marketing and pushed through partners. We bumped top-line revenues over 25% in the first year (well, the first nine months actually).

One of the reasons this worked is believability. B2B software buyers are a cynical and skeptical lot because those are survival traits. Blindly buying into vendor promises is slightly less foolish than buying a politician’s.  Vendor claims are the least trusted, and thus by themselves make poor promotion. People need validation, and in a world where nobody has the time to validate every feature of every competing solution, buyers seek outside confirmation that spending corporate lucre will not result in unemployment.

Partner pimping, providing the pimp is the parent in the relationship, works well. Though not the best validation source, a vendor on whom you already rely has earned some trust … or at least painful commitment. Buyers will trust that vendor’s advice on partner products that complete the vendor’s whole product offering. Buyers assume (rightly in most cases) that the parent vendor has vetted selected partners and that the offering isn’t complete crud.

Assurance via shared potential failure.

Even more so than vendors, peer referral is the best trust builder. Before social media, the most you could hope for were trade shows and special events where peers could reinforce recommendations. This led large companies to create their own events so happy customers could infect the thinking of prospects. But unless you are a big firm, this isn’t always an option. If you are the child product in a partnership, you may be able to leverage the parent’s events.

The marketing lesson is that buyers require validation (even consumers look for the UL label). Your propaganda is insufficient. Prospects need third party assurances that you are worth the investment. Make validation an equal part of your promotional effort.

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Marketing is a bit like target practice. You aim for the middle to score the most points.

Start-ups are notoriously bad at targeting their buyers. Instead of using a hunting rifle, they choose a shotgun, scattering their marketing spend over vast areas of ill-defined buyers. Thus their spend per new customer is higher than it should be, and their stable of customers contain awkward fits who will be less happy with the product that well targeted buyers.

Start-ups entrepreneurs shoot their investment wad and go home without winning.

Go-to-market plans need to identify everyone that influences a purchase decision in a viable market segment. If you have not segmented – properly or at all – and you have only vague ideas about the functional and emotional motivations of buyers, their bosses and subordinates, then you are shooting blindfolded and will miss your target.

Here are the essential steps in formulating a sound go-to-market plan:

Be realistic: Whittle down your total market first into your addressable market, then your realistic market. Narrowing your market helps you to narrow your R&D and marketing spend.

Divide to conquer: Segmenting is essential, so make sure you not only segment your realistic market based on appropriate vectors, but that the segments you prioritize are viable (you have a good whole product fit, the segment lacks competition and everyone therein communicates freely with one another).

Know their DNA: Odds are more than one person will be involved in the buy decision. Learn all their separate motivations (functional and emotional), what mandate and veto powers they have, and compose your value propositions and market messages to match.

Only then do you have your sights set and adjusted … only then should you pull the trigger on your go-to-market campaigns.

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