Author Archives: admin

Needy Wants

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Giving a customer what they want can be a bad thing. Long ago, I was on both the product management and product marketing side of some new technology. We had a few early adopter customers. One in particular was very engaged, right down to near daily communing with our software architect. Like all customers, he had a wish list of features and functions he wanted the product to sprout. Unlike most customers, he had money to spend. I had to turn down a lot of his feature requests, sponsored or not. There is a difference between what customers want and what they need. There is even a difference between what one customer needs and what every customer needs. Creating products based on wants becomes a stress-inducing cycle of unicorn hunting that never works. While trying desperately to create the perfect product for one or two customers, typically for the sake … Continue reading →

Simply Stupid

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Complexity creates friction, which if you are lucky, only drags out the sales cycle. More often than not, it kills sales. In B2B technology marketing, many solutions are complex and loaded with customer risk. The more complex the solution, the more friction is built into the sales process. Marketing’s primary job is to reduce friction, which means reducing complexity. Simplifying – distilling complex topics into focused value propositions and content – is the first order of business. Just don’t over simplify, especially for the wrong person. B2B technology sales typically involve several buyer personae (genotypes) that have different friction-generating concerns. Simplifying all content and applying it to every audience creates more friction, not less, because every genotype is left uninformed. Creating one piece of content for the CIO, CTO, server administrator, developer and third shift operator will educate none of them Likewise, even if content targets only one genotype, over-simplifying … Continue reading →

Noise Canceling

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Market squares have always been noisy places. I don’t care if it is a bazaar in Kabul or an Amazon customer discussion group. Whenever there are buyers and sellers, it gets loud. This is a problem for marketers. Basic communications theory says that there is a transmitter (the marketer), a receiver (the buyer) and noise in between. The more noise there is the less signal (your marketing messages) that get through to the buyer. The internet has made the situation both better and worse. Good marketers can precisely target their buyers in digital media. The problem is so can lousy marketers. Your perfect solution for a buyer’s point problem will not be heard if you are one of a million inbound messages. People aggressively filter, preferring the lost opportunity of hearing your message to the alternative of not hearing everybody’s message. With so many products and services being sold non-stop … Continue reading →

Changing Markets

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Start-up CEOs constantly talk about managing growth, but rarely about managing change (growth being only one type of change). It happens a thousand times faster in technology markets. Marketing must monitor markets, and identify changes early on (though the better approach is to keep reinventing the market yourself and driving your competitors nuts in the process). Here are a few things to watch, some of which you likely are not. Competitors and partners Competitors never sleep, and are trying to reinvent themselves, market expectations and the shape of the known universe. Monitoring what they do as well as what they say is important. What they do exposes areas of the market they think are of growing or shrinking importance, and this needs to be folded into your positioning planning. What they say reveals

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Keiretsu Whole Products

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An auto insurance company can make you feel loved. A recent event caused me to interact with my insurance company (Geico) to have some minor repair work performed. Geico does many things right, from well architected web site that deliver simple yet effective customer support, to claims agents who are fast and efficient, to non-offensive lizard spokesanimals. One element of their success is delivering a whole product on the ground by forming keiretsus with other companies. In this instance, I arrived at the designated body shop knowing that Geico had set my appointment and arranged for a free rental car. What I discovered is that Geico identifies service providers and helps to manage their cooperation for Geico customers. Body shop are selected to assure great service and quality work and the car rental company (in this case Enterprise) is selected for the same reasons. Enterprise is given a desk at … Continue reading →

Vaguely Blunt

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Some marketing messages are delivered like a 2×4 head shot. Others come and go like whispered gibberish. Blunt market messages cannot be mistaken, but lack emotional connections. The more vaporous varieties tend to say nothing, but say it prettily leaving customers delightfully confused. In B2B tech marketing you see attempts at both extremes and failures either way. They bomb because attaching to functional and emotional drivers delivers the best total cognitive attraction possible and short selling either part leads to incomplete customer connections. Where confusion enters the minds of marketers comes from not understanding their target audience. I had a client once who sold IT infrastructure software, yet decided they wanted an “irreverent” brand. The result was their messaging lacked the requisite blunt force trauma of traditional B2B communications aimed at executives making strategic technology decisions. This client’s failure to understand the typical no nonsense CxO led them to induce … Continue reading →

Operational Marketing

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Lying on the floor while talking to my insurance company shows why marketing must be involved with operations. In the past week I did business with a bedding retailer, which indirectly led to filing an insurance claim on my car. The bedding company’s operations were a disaster – they got precisely 0% of our order correct, causing my wife and I to camp on surplus mattresses placed on the bedroom floor, checking The Sleep Guide’s mattress protectors tips. Their late-arriving truck hogged the street, causing a passing vehicle to clip my side-view mirror. Unlike the bedding retailer, the insurance company (Geico) executed perfectly, from a well-designed web claims form to nearly instant claims analysis, body shop appointments rental car reservations and more. The contrast is stark. The bedding company experience after the sale (and to a lesser degree, during the sale) was a study in manufacturing customer frustration. The salesmen … Continue reading →