Category Archives: Advertising

Cow Wine

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Seth Godin is a wino. Well, I don’t know this to be true, but he indirectly inspired and Oregon winery to market to Seth’s precepts. I was escaping Portland’s Silicon Forrest area, randomly driving southward. While cruising slowly through the town of Newberg – the Sonoma of Oregon – I saw a wine tasting room for Purple Cow Vineyards. Being a marketer, the Purple Cow label grabbed my attention, not for the reasons Seth Godin outlined in his book of the same title, but because I recognized the title itself. Since my wife was with me, and because she has successfully turned me into a wine snob, I had to drop in for a taste. After chatting amicably with the co-founder, I mentioned that among marketers “Purple Cow” was practically a verb. Before I could get deeper into my monologue, the owner reached up to the top shelf, and grabbed … Continue reading →

Copy Wronging

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Marketing copywriters are like novelists: they don’t like critics. During a recent client copywriting process, I tighten reins on a copywriter who had soared off the cliffs of bombastic prose, painting the client as a little too good to be true. This otherwise bright and competent copywriter, evidently distracted thinking about his unfinished novel, had peppered his newly wrought copy with words that created a sense of disbelief. Such words are easy to spot … just look at the “about us” page of any funded start-up. When you see “market leading”, “disruptive” and “compelling”, then they likely are none of the above and you immediately sense it. Words can trigger emotions, and good copywriters – armed with a competent branding guide – will select the right words to evoke the right emotion. Word churners (a polite word for “hack”) often pick easy and dramatic sounding words in an attempt to … Continue reading →

Marketing Expectations

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Your customers expect what you tell them to expect, and what you don’t tell them to. Outbound marketing is largely about setting customer expectations, which we do through branding, messaging, feeds-and-speeds lists, pricing and so much more. After encountering a product, customers have gut-level sets of expectations. Drive past a posh French restaurant and a dirty taco truck, and you have two completely different expectations concerning your culinary experience. Where bad and good buzz begins is when you set one expectation and deliver another. Set expectations low and deliver high, then people sing your praises everywhere. Invert the expectations and results and you likewise invert a customer’s public reaction. Marketing is responsible for defining those expectations, and presenting most of them (every employee who interacts with customers is also responsible, and great CEOs make sure they all set the right expectations). Marketing defines the brand – a primary expectation-setting tool … 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 →

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 →

Content Discontent

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All companies, small to large, love and hate content marketing. A recent survey shows that enterprises and small/mid-sized businesses (SMBs) believe content marketing is the most effective inbound tactic. They also rank it as the most difficult. They note that lead nurturing is also tough. This means that they are not achieving their goals, especially at the intersection of content and moving prospects toward buying. I have actually herded cats, and it is simpler than content marketing. Content marketing is important for multiple reasons. It helps you in being found by prospects. Done well, it creates believability and authority in your brand and your products. And used properly, it can nudge a prospect along their path of discovery toward purchase. Yet few individuals or marketing teams have a critical mass of expertise to make content strategy, planning, creation and timing a reality. Even expensive marketing automation suites are useless if … Continue reading →

Content Conundrum

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If content is king then some content creators are court jesters. Content marketing is a hot topic, which is odd because marketing has always been about content. Long ago we used to buy expensive ad space in magazines (younger readers may need to Google that word). Television is content and product placements in entertainment are as well. Content has always been the marketing communications medium. The new excitement comes from people hot over the idea that creating gobs of digital content, which has a near zero distribution cost, is a great way to market. Except when producing a slick, urban YouTube video for backwoods survivalists. Content has always required targeting – what content, for which audience and at what point in their buying cycle. Mismatch any of these three elements and you are spending money to create content that won’t work, isn’t consumed, or may even kill sales by inducing … Continue reading →