Category Archives: Communications

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 →

Mixed Messaging

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If you want to delay sales and distort your brand, just mix a few messages. This came to light recently when a client needed to recast their brand, desiring their prospects to simultaneously feel relieved and excited. Though not entirely mutually exclusive, they are on opposite ends of the adrenaline spectrum. One might feel excited about the prospect of being relieved, but that is as close as these two concepts come. When a customer encounters you for the first time, they have to believe something about you. Even if they are skeptical, they must have in their hearts some notion about the value they would derive from giving you money. These value propositions, communicated in words, images, colors, videos and other modes can never be complicated (there isn’t enough time or customer patience) and they cannot be contradictory (“we will make you sexy and saintly”). For B2B companies, this is … 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 →

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 →

Rational Buyer Apathy

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If your prospects seem apathetic, they may be rational. “Rational apathy” is when people perceive a problem to be so small, or the solution to be so enormous that they become apathetic about it. After all, we cannot individually take on every woe in the world. In commerce, rational apathy exists when a problem does not, or the market doesn’t perceive a problem, or solving the problem seems insanely complicated. The word “rational” is included in the concept because prospects are making gut-level decisions concerning their needs and alternative (in)actions. Lackluster concern comes from the perceived effort and benefit in solving the problem, and takes one of many possible forms including but not limited to: No Pain: Prospects perceive that they do not face a threat, the pain within their situation, or that the pain is small enough to endure. Too big to correct: Solving the problem appears to be … Continue reading →