Category Archives: Marketing Strategy

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 →

That’s Different!

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When Lady Gaga donned a meat dress, people said “That’s … errr … different.” Differentiation is what drives both companies and products, which means differentiation is one of the most import things to occupy your attention immediately after corporate cash flow and the last donut in the break room. Being different is a communication of value, and value is what people pay for. Yet, not all differentiation is equal and not all differentiation is sustainable (e.g. Madonna). Product differentiation is the easier to understand, and oddly the less valuable of the two. When your product is different in a way that matches the needs or desires of a targeted audience, then sales are sped. But product differentiation is short lived, even if you have patents. The differentiation you invent today will be cloned by your competitors tomorrow. Likewise, there are differing

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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 →

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 →

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 →

Complex Customers

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Executive assistants have veto power over multi-million dollar software sales. Complex selling involves a lot of complexity, none more complex than having to deal with many different stakeholders with very different motivations. Once two or more people collaborate on a purchase decision, they raise questions, voice objections, derail progress and drag-out your sales cycle until the Second Coming. Sometimes the lowest caste can kill a sales single handedly. IT techies are the worst in many respects – having been one in a former career, I can attest to their ultimate veto power. Tell an avid Windows admin that you want to install a Linux infrastructure and you’ll meet a wall that howitzers couldn’t knock over. Techies know nothing happens without their expert participation, and they gladly use their veto power to guard their empires. Marketing and sales need to manage the sales cycle, engaging stakeholders at points in time when … Continue reading →