Category Archives: Marketing

Observations about the science of marketing technology

Tripping Customers

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My father was too fond of the old joke about a farmer and his mule. The punch line of the joke was that the farmer would whack the mule in its forehead with a two-by-four, saying “First you have to get his attention.” Customers are like that, though I don’t advocate felonious assault as a promotional tactic. Modern life is complicated to the point that we can only be distracted. Thus, distraction is the first act of promotion. If you cannot pry your prospects’ attention away from their work, smartphones, Facebook and on-demand videos, then you cannot possibly move them toward buying. Long gone are the sad old days of advertising when spokesmodels pointing to refrigerators with a disembodied droning voice pitching platitudes about the appliance. Customers are mules and have to be coaxed with similar bluntness. This is not new, though the chain of advertising practice is oddly convoluted … Continue reading →

Marketing Manual

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You would be surprised at the risks founders take, though they have fewer risks starting today. I have canned and condensed twenty years of marketing strategy knowledge, insight, tactics and war stories into a new book titled the Start-up CEO’s Marketing Manual. This book has one goal — to make sure you have the broad perspective on everything that goes into marketing strategy development. If that doesn’t scare you, nothing will. In my years working for and consulting to companies about marketing strategy, one thing has become painfully clear — very few people know it all. One classic example was an early client of mine (who remains nameless), a post-IPO company doing a very late pivot. During a kick-off meeting I asked them “What is your segmentation model?” They said it was industry verticals, which seemed odd to me. When I asked them why they chose that model they replied … Continue reading →

Play Real Good

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The violin’s heavy vibrato found my ear through the chaos of the subway. Being a music junkie, the stuff tends to get my attention. Hearing a well-played violin in a crowded underground tunnel filled with thousands of rush-hour commuters was a miracle. That it held me for a brief moment was regrettably common. We learned in Communications 101 that there are three factors in passing along info – the transmitter, the receiver and the noise in between. Transmitters, be they buskers or marketers, have to confront noise in order for their product to even be perceived. Like the subway scene in which an aspiring violinist struggled to be heard, marketers have only the tiniest moments of relative quiet to connect. But noise is growing. The ability of people to tune out is positively Darwinian. With promotional messages now coming via radio, TV, billboards, browsers, embedded in apps and on nearly … Continue reading →

Selling Vapor

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Ideas are tough to sell because people don’t adopt ideas easily. I knew a sci-fi writing couple who claimed to have popularized the concept of “ecology” in the 1960s as part of a language adoption experiment. Their observation (which may be sci-fi itself) was back then it took about seven years for a new concept to become culturally ubiquitous. We can assume that in our Internet age that it takes about seven minutes. The problem with marketing an idea of any type (including intangible services) is that ideas may or may not be facts. Facts, data, features, benefits – these are elements that people can wrap their minds around. They are manifestations of already adopted concepts, and thus easy to accept. When anthropogenic global warming theory was first released, nobody aside from a few alleged scientists had conceptualized the theory, and it took time (about seven years) for the notion … Continue reading →

B2B Emotive Marketing

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Emotions are valuable, and value is emotional. Value is what you advertise. Ignore features, benefits, functions, the color of the paint on the server chassis or even ROI. These may help create value or close deals, but they are not value itself, and people buy value. Your boss doesn’t value your protoplasm, and if he does there may be a sexual harassment suit in his future. He values what you can help him achieve, which in turn should be what your company needs to achieve. The marketing question is what is valued? Rarely is it a functional process or a technical specification. Outcome is the center of value. Take AwayFind, a company that alerts you when you have an important email waiting. They have many features which are not valuable. The outcome however – to not be enslaved by needing to constantly check email – is very valuable. It is … Continue reading →

Psycho Marketing

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When it comes to marketing, is your company a guru, sportsman or warrior? This may not be an exhaustive list of psychologies, but these three traits cover most go-to-market plans and mentalities I have encountered in B2B marketing. They can be as individual as the CMO or corporate-wide traits. Each has its own operational MO and they apply well to different markets. Pitted against one another, any can win depending on the market they seek to exploit. With some overlap, market dominating mutts can be whelped. Gurus: Passive marketing, which these days is largely typified by social media marketing, is nearly spiritual. It seeks to affectionately coax buyers to come forward — encouraging, not pushing. Gurus play the long game and seek actual relationships with customers, and are willing to take time, invest effort and wait for returns. Sportsmen: These are people who keep score. Market share, quarterly revenues, and … Continue reading →

Funnel Fun

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I don’t believe in sales funnels. It isn’t that they don’t exist or that customers no longer suffer requisite discovery steps before making a purchase. I don’t believe in sales funnels because one of marketing’s missions is to eliminate friction, to grease the path to purchase. Eliminating levels in the prototypical sales funnel speeds revenues and early retirement. It turns sales teams into order takers. It makes companies famous. But it ain’t easy. For green marketers reading this memo, typical B2B sales funnels have a number of stages where, according to ancient lore, potential buyers fall out. The funnel concept was born in the old days when mass communications were the most common promotional tool. Theory said that you had to cast your lead generation net wide, gathering anything that smelled like a prospect, then toss aside those that failed tests at each narrower neck in the sales funnel. This … Continue reading →