Category Archives: Messaging

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 →

Visualizing Innovation, Value and Brand

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When innovating a market, there are three specific intersections that define your products, your value propositions and your brand. Visualizing these intersections leads to a very clear understanding where to focus your outbound marketing. Our new Silicon Strategies Marketing white paper – – creates the visualization framework you need to communicate within your organization so everyone is clear on how to communicate to the market. Download now and see how intersections between the possible, desirable, needs, differentiations, thoughts and feelings define your brand.

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Pointed Communications

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A relative of mine tells her stories … for hours … before ending them with her point. Good thing she isn’t in marketing. Get to the point quickly, then fill in the gaps. I was recently reminded of this while being a judge for the CODiE awards. I think I’m in my 573rd year of being a CODiE judge. The contestant’s presenter launched into a live demo of the product without summarizing what the product did much less its key value propositions. Thankfully he skipped the all-too-common dozen or so slides providing background about the company and other snore generators. He was like my relative, all too eager to tell his story as opposed to telling me why I should care. With attention spans shrinking fast as content explodes, getting to the point becomes ever more important. Telling people why they should care up front causes them to care. When … 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 →

Liars Leverage

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If your prospects think a problem is not easily solved, you may find it difficult to convince them you can easily solve it . One of the few must read marketing books is Seth Godin’s All Marketers are Liars, the central thesis of which is that all people tell themselves lies and a good marketer merely agrees with whatever lies are being told. This is well and good when the customers’ lies are sympatico with the product’s value, but causes friction when they are not. This came to light recently when a CMO conclave to which I belong started discussing “big data”, the current marketing and IT hype monster. The consensus among CMOs – right or wrong – is that integrated digital marketing intelligence and analysis is difficult – so durn difficult that only the biggest, bravest and wealthiest of marketing organization are attempting it or doing it well. CMOs … Continue reading →

Warm Coke

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One drop of water makes a difference. In marketing and product design, the accumulation of tiny details motivates people to want. I would argue that Apple designed the iPhone with a critical mass of tiny little features, and the one huge feature of simplicity. Together they wowed the world. In marketing, knowing the motivations of your target audience and subtly tickling each fancy creates an irresistible offering. Which makes me wonder when Coke forgot this reality. Coke is one of the best marketing machines on Gawd’s grey earth. From cuddly polar bears (who in real life can rip the flesh off a seal in seconds) to kumbaya songs suited to the hippie era, Coke touches consumer sentiments and constantly creates product preference (being a Georgia born southerner and former Atlanta resident, I have natural bias about their product anyway, as do most people south of Masson and Dixon). But Coke … Continue reading →