Category Archives: Product Marketing

SEO Centering

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Any competitive marksman will attest that you don’t have to hit the bull’s-eye to win a match. The same goes for marketing, including that corner of marketing called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For every product, there is a precise target audience and keywords that are compelling to making the buyer/product match. But no human has one single interest, and their interests tend to have subsidiary interests. Click here for the best SEO service. B2B buyers are no different. Enterprise Linux has always been more than just an operating system, and many people buy it for the stuff that comes bundled (MySQL, JBoss, Hadoop, Apache, etc.). Marketing and SEO Boerne, involves a greater scope of interest than the core product. Which is where some SEO companies mislead their customers. One can expand their keywords as to generate a great deal of

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Coaxing Channels

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I love complex markets that require collaboration with strategic partners, industry groups and channels. It is an exotic form of auto-masochism. Marketing requires appealing to byer motivations. But you are often not the only, or even the primary person delivering the marketing message. Intermediaries may deal more directly with end buyers than you. Yet for the buyer to receive a consistent message, perceive a consistent brand or believe a consistent value proposition, these outside organizations have to carry your message, value props and brand identities. Not being your employees, they have to be coaxed with something other than the possibility of instant unemployment. Intermediaries can either be

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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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →