Category Archives: Messaging

Brand Reversal

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“Bacon is health food” will never fly, but “pork, the other white meat” did pretty well. Brands are assigned by the market unless you force the market to think and feel what you want them to. Before 1987, it was common wisdom that eating pigs was bad for the body, and not just from uneducated cooks serving up sides of trichinosis. Bacon was evil and even pork chops were off everybody’s diet, regardless of a lack of religious law. This was bad for pig farmers as an increasingly health-conscious America was jogging with Jim Fix and rediscovering vegetables. Even ranchers were winning as they promoted leaner cuts of meat and mom discovered how to trim the fat we used to grill and swallow. Swine sellers fought back by launching the “Pork, the other white meat” marketing campaign to change the pig’s brand image. Pork prices rose, sales jumped 20%, and … Continue reading →

Copy Wronging

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Marketing copywriters are like novelists: they don’t like critics. During a recent client copywriting process, I tighten reins on a copywriter who had soared off the cliffs of bombastic prose, painting the client as a little too good to be true. This otherwise bright and competent copywriter, evidently distracted thinking about his unfinished novel, had peppered his newly wrought copy with words that created a sense of disbelief. Such words are easy to spot … just look at the “about us” page of any funded start-up. When you see “market leading”, “disruptive” and “compelling”, then they likely are none of the above and you immediately sense it. Words can trigger emotions, and good copywriters – armed with a competent branding guide – will select the right words to evoke the right emotion. Word churners (a polite word for “hack”) often pick easy and dramatic sounding words in an attempt to … Continue reading →

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 →

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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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 →