Marketing Spin or Market Value?
A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at a seminar next to an independent consultant. He was telling me about some new initiatives from Cisco around monitoring and controlling computer devices. The first example involved automatically turning all the phones & computers off in a call center when they are not in use in order to save energy. The idea being if it was a two shift operation, the devices could be automatically turned off for the idle third shift. The second scenario was putting RFID tags on newborn babies. If the baby left their room without authorization, the hospital elevators and doors would lock automatically, and the hospital would ensure the infant was not abducted.
After explaining these with much enthusiasm he said, “I do not know if there is any real value in these, but Cisco is a marketing machine, so we believe we can make some good money.”
Without debating the value of the initiatives, it made me wonder: How much success is inherent value versus pure spin marketing? Obviously on the strategic side of marketing the whole objective is to find new markets and deliver value, but fundamentally there has to be some core value. No question spin marketing can accelerate the success or even ensure it gets a strong enough foothold, but if there is not enough core value, the marketing efforts will be expensive and time consuming.
Do You Need a Psychiatrist?
Over the New Year’s holiday I was at a friend’s for dinner and we played a game called “psychiatrist”. It can be quite fun, if a little bit risqué. The game requires at least 7 or 8 people, with one playing the psychiatrist. The person being the shrink cannot have played the game before and here’s why. All the others have the same problem, and it is up to the psychiatrist to find out what that problem is by asking probing and personal questions. The condition that every player has is that they are answering the questions based on they believe person to their right would answer. The final twist is that when someone gets an answer wrong, the person to their right must declare “psychiatrist”, at which point they switch seats. You get the point.
The above game got me thinking about lead qualification and the sales process. Is your sales team wondering around asking diagnostics questions trying to find the pain and compelling event? In today’s world creating a strong differentiated value proposition is just the start. Even developing compelling and consistent messaging is typically best practice. However, these are not enough. What I believe complex sales require is a diagnostics map. A diagnostic map basically provides guidance on where to probe based on the prospects context. The context includes the customers business, vertical, organization, etc. as well as where you are in the sales process.
Do you have any good examples of a diagnostic map?
Messaging Fairy Tale
Recently I was walking through Heathrow airport and was struck by HSBC’s “Different Points of View” campaign. The main point of the campaign is that a simple word or image can mean very different things to people based on culture, context, etc. One example is shown above with a picture of a bridal couple on top of a wedding cake. There are three different versions with the messages: Fear, Fate, Fairy Tale.
It re-enforced how critical messaging and context is to high tech marketing. In this world it is almost always a complex sale, with multiple communications channels (e-mail, phone calls, meetings, formal PowerPoint presentations, etc.), each hitting different roles within the prospect. Although it is obvious the VP of transportation will have different perspective than the director of IT; getting the right message, delivered in the right way can be challenging. How the messages are “packaged” impacts their effectiveness as shown in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink.
The following is a starting point to deliver strong messaging:
1) Define the titles and roles you need to reach
2) Based on role what are the most relevant value points
3) What are the best channels to reach these people? In this case channels might be as simple as an e-mail blast or as sophisticated as a complex discovery process.
A core messaging map is a useful internal tool that can be used by marketing communications, sales, business development, product marketing to ensure content and tools for the campaign are aligned. In today’s social marketing world with information overload, the right messaging and context are fundamental.
Everyone is in Marketing
The glory is in sales…especially when the deals are big. Everyone in the company likes to take credit for a big win. Marketing created the lead, engineering added features for the demo, finance drew up new pricing….of course when the deal goes south it is sales fault: he did not sell high enough, she did not understand the decision process, we did not create a compelling event. Having said all this, it is true that most companies and employees are willing and able to help drive sales – we are all in sales…without the quota.
So why don’t people say “We are all in marketing”? Well in fact everyone should think about how they can be in marketing. May areas of the company can be fantastic champions of the message and can be used to amplify success. A couple of examples,
- When a press release is issued – Does your services team use to re-enforce success with customers? Does your sales team use it to nurture prospects drive home a key value proposition?
- When a customer testimonial is created – Does professional services use it to expand their relationship in their accounts? Does business development use it to target stale prospects?
One of marketing’s jobs is to create great content. In today’s world of Linkedn and social media all employees can be supporters of getting the word out.
Creating Buzz – Cheap
It is always fun to see clever people in marketing, and new ideas. Google has always been innovative, first with their search technology, how they went public, the list goes on. They create a culture of innovation that permeates beyond technology but into their business, and specifically marketing. Their tradition of adjusting their logo on the search page is a good tactic that re-enforces their creativity. Today’s “moving dots” goes beyond the tradition and has create a ton of buzz and visibility in WSJ.
Getting this buzz is clever and relatively cheap.
Marketing Strategy – Maturity Scorecard
The most fundamental question in assessing your marketing maturity is “Do you have a strategy?” Although fundamental this is often not crisp or may be very well thought out but not well communicated. Here are some questions that need to be answered to ensure your market strategy is well founded:
- Have you defined your target prospect/customer? What types of industry, what size? Who in these companies will buy?
- Do you have a well defined value proposition? Is your messaging aligned with the different roles your will encounter in selling?
- Are you well positioned? Is your value proposition and messaging differentiated? Do you understand the competitive landscape? What competitive strengths do you have?
- How do you go to market? Are you leveraging a direct sales model? Do you need a channel? Are there partners involved?
- Are the results (sales & customer wins) consistent with what the strategy expects? This is the ultimate measure of success.
Communicating the strategy is just as important as having one. If not well communicated a crisp & sharp strategy bleeds into average.
The following table will help you score yourself on market strategy. For each attribute of strategy you can score between 0-25 points, for a total of 100.
Marketing Maturity Scorecard
High technology marketing is a mix of art, science, luck, and hard work. It also requires a diverse set of skills which include strategic planning, creativity, ROI analysis , etc. If you have multiple solutions at various stages in their life-cycle, how do you balance your investment in time and dollars?
I have recently created marketing maturity scorecard to share with the rest of the executive team and the board of directors to ensure alignment in the mix of investment across solutions. Essentially the scorecard captures 4 key elements:
- Messaging, positioning – Do you have a clear value proposition, the correct positioning, and the supporting messaging?
- Assets/Content – Do you have a set of supporting sales tools (or assets) such as whitepapers, PowerPoints, brochures, etc. that support your positioning?
- Customer Proof Points – What customer testimonials do you have? Prospects want this way more than your brochure.
- Promotional/Lead Gen – Do you have the right promotional plan, do you know which channels leads to which prospects and roles?
In my case the solution portfolio include a mature market where we are market leaders and the marketing objectives are to re-enforce market leadership and generate leads. Alternatively I have a brand new solution where first we need decide what we can say, and then build the brand.
I will drill into each of these topics over the next few posts.
Any Position Will Do
Creating and ensuring consistent & strong positioning is one of the most important tasks for a marketing person to do. If the marketing team does not consciously create and communicate the positioning, the market and sometimes the competition will do it for you. I am a big fan of Pragmatic Marketing, and they have a great article on positioning. The key points include:
- You cannot create the positioning in a vacuum, it has to be supported by the positioning, brand reputation that already exists
- The supporting messaging has to be credible
- Positioning should be problem/solution focused, rather than feature/function
In my experience even marketing professionals get confused between value proposition, positioning, branding, tagline, mission statement, elevator pitch, and messaging. However, if marketing people get confused, imagine the rest of the organization. In today’s world of blogs, twitter, podcasts, it is critical that everyone in your company understand your positioning and leverage when communicating with customers, and prospects about your company.
How does it fit together? I propose that pretty much anything and all major external communications must be positioned. Examples includes: a major product release, job postings, a new product launch, an acquisition.
First and foremost, to ensure consistency, when I say positioning, I do not mean a tagline or elevator pitch, although those can be derived from positioning. I am referring to a one page positioning document. I use the template from Pragmatic Marketing. It covers
- Problem statement
- Solution statement
- Primary message
- Product description
- Three supporting benefits-oriented features
It’s design is to support positioning a product or a product release, but it can be adjusted for other announcements.
In putting this together, it should be done with a group that includes product manager, marketing communications, input from a thought leader on your sales team. The hardest part is trying to get it all on one page, with as few words as possible, while at the same time, creating meaningful content.
Finally, to build and leverage consistency product releases should build upon product positioning, which in turn should build on corporate positioning. So whether your company is a start-up or an established market leader, create and write down your corporate positioning, then ensure all appropriate stakeholders know it.
Presidential Nominee – demandware
Now that the republican convention is reaching its summit, I will nominate demandware as a presidential nominee for excellent positioning. I steered clear of larger companies such as SAP or Oracle because their brand is so well known, it makes analyzing positioning a little irrelevant. Although I do think SAP’s positioning of solutions for the mid market is an interesting challenge, but that is for another day.
As with Sterling Commerce I reviewed how they cover: description of what a company does, value they provide, and differentiation. How succinct and credible the story are also key. These 5 factors are scored as follows:
-
Presidential - Excellent score, top marks
The main item I really like about demandware description if themselves is their mix of actual content with messaging.
- First of all on the web site label the company background as “Our Story”, and they tell a story
- They start with facts and problems they solve, not a long blub about the company
- They mix vision, excitement with grit.
Let’s look at the details. The main description of the “their story”
The vision-then and now-was clear: bring to market an enterprise-class ecommerce solution that would put more power and innovation in the hands of merchandisers and at the same time would remove the technical costs, risks and complexities of running an ecommerce operation. We took what we knew of great ecommerce merchandising (our founders have been in ecommerce since 1994) and applied to it the then-emerging advancements in Software-as-a-Service architectures and dynamic grid computing. Then we worked hard. We stayed up late. We drank lots of coffee. And ultimately, in late 2005, we delivered the market’s first on-demand enterprise ecommerce platform
1) What the demandware does:
“bring to market an enterprise-class ecommerce solution that would put more power and innovation in the hands of merchandisers”
Clear delivery of a solution, clear target prospect.
Score: 
2) Value:
They start with facts such as
eCommerce merchandising and marketing innovation is what generates the revenue, yet most operations are spending 80% of their budgets simply maintaining current infrastructure
The description of value is bold, empower the key business champion in the prospect, limit challenges and implications for IT.
“put more power and innovation in the hands of merchandisers and at the same time would remove the technical costs, risks and complexities of running an ecommerce operation”
3) Differentiation
They tout their vision, SaaS technology and hard work. I like the mix and believe the “Then we worked hard. We stayed up late. We drank lots of coffee.” Quote adds humor and balance to the vision. Essentially, they are acknowledging it is hard stuff and they work hard.
4) Being Succinct
Very good
- 1) Start with problem
- 2) Single paragraph on company
- 3) Customer validation
5) Being Credible:
Their experience, vision, creativity oozes through.
Related is a good article by Craig Stull on Cuil. He mentions they called themselvesa Google killer. Not a very good positioning strategy. Get real. After looking at their web site they call themselves “the world’s biggest search engine”…..Hmmmm
Positioning is definitely not the be all and end all. Targeting a real market, with solid products and great customer experiences are all critical.
Let me know your thoughts.
