December 11, 2007

Thoughts from an overview of technology marketing

As part of the Monash Advantage program, I published a proprietary Monash Letter about online marketing … and another one … and some further stuff so proprietary I’m not even putting out teasers about it. Now I’ve taken the next step, and written another Letter with a complete overview of software-centric marketing strategy and tactics (lead generation aside). That’s proprietary too, and only available in full if you have access to the secure Monash Advantage website, but here are some semi-random highlights for public consumption.

When marketing product goodness, it’s useful to divide it into three categories: Reliability and simplicity; cost, performance, and high-concept architecture; and application feature/function. Techniques for marketing in these three areas are rather different.
One thing they have in common, however, is the great emphasis on customer success stories. Group-of-customers success claims can be even more important then individual ones, both in product marketing and in establishing general company “leadership” and financial strength.
There are at least 17 different venues for telling customer success stories. Few vendors come close to exploiting them all.
Also important to any kind of product claim is hands-on proof. That can be anything from a quick demo to an on-site proof-of-concept, depending in large part on what category of claim you’re trying to establish.
“De-positioning” is central to high-concept marketing. Even if you don’t do it yourself, you constantly need to defend against it.

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