The last few months, I’ve mostly written about how to develop, recognize, and tune a viable product and market strategy.  Now I’d like to switch gears a bit and discuss how to “talk the talk.” 

Often, getting people to understand what you do and why you are of value is just as hard as or harder than developing the product.  There is a huge amount of noise out there – lots of vendors with lots of products making lots of claims.  Unfortunately, we’re coming out of a period of two or three years where noise levels reached new highs and the intended listeners reacted the way you would expect them to react – by putting their fingers in their ears and hands over their eyes.  “Hear no evil, see no evil, get duped by no evil vendor claims” seems to be the mantra of the buying public these days.  Strong doses of healthy cynicism and a “buyer beware” attitude prevail.  Combine that with ebbing budgets, and you have a very difficult market to sell to.

So, with all this noise, how do you get your story heard?  First of all, let me say that although this Musing is about outbound marketing, none of the suggestions below are useful unless you have a really good product that addresses real customers needs.  You can’t turn a pig into a princess.  If you find you are having trouble articulating your value, don’t just review your MarCom plan -critique your product strategy.  The problem most likely lies there.  But assuming your product has value that can be articulated, here are some suggestions about how to cut through the noise and get your message heard.

Get Customers

The #1 way to create an aura of believability – and, by the way, the best way also to build revenue – is to get customers.  The early customers won’t come from marketing actions.  They come from direct interaction by Product Management, Engineering, and Business Development.  These early interactions are critical for validating the product specification, but are also a good proving ground for determining what kind of messaging and communications works best. 

Once you have these customers, the MarCom problem becomes simplified.  The cynicism applied by analysts, the press, potential partners and prospective customers to the claims you make is reduced by at least an order of magnitude, if you already have a reasonably-sized list of customers in your target space.  The thinking is – these customers must have done their homework and investigated all of the other vendors in the space or alternative ways to solve their problem, yet they chose you.  I didn’t quite “get it” the first time I heard your story, but I better go back and look at you more closely. 

Success builds on success. So focus your early energies on your early customers. And serve them well so that they’ll say good things about you. 

Be Patient

In general, power comes from releasing energy at the right moment.  Look at Tiger Woods, Barry Bonds, Andre Agassi, and Bruce Lee as examples to that.  They release their energy when they are in the hitting zone.  Not before and not after.  It takes a lot of preparation and excellent timing.  Mere mortals can’t achieve it and we waste a lot of motion and dissipate a lot of energy resulting in drives that barely make it to the ladies tee. 

The same concept of pent-up energy and last-second release to achieve maximum impact applies to marketing.  Too often people confuse “first-to-market” with “first-to-marketing.”   It is important to deliver a product in a timely fashion, so that you can capture customers and then regularly improve the product to deepen the value proposition and raise the barrier to entry for competition.   It is less important to be the first company to talk about a new product idea, propose a new product category, or introduce new concepts and vocabulary to the market – unless you have a product with customers to back it up.

So it is generally best to wait to launch a company until you have a product, and to launch a product until you have customers – at least beta customers.  In the meantime you can hone your messages and your launch plan – building up energy – so that when released it will have the maximum impact. 

You shouldn’t feel that you have to rush to get your message out to the market in fear someone else will do it first.  I call these ‘Premature Articulations’ and they can be quite embarrassing.  Only two scenarios can happen when someone beats you to the punch in marketing: 

1. They are marketing ahead of themselves. They can’t ship the product or they ship something far less than what was promised.  In this case they are creating awareness and a demand they can’t fulfill; something you can take advantage of when you launch and ship.  In this scenario it is best to just remain quiet at the market level and let them expose their strategy and dissipate their energy. You’ll want to stay in close contact with your prospective customers here; to make sure vaporware doesn’t sway them.  But other than that, you can just continue on your plan and look forward to your future successful launch.
    
2. They really have something, they are shipping it, and they beat you to market.  In this case you may need to go back to your strategy and see what, if any, adjustments you need to make.  In this scenario, you’ll be glad that you haven’t announced yourself yet because then you won’t have to expend energy trying to get people to forget what you already said when you come out with your modified story.

It is rare that marketing ahead of your headlights is a useful and positive thing, although it may feel good for a few months until the ramifications become visible.  

Less Is More

Usually, product design teams build a lot of features and little “tricks” into every product, each one of which is clever and useful.  The mistake people often make, however, is to try to reflect all of these features and capabilities into their marketing and sales materials.  MarCom is an area where less is more.  As a start-up your company can only be about one thing.  Each product can only support one or two applications and can only reflect two or three key values.   Any more messaging than this creates noise that adversely affects the communications to your prospective customers.  Therefore choose your highest-level messages very carefully.  Every word counts.  Spend a lot of time thinking about these words, positioning, tag lines, product names, etc., because you only have a limited number of bullets to shoot.  As you drill down into more detailed product descriptions, be consistent in vocabulary. Express each feature in a way that can be traced back to the core product positioning and values.  If you have a bunch of features that don’t easily relate back to the core messaging, don’t go back and dilute the message by adding more to it. Instead, think why the product even has those features.  You may have built more into the product than what is really important to your target customers.  If the features are valuable for other applications or customers, maybe it’s a sign that you should spin off a separate product. 

Don’t Stretch The Truth (Much)

Some people put marketing into the same general category as lawyers – i.e. paid liars.   I like to think this association is extremely insulting to most marketers, but I can’t get too upset about it, because it is a reasonable analogy in some cases.  Some marketers assume that the rule for external communications is exaggeration and outright lying and telling the truth is the last resort. But I look at marketing as a translation function.  Translate the technology developed by deeply committed engineers into vocabulary and values understandable by the users and benefactors of that technology.  As in any translation activity, clarity is key. The goal is not to have lots of large font exclamations, but to have a clear and concise story that communicates to potential purchasers how they would benefit from using your product.  If your strategy is good, a clear story will be differentiated, compelling, and newsworthy.  Anything else – wild claims and exaggerations, provocative graphics, competitor bashing, etc. – obfuscates such communication and should only be used if and when you don’t have a good story to tell.  In the long run, what you really depend on in marketing is believability – without that no one will listen to you no matter how good your story is.  You’ve got to make sure that your customer experience is in line with what you promised – or else you’ll lose customers much faster than your deceptive marketing helps win them. 

Influence The Influencers

It is hard to deliver your messages directly and clearly to every possible customer for your products and services.  The broader the target customer base, the more this is true.  Semiconductor companies selling to a few key OEMs have an easier time than systems companies selling to enterprises who in turn have an easier time than companies selling to consumers.  But in all cases, some kind of leverage is needed to make your communication channel wider and louder than you can do on your own.  One way to do that is to make sure your messages are understood and bought into by analysts and trade press. 

There are really two types of analysts who, for all intents and purposes, you can really lump together – Industry Analysts and Investment Banking Analysts.  Some of the smartest, most technical people in the technology ecosystem, who have a lot of influence on potential customers, investors, and partners, are these analysts.  There are a few posturers and brain-dead people who represent themselves as analysts as well.  But the good ones generally understand the market and competition well, and as a result represent the acid test for new companies, products, and value propositions.  You’ll want to identify two or three who specialize in your market segment and engage them early and often (usually for pay) as you develop your business plan, product plan, and go-to-market messaging.  As you get closer to launching your business or your product, you’ll then want to coordinate a “road show,” where you take your story to other selected industry analysts and long-lead press so they understand what you are doing.  This is essential because shortly thereafter, when you do your press tour with the trade rags and other quick turn-around press, you’ll want to tell them which analysts you have briefed.  The reporters will generally call one or two of these analysts to get an opinion on the news worthiness of your announcement, get some clarification of the details, and to get a quote so that they have to think up fewer words for their articles themselves.  You’ll also want to give the analysts and/or press a few customer contacts they can call.  If you do that, you’ll immediately jump into the category of “one out of a hundred” and almost guarantee yourself good press coverage. 

Briefing these influencers is not a one-shot deal.  You’ll need to get back to them every once in a while with fresh news.  And I emphasize “news,” i.e. updates of substance.  It’s a good idea to do that within their memory window, which is about six months for analysts and two or three months for the press.

Summing Up

Hopefully this gives you some useful information about when and how to launch your company or product into the public conscience.  At all times remember it is a lot easier to market and sell a product that was built from day one with a real customer need in mind than it is to find a market for something built with no particular user need in mind.  

(volume 4, number 11)

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