Are your sharing focused and compelling messages with your audiences?
Many technology businesses try to attract and and all potential audiences with their messages, many of which are based on technology features, instead customer value. That’s the kiss of death in today’s technology markets.
For example, I was looking at a potential client’s new website yesterday. I spent 30 minutes and was still scratching my head wondering what value the business provides to me – as the customer. I found claims for increased revenues and just plain super duper business results. Statistics and name dropping. Every popular buzzword in this specific industry right there on the Home Page for all to see. I had to do a deep dive into the website and look hard for the information I needed. Even worse, I had to distill and extrapolate the cool technology features and apply them to my own needs.
Forcing your audience to read between the lines, thinking they’ll take time to decipher your message, is a bad idea. When positioning your technology business, you want to resonate with the perspectives, language and problems of your audiences.
Follow these three Power Positioning steps to compelling clarity in your marketing.
- State your value in terms of benefits to your audience and their business. Forget the whizbang technology features and focus on the So What? for your buyer. Be compelling based on what your audience needs – not the technology widgets your company developed. Get out in the market and learn the key “So What?” benefits that buyers derive from your offerings – and share that value, not your technology brilliance.
- Be concise and focus. Forget the ambiguity. We tiptoe and generalize our statements when we’re uncomfortable, unsure, not wanting to say the wrong thing. We don’t want to lose a potential customer, so we try to generalize to make sure we appear valuable to all our prospects. That’s a sure way to fail at communication – and to confuse (or unimpress) those prospects for good. Know your target segments, focus on those segments and walk away from all the suspects who might, some day on a full moon on the 29th of February buy your offerings. Decide where you want to win and market to that audience – not the world.
- Don’t make your audience do the work – that’s your job. Sometimes we technology marketers throw a bunch of stuff (make that technobabble) at the wall to see what sticks. That’s expecting your prospects to do way too much work. Instead, you do the work for them. Bring your value to life, make it easy for prospects to see themselves and the benefits they’ll derive from your offerings. Share customer case studies that reflect your top prospect profiles, show them quantitative evidence of the results and how these customers created them. Paint a picture that answers their questions, not asks them to figure it out for themselves.
Always remember: Clear communication compels – general communication confuses and prospects move on.
