{"id":92590,"date":"2014-02-20T08:19:14","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T16:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/spearmarketing\/fcmL\/~3\/cBCq5BvhhxY\/"},"modified":"2014-02-20T08:19:30","modified_gmt":"2014-02-20T16:19:30","slug":"how-the-answer-to-one-question-can-tell-you-how-to-market-your-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/how-the-answer-to-one-question-can-tell-you-how-to-market-your-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Answer to One Question Can Tell You How to Market Your Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the first questions I ask any prospective technology client is the following:<\/p>\r\n

\u201cImagine your product on a spectrum. At one end of that spectrum are commodity products \u2013 CRM, for example \u2013 people know these products exist, they understand the problem that the products solve, and they recognize when they have that problem.\"demand<\/a><\/p>\r\n

At the other end are products in a completely nascent category \u2013 people have never heard of the product, they don\u2019t know this type of product exists, and they may not even know they have the problem in the first place. Which end of the spectrum are you closer to?\u201d<\/p>\r\n

How a company answers this question tells me a great deal about two things:<\/p>\r\n

1. Whether a company should predominantly use inbound or outbound marketing;
\r\n2. The type of content most likely to work best for demand generation<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

I\u2019ll explain:<\/span><\/p>\r\n

For a company selling a commodity-type product, or close to it, there\u2019s little need to educate the market on why a particular company needs that product. People know when they need it; they just need to decide which vendor to do business with. At its essence, marketing commodity products is simply about being in the right place at the right time. As a vendor of CRM solutions (to use that same example), when a prospect determines that he\/she has a need for CRM, you want your marketing message to be in a place, at that very moment, that makes your company part of the conversation.<\/p>\r\n

Commodity products are tailor-made for inbound marketing: SEO, paid search<\/a> (SEM), content marketing, online display advertising. Commodity vendors don\u2019t need to educate prospects about the need for their technology, they just need to establish a critical mass of online presence to the point where a prospect looking for information on that category \u2013 on any given day, at any given time \u2013 finds their product. We often refer to inbound marketing programs as \u201cair cover\u201d \u2013 meaning, they run 24\/7 and provide a consistent stream of leads while the company pursues more targeted, tactical campaigns against specific accounts or market segments.<\/p>\r\n

The type of content that works best for commodity products is typically later-stage content: buyer\u2019s guides, case studies, ROI calculators, analyst reports, etc. Again, it\u2019s not essential that the content provide a business case for why a company would want to buy this product, it should simply appeal to a company already shopping for a product in this category.<\/p>\r\n

Technology companies in nascent product categories have an entirely different challenge. Inbound programs can have limited effectiveness because no-one is searching for their type of product. Vendors in these categories need to first educate the market \u2013 one, that these products exist, two, that the problem (what prospective clients may perceive as the \u201cstatus quo\u201d) even exists in the first place, and three, that there\u2019s a compelling business case for investing in the technology.<\/p>\r\n

Companies in these categories need to invest much more, proportionately, in outbound campaigns \u2013 that is, taking their message to the audience, rather than simply waiting around for the audience to find them. A company in a nascent product category is more likely to find value in a database marketing approach, one in which they acquire \u201ccold\u201d names of prospects that meet target demographic criteria, and then market to those prospects consistently over time with a stream of informational offers.<\/p>\r\n

Similarly, the type of offer content most likely to work for nascent products is more often early stage content \u2013 white papers, infographics, Webinars \u2013 offers that have an educational bent and focus on a particular pain, business challenge, or technical issue (coincidentally the very same pain\/challenge\/issue that the product solves.) Marketers in nascent categories need to educate the market before they can expect people to evaluate their technology.<\/p>\r\n

Inbound marketing can work for nascent products also, but only to the extent that the content on offer speaks to a pain\/challenge\/issue, market event, or industry trend that prospects are likely to be researching or looking for information on how to address. Social media can play a key role in that it helps spread the word about a particular solution or problem.<\/p>\r\n

Where does your product fit on the spectrum? And does your demand generation strategy align with the type of product you\u2019re selling?<\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the first questions I ask any prospective technology client is the following: \u201cImagine your product on a spectrum. At one end of that spectrum are commodity products \u2013 CRM, for example \u2013 people know these products exist, they understand the problem that the products solve, and they recognize when they have that problem. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}