Advice to Technology Marketers
It’s really kinda neat. Centric is working with more and more technology companies these days. Call it the economy, or call it a return to our roots (I’m an electronics engineer, Sue’s a chemist), but there’s one thing we really like about it: people in technology tend to be smart. Really smart.
Sometimes, maybe, a little too smart for their own good.
Let me illustrate with a quick case study. A couple of years ago, we had a client that was introducing a new technology. And by "technology," we don’t mean "a better iPod," but "something that serious scientists would use on the next generation of microprocessors." And, after we sat down with them and talked it through, it became apparent how much of a breakthrough this technology was. It was, simply, the ONLY way of doing what they were doing. As in, "Want to do this? We have the only solution. And we have enough patents to ensure that nobody else will have this solution, like, until we’re all running Windows 11 on our biomimetic brain-processors."
So, you’d think the advertising and outreach would be simple, right?
In an ideal world, yes. A message of "This is the only way to do X," when you know people have to do X in order to make the next generation of microprocessors work is dead simple. You don’t need to get into tricky metaphors or long lists of features.
But then brand marketing stepped in. "Can we reference this in terms of our core brand promise?" they asked. "Does this tie into the overall theme we’ve been developing?" "It seems too simple, can’t we add something more creative?" They were pushing us off a simple one-line statement that anyone could understand, and burying the key communication (if you want to do this, you HAVE to come to us) down in the body copy.
Uh. Well.
In the end, everything worked out. But what should have been a dead-simple process ended up eating incredible amounts of time.
So here’s that advice I bragged about: Keep it simple. Don’t over-complicate your message. If you have a one-and-only product, don’t be afraid to simply say it.
"Yeah, duh," you say. "But I don’t have a one-and-only product. I have a product with a list of 83 key features put together by the engineers and scientists, and I have no idea which ones are the most compelling. And the engineers only care that we’re using an entirely new foundation chipset."
And yeah, that’s more common. But you can still keep it simple. Here’s how. Take that list of 83 key features and sit down key people from engineering and sales. Bring a red pen. And do this:
1. Ask the engineer, "Which of these key features are ones that only we have?" If they tick off one or ten, move them to the top of the list. If they hem and haw about relative performance, and shades of gray, then ask the second question.
2. Ask both the engineer and salesperson, "Which of these key features do we have a more than 50% advantage in?" That should get you some items. Move them to the top, if you don’t already have some one-and-only features.
3. Ask the salesperson, "Now, for these top features, what is the benefit to the end customer?" And have them write it next to the features. Now you have a whole lot of fodder for marketing messages.
4. Ask the salesperson, "Now, if you were standing next to your biggest prospect on a show floor, what are the THREE top benefits you’d talk about?" This gets you the ad copy.
5. Ask the salesperson, "Now, if you were standing in front of your biggest prospect in an elevator and he punches the button for the next floor–so you only have a few seconds to talk to him–what is the ONE top benefit you’d tell him about?" Now, you have your headline.
And there you have it.
