The ever-blurring analyst/consultant line
Continuing the discussion about IT analyst business models:
In the traditional model of IT analysis, vendors and users alike buy subscriptions to published research that are bundled with a certain level of retainer-like consulting. You can also buy additional consulting from analysts on an ala-carte basis. Indeed, analyst relations gurus suggest it’s a best practice to do so, both because you might learn something and because the process of your doing so might strengthen your relationship with them, in reality and euphemism alike.
In the 1990s I subverted that model somewhat. Anybody could buy my subscription newsletter for $347/copy/year. Only two vendors that I recall (Oracle and Informix) ever bought > 10 subscriptions at once. In addition, I had some faxed published product that frankly didn’t add all that much to the newsletter. But it was part of a $15,000/year service – almost always sold to vendors only — that also included a day of consulting and related prep and follow-up, a price point I stumbled into and later in various ways validated.* Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Technology marketing | 1 Comment |
So who is an analyst anyway?
Recently, there have been several high-profile (at least within the independent analyst community) posts and initiatives relating to analyst business models. Each at least implicitly suggests a definition of what an “analyst” is. Interestingly, no two of the definitions seem exactly the same – even though similar people are involved in several of the efforts. 
Notwithstanding my well-documented skepticism about category definitions, I think it might be interesting to pull some of these ideas together in one place.
| Categories: Analyst relations, Oracle, Technology marketing | 9 Comments |
Obfuscate clearly!
Quite frequently — sometimes even in so many words — I find myself compelled to give clients some classic advice from Strunk and White:
Obfuscate clearly!
Actually, I have not succeeded in finding the edition in which I recall seeing that phrasing. Probably it was the second, which I presume Paul Kedrosky also had. But in a a subsequent edition somebody (presumable White, as Strunk was long deceased) wrote similarly in their name:
Be clear.
Clarity is not the prize in writing, nor is it always the principal mark of a good style. … since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. And although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one. Even to a writer who is being intentionally obscure or wild of tongue we can say, “Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!” Even to writers of market letters, telling us (but not telling us) which securities are promising, we can say, “Be cagey plainly! Be elliptical in a straightforward fashion!”Clarity, clarity, clarity.
What makes me think of this dictum most often is not marketing collateral per se, but rather product naming and description. Worst of all can be the names of particular portions of a marketecture diagram. Now, I am on record as believing that all product category names are flawed. But while some vagueness or ambiguity may be unavoidable, there is no reason for names to be meaningless or downright misleading.
| Categories: Marketing theory | 1 Comment |
Often the best press release is the one you DON’T issue
I recently received an email that started
ENTERPRISEDB CEO ED GOES WITH THE BUFFET AT LOCAL SIZZLER FOLLOWING SPEECH AT OPEN SOURCE BUSINESS CONFERENCE
SAN FRANCISCO — EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian rejected a wide array of fixed, rigid, printed menu options at a local Sizzler this week in favor of the restaurant chain’s sprawling buffet.
“It was clear that the open, free, unconstrained nature of the buffet was the right choice,” Boyajian said.
This is not an April Fool’s joke. I really received that email a couple of weeks ago. True, it was a spoof, and came from somebody unaffiliated with EnterpriseDB. But the real EnterpriseDB press release it was spoofing was almost as bad, starting
EnterpriseDB CEO Selected to Speak at Open Source Business Conference 2010
Ed Boyajian to deliver session on open source disruption in the database marketWESTFORD, Mass., March 15, 2010 — EnterpriseDB, the enterprise Postgres company, today announced that President and Chief Executive Officer Ed Boyajian will deliver a presentation at the upcoming Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2010.
I happen to be a non-fan of EnterpriseDB, both for its stewardship of Postgres and its attitude toward business obligations. But in fairness, I should note that many other vendors put out similar press releases; this kind of idiocy is distressingly widespread. Issuing press releases that absolutely nobody outside your company cares about is always a bad idea, yet a large fraction of all press releases are of exactly that kind.
Recalling my recent taxonomy of five kinds of PR — which of the following goals is advanced by issuing a press release about an utterly predictable, interesting, and ephemeral fact?
A. “Sell” to the press.
B. “Market” to the press.
C. Market through influencers to your end customers and prospects.
D. Market through influencers to other influencers.
E. Market to potential buyers directly.
or
F. None of the above?
I’ll go with “F”, which is also the grade that should be assigned to any PR person who allows such a release to go out over his or her still-living body. Nobody cares that you bought yourself a conference speaking slot. Nobody cares even if you didn’t buy it. Not one extra person is going to attend your talk because the press release was issued. It might be vaguely interesting were you to be selected to keynote the Davos Conference, present an Academy Award, or address the UN General Assembly. But even then I’d suggest saving the press release for after the event (or the day of it), when it’s actual news.
| Categories: Technology marketing | Leave a Comment |
Five kinds of public relations
I comment about public relations from two different standpoints:
- As a consultant to the technology industry
- As a target of public relations myself
Sometimes these discussions are very fruitful. But other times they are “Head, meet brick wall.” Perhaps this post will help.
This post actually started as a set of specific tips, the biggest of which is uncouple your PR from your press releases. I’ll put the others below — but first, I’d like to cover a little theory.
There are (at least) five different things you can try to do via public relations:
- “Sell” to the press (and bloggers and so on), by which I mean that you try to induce stories, and you probably measure success by a count of stories written (presumably weighted by the quality of the publication, the favorableness of the mention, and so on), and your activities are focused on contacting the press in pursuit of that goal.
- “Market” to the press, by which I mean that you try to create a favorable disposition toward having them say what you’d want them to. This can be measured in the same ways as “selling” success, but usually on a more long-term basis.
- Market through influencers to your end customers and prospects. Here I’m saying “influencers” rather than “press”, because social media, pure word of mouth, and so on can also contribute to success.
- Market through influencers to other influencers. It is now a regular consulting exercise for me to walk clients through the whole chain of which influencers listen to which other influencers. (If you want to work that kind of thing out for yourself, social media observation is a good way to start.)
- Market to potential buyers directly. This has become increasingly realistic as the internet has matured.
| Categories: Analyst relations, Marketing theory, Technology marketing | 2 Comments |
Note to technology startups
The following was originally part of my post today regarding Groovy Corp, but I decided to post it separately instead.
Getting a favorable mention in a couple of prominent blogs should not be the be-all, end-all of your launch strategy. Rather, you should be laying the groundwork for getting enterprises to place significant bets on your unproven technology. Eliciting the “I’m interested in that if it works” reaction is only a very small part of your overall marketing challenge.
Related links
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Sarah Dopp re social media expertise
As I’ve previously noted, the concept of “social media expert” is problematic at best. Still, people are constantly trying to figure it out, because … well, because they want to get paid for their “social media expertise.” Sarah Dopp offers an interesting take on social media expertise, which I shall herewith quote at length. My comments are in italics.
1) Since having a social media presence is about reputation and relationships, it needs to be personal to the individual. … The approach needs to be custom-tailored to fit the client’s personality and worldview, and the client needs to have a lot of say in the development of this fit. … Agreed.
2) Having an effective social media presence is different from traditional marketing, and it’s also different from the ways we’ve been using the internet in the past. True but overstated. There are three golden rules of social media marketing:
- Make your messages robust.
- Train and trust many of your employees to deliver the message, implicitly and explicitly.
- Trust your employees to show their own personalities without hopelessly undermining the “personality” of your enterprise.
The first two have actually been good management practice for decades, and the third one frequently worked as well.
3) Developing a social media presence has to be done gradually. A client has to pay attention to what’s working and what’s not, listen to feedback from the community, and constantly refine their approach with little changes. Agreed.
4) The social media consulting model is in contrast to the web development consulting model, where you just build something and walk away until it needs to be updated. It’s also in contrast to the idea that social media consultants exist to give expert advice — if clients think of them that way, they’ll only go to them with the big questions, and try to answer the little questions on their own. But social media success is in the details, and it’s the little questions that will make or break an online presence. Agreed. I have clients who ask me to review a large fraction of their individual blog posts. I think that’s a great use of my time … but then, I think the same thing about press releases.
| Categories: Marketing theory | Leave a Comment |
The horns of the “social media expert” dilemma
Skelliewag correctly observes that the concept of “social media expert” is silly in the first place.
Most people are looking for an expert to solve a very specific problem. Some examples from within social media:
- They want to learn how to create content that compels Digg users to vote, which will in turn bring them more pageviews and ad revenue.
- They want to use Twitter to build a bigger profile in their field.
- They want to create a blog that turns readers into customers.
Who are they going to hire, all things being equal?
- The expert in creating and marketing Diggable content for pageviews, or the ’social media expert’?
- The expert in creating super-accounts on Twitter, or the ’social media expert’?
- The expert in business blogging for conversions, or the ’social media expert’?
On the other hand, people with such narrow expertise are (in most cases properly) pigeon-holed as low-level tacticians. As I recently noted, social media should not be done in some kind of silo, let alone in a whole collection of silos.
Only the largest or most aggressive consumer marketing organizations will be able to afford and make proper use of the range of expertise Skelliewag suggests.
| Categories: Marketing theory | 1 Comment |
Merv Adrian’s threads on analyst blogging
Merv Adrian offers two well-commented posts on analyst blogging. I think the whole thing was (probably not intentionally) framed in terms of large-firm analysts, leading to a lot of Golly gee whiz! Blogs aren’t the same as subscription analyst reports. Harm can occur when people forget this! And that led to various calls for things like industry-wide codes of how analysts should and shouldn’t write, etc. (Merv himself was the lead offender on that one.)
Grrr!! Any suggestion that there’s one right way to communicate rubs me the wrong way. Indeed, I’ve been arguing that there’s an evolving information ecosystem that will ever more depend upon there being healthy occupants of many different niches. Most particularly — and few vendors have yet wrapped their minds about this — it will increasingly be the case that primary news sources are analysts with NDA obligations. And yes — every once in a while it is important to be the one who breaks the story. Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Technology marketing | 3 Comments |
Paul Gillin on influencer marketing
Paul Gillin offers a pair of posts that in my opinion are spot-on about influencer marketing. Highlights include: Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Marketing theory, Technology marketing | 1 Comment |