Generalizing the layered messaging model
In my introductory post on layered messaging, I laid out two basic templates for enterprise IT messaging. But consider, if you would, the following
General layered marketing template
- Tangible benefits
- Credible causal connection
- Measurable characteristics
- Credible causal connection
- Fundamental nature
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Enterprise IT marketing — a layered messaging model
Two things matter about marketing messages:
- Do people believe you?
- Do they care?
It’s easy to meet one or the other of those criteria. What’s tricky is satisfying both at once.
Many marketing consultants, me included, would phrase the core messaging challenge in terms such as:
What’s the most compelling claim you can make that people will actually find credible?
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Engagement marketing
More and more, consumer branding is about engagement. On the Internet, you’re most likely to see references to the social media aspects. But it goes further than blogs, chat, and diggery. For example, a huge fraction of the sports business now is apparel sales – replica jerseys and the like. This may be “tribal” in Seth Godin’s lexicon, but it’s not particularly online-social.
US politics is heavily about engagement too. The traditional centers of engagement – unions, churches, and so on – have no been joined by the Internet as well. The Washington Post has a great article today about old-style engagement in the Clinton campaign. Micah Sifry makes the case that this time it’s different, and in the process describes the crucial role of internet-based engagement to this year’s presidential campaign.
And of course the same thing’s happening in software. Read more
| Categories: Marketing theory, Political marketing, Technology marketing | 3 Comments |
Many levels of influencer — long tails, tall tales
Duncan Watts is getting a lot of attention for attacking the notion that markets can be divided into influencers and influencees. The influential 
Seth Godin argues the market wants to gather into “tribes” of people who, no doubt, influence each other. On the other hand, he also argues for a more classical, top-down, influence-the-influencers approach as well. Guy Kawasaki buys into an extreme form of the Watts argument.
I agree with Godin, not Kawasaki. More precisely, I think there are many kinds and levels of influencer. The most important can be identified, and should be direct targets of your market outreach. But you should also be trying to reach an influencer “long tail” as well.
If selling enterprise technology, for example, you should separately target 8 different kinds of influencer, namely: Read more
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Negative marketing in the internet era
Mark Hemingway’s recent article in favor of negative campaigning makes some good points, such as:
- Negative advertising highlights differences between candidates.
- Negative advertising undercuts opponents’ misrepresentations.
- False negative advertising can itself be debunked quickly online, and will likely backfire accordingly.
He’s right.
However, there are two big differences between negative marketing in politics and negative marketing in enterprise technology.
- If you say something negative about a technology competitor, it’s likely they can come back with the rebuttal “That’s not true any more.” Rapid product cycles are wonderful things.
- Whatever rebuttal you have to negative advertising in technology, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to present it. If it’s late in the sales cycle, your salesperson can deliver it. If it’s early in the cycle, internet-based marcom has time to take effect.
So should you go negative in enterprise technology marketing? If so, when and how should you do it? Here are my thoughts: Read more
Fear and Greed
When I was a stock analyst, I learned the maxim that all investor behavior could be explained by two factors: fear and greed. Any stock’s price reflects a balance between fear of the reasons it could go down, and hope based on the reasons it could go up.
Buyers of enterprise information technology operate pretty much the same way. They buy technology because of what it can do for them. They avoid purchases for fear of project failure, or of the products not living up to their promises, or of difficulties in the products’ use. Indeed, in its heyday, IBM was said to sell largely on the basis of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD), in a memorable phrase sometimes attributed to analyst Ulrich Weil.
Voters do much the same thing. Read more
| Categories: Marketing theory, Political marketing, Technology marketing | 1 Comment |
Seth Godin on dealing with influencers and listening to the market
From a Seth Godin interview conducted by the SEO-oriented Eric Enge:
They need to find the thirty bloggers matter, and months before they need them, give to them. Post comments, link to them, talk to them, engage them as a member of the community, and then when they roll something out those bloggers trust you. An example is Boing Boing, which is one of the three most popular blogs in the world, and there is a piece of software that just came out that helps you track appointments and stuff like that.
Cory Doctorow wrote a rave review of it yesterday on Boing Boing. Why did he do that? Because they showed up an hour ahead in time and begged him? No, because he’s known the founder for a long time, and the founder actually asked him a lot of advice about how to make the software better, and he gave it to them. So, he has a sense of relationship and ownership, so when the software comes out, of course he is going to say something about it. That time investment, and that respect is an asset that people at a traditional company might not have earned.
Certainly the company/analyst relationship fits into that paradigm.
Godin went on to take a related point to an extreme:
The thing that’s going to be hard for a lot of people is it represents a shift in power, that the reason most people become marketers is because it is fun to be in charge. It’s fun to put on a show; it is fun to have influence that comes from money. What we are seeing in the new marketing is that the opposite is true. People who are succeeding tend to be the ones with no money, because having no money makes you humble and being humble makes you work with the marketplace better.
But while extreme, that’s not entirely wrong. For example, the technology industry has advanced to the point that large firms have huge economies of scale, and startups keep succeeding even so. (E.g., see my coverage of Netezza or Qliktech.) And this year’s presidential campaign has, so far, been friendly to insurgent candidates such as Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama, a rebounding John McCain, or even Ron Paul.
| Categories: Campaign 2008, Marketing theory | 1 Comment |