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Compare and contrast to clearly define yourself

Mike Troiano, our CMO at Actifio, posted a great piece on our blog yesterday, CommVault vs Actifio. In it, he does a fantastic job of comparing and contrasting Actifio with one of our big competitors, to whom we are often compared. Most importantly, he draws the distinction between official positioning and product reality.

“On closer inspection Actifio and CommVault are in fact pretty different. They’re saying all the right thingsDifferences when it comes to defining the next generation of enterprise storage technology. But Actifio is delivering on them – today – with the only system purpose-built to do exactly that.”

There are many good reasons to write such a post, but perhaps the best reason is to draw a clearer picture of the company’s own value proposition by explaining how it clearly differs from that of the competition. Sometimes contrasting to something else is the best way to provide clarity on what makes you special.

“Rather than work up from the complex landscape of storage, Actifio works down from the application-based requirements of an SLA…Unlike CommVault, Actifio can protect data over the IP network or within a storage network, in either case delivering application- and/or crash-consistent RPOs, and heterogeneous storage migration.”

In the end, defining what you are not (and identifying the comparative weaknesses of the competition), it makes it easier for people to understand what you are.

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Adjacent Content Marketing ftw

When you are coming up with topics for content marketing – not the stuff where you define your company’s value or the offerings of your products, but the stuff that people want to keep coming back for – don’t focus on your products.

No one thinks your baby is as cute as you do. You are not the market, even if you may be a member of it. Your mother may want to see 1000 pictures of the kids, but your neighbors do not. Why then do you think your market wants to read content about your product? If they are in a buying mode, they may want information about your product, but they don’t want an ongoing relationship with product content. They don’t want to share it with their friends and followers.

Content marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing today. It delivers benefits across many programs. It can cause people to come to your site and to return frequently. It can power your organic search traffic, by letting all those pages be indexed and found and by driving thousands of links to your site, thereby raising your authority. It is the lifeblood of sharing on social networks. And, it is a way to get the influencers in your industry involved with your brand.

To be effective, though, content needs to be about topics that are not product focused. To be authoritative, they do, however, need some relationship to your industry. The key then is to develop what I refer to as “adjacent content”. What does your market and community care about? What interests them? What will enhance their professional knowledge? Once you shift your thinking to those topics that aren’t about your product, or even about the problem your product solves, potential topics will explode in volume.

In RealEstate? Don’t write about your listings or your sales success; write about pricing trends in the market. Run a grocery store? Don’t write about your specials; write about the growth of local farms in the area and the demand for their produce. Make fine furniture? Write about the new woods available from Latin America that are changing the industry.

Not the thing, the thing next to it…the adjacent content. That’s your sweet spot. Build the value of your brand by giving people value in content that interests them AND that relates to what you do. Do that and they’ll come back and read your product copy when they are in buying mode…it’s right next door to where they hang out anyway.

Image credit: Mr. T in DC

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Word choice matters in sales. A view from the buy side.

After 20 years on the sell side, in both sales and marketing, I have spent the last couple of years on the buy side. As such, I have sat through countless vendor presentations and agency pitches. It is amazing to me how many salespeople, even the better ones, make fairly fundamental mistakes in word choices when they are trying to describe scenarios that relate to your business during sales presentations.

I learned long ago that the key to developing good messaging is listening to the market. Listen to customers and prospects closely. They will not only outline the problem that needs solving – thereby helping to define a feature set – they will also unconsciously “write copy” for you. Listen to enough people and you will hear the patterns of speech for how THEY would describe your product, which coincidentally is the same set of words that will resonate best with them when you sell your solution.

So back to those sales people. The same principles apply to spoken sales language as do to written marketing copy. If you listen first and pick up on the way a prospect or customer describes her business and then use her vocabulary when you speak, your words will resonate better with her. Does she call her distributors “agents”? Don’t call them brokers. Does she “sell direct” to consumers? Don’t call that part of her business “retail”.

Even more important than the words is to make sure you demonstrate a knowledge of the customer’s business. Don’t talk about selling direct if the business is purely based on a distribution network. This is basic homework. Read the company’s website before the meeting. Take note of the things that show how the organization does business and the words they use to describe it and their products. Though they may not even know it, they will appreciate that you speak their language and that they don’t have to correct your incorrect assumptions. Start the meeting by asking them to talk about their problem before you pitch your solution. Pay close attention to the words they use while speaking and use the same vocabulary when you finally do present your solution. It will resonate better with them.

It’s not rocket surgery… Why do so few salespeople get this right?

Image credit: Dullhunk

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Mad Men Marketing Lessons: Speaking in their language – the secret of effective message development

Effective Marketing Messages
In a season 2 Mad Med episode, Don Draper decides to send two staffers to a West coast aerospace conference, an account executive and a copywriter. He tells the copywriter, “I am sending Campbell (the account exec) to do the talking. I’m sending you to listen.”

Among the many memorable quotes from Mad Men that marketers can take away as sage advice, this is one of my favorites. the reason is that it gets to the heart of marketing (and selling too, if truth be told). In order to both identify the need of a market and to understand how they think about it and talk about it, you need to listen to them explain it in their own words.

Too often, companies are in love with their product and the cool features they have built to solve a problem. they love their elegant use of standards or cutting edge technology. they describe their products in terms that use the language of their industry. It makes them feel smart and they think it makes their products seem, therefore, to be the best.

They will also fall prey to the classic marketing trap of thinking of themselves as the market. They say, “if I describe this in terms of how I think about this, everyone will understand.” [In Mad Men, some of the less talented copywriters don’t even do that. they just assume others are the market and assume they know how they think.]

But the best marketers are great listeners. they don’t assume they know the market. they listen to what the market wants. They don’t describe a product in their own words. They use the words used by their targets or early customers to describe their problem and that solution. Even effective market research heeds this. In one of my earliest jobs, in market research, we would always run an open ended survey (endlessly coding the free form responses) to get the best way to describe things before writing the closed ended version in the language of the targets. This lesson stuck with me through my career.

The message development came from listening, not from talking/writing.

Apparently Don Draper knew that too…one of the many reasons we marketers love the show.

Photo Credit AMC

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Your social media voice – Be real!

You don’t need to yell your sales pitch through a bullhorn.

Social Media is not simply another platform for interrupting people with your sales pitch. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with selling stuff, and to do so takes a pitch of some kind. But, even I, the sales and marketing guy, get turned off by the direct, no pleasant introductory conversation, dive right in and get it on type of sales come-on, whether it is face to face, online, or in any other medium. Social Media extends that rule and even amplifies it.

I like people. I like getting to know people and I like learning what makes them tick and hearing what it is they have to say. This is at the heart of the concept that many refer to as AUTHENTICITY. We all have a bit of the voyeur in us (in a good way…). This is why we see our news filled with personal interest stories. This is also why many of us like when people add tweets about their personal life or what they are currently doing to their supposedly business focused online persona. Sure it is a bit like a soap opera, but it makes us feel connected to those people with whom we have a mainly one way relationship of listening.

So your voice – how you blog, tweet, post, update – has a big effect on how people will perceive you and how they will place value on your stream. As I start to follow more and more people on my personal twitter account, this is being driven home very clearly to me.

I pay closer attention to those who tweet in an authentic voice like a real person. This is even true with those tweeters who represent a company or brand as opposed to an individual, especially those who mix personal remarks and commentary with the content of their tweets to go beyond business announcements and attempts to get people to click on a bit.ly link. As my stream gets more cluttered, some people will get a larger piece of my attention…the authentic ones.

So, be a real person. Write in a real person’s voice, not in marketing copy. Be a helpful netizen. Don’t just focus on your company’s content or products. Join the conversation. Post things that are relevant but have no benefit to you. That way, when you do post a “pitch” or a product message it will be resonate and have a much greater effect with people who actually want to listen to what you have to say.

Photo by adriaanverstijnen