Extending the layered messaging model
Some time ago, I introduced the layered messaging model for enterprise IT marketing, to address the challenge:
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.
My essential recommendation was:
… the two fundamental templates of layered technology marketing:
Enterprise IT product (proof-today messaging stack)
- Tangible benefits
- Technical connection
- Features (and perhaps metrics)*
- Persuasive details
- Customer traction or proof-of-concept tests
and
Enterprise IT product (sustainable-lead messaging stack)
- Tangible benefits
- Technical connection
- Features (and perhaps metrics)*
- Technical connection
- Fundamental product architecture
The lower parts of the stack demonstrate differentiation, most directly addressing the “Why should I believe you?” question. The upper parts demonstrate value, answering “Why should I care?” But ultimately, credibility rests on the whole flow of the story, and is no stronger than the weakest of the five layers.
*In the original form I just said “features and metrics”. But truth be told, metrics — speeds/feeds/scale/whatever — are only as important as features in a minority of market segments.
Since then, consulting engagements have shown me there’s actually a third template; happily, it’s synergistic with either or both of the other two. That one goes:Â
Enterprise IT product (focus and commitment messaging stack)
- Tangible benefits
- Technical connection
- Features (and perhaps metrics)*
- Dedication
- Focus on a specific set of use cases
Here “Focus on a specific set of use cases” is a lot like “Commitment to a specific market or class of users.”
Extreme examples of what I mean include:
- “We manage and serve content.” (MarkLogic’s classical positioning, perhaps to be changed going forward.)
- “Our technology does nothing except manage and analyze poly-structured data, and we’ve been doing that for years.” (One possibility for the change. :D)
- Same thing, but for machine-generated data. (That’s pretty much the Splunk story.)
- “Technology T focused on vertical market V, where our founders previously worked,” where “T” might be business intelligence or predictive analytics or CRM.
Less extreme forms include many vertical market strategies, many “we’re t-shirted coders just like you” messages, and McCormack & Dodge’s long-ago pitch “Buy our financial software because we have lots of Certified Public Accountants on our staff.”
The point of such a story is that, if you’re dedicated to solving a particular set of problems, it stands to reason that you’ll put a lot of things into your product to address them that somebody less dedicated might not bother with. Often, that’s actually true, and perhaps to a greater extent than a simple feature list could easily convey. Sometimes, you can even say that your competitors’ features that benefit other use cases show they aren’t as committed as you are, but usually that crosses the line into overhype.*
*It’s rare that having additional capabilities is truly a bad thing.
Variants of the focus-and-commitment argument include:
- “This is all we do.”
- “Everybody in the company is focused on doing this.”
- (Synergy with the proof-today stack) “This is the kind of user we talk to and try to please every day.”
- (Synergy with the sustainable-lead stack) “We made whichever architectural decisions we thought best to meet these needs, even if they wouldn’t be good choices in some other market we aren’t pursuing anyway.”
So why wouldn’t you use a focus-and-commitment argument? First, it might not be true. 🙂 Second, it might haunt you when you later claim to be competent in other use cases as well. So in some cases you might want to suggest the argument rather than say it explicitly, or at least confine it to individual sales presentations that are unlikely to be quoted later. But despite those limitations, focus-and-commitment can be an important part of a credible and differentiated messaging strategy.
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