Kipling on High-Tech Product Marketing
4 Comments Latest comment by: Jason
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Rudyard Kipling was a popular author and poet who lived during the turn of the 20th century. Born in India to British parents in 1865, he would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. This author of The Jungle Book couldn't have known much about High-Tech Product Marketing, could he?
Come Again, Please?!
In my previous blog article titled Product Management & Product Marketing - A Definition, I defined Product Marketing as:
Product Marketing refers to the activities of outbound messaging - telling the world about your product. This includes creating collateral such as datasheets, brochures, website, flash presentations, press packages, trade shows and more.
One of my pet peeves is that most high-tech companies come up way short when it comes to effective outbound product messaging. Often their product descriptions - as seen on their website, datasheets or brochures - are so vague that most readers will be hard pressed to make much sense out of them.
The following is a slightly edited product message that I got from the website of a software company I recently came across. This is the text they led off with, I've removed the actual product name.
<Product Name>, the industry's first integrated planning and delivery solution that spans the entire lifecycle: from strategy to plans, from plans to launch, and from launch to re-generation. With <Product Name>, product and service companies can break free of spreadsheet gymnastics, stop making ad hoc decisions in hallway meetings, and take control of planning and development – with dramatic results.
After reading this passage, do you know what the product actually does? Who it is targeted at? Why you should get it?
Rudyard Kipling to the Rescue!
Kipling couldn't have known much about the high-tech industry - the first Model-T car wouldn't be sold until a year after he won his Nobel Prize, and the color television wouldn't even be invented during his lifetime!
However, one of Kipling's poems is very educational in creating effective product messaging for high-tech products. He writes:
I keep six faithful serving men
Who teach me well and true
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.
When creating your product message, put Kipling's "six faithful serving men" to good work. They will help improve and sharpen your product message:
- "Who" Are You Marketing To?
While creating your product message, first clearly identify who you're marketing to. Then write your message for this audience. Don't write a message that tries to appeal to everyone - it is highly likely it will end up appealing to no one.
- "What" Does Your Product Do For Them?
Tell your target audience what your product does for them in plain English. Do not use jargons or unnecessarily complex language - many B2B software companies are especially guilty of this.
- "Why" Is Your Product Better Than Other Solutions?
Odds are your audience has several other means to achieve the same thing that your product does. Tell them why your product is better. Why they should consider your product instead of the other solutions.
- "How" Can You Prove Your Points?
- "Where" and "When" Is This Message Being Delivered?
When creating your product message, take into account where and when the message will be delivered to your target audience. For example - a message on your website will be delivered to any visitor to your site, whereas a message in a direct mail will only reach the intended audience during the intended timeframe. Tailor your message accordingly.
Provide concrete, tangible information that proves your points about what your product does and why your product is better. Often companies make vague statements that cannot be proven. Instead, use concrete data - such as customer testimonials, success stories, third party surveys, etc.
There you have it. Get as friendly with these faithful serving men as you can and lean on them to help make your product message clearer and more effective!
Until next time...
What are your thoughts and comments on this topic? Let the world know what you think! Click 'Post Comment' link below.
About the Author: I'm your author, Michael Shrivathsan, an expert in product management and product marketing with successful experience spanning two decades. I live in Silicon Valley, USA. For my day job, I manage the product management & marketing teams at Accompa, makers of requirements management software and product management tools.
Comments
In my company, we recently took a seminar in writing "differentiating" product descriptions. The template we ended up with was:
[Product Name] helps [Target Customer] to [Business Goal]. Unlike [Alternate Solutions], [Product Name] offers [Differentiation].
For example, this could be the description for CRM software sold by your company:
"SweetCRM helps sales organizations to automate sales prospecting. Unlike other CRM solutions, SweetCRM is exclusively focused on prospecting and offers the most complete set of tools to automate your prospecting activities."
This post is pretty much in sync with it. I like the reference to the Kipling poem, we read that in grade school!!!
Posted by: Sanjay | April 23, 2006 02:51 PM
Michael, first you have a nice site. I just added it to my feeds, this is one of the best sites I have seen on the topics of product management + product marketing.
Second, I agree with you that most tech companies do a very mediocre job of communicating what their product does. I have been in product mgmt+mktg of enterprise software products for more than 15 years, and most enterprise software companies do use very confusing product descriptions. I think there are two reasons for this:
- People who write the descriptions are neither close to the product nor to the customers. Especially in larger companies this is written by someone in marcom or product mktg dept. They may not have a good understanding of product or market.
- Companies want to make their product sound quite complex so that they can justify charging the high prices that most enterprise software companies charge. This is really not the right thinking, but many companies think it is.
Keep the nice posts coming.
Posted by: Mitchell J. | April 23, 2006 07:28 PM
I agree with your premise that most b2b software companies do a poor job of communicating what their product does. In addition to reasons mentioned by Mitchell above, I can think about one more reason: Companies don't know what their product does!
There are many software products out there that are looking for a problem to solve. In my opinion, questions 1-3 should be actually asked before making the product itself. What do you think?
Posted by: Raj Pandi | April 25, 2006 09:49 PM
This is so true, I feel that many in the marcom depts of high tech companies don't understand either the product or the target market in detail. Yet they're the ones who write the website and brochure content. Combine this with the fact that they also have little experience in copywriting, no wonder the product messages of most high tech companies suck.
Posted by: Jason | April 28, 2006 12:55 PM