Feb 16, 2016 | Breakthrough Marketing
When my good friend and colleague and marketing automation guru from Digital Pi Tom Grubb pointed out in this blog, “If you don’t get your messaging right and tight, the revenue you take will rarely equal the marketing investment you make” it got me thinking about the true value of great messaging, story and positioning. After Tom and I chatted a bit today, we concluded that it really comes down to one key metric, what % of, or how many deals go to revenue for every 100 leads that your marketing efforts capture. So I whipped up a simple model based on my Viewpoint Marketing client experience and that leverages data published by Marketo and others, to try to simply display the true value of great messaging.
Here’s what I came up with:
At the bottom of the ladder, when my messaging is product, or feature function centric, my conversion can be expected to be very poor, less than one in 200 leads converts to revenue deals. This is the battle that many organizations are still fighting. As I climb up to unique value, I see a 3x or more improvement to about 1.5 leads per hundred converting. Investing the time to get beyond feature/function/benefit to unique value is clearly a no brainer. Next, we move to what I call Aligned Viewpoint. I’ve blogged extensively about this, and it is a major component of my upcoming book, Stories that Sell and Messaging that Matters. To summarize here, if we control the CONTEXT of the market conversation by telling a story that aligns our value with the customer’s world, magical things can happen, and we see a doubling or more of this key metric. Honestly, many billions have been made by doing these two steps well. And that’s evidenced in part by a 6x improvement from our starting point. This is 100% under our control and if you aren’t doing this, you are missing a great opportunity to improve your business. This is the true value of great messaging.
However, we do not need to stop there. Today’s buyer wants to experience your value directly, early and often in the sales cycle. Once we have aligned our Viewpoint and Value to the buyer, we then SHOW rather than tell it to them with our marketing programs, be it demos, customized web experiences, or a myriad of other interactive content approaches. Lastly, if we are lucky, we emerge and a market leader and can drive a purpose, think Salesforce.com and “The end of software”. Markets are BRUTAL, and the market leader owns an incredible advantage because they are the defacto standard. Leads flow in and conversions skyrocket. They enjoy a 20X or more advantage over their product-centric messaging competitors.
Where are you on this key metric? Are you ready to do the work to fix your messaging, story and programs and climb the messaging ladder to market success?
Feb 11, 2016 | Breakthrough Marketing
I just had the pleasure of spending 2 days helping a client jointly with my good friend and colleague Tom Grubb. Tom, and the company he co-founded, Digital Pi, may be the most skilled marketing automation people on the planet, among other things, Tom used to run all of product marketing for Marketo, and the business he helps to run is growing beyond belief. In today’s world, whether you are selling anything from the latest cloud big data analytics automation security product, and who isn’t :), OR industrial supplies, if you don’t have a well oiled, tuned and managed digital marketing machine running, you will not win.
However, as Tom noted eloquently to me on the plane and then blogged about here, many of the clients he works with could really use a fresh look at their messaging. Because great messaging is the high test fuel that makes the content that the marketing automation machine depends on meaningful, relevant and successful. Without good fuel, the best machine is subject to knocks, stalls and eventual breakdowns.
At least that was true until today, when scientists announced they have discovered the elusive gravitywave predicted by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. This changes everything. Well, not really. Unless you are a nuclear physicist, then the entire context of your world view has changed. And on the off chance that your customers are the nuclear physicists of the world, you better understand that. Because if you are trying to sell a product or service to them, and you are talking about the world before this discovery, you will lack the correct context to chat with them, and they will probably not want to listen. But, if you can sell them a thing that can help them harness this discovery to better their lives, GET ON IT!.
OK, this is a kinda silly example, BUT, you’d be surprised how messaging fails in this precise way everyday. B2B marketers are way too often out of touch with the reality of their customers. They either assume that they know it, or they knew it and it changed. In a world where B2B buyers want vendors to teach them something before they sell them something, this is a fatal flaw.
Our value to buyers MUST be in the context of their world. If it isn’t, we are running our machine on low test crappy fuel. We’ve bought the car and we are running in on 60 octane when it needs 97. What do we do to fix this. It’s not that hard. Context first, before content. Find a framework like my Viewpoint Marketing one, that puts your value in the context of your customer’s world, not yours. Then fix your messaging to match that. Now you are running on high octane jet fuel. Go Go Go! You may even run into a gravitywave or two.
Ken Rutsky is a Product Marketing and Go to Market “Ninja”. His upcoming book, Stories that Sell, Messaging that Matters: The Viewpoint Marketing B2B Playbook to Market Leadership helps organizations elevate their positioning, messaging and programs from me-too stories and tactics to unique, compelling and breakthrough ones. You can read a short preview of the book here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Feb 11, 2016 | Breakthrough Marketing
Dear Reader,
I’m excited to share this preview content of my upcoming book with you. We live in a challenging time for marketing and sales professionals in B2B markets. Information flows freely, markets are crowded, and buyers only engage on their terms, in their context, and on their timeline, not ours. Basically, no one wants to listen to us. Even when they are ready to listen we must break through a cacophony of noise and clutter to both get attention and communicate value. For the last 6 years as a consultant, and for more than a decade before that in senior marketing operating roles, I’ve been helping to navigate these challenges and build market leading brands and businesses at Intel, Netscape, McAfee, FireEye and many others. The Viewpoint Marketing B2B Playbook provides a game plan to help you break through and lead your market by telling stories that sell, crafting messaging that matters and delivering programs that punch through. Winning examples of this from FireEye, Palo Alto Networks, Zuora and others are highlighted.
Here’s a brief sample of the book. I hope you enjoy it, But most of all, I’d love your feedback right here, via email or even an old fashion phone call!!
Thanks for your readership!
Ken
PS, let me know if you’d like to be on the early access list for the full book!
Feb 11, 2016 | Breakthrough Marketing
I do a lot of work with IT Security Vendors. It’s a fascinating place to be a marketer. There is no doubt, IT Security is a very technical market. And one that might change more continuously than any other B2B market I know. Of course, we all know that there are individuals and countries that are motivated to break into our most important network and systems and either steal our data, disrupt our operations or both. And whether their motivation is profit, political gain, warfare, espionage or fame, they are more networked, smarter and better resourced than ever. The non-stop battle between good guys and bad guys is a treadmill that has launched and fueled companies like Palo Alto Networks, FireEye, Barracuda and countless others small and large for the last decade.
A critical question that faces all IT Security companies is how to break through the noise and the crowd and be heard and noticed. In a few short months 30,000+ people will descend on the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco for the annual RSA Conference, the largest event in the global IT Security industry. Along with the 30,000 attendees, over 500 exhibitors will vie for their attention over four exhibit halls. Several hundred more will try to bootstrap some attention with offsite meetings, parties and even a few stunts. It was in this exact environment that FireEye successfully launched in 2009 with their “Advanced Threat Protection”. I will bet about anything that seven years later, you won’t be able to walk more than 10 feet in any direction without seeing some variation or combination of at least two of these three words. In fact, of the 505 exhibitors listed at http://www.rsaconference.com/events/us16/expo-sponsors/exhibitor-list, 385, or nearly 80% describe themselves with one or more of these combinations. (thanks to the Import.io service for making this analysis easy) But that’s the old news.
How then to stand out? It’s hard. But what works is to deeply understand the reality of the IT Security buyers and practitioners world. What has changed that impacts their success or failure? What are the key business initiatives they need to support? What’s changed in the world we live in that is making their job harder or easier? In 2009, FireEye stood out because they were the first to stand up and yell what everyone knew, the threats had changed but the ability to defend against them had not. With that context in mind, there are five things I’d shout about if I were one of the five hundred vendors on the show floor. Some of these topics are new, many are not, and finding my unique value is a second step, but first, let’s discuss what’s going on that is impacting the customer’s world –
1) The IT Sec Skills Gap – There is a tremendous shortage of IT Security people in the US and globally. The demand has simply outstripped the supply. As my friends at Seculert have pointed out, their are over 300,000 unfilled IT Security jobs in the US today, and that number is projected to grow to 1.5 Million by 2020! Hmmm, think you are going to hire your way out of your problems?
2) The Era of Ubiquitous, High speed, Always on Connectivity – this has been coming for a long time, but is now hitting a tipping point. Just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal wrote about this yesterday in an article entitled: The Future of Public Wi-Fi: What to Do Before Using Free, Fast Hot Spots , in which they reported;
…it’s one of the first parts of New York City to turn old phone booths into hot spots. In the months ahead, they’ll cover the city like graffiti in the 80s, meaning I can walk around town using fast, free Wi-Fi—not Verizon ’s slow, pricey data. Even better, it uses a new technology to automatically connect when I’m in range. No need to re-login.
At the same time, thanks to data from my friends at Skycure, we know just how risky public Wifi networks can be. Are we ready for our CEO to walk through Manhattan skipping carelessly and happily from Network to Network?
3) The Maturing of the Digital Natives – Digital Natives are taking over the workforce. Research show that while they are concern and skeptical about privacy and security in their use of devices and services, they have an almost defeatist attitude to the situation. As InfoSec magazine reported here, the new employee is more capable, more skeptical but lazier than their older Digital “Immigrant” co-workers. Think your workforce of the future is better prepared, able and willing to help you manage risk?
4) The Board Cares, of Course it Does – As Fidelis and Ponemon point out in the studies found here, and has been confirmed in countless other studies and reports, Boards care. The Target breach opened the eyes of boards, and the potential damage to brand, reputation and financial liability has more than gotten their attention, it’s now near the top of the list, and might be the biggest risk that any board needs to manage. This has changed the life of the CISO and his team dramatically, it’s increased both visibility, and often resources. If the CISO was asking for a “seat at the table”, he’s got it now. Just how hot that seat is, it just depends…
5) Past Prevention – We get sick. We will get sick. Every good doctor knows that sometime the bugs move faster than the body can defend against them. We are finally admitting this in our approach to IT Security. We can invest and invest in prevention, but the one that gets through is the one that can steal our data and disrupt our business. We must become not just protected but responsive, we can get sick, but we can’t let the infection win.
ONTO THE SHOW!…
To the 30,000 people at Moscone next month, none of the above will be shocking or surprising or even new. But the smart vendors are the ones who can teach us more about these mega-trends, what it means to buyers and how they can relate their value to what the buyer needs, not on the show floor, but back at the office. In 2009 IT Security knew the threat was changing. FireEye got in front of this parade and has rode it to great success with their solutions. Who will start the parade to market success this year at RSA? I don’t know, but I think they will be talking about one or more of the topics above, and doing it in a unique and meaningful way. It ain’t easy, but it’s doable and it is what it takes to rise above the noise of 500 vendors and 30000 customers. See you in the crowd next month!
Feb 11, 2016 | Breakthrough Marketing
There is no doubt in B2B markets many, if not all companies strive for market leadership, but few breakthrough and achieve it. Why? The reasons are many. Poor product market fit, poor user experience, misaligned pricing to value, the list goes on. But even those who get all that right can “self-limit” their success by not elevating their messaging mix to the heights required of a market leader. A simple diagram shows this relationship nicely. Most companies find themselves stuck at the bottom of the left pyramid with product-centric messaging. As they fail to articulate unique value, stuck in the low ground of feature/function/benefit, they struggle to find meaning in the customer’s mind. To achieve meaning in the market, we must message not only our benefits, but be crystal clear on the unique benefits that the customers will get from adopting our solution. Unique value is the entry level messaging needed for market leadership.
But to rise above meaning to impact in the market, where our messaging actually helps to shape influence and impact the market in our favor, we must elevate again and align our value to the world view, or Viewpoint, held by our customers. In this context we describe not only our value to the customer, but how we can strategically impact our customer’s journey to success or failure.
However, in today’s “show-me” short attention span world, if we want to truly break out of the crowd, we need to allow buyers to not just hear, but to experience our value early and often in the buying cycle. And then last, if we are successful in breaking through, we can add purpose to our messaging and truly transform not just our customers and the market, but the world.
Market leadership is a privilege that is earned not given. To earn it, we need not only a great offering, but we need to elevate our messaging to new and meaningful heights. It’s not always easy, but the rewards, both economic and intangible, go to those who dare to climb, not those who stay in the comfort zone of their product feature, function and benefit. Happy climbing!
Ken Rutsky is a Product Marketing and Go to Market “Ninja”. His upcoming book, Stories that Sell, Messaging that Matters: The Viewpoint Marketing B2B Playbook to Market Leadership helps organizations elevate their positioning, messaging and programs from me-too stories and tactics to unique, compelling and breakthrough ones. You can read a short preview of the book here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a 
Most companies find themselves stuck at the bottom of the left pyramid with product-centric messaging. As they fail to articulate unique value, stuck in the low ground of feature/function/benefit, they struggle to find meaning in the customer’s mind. To achieve meaning in the market, we must message not only our benefits, but be crystal clear on the unique benefits that the customers will get from adopting our solution. Unique value is the entry level messaging needed for market leadership.