Technology companies often struggle to effectively market their products, despite superior technology in many cases. This is especially true in smaller or early-stage enterprises that are trying to feel their way through the market. Generally, there is a strong bias towards features and a desire to establish and project technological know-how. This often leads to marketing and messaging aimed at peers or a desire to impress customers. Smart doesn’t sell. Solutions that solve customer problems do. Being able to effectively communicate to a buying audience requires a shift in mindset. The following are some basic steps in the process of arriving at an effective market message framework.

• Identify the Why - be able to precisely articulate the problem your product solves and the quantifiable and psychological benefits it offers. This can be done both at a macro- and micro-level. Understanding what customers need and want is often more subtle and requires more digging than meets the eye. Operative assumptions on what a customer values or needs without prototypical customer input often lead both product development and marketing message frameworks astray.

• Understand the Who – identify who your customer is. This is both by specific market vertical as well by persona. Who in your customer target is responsible for owning and making decisions, and what motivates them? Who in the customer organization will use the product? Who in the customer’s organization has “negative authority” (those who can block but not approve) and what is their risk aversion motive? Market to users and decision-makers, and don’t spend dry powder marketing to negative authority.

• Decode the Target Culture – within any target vertical there is often a culture that defines how its members speak and what words they use (i.e., industry jargon). Marketing studies repeatedly show individuals are tribal. Group members are more receptive and better relate to people who talk like, dress like, and behave like their group. Effective messaging requires a cultural match.

• Account for Emotional Buy Decision Making – humans make fuzzy decisions quickly. Studies show that people make decisions quickly on instinct and then attempt to validate the decision with selectively affirming information. These decisions are driven by often subtle unconscious decision queues and can be affected by word choice, color, imagery, and other factors. Humans employ different parts of their brains for different tasks. The amygdala is the “flight, fright, freeze” part of the brain wired to make fast decisions. This primal instinct often drives fast decisions when it comes to sizing up friends, foes, and anticipating pain or pleasure.

• Focus on Value over Price – the most common business mistake made by all types of companies is selling on price instead of value. Price is a subjective concept. What something is worth is defined in relation to the need and perceived utility. A $5 bill has no intrinsic value beyond what it can buy. A customer must make a value decision through comparative means based on perceived benefit and what the benefit is worth to them. A $50 dollar bottle of wine must be better than a $15 bottle of wine when in reality it may be marginally better or not better at all. Pricing often implicitly relates to perceived benefits in quality, reliability, experience, and/or stature. Value messaging is more effective because it more intimately connects with the human decision process.

• Look for Differentiation – the more perceived differentiation a product or solution has, the more difficult it is to find a comparable and this allows for pricing freedom. Being special or unlike something else has its virtues. Communicating that difference in a simple way that connects with an identified need or problem creates extraordinary value.

As seen in the above, the word technology rarely appears because it’s always about what the product does for the customer. It is not how it works but what it does. Let’s take a closer look.

Comparing Marketing Messaging:

Acme Super Steel has invented a super strong steel made of nano-carbon reinforced steel. Acme wants to market its new steel to the crane industry. Which advertisement below will be more effective in selling to crane companies?