It reminds me of the health, fitness & diet markets — trillion dollar industries that exist solely to peddle sophisticated alternatives to a simple, obvious truth: eat less, exercise more.

The simple, obvious truth in marketing is this: the Disruptive Idea takes all before it.  If you’ve got one, you’re half way to the gold ring.  If you don’t have one, you’re probably wasting your time.

A Disruptive Idea is just that. It’s a new idea that threatens the status quo.  It tells people that they’re looking at things all wrong, then suggests a much better way.  The Disruptive Idea has to have these qualities:

It has to be true – Loud, lame or lyrical bullshit just isn’t sustainable.  The more you can prove the validity of your idea, the stronger it is.

It has to be different – Big ideas incite riots. ‘Me-too’ ideas incite yawns.

It has to be controversial –  If everyone who hears it simply agrees, it’s not disruptive.

It has to generate value –Spiritual ideas are wonderful, but in B2B marketing, a disruptive idea has to make someone money or save them money.

A few Disruptive Ideas from tech marketing history:

Salesforce.com: “no software”.  They didn’t even push the (fairly generic) benefits of CRM — they just hammered home the big idea that you don’t need software to run it.

Google: “pay per click”.  A completely new ad model that had big advantages: it worked; it was completely transparent; and it didn’t commit the advertiser to anything up front.

Betfair: “the betting exchange”.  A new way to gamble, pairing buyers and sellers of risk. The value: better prices.

Skype: “Free calls over the Internet”.

Disruptive ideas are not the only way to build a successful business.  Sometimes just doing lots of little things better than the other guys is enough. But a disruptive idea is probably the single most powerful weapon in the marketing arsenal.  And most marketers spend far too little time generating them.

Marketing machine work is easy. Anyone can do all those things that can be measured in an analytics package or poured into an ROI model. But take half the time you spend on campaigns or programs and put it into generating a Disruptive Idea and you just might hit pay dirt.

A lot of marketers don’t shoot for the big, disruptive idea because they don’t think they have the power to do it. They feel that they have to take the product as it is and sell it on its merits.  So they plough the usual furrows and nothing great ever happens.

We think it’s the marketer’s job to have big ideas and shake up markets.  If you’re products are boring, come up with something exciting.   If the company doesn’t let you make it happen — find another company.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Benefits, Branding, Content, Copywriting, Corporate Message Development, Corporate Positioning, credibility, Mobile Marketing, Relevance, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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It deals with the fact that most technology companies are run by smart, technical engineering types – and these folks are pre-disposed to take a running jump from tech-speak to Big Business Benefits when tackling their corporate positioning and corporate message development projects.

In doing so, they’re approaching things in the same way that Evel Knievel used to approach the Snake River Canyon — because they recognise how far away the Land of Really Meaningful Business Benefits is from the World of Technology.  And the result is predictable:  they fall down.

The truth is, companies can’t leap from tech features to Big Business Benefits when describing themselves.  They have to build a bridge between them.  Better still, they need to swing across this ‘benefits chasm’ on a Vine.

And that’s what this new Velocity white paper is all about. It’s a killer set of diagrams and best practice advice for slaying any daredevil message and positioning pretensions you may have.

You can download it today, FREE, via:
http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2008/11/25/tech-benefits-recipes-for-corporate-positioning-and-corporate-message-development/

About Velocity

Velocity is the consulting-led B2B marketing agency for the Interweb era, specialising in technology. Projects range from strategic consulting to marketing acceleration programs to digital engagement campaigns that include through-the-line content, creative, websites, search engine optimisation, pay-per-click advertising and web analytics. Clients include dotMobi, Gartner, ShipServ, Clearswift, ip.access.

For further information about Velocity, see:   http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk

© Roger for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Benefits, Branding, Content, Copywriting, Corporate Message Development, Corporate Positioning, credibility, Mobile Marketing, Relevance, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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Being smart, engineers recognise the problem and take a running jump from tech-speak to Big Business Benefits like generating revenue or increasing profitability.  They approach this in the same way that Evel Knievel used to approach things like the Snake River Canyon — because they recognise how far away the Land of Benefits is from the World of Technology.

The result also parallels Evel Knievel’s attempt at crossing his own private chasm: they fall down.

The truth is, you can’t leap from tech features to Big Business Benefits.  You have to build a bridge between them.  Better still, you need to swing across on a Vine.

That’s what the Velocity Hierarchy of Benefits is all about. It’s a killer slide that’s popping up with alarming frequency in our presentations to clients.  We’ve just written a paper about it which you’re welcome to read.

One of the more interesting things the Hierarchy exposes is the inverse relationship between Credibility and Perceived Value: your prospects believe the claims they don’t care much about and care a lot about the ones they don’t believe.

We attack this problem by creating links, or Vines, between  the higher order benefits and the deep tech below.  When it works, the technology story brings credibility to the business benefit claims and the business benefits bring relevance to the technology features.

No sense summarising the paper here. It’s only four pages long with a few pretty pictures thrown in.  Give it a read and let us know what you think.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Benefits, Branding, Content, Copywriting, Corporate Message Development, Corporate Positioning, credibility, Mobile Marketing, Relevance, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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But credibility is a funny thing. It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes us believe one person and not another; or believe one claim while remaining suspicious about a very similar claim made by someone else.

To make sure your message is believed, you can’t have too many credibility-builders (though spending too high a proportion of your reader’s attention on credibility issues might backfire by making you appear desperate). In general, more credibility is better.

Let’s look at the top cred-builders:

• Statistics – ideally independently generated
• Awards – the fairy dust of the credibility business
• Accreditations – sometimes essential, other times a hygiene issue
• Analyst attention and endorsement – can go a long way for some customers in some markets
• Media attention and endorsement – the better the source, the more it adds to your cred
• Lists of customers – if you’ve got ‘em, flaunt ‘em
• Testimonials – more credible than you’d think; the good ones have a ring of truth
• Case studies – often boring and ignored; if you can get them read, they’re worth their weight in gold
• Your resources and assets – just being big and solid and here to stay builds credibility
• The credentials of your team – hard to get this into every conversation, but never hurts
• Other successful products – winners breed winners
• Your company’s commercial success – the trick is to not to focus on the growth but the reasons behind it

Softer signals that indicate credibility:

• Your reputation – the only way to control it is to execute brilliantly in every department
• The way you speak – a straight, open, honest tone of voice does wonders for credibility
• The way you look – clean, inviting design says clear thinking and user-friendliness
• The way you behave – personal interactions can wipe away all of the above or double it

The last credibility builder is probably more important than the first sixteen but is usually undervalued: good, solid logic.

If your argument makes sense and is built on premises that the audience accepts, they will believe you. If it’s built on shaky foundations or makes little leaps of faith, they won’t.

At Velocity, we often break down our clients’ stories into a diagram that shows the steps to a sale — the things people have to believe in order to progress to ‘Yes’. Sometimes the path shows four easy steps separated by simple logic. Other times, it’s seven or eight steps, some separated by yawning chasms — the zones where we’ll have to work extra hard to get prospects to the next step.

The sixteen credibility-builders are all important. But without the seventeenth – a good, strong case – you’re supporting a false front. Spend some time analysing your own steps to a sale. Make sure you’re not asking people to take leaps of faith. Build an argument that earns every step and you’re more than half the way home.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, credibility, logic, persuasion, selling

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