Hello once more, this is Chris Halliwell signing in for the Technology Marketing Center to opine a bit on technology messaging strategy...
One of the concepts we spend a fair amount of time discussing in the Strategic Marketing session is the Whole Product concept and how to apply whole product thinking to develop competitive strategy. The whole product framework helps technology business teams tease apart competitive advantage at three levels: competitive value of the technology category versus alternatives; benchmark performance versus competitive options in cost of acquisition, integration, and use; and unique value versus direct competitors in addressing high priority customer problem.
Category competitiveness is important. It takes a lot of technical resources, and a lot of message air space, to develop, describe, and defend core technological advantages versus alternative methods and technologies. However, the whole product framework analogy is "table stakes" -- it might be expensive, but all it gets you is a seat at the table. You aren't in the hand. You haven't won anything. If you are not clever in your delivery of generic category messages you will create so much noise that the customer will not be able to perceive your discriminators as a supplier in the category. By all means, defend the category, especially if you want to lead it! But do so crisply so you don't drown out your unique value.
Messages that convey competitive performance in addressing the customer's cost of acquisition, integration, and use threaten to create even more noise that can overwhelm communication about your key differentiators. A lot of these benchmark "cost of doing business" messages fall under the heading of objection handling to prove that you have met the "ante" of the category. Are your maintenance costs in line? Does your technology require more training, and if so, what are you going to do to reduce training costs? Is your solution compatible with the customer's culture, processes, environment, and technical infrastructure?
Finally, the most important messages are those that covey your unique value as a supplier. These messages justify the customer's selection of your product and, if true value is delivered, justify a price differential in the bargain. There are a number of reasons customers can not hear these all important differentiating messages: we make too much noise communicating table stakes and ante; we don't understand the customer's problem well enough to add unique value in solving it; we are not, actually, unique.
Next week I'll discuss tips on how to communicate layers of competitive messages in a way that reduces the noise and focuses the customer on your unique value proposition. Until then...
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