The folks in Marketing in the IT industry often take a lot of flak. There are several reasons for this.
IT is, by its very nature, technical. The vast majority of folks in Marketing don’t have technical backgrounds. Also, many Marketing folks have never been the customer for the product they’re marketing. This creates two hurdles when trying to market to technical customers.
Also, I’ll admit it — technical folks tend to be picky, sometimes even nit-picky.
I’ve always said that I brought two big advantages to any Marketing-type position:
So, while IT-related Marketing sometimes takes the blame for things that aren’t their fault, sometimes they do things that really are their fault. Below, I’ll cover the five things that Marketers need to just STOP right freaking now.
Not only is it cultural appropriation to use the phrase, if you know anything at all about its origins, you’ll realize immediately that the phrase carries the double-whammy of being both misogynistic and racist, so just cut it out already.
I get the spirit of what folks using this phrase are attempting to get across. They’re looking to create an air of mystery and give the impression that they’re showing you something that other people don’t get to see. There are a lot of ways to do that without using this phrase. Here are a few off the top of my head:
If avoiding racism and misogyny aren’t enough reasons to convince you to stop using this phrase, I have one last appeal.
Imagine yourself as the customer, sitting in one of your company’s product briefings. Now imagine that the last person you heard use the phrase “open the kimono” is the presenter. Imagine that he or she (in my experience, most likely he) enters the room wearing a kimono. Imagine the presenter standing directly in front of you and saying “Now I’m going to open the kimono…”
If you weren’t immediately overcome with a brain-crippling, want-to-gouge-your-own-eyes-out case of being completely creeped out, well, you’re likely a soulless Marketing robot who is immune to human emotion and my message is wasted on you. Save yourself the time and skip the rest of this post — it will only describe things you already consider to be “Best Practices”.
That idea is critical. How much faith would you put in an OEM who uses someone else’s product instead of their own. Imagine a storage vendor who uses another vendor’s array for the business-critical applications. Imagine a PC vendor whose workers have another vendor’s PCs on their desks. You wouldn’t want to buy from either of those vendors.
So the central message is a good one. This just happens to be one of the least appetizing ways to get the message across, for two reasons:
Why would you want to compare using your own product to a distasteful experience? (Unless using your product is actually like that, in which case your problem exists in Product Development and not in Marketing…)
For IT, you can get the idea across in plain, simple language by saying something like: “In fact, our own mission-critical applications are running on our product in our own data centers.”
If you feel you must use an analogy, try something pleasant and celebratory like “We drink our own champagne.”
Think about it. If you’re producing “${PRODUCT_AREA} for Dummies” materials, the implications are:
Trust me, customers don’t like any of those messages.
I get the idea. You’re selling into a new and/or complex product area and you’re trying to be cute. Stop and think about your customers’ purchasing criteria. I’m guessing “cute” didn’t make the list.
(True story: As I’m typing this very section of the post, on my other monitor a tweet from a vendor appeared in my timeline offering customers a link to a “guide” accompanied by a “${PRODUCT_AREA} for Dummies” graphic. Stop it.)
If your product is so new, or the area it addresses is so complex, that it’s beneficial for you to help educate your customers, there are lots of ways to do that without insulting your customers. Produce materials like:
Yes, all of those are harder and less “cute” than “X for Dummies”, but they’ll likely be much better received by your customer base.
I get it — you’re trying to get across the idea of what a great team was involved in the creation of your product. But think of the things that are often associated with the image of a “rock star”:
Would you want to buy a product built by those guys?
If you feel it benefits your message to talk about the team responsible for the product, by all means do so, but do it by being specific. For example:
The problem here is that you need to take the 60 seconds of required research before making any claim like this.
I can’t think of a single example of when I’ve heard a vendor make this type of claim where I couldn’t think of anywhere from three to six other products from other vendors that do the same thing — and that’s just off the top of my head. It doesn’t matter if it’s “has this particular feature”, “solves this specific need”, or “was built with X in mind”, this is a very dangerous phrase to use in any Marketing material or messaging.
It’s incredibly rare that any vendor is the only vendor doing a particular thing, and even then it’s only for a very short period of time. “Was first-to-market with X” is believable — if true.
Saying your company is the “only” one who does whatever, when the listener knows it’s not true, brands you as either:
Is this how you want customers to see you?
Maybe there is some uniqueness to your product, but then use truthful statements to describe that specific uniqueness, rather than the sweeping generalization of “only”. For example:
Remember, your target audience is generally knowledgeable about the industry you’re in. Avoid easily-disprovable claims, or risk being tossed out of meetings.
