How to win more hearts, minds, and market share

Conventional logic is hopeless in marketing—as you end up in the same place as your competitors." -Bill Bernach

An amazing thing happened over the past year: big business customers let us into their homes.

Think about it for a second. We—meaning, you the technology marketer and us the technology marketing firm that supports your efforts—were invited to "meet" our customers as human beings in the intimacy of their private spaces, for the very first time. Collectively, we let our guard down and felt more comfortable being ourselves. We’ve now gone well beyond superficial work personas.

A watershed moment for tech marketing

This is a watershed moment for us, especially in enterprise technology marketing. In fact, this creates a new pathway on the journey we've been on with big business customers for decades.

“We see a magical way to connect with our customers in more meaningful ways, taking the whole person into account.”

Looking down this new path, we see something magical: a way to connect with our customers in more meaningful ways, making connections that take the whole person into account—both the work self and the personal self, the logical and the emotional. Now we can build real, long-term relationships in which our customers see us as people and trusted partners instead of transactional vendors.

Really getting to know our customers

As B2B marketers in the technology space, we've at times felt constrained when it comes to communicating like humans. Why? Mainly because we've relied on logical or rational arguments to promote our products and services, putting the mind before the heart. Too often we’ve failed to tap into the behavioral sciences, or an emotional economy like in B2C.

On that side of marketing, we’ve watched our colleagues basking in humanity—tapping into feelings to create deeper connections between people, brands, and products.

That’s why, in the technology marketing space, this is such an exciting window of opportunity for us. The window is wide open to challenge and move past our limiting misconceptions. To accept the new invitation from our customers to come in, have a seat, and really get to know them—and their customers, products, and services—in more meaningful, authentic ways.

A new pathway to deliver for customers

Imagine what this can do for you and your career. And the tremendous value it's going to deliver to your customers.

If you decide to take this promising path, we invite you to give yourself permission to break some very old molds. Since many of us are responsible for product marketing, we follow the lifecycle rhythm of our products, from prelaunch to in-market to growth and scaling. So we take a moment here to share with you some tangible ideas on how to do things differently across your product’s entire lifecycle in this new world we now live in.

Planning and prelaunch

Although we've come a long way in the planning and pre-launch processes when it comes to customer persona development and striving to be customer-centric, we can push further: much of what we do today is one-dimensional. We tend to focus on the negative, relying on the lizard brain or the lowest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy to create the need. Persona development is often flat and sums up a fictional human only through roles, responsibilities, and work challenges.

What if…

…you overlay your customer's emotional needs on top of your existing persona, positioning, and messaging details?  

An example: Identify what potential opportunities or stresses your customer will experience by adopting this new product. Could this product effect their job or personal life, and if so, it is a positive or negative effect?  

…instead of focusing on the lizard brain (fear, uncertainty, doubt), you explore how your product or service helps your customer achieve higher levels of potential?  

An example: Will your new product help your customer get a promotion? Can it help your customer turn a five-day workweek into a three-day workweek (because they're so much more productive)? 

Now we’re in market

“This is the time to help customers get more value out of their investment in the products/services they already have, and to set the stage for building a durable, long-lasting relationship. ”

Once our product is in the market, in B2B we have a tendency to become fixated on new product enhancements, features, and other short-sighted details. Today, there’s no shortage of technical marketing content. We overwhelm customers with information. This is the time to help customers get more value out of their investment in the products/services they already have, and to set the stage for building a durable, long-lasting relationship.  

What if…

…you streamline your content, make it modular, with more tangible benefits, and focus on positive adoption and usage, helping your customer get more value/use out of their investment?  

An example: Employ storytelling and positive examples of customers actually using your product/service. Illustrate what steps they took to adopt and continue to use the product. 

…you are more respectful of your customer's time?  

An example: Create modular, tangible, and streamlined content that aligns to addressing a specific and targeted area of customer benefit/value. 

While scaling, watch out for complexity

Now that our product is in market, and most likely represents a broader portfolio of products/services, it's easy to overwhelm customers with the growing intricacies of our solution. In other words, as our product grows and scales, so does its complexity. So while trying to articulate the overarching value of our evolving product, we’re actually creating more confusion.

“Today, we’re less than stellar at crafting compelling customer case studies out of new applications. Now is the time to eliminate the noise and home in on specific customer needs.”

Also, as our product keeps growing in the marketplace, so do customer usage and stories. But today we’re less than stellar at crafting compelling customer case studies out of these new applications. Now is the time to eliminate the noise and home in on specific customer needs.

What if…

…you create a digital experience that helps guide customers’ areas of interest?  

An example: Use your modular, tangible, and streamlined content as the foundation to create a curated list of information based on customers' interests. 

…you continue to invest in great customer stories?  

An example: Customer case stories often fall short—they're either too technical, or only focus on a specific moment in time. The best, most powerful customer stories tell a richer, longer-term story that includes more customer voices. This provides prospective customers a better picture of what it's like to live with your products/services over a long timeframe. 

We bandy about the concept of "customer-obsession" or "customer-centricity," but frequently fail to consider the whole customer. Who would have thought that a global pandemic would give us the opportunity to finally deepen our relationships with our customers by tapping into their emotions and ambitions?

We encourage you to take this new path.

FURTHER READING