Marketing is Dead*

*long live Product Marketing

April Dunford

rocketwatcher.com

My Background

• Big Companies

• IBM (Launch and growth of InfoSphere)

• Siebel (Global Marketing Financial Services)

• Nortel (head of incubation)

• Startups

• Infobright

• DataMirror (exit to IBM)

• Janna Systems ($1.4B exit to Siebel Systems)

• Solarsoft ($100M roll-up)

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Marketing Sucks

• Untargeted and

generic

• Interrupt-driven

• Way too pushy (most

marketing doesn’t care

if I’m ready to buy yet)

Marketers are yelling, and not even yelling at me in particular…

Plus There’s the Lying….

Nobody Believes Marketing Anymore

….and can you blame them?

The World has Changed

Vendors are no longer THE source of

Information

• Customers can broadcast to the world

• Prospects can easily talk to each other

• Product info is readily available

Prospects are far along the buying path

before vendors know about them

What Changes?

Buying vs. Selling

Earned vs. Bought Media

Customer Service

Visibility vs. “Branding”

Who Will Get us Out of This Mess?

You.

Yeah, Ms./Mr. Product Marketer, I’m looking at you.

Why Product Marketing?

• We get segmentation

• We understand the market needs of our segments

• We have deep product knowledge

• We know how those fit together

A New Marketing Framework

Key Elements in this New Environment

Inbound

Marketing

and Content

Visibility

Messaging

Messaging

Needs to answer 3

questions for prospects:

• What is it?

• Is it for me?

• Why should I buy it from

you?

Stories, stories, stories.

Paris Hilton Marketing

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beautiful but makes no sense

What You Do?

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Netflix – Watch as many movies as you want for one low monthly price.

SalesForce.com – the world’s favorite CRM software as a service.

Wikipedia – A free encyclopedia built collaboratively using Wiki software.

You do WHAT?

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Sun Microsystems – Innovative

products and services that

power the network economy.

Sterling Commerce – helps companies optimize and

transform their dynamic

business network to accelerate

revenues and reduce costs.

Any internet b2C startup –

Personalizes the Internet!!

Step 1: What the Heck is it?

Keep it brief

Use simple language

Just come out and say it!

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Segmentation is not a Dirty Word

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Market to Everyone, Sell to No One

Explicit Targeting is Powerful

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ThinkGeek: Selling geek t-

shirts for programmers,

linux hackers, and open

source geeks.

VS

Customink: your t-shirt

expert for companies and

individuals.

Go Deep – The Janna Example

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CRM for Investment bankers:

• Use cases, day in the life of a

banker

• Demos, example data

• Whitepapers, articles, opt-ed

• Sales Enablement: the IB

dictionary

Step 2: Is it for Me?

Be explicit about who you target

Use their language

Go as deep as you can

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Why Buy From You?

The terrible secret they don’t teach you in

engineering school:

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Why Buy From You?

The terrible secret they don’t teach you in

engineering school:

Customers Don’t Care about FEATURES

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Why Buy From You?

Value Features

Make sales more productive Integrates customer data from

any source, show relationships

between customers.

Deploy new applications 20%

faster

Extract and transform data from

heterogeneous sources

Resolve IT issues faster Monitor cpu and memory usage in

real time.

Pay off your debt sooner View all account information in

one place, graph spending

patterns.

Sharper, more realistic images Megapixels

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(do that and you won’t need to lie)

Step 3: Why Buy it from You?

Value not Features

Focus on Differentiators

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Bring it to life with Stories

Go ahead April, tell them a story…..

Inbound Marketing

What it’s NOT:

• Broadcasting info about

products

What it IS:

• Attracting customers to

you by offering helpful

stuff

Content for Prospects

Content needs to be helpful

Provides the benefit of your

expertise in the market (not necessarily about product)

Needs a programmatic

approach:

• Requires a strategy

• Map to steps in buying process

Visibility

How non-users observe

that others are users:

• Product features

• Shareable content

• Reviews/awards

• Independent analysis

• Success marketing

Thanks!

RocketWatcher.com

Twitter: @aprildunford

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