Effective Product Marketing Rule #9

This is the ninth in a series of posts on Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing Rules.

Effective Product Marketing Rule #9: First, say what problem you solve for the buyer. Then, deliver your persona-based
message.

Laying out what problem you solve for your buyer is an excellent way to set the stage for what you have to say. By describing the problem, you’ve demonstrated that you understand what’s going on in the prospective buyer’s world, giving yourself some instant "street cred" that will get that prospective buyer to keep on reading or listening. (’Hey, they know what’s going on in the widget industry. They know that we’ve been under terrible price pressure, that widgets are rapidly commoditizing, and that quality’s been an issue, too.")  It’s obviously not possible to watch someone’s face when they’re reading your web site or brochure, but if you’re giving a presentation or talking to someone one-on-one, and you see that head starting to nod in agreement, you know that you’re on to something. And, of course, you don’t stop with just describing the problem generically, here’s where you also get to implicitly or explicitly indicate that you’re the ones to solve this problem.

At this point, even though you’ve goosed the message with a tiny bit your company and product, you’re talking about the prospective buyer, not about your product.

If you forego the stage setting, and hop right into "Me-Ville," people will tune o (You know how you hate being in a conversation that’s more or less, "I’ve talked enough about me. Why don’t you talk about me?" Well, prospects feel the same way, too. Everyone’s ears perk up when the conversation’s about them.)

A slight digression here: make sure that when you set the stage, you’re actually setting it with a problem that your product solves. This may sound like the most basic advice ever uttered in the history of marketing, but let me tell you a cautionary tale.

Years ago, a new sales guy at my company asked me to review a prospect letter he’d created. First, let’s give him some props for having the initiative to actually do his own prospect letter. Sure, marketing should have done them but there were so few of us…Not to mention the fact that marketing had laid out go to market that had ben approved by executive management, but was not being followed by sales. A whole ‘nother story, of course. In any case, this lunkhead, errrr, sales guy, gave me his letter to look at. It began something along these lines:

Dear Mr. CIO:

Today’s CIO is facing many pressures:

Sarbanes-Oxley….

GLB…

HIPPA….

FMLA….

What, I asked him, do any of the above have to do with our products?

The correct answer was "nothing." His answer was, "I read that this is what’s important to CIO’s, and I want to get their attention."

Well, you might get their attention, but if you can’t connect it to what you actually have to offer, what, precisely, are so going to do with that attention.

But I digress. Now back to the effectively and sensible stage setting that you’ve done. Now you’re going to deliver that persona-based message.

First off, forget everything that you learned in English Lit 101 or Intro to Psychology 102 about what a persona is. In this case, it’s neither a character in a play, nor the façade that mask’s someone’s true inner being.No, this persona is the person you’re talking to: manager, finance guy, executive, end-user, business line, purchasing, tech guru… And, now that you’ve so nicely laid out the problem that this person, you get to talk about what you can about it in their terms.

If it’s the finance guy, you talk ROI. If it’s the business, you talk gaining new customers. If it’s the CIO, it’s operational efficiency. If it’s the end-user, it’s removing some headaches. If it’s the techies, it’s tech-talk - the more the merrier. Etc., etc.

Obviously, there are going to be situations - an umbrella product overview, the company brochure -  in which you’re talking to a general audience that may include one each of all possible personae. (And I thought I would never get to use those 4 years of Latin!) Depending on how much time and space you have, you can create a higher level set of benefits and features or- better yet - group your benefits/features into a couple of buckets. Business and technical usually work; sometime’s it’s management and users.

Just make sure that the people who matter, i.e., your prospective buyers, know that there’s something in it for them.

If they don’t, then you won’t be seeing any head nodding. What you’ll be seeing is eye-rolling and suppressed yawning.

Remember, even when they want to need and know about "it" (your product) it has to be in the context of "them."

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