It’s so much more fun this way

I’ve had a long career in B2B technology marketing, and I must admit it’s often been a struggle to explain the value of the products I’ve marketed. Especially when that value was - at least to most of our customers and prospects - in stark contrast to the prices we were charging. That, or the products were so far ahead of the market - or, alas, sometimes so far off the mark - that no one could figure out why they should be using our products to begin with.

That’s why it’s such a deep and distinct pleasure to work with my current clients, who are all blessedly clear on what they do, who they do it for, and why it’s worth it.

One of my current clients really stands out.

For almost a year now, I’ve been doing win-loss analysis, developing use cases, creating vertical messaging, writing case studies - product marketing stuff. In the course of the last year, I’m guessing that I’ve had as many customer conversations as anyone else in the marketing and product management organizations. It is scant exaggeration to say that most of my conversations have been love fests.

Sure, there have been a couple of outliers - folks who’ve had an especially thorny support or technical problem and weren’t all that delighted with the speed of its resolution - but even the people who want to crank have been mostly positive about the products themselves. Heck, even the losses I’ve spoken with have liked out products. Case in point: when I did the loss analysis, we offered participants a choice of receiving an iTunes card worth $25 or a one year free subscription to one of our utilities, worth $69. About 1/3 of the folks I interviewed chose the free product. Sure, these are all techies, and a tech utility is as shiny and glittery to a lot of techies as a plain old iTunes card. But, mind you, these were people who, for one reason or another, had chosen a competitive product. Still, they were invariably and genuinely complimentary about our products.

What does this company do so well?

• They make products that take care of a real problem.
• The products work.
• The products are easy to understand - and easy to use.
• The value of the products is clear - they really do save time and money, and the company has proof points.
• The products are priced to that value.
• There’s a limited, free version of the product that is an exceedingly valuable point of entry: most of the customers I’ve spoken with have used the starter product at some point or another. It introduces them to the company, proves out the reliability of the product, and sows and reaps immense good will. I suspect it’s also an important way to factor out prospects who really do need only very limited functionality, and who - if they had to pay for that functionality might feel had. (The limited functionality is widely available elsewhere.)

I’m not saying that this company is Nirvana, or that their products are perfect. But I’ve got to hand it to them: they sure know how to keep a boatload of customers satisfied.

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