Abstraction

More than 10 years ago I moved from Washington DC, where I was communications director for a lobbying firm, to the media relations department at Netscape. The Netscape communications team were consummate professionals, very skilled at marketing and public relations, and I learned a lot from them. Being new to software, however, I was amused by the use of language that struck me as, well, odd.

One never spoke of using something; rather, it was “leveraged.” Software was never built for a particular purpose; rather, it was “architected.” Being the best was never good enough; one had to be “best of breed.”

No matter. This is the language of software marketing, and I got used to it. Besides, Netscape messaging may have popularized many of what became high-tech marketing cliches, but these phrases were never the focus of the message. Certainly never the entirety of the message. This, sadly, is no longer true.

Messaging in the software industry, by and large, sucks. Probably (and I mean this only in the most constructive possible way) even yours. Consider the following, taken verbatim from a brochure:

[Our company] develops flexible, best-of-breed intelligent software and services for the telecommunications industry and enterprises that accelerate convergence by leveraging communications networks, technologies and applications.

Wow!  Well.  Now that’s something. Except, what the hell does the company do? More to the point, what problem does the product solve?

Can you guess the most common phrase used in technology related press releases? It’s “next generation.” This is followed closely by “flexible,” “scalable,” and “robust,” among a host of others. Please. Marketing leaders must avoid architecting their messaging by leveraging these terms, if you’ll forgive me. Write to the customer. What does your product do?

But first, take a look at your website. At your collateral. Does it say “next generation” anywhere? Are you scalable, available, robust, flexible? Are you a platform? Do you feature an enterprise-class (or carrier-class) engine? Are you cutting edge? Easy-to-use, user-friendly, integrated, or interoperable? Tell me, do you leverage a bunch of industry standards?

Here’s the rule: when writing any marketing material, consider your customer first. Write for them. Start with them, and with their problems, first. Write about that for awhile. Then consider what your product does for the customer. What problem does it solve, what pain does it assuage, what pleasure does it provide, what would move someone to pay to experience your wonderful next generation product? Write all that down, then go back and edit and massage. Maybe even throw in a “leverage” or two, just to show you’re a team player.

Once you do that, that’s probably enough to stand out. You won’t have to go into why your product is differentiated from your competitors — you’ll be differentiated because your customers will understand what it is your product does. And your competitor’s product? Your customers won’t be sure what it does, except that it does it in a “next generation” kind of way.