I’ve created a monster… REPAMATron – A Search Engine for Competitive Marketing Intelligence?
…Well strictly speaking that should be I’m creating a monster. You see, I’m in the process of automating our REPAMA methodology. Let me explain.
I’ve been using the REPAMA competitive research methodology for many years to understand vendors’ marketing strategies. Long before the formation of Lustratus in fact. It wasn’t a strict methodology back then. It was a set of relatively loose processes, measures and classifications that I used to ‘score’ various elements of a specific software vendor’s marketing strategy.
I used the process when I worked on the vendor side in various senior marketing positions. It allowed me to understand how I could differentiate my company’s technology from our competitors. And to differentiate, first I had to know how… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, pain, REPAMATron | 
analysis, automated, competition, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, competitive, Lustratus REPAMA, marketing intelligence, nlp, REPAMA, REPAMATron, search engine | 
6 Comments“Aim wider”, “focus everywhere” and other oxymorons
I’ve just had a conversation with a friend, an ex-colleague who was picking my brains (for free I might add!) about what he could do to make his sales year look better.
I asked him how his product was positioned and where his focus was on the market. He told me, and in doing so mentioned 3 industries, 3 market categories and 4 sub market segments, 4 or 5 target audiences and a similar number of problems they address in each of the 3 industries. I told him that this isn’t a focus. It’s a hedging of bets. It’s a baiting of many hooks in the vain hope of landing at least… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, go-to-market, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, pain, positioning, product marketing, prospects, reason to buy, usp | alternative, audience, benefit, competitive, Danny Goodall, focus, lead generation, Lustratus, marketing strategy, product marketing, prospecting, REPAMA, Target audience | Leave a commentPositioning and the Positioning Statement
Positioning and the Positioning Statement
This page contains a summary of a series of blog entries I made during January and February 2009. It describes the format of the positioning statement that we use in the REPAMA competitive intelligence methodology. I refer to the concept of positioning and the positioning statement frequently so I wanted to pull them all together in once place. So here you are.
Danny Goodall
Links to Original Posts
The Positioning Statement
FOR… positioning element
WHO…positioning element
OUR…positioning element
IS A…positioning element
THAT PROVIDES…positioning element
UNLIKE…positioning element
OUR PRODUCT…positioning element
Part 1 – Positioning
Happy 2009! I’ve been in debate with a number of correspondents about the layout and format of the positioning statement… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, go-to-market, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product category, product marketing, product name, reason to buy, Uncategorized, usp | alternative, audience, benefit, competition, competitive, competitor, customer pain, Danny Goodall, ideal customer, Lustratus, main benefit, messaging, offer category, positioning, positioning statement, primary alternative, primary reason to buy, product category, product marketing, product name, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing, target customer, unique sales proposition, usp | 1 CommentPart 7 – The “UNLIKE [the primary alternative]” element from the positioning statement
The Primary Competitor or Alternative
I’ve been looking at the positioning statement In this series of blogs. This entry will focus on the UNLIKE [the primary alternative or competitor] element.
So just to recap here we’re constructing a natural language statement that captures a number of key strategic marketing positioning elements. This particular element in the positioning statement above is where the ideal customer’s alternative to our product is defined.
First let’s see this element in the context of the complete positioning statement.
FOR [the ideal customer] WHO [has this specific pain or problem] OUR [product name] IS A[product category] THAT PROVIDES [this main benefit and reason to buy] UNLIKE [the… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, go-to-market, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product marketing, usp | alternative, competition, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, competitive, Competitive Marketing, competitor, Danny Goodall, Lustratus, marketing strategy, positioning, positioning statement, product marketing, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing | Leave a commentPart 2 – The “FOR [ideal customer]” element from the positioning statement
The Ideal Customer
As mentioned in the previous blog entry on the positioning statement, I’m going to continue to flesh out the details of the seven other positioning elements.
This time its the ideal target customer, so let’s first revisit the format of the positioning statement just to give us a context.
FOR [the ideal customer] WHO [has this specific pain or problem] OUR [product name] IS A[product category] THAT PROVIDES [this main benefit and reason to buy] UNLIKE [the primary alternative or competitor] OUR PRODUCT [has this unique selling proposition].
The ideal customer allows the organisation creating the positioning statement to express the characteristics of their ideal target customer for the… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, esb, ideal customer, job roles, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product marketing, prospects | competition, competitive, Danny Goodall, esb, ideal customer, Lustratus, marketing strategy, positioning, positioning statement, product marketing, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing, strategy | Leave a commentPart 1 – The positioning statement
Positioning
Happy 2009! I’ve been in debate with a number of correspondents about the layout and format of the positioning statement that we use in the Lustratus REPAMA-based research. So I’m going to dedicate the next few blog entries to the positioning statement. I hope to answer the following questions.
- What is the positioning statement?
- Why use a positioning statement?
- What is the value of a positioning statement?
- What is the format of a positioning statement?
The first thing to say is that over the years, having worked with some of the best product marketing people in the industry, I’ve seen many different approaches to positioning and equally many different formats for positioning statements. Each of them,… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, pain, positioning, product category, product marketing, product name, reason to buy, usp, Vendor-Related Posts | alternative, benefit, competition, competitive, competitor, Danny Goodall, ideal customer, Lustratus, main benefit, marketing strategy, oracle, pain, positioning, positioning statement, product category, product marketing, product name, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing, strategy, tibco, usp | 1 CommentAn “average” marketing strategy
Mean. It’s a great word isn’t it. But what does mean, mean? If you see what I mean. It’s either hateful, the intended meaning of something or, as I want to use it here – an average. In this case it’s the “average” marketing strategy for a specific marketing segment. What would be the value of knowing the “average” marketing strategy for any number of strategic marketing elements for the segment in which you compete?
i.e. on average for your market segment who is the ideal target customer organisation? On average what job roles do your competitors target? On average which vertical markets are favoured? On average who does your competition see as… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, high performance middleware, ideal customer, job roles, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, positioning, product marketing, prospects, Vendor-Related Posts | 29West, competitive, ibm, low latency messaging, Lustratus, marketing strategy, middleware, positioning, REPAMA, solace systems, tibco | Leave a comment
- On Informatica, Evangelism, Audience Strata and BIG-DATA
- The marketing strategies of open source versus closed source ESBs
- Part 2 – First output from REPAMATron – WSO2 versus FuseSource versus Talend versus the ESB market
- First output from REPAMATron – WSO2 versus FuseSource versus Talend versus the ESB market
- WSO2 – Fits in between Talend and FuseSource…
- WSO2, or rather one of its competitors, has thrown its hat into the ring
- Wordcount.org – it counts words…
Recent Comments
May 12, 2011 (12:01) The Goodall Technology Reading Ease Index - How Complex is Your Marketing Copy? Hmm. I really do like the name Sarah but what about my ego? If I were to call the index 'GoodRead...
May 12, 2011 (11:36) The Goodall Technology Reading Ease Index - How Complex is Your Marketing Copy? I suggest calling it the GoodRead Index. Maybe it's over-reaching a bit, but you'll just have to ...
October 14, 2010 (4:19) Truth Denied? The Software Appliance Revisited. I hope you could tell that I was being more than a little flippant here Jacques. Perhaps I should...
October 13, 2010 (1:56) Truth Denied? The Software Appliance Revisited. Allow me to disagrre. At a customer, we have used Datapower for years to process XML (BTW, it is ...
June 7, 2010 (4:38) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Pete,Thanks for your comments, and those of your colleague. I think Danny has answered the 'mar...
June 4, 2010 (4:03) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Hi,I'd very much like to develop a point made in the report where it is asserted that software ...
May 6, 2010 (12:35) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Thanks for your comment Blake. This is a marketing-focused blog that looks at different vendors' ...
May 5, 2010 (1:23) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Hello There - It seems that this is a very provocative report, especially with respect to the sta...
April 14, 2010 (2:57) The Decision Making Unit for Cloud Computing Nice Technology Related Blog. Will visit again.
October 16, 2009 (5:56) The Decision Making Unit for Cloud Computing Very interesting point of discussion. I would be very interested to hear your results.