2009 Guidance for CMOs
I think Michael Gerard is spot on with his views on the need for different priorities and strategies for CMOs in 2009. He talks about the need to remove the disconnect between sales and marketing, decentralisation of both the marketing function and budgets to the region and also about the importance of sales enablement. These are all hobby horses of mine. It’s well worth a read, I hope CMOs are listening.
Danny Goodall
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Audience strata mismatch
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If I were to write in this blog
“18th century art has always been my passion. It’s my belief that mid-18th century, art, as captured by oil on canvas, has never been surpassed in terms of quality.”
You may ask what on earth that has to do with you – a visitor to a blog about high-technology marketing. You’d be right to question it because I’d obviously written the wrong thing to the wrong audience. My message may have been exactly what I wanted to say but I chose the wrong audience to deliver it to. As it happens, I’m afraid I’m a bit of a philistine when it comes to art appreciation – but hopefully… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, positioning, product marketing | 
audience, competitive, Competitive Marketing, Lustratus, messaging, product marketing, REPAMA, strata, Strategic Marketing | 
Leave a commentBook recommendation
I’d like to recommend a book today. I came across it a couple of weeks ago and whilst I don’t know the author, it felt like it was written by someone I knew. It’s well worth a read if you’re in product marketing, product management or strategic marketing planning. It’s called quite simply “Product Marketing for Technology Companies” and it’s written by a guy called Mark Butje.
If you’re in a hurry then it’s a simple as that. Go buy the book. You won’t regret it. If you want to know why I recommend it. Read on.
I’ve been developing marketing strategies for many companies for many years. … Continue reading
You can spin, but you can’t hide
We spend a lot of time at Lustratus looking into the performance of early market companies. Quite often these companies brief us and tell us how well they’re doing and how well they’re latest re-positioning is being received in the market. Most of the time I believe them. And what if I don’t, what can I do to prove/disprove their claims? As an early market company they’re typically not public and probably don’t have to file detailed financial results.
The answer lies in the footprints they leave in the Internet snow. That and something that we refer to as the Press Release Boilerplate Evolution. As you probably know, the boilerplate is the short,… Continue reading
“We all target the same prospects”
We all target the same prospects!
I hear this a lot in the high-tech marketing world. Organisations tell me that when they are prospecting they and their competitors target the same organisations and the same people.
I want to highlight how assumptions like this can be very dangerous in competitive marketing. It’s lazy to assume that your closest competitors are saying the same thing to the same people as you are targeting.
Sure there are major similarities in most highly competitive markets but when Lustratus studies the protagonists and their relative offerings in detail we always find significant clear blue water between them.
We developed the REPAMA methodology to bring a little clearer insight into competitive marketing. … Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, high performance middleware, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, Vendor-Related Posts | 29West, ibm, Latency Busters Messaging, LBM, LLM, low latency messaging, marketing strategy, messaging, middleware, positioning, Solace Content Router, solace systems | 1 CommentThe company doth protest too much, methinks
…or Shakespeare and Cuban heels.
Apologies to those fans of the Bard for the bastardisation of the famous line from Hamlet but it’s a phrase I’ve come to use for early market software vendors that are trying just a little too hard to convince prospects that they are bigger and more credible than they really are.
Claiming, front and centre on your web site and in the copy of your press releases that you are the “global leader” in somethingorother appears to be the fashion in marketing communications. In fact we see phrases like “global”, “market-leading” or “leading provider” so often now that I think we’ve actually stopped thinking about the meaning of these words and whether we… Continue reading
High-tech marketing spend is…
…slowing according to IDC’s Michael Gerard. No surprise there then given the global economic slowdown. I guess we’ve all seen some evidence of a slowing in spending and recruiting perhaps the surprise is that the slowdown is not as bad as one might have expected. The results come from IDC’s 2008 Tech Marketing Benchmark Study (covered more fully on btobonline.com). This is a piece of research that should find itself on every senior marketing exec’s highly polished desk.
Anyone expecting a grilling over budget requests should have studied this report beforehand for justification. If you’re asking for money and you haven’t realised that your request is 10% higher than the average in… Continue reading
Indocilis privata loqui – expelled from the marketing circle?
Without the benefit of a classical education I can’t be sure, but I think the Latin in the title says something like “not right to reveal secrets”. It’s the motto of the Magic Circle – an organisation that guards its magic secrets jealously. I wonder what would motivate a magician to leave the ‘circle and expose the tricks behind the “magic” and in doing so disappoint people everywhere with the realisation that the women doesn’t really get sawn in two but is in fact two very small women bred specifically for the act. Probably.
Funnily enough an ex-colleague of mine suggested that I might be doing the same thing by blogging on some of the techniques used… Continue reading
A quantum of Solace? (Systems)
So, as I mentioned in my previous blog that Lustratus has been looking at companies in the High Performance Messaging (middleware) space recently. A couple of ex-colleagues from Sonic (Dave Clare and Annalisa Sarasini) have both found themselves in this space, with Solace Systems and 29West respectively. My colleague Steve Craggs is looking to produce a paper on the space so we arranged a couple of briefings.
Steve and I have both served our message oriented apprenticeship. Steve ran IBM’s MQSeries division for many years and I was part of the team at Sonic Software that brought SonicMQ to market and then launched the ESB category. So we both understand the manic vendor space… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, high performance middleware, marketing, Marketing Strategy | 29West, annalisa sarasini, Danny Goodall, dave clare, high performance messaging, low latency messaging, marketing strategy, mqseries, solace systems, sonic software, sonicmq, steve craggs, talarian, tibco | Leave a commentFocus and 8 fingered gloves
I remember using the phrase “You’re marketing 8 fingered gloves” with a client a few years ago. And without wanting to show any disrespect to those unfortunate or fortunate enough to have more than 5 digits on each hand, I think it illustrates perfectly the dilemma that some technology vendors face.
Imagine you are the VP Marketing for Octodigit Inc. – a manufacturer of 8 fingered gloves for men. Your market is pretty small. Really small in fact. Getting new customers is quite a chore and involves some incredibly detailed research, focus and a lot of leg work. However, when you find a prospect – an octodigit (or whatever the term is) male who… Continue reading
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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.