Tag: digital-marketing

Categories
content marketing

Respectfully, marketing.

If you’re doing ABM, you probably know what your ideal customer looks like. But do you have any idea what your own vendor profile is?

Being a B2B marketing consultant is a privileged position. I get to see so many more businesses from the inside than most people do. Sometimes that means:

  • Witnessing genuinely exciting new technology long before others do
  • Working with super diverse skillsets, from visionary developers to incredible salespeople and brave founders 
  • Getting a real-world overview of “best-practice” marketing strategies and how well they do in the real world.

It can also mean

  • A surprising number of tech companies trying to “create their own category” TM
  • Yet another chaotic agency (and I can tell you that “each dysfunctional agency is dysfunctional in its own way”)
  • A steady flux of vague briefs with fluffy goals

But by far the most unusual quirk of this job is that I sometimes work on ABM programmes that target the same account as a different ABM programme I’ve worked on. So I don’t just work for a lot of different Bs – I often help them sell 2 a small group of other Bs.

For instance: during a recent call, my (new) client X seemed surprised that I knew so much about the ABM account Y they were trying to sell to. I had researched Y for a different ABM project last year and knew how they were structured and what some of their priorities are. To be honest, X actually seemed a bit annoyed that I had worked for another tech company that tried to sell to Y. I believe they felt that I’d worked for the competition. I hadn’t – my other client had a completely different product, and besides, I’m under NDA on all my projects. Anyway, X didn’t seem to see this advance knowledge as a a bonus – even though it meant I already knew the target account well and wouldn’t need long to research them. Maybe they simply hadn’t really thought about it much before.

There aren’t that many ABM-worthy accounts 

But this really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Think about it: The Microsofts of this world, the Verizons, Nestles, DHLs, Allianzes, BMWs – there are a few gigantic multinational enterprises out there that of course everybody is trying to sell to. (In fact, sometimes they’re trying to sell to each other). They’re huge, they’re mature, global, and complex. And they need to constantly spend money – and not just on enterprise tech – to keep the ship going. Of course others are after that money, too. And just like you, these other B2B tech vendors are going to target at the very minimum:

  • A specific department  – or several (i.e. the primary users of the solution)
  • IT (because they’re going to have to integrate it)
  • Key people in the C-Suite (so they’ll find and sign off the budget – i.e. probably the CIO, and CFO)
  • (and most will fruitlessly attempt to get through to the CEO, too) 

…and ABM targets are bored with this stuff

Understandably, these businesses are really tired of being sold to. As a consequence of being big-ass corporations, they’re being pitched to 24/7. And unfortunately, a lot of the pitches sound exactly the same (I know because my privileged position as a B2B tech marketing strategist means I get to see a lot of them):

  • The value propositions are bland. They often aim high – e.g. they might revolve around abstract concepts like ‘digital transformation’ and ‘customer experience’, but never specify how they deliver these things. That makes the message fluffy, irrelevant, and less than credible (I wrote about the importance of getting messaging altitude and laddering right in this recent post)
  • They lead with non-differentiating messages, such as ‘our product can be customised’ and ‘we deliver superb user experiences’. Don’t get me wrong, these can be great differentiators – but only later on, when they’ve already bought. They’re not great for marketing, because they’re messages everybody can claim, which have to be experienced to be believed. If they’re actually true about your product, then they’re customer retention features, rather than lead conversion ones. Your targets will see them in literally every vendor’s marketing collateral that lands on their desk and believe me, it makes their eyes glaze over.
  • They beat their own drum instead of focusing on their target’s priorities. Too many ABM propositions still talk mostly about the vendor and don’t craft a value proposition that aligns with their prospect’s business goals (even though they often do the hard work of identifying these!). It leaves the target account having to figure out the value to their business themselves (and who’s got the time, brainspace and motivation for that?).
  • Their creative and collateral are weak. I recently advised a client from the English-speaking world who was trying to break into the German market. They showed me the German website and collateral they’d created. Everything was entirely machine-translated and sounded clunky. What signal is that going to send to your new market? Exactly. It says: “we couldn’t be bothered to invest any money. We’re making you do all the work figuring out who we are. And if this doesn’t work we won’t stick around here.”

How to develop a vendor brand that stands out

And frankly, given that if they end up buying from you, they’ll be paying you rather handsome sums, and often on a subscription basis (i.e. recurring revenue, ka-ching!), these businesses can rightfully expect marketing that tries a little harder. This is true whether you’re doing one-to-one ABM or just plain old marketing to a specific customer segment. I would argue that your customisation effort should be proportional to the potential return you’re expecting. Or in other words:

If it’s going to be valuable to you, it’ll have to cost you something.

And by that I don’t necessarily mean glossy campaigns or airtime or expensive spokespeople. What I mean is making a real effort to be relevant.  How can vendors do this? By doing quite a few things, actually, and none of them are rocket science:

  • Do your research. Talk to the SMEs in your own company. Find (former) employees of your target account or industry in your network. If you can’t speak to an actual insider in person (do try, though. Can somebody introduce you?), read up on your target account’s strategy, their values and priorities – the bigger the account, the more likely you are to find annual reports, mission statements, CEO presentations, interviews. This is where leaders talk about the big issues for their businesses, and ideally your solution is relevant to that  (even if it’s in a small way. If you acknowledge that and credibly show how you can help, it’ll be appreciated)
  • Make a note of the language they use. This is such a simple trick, but it’s highly effective. Adapt your message by aligning to the way they speak. (Note: this doesn’t mean making things up.) But if, for instance, you use the term “sustainability” in your messaging, and their annual report talks about “ESG”, it makes sense to adapt to the way they think and talk about these things internally. Obvs this is easier in one-to-one ABM programmes, where you can fully focus on a single account. But it also works for industry campaigns where you can tap into domain-specific language and demonstrate that you understand your prospects’ world.
  • Complete the Venn diagram. Once you’ve listened and learned as much as possible, be very honest with yourself and probe your value proposition for something your target audience really cares about. Find that sweet spot between what you can offer and what they need. It’s fine if you can’t help with everything. Be open about that. Don’t fall into the overclaim trap. Be as specific as possible. Nobody believes that a single vendor will deliver “Digital Transformation”. Stick to your guns. Name the precise problem you solve, and how you do it.
  • Respect their intellect and time. Prepare for the skeptical questions any discerning buyer will ask and have answers, proof points, case studies and testimonials ready for them. If you don’t have any of these things yet, work up a confident (but not utopian) projection of ROI (think beyond just money: time saved, employee experience, customer retention etc can all be dimensions of ROI relevant). Sometimes you may have to make assumptions (e.g. about their tech setup, or size of their problem). Usually, as long as you flag that they’re assumptions, buyers are fine with that. But: be ready to pivot.

Ultimately, in my experience, being a great vendor comes down to showing you’re respectful and invested: doing the hard work for your prospects, making your message as relevant, compelling and easy to understand as possible, empathising with their position, and helping them apply the due diligence that their business expects of them.

Even better if you do it with wit and verve. But in B2B tech, wit and verve alone won’t save you if you’re trying to cut through to the smart, busy, inundated buyers everybody’s trying to reach. 

(This post is partially inspired by a person, who, when I recommended a messaging exercise to sharpen their painfully generic value proposition, told me that wouldn’t be necessary: the company already had one, it was all there on paper. And if I really needed to tweak it, which they doubted, to do it based on some desk research, and not rock any boats. After all, their customers and SMEs were too important to speak to some random marketing lady. I hope the fact that they “deliver Digital Transformation”, “strive for excellence” and “tailor their services to customer needs” strikes a chord with their audience.)

Categories
content marketing

How to create B2B content that helps you sell

Several years ago ( I think it was pre-Covid *cough*), I did a presentation on content marketing to the portfolio companies of Illuminate Financial (a VC dedicated to Fintech and enterprise tech). Afterwards, they interviewed me for a blog post.
I just found that interview again, and am surprised that I still believe most of what I said then: mainly, that good marketing in B2B isn’t rocket science, and that good content can deliver credibility for your business. (And that you can shamelessly re-purpose old content if it’s still relevant ;)

What is the context and background of what you do?

I help businesses sell to other businesses. My focus is marketing strategy for tech companies – specifically helping them figure out the best message to put to their audience within their market and space.  

In the B2B tech space this is often a big challenge as it’s something that sits at the intersection of understanding product, the overall market, and the audience. 

Too often you see tech companies who are incredibly strong when it comes to building their product, but they don’t have enough understanding of the environment they are selling into. For their proposition to resonate with the industry budget holders (often different from the end users), it needs to be positioned in a way that factors in the different dynamics and forces at play. This nuance is key to the message. It needs to focus on who you are selling to, and the world they are in. 

How can you work out if someone (new hire or agency) really knows B2B?

The first thing I would do is look at the work that person or agency has done in the past. Have they got experience in your sector, and do you like their style? And secondly: Be rigorous when you ask them about their process – get them to take you through it step by step. How do they approach learning about the problem and product, identifying the audience they are trying to reach, and factor this into their work. Make sure you understand what they are doing and why. Don’t let them bamboozle you with marketing jargon. If you don’t understand something, ask.

Why content marketing?

Content shouldn’t be separate from the rest of your marketing. I think marketing disciplines need to work together. I have seen businesses who have split digital, traditional, content marketing etc into silos and it can be a disaster (and it’s not efficient either!). You need to have a clear position and voice as the starting point for all your marketing. Content builds your credibility and authority in your chosen space. It allows your audience to read what you have got to say, self-educate and build trust in you. That’s why it’s so valuable –it helps find people not on your radar and bring them into your orbit. It’s out there working for you when you don’t even realise! But it’s closely related to your value proposition, your brand and your product – these things have to makes sense together.

And, to get it right, it’s essential to lead with the bigger themes in your market rather than the product message. If you only talk about yourself, your prospects will just shut down and stop listening. You need to earn the right to sell to them by showing them you get their world, and the challenges they face. 

Biggest mistakes you see companies make with content?

Leading with a product message is the first. Other mistakes are companies who push out content for content’s sake. Too many firms think they need to publish once or twice a week for consistency. When they do this, they often creep into pushing out posts that either don’t relate to their expertise, or are low quality – or boring! This destroys credibility and traction, which is exactly the opposite of what you’re trying to do.

The other trap is when you have PR masquerading as content. ‘Content’ that is too self-centred, an excuse to write about a client win or award, etc. Don’t make your content library a PR catalogue. No-one will come to your site to read about how great you are. 

Last but not least – don’t put out content that you wouldn’t want to read yourself! Use this as a sense check before you hit post. Are you saying something new and interesting? Is it formatted in an easy to read way? Can I skim it and get the gist? Ask yourself – would a mildly interested observer want to read this (be really honest with yourself…). If the answer is no, then don’t post it.   

What advice would you give to a company just starting? What is the minimum base you need?

The first thing to do as a tech marketer (if you are new hire in a company), is to gain the trust of the techies. The best content will always come from the expertise in the business. One way to create content and gain internal trust is to engage people internally to help create content. Ask people to write a post or interview them about their expertise. It is a great first step to make people internally feel involved, and bridges the gap between marketing and tech. It won’t cost you anything extra either if you are running on a tight budget. 

What about your views on agency or non-agency? Consultants vs in house?

Why wouldn’t you want to work with an agency if you can afford it? They can combine so many things and have a roster of talented people under one roof. Of course, it comes at a price. So working out the best route for your company is common sense. There are certain functions any business should have in-house these days – a good digital marketer for instance – because you want to own your own marketing data. 

What agencies can bring is professionalism and creativity. A way of looking at things differently given what they are exposed to cross industry. There is a lot of B2B content that just looks the same. As though someone created a template and its been shared with too many people. This can be boring and risk falling into the content for content’s sake bucket. Agencies can help create standout visuals, brand messaging, and tone of voice. At the beginning, you can do lots of this work with freelancers to fit your budget but ultimately this won’t scale. 

What are some of the other hacks you would suggest aside from using freelancers?

Getting the foundations right and building from that will save you lots of money and headaches in the long run. As a starting point, I would be hiring a great digital marketer who understands KPIs and measurement. Lots of B2B marketing is experimenting with channels and messages. Which emails are opened, AB testing etc… try to embrace this. Get someone into your team who is excited about it, can set it up, and measure it. This would probably be one of first hires you should think about (I know I’m shooting myself in the foot here as I’m a content marketer) – but I really don’t think you should outsource digital anymore. 

What about the balance of content you would suggest – top of funnel vs sales and head vs heart?

I think that businesses need to have more emotional content! There is a huge misconception that the B2B buying journey is entirely rational – so the content needs to be all sales-aids, etc. with ROIs, business plans, savings calculators etc. Yes, there is a big rational aspect but there is also a huge emotional element that gets completely overlooked. 

If you have a product that solves a specific problem in an industry, there will be people who feel strongly about it. They will have been frustrated with the problem for years. And finding a solution is a relief. That’s what your marketing should talk about.

In a business, there are also ambitions and politics at play. Maybe the sponsor wants to look good to his/her superiors by finding and backing a solution. 

There are lots of message here that can make people sit up, pay attention and say ‘wow – I didn’t realise this existed’. I think the industry is missing a massive trick here by focusing on rational decision making alone. 

What are the other gaps that you see?

As well as top of the funnel content, there often isn’t much middle of the funnel either. This segment is all about best practice. Content marketing works best when you’re generous to your audience with what you know.. This allows people to self-educate. Too often it becomes too salesy too quickly which is a turn off. 

Being too focused on your company, and not the market is the other gap. In any industry there are four or so thought leaders, experts who blog about industry issues that are well known. Reach out to them! Show them you have an opinion, truly react to what they say. Show you are engaging and part of the space you are selling into.

I really enjoyed this conversation (as you can probably tell, I can talk about this stuff for ages). If you’re relatively new to marketing in B2B, then you might also like this post, which explains some basic terminology.

And if you have a B2B marketing or content-related question, or would like to explore your options, then do get in touch!

Categories
Copywriting messaging

A B2B Marketing FAQ

A few essential B2B Marketing terms everyone uses but nobody ever defines

a lightbox shaped like a question mark lying on its side
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Except for the shortest-ever stint with an in-house team (where I learnt the hard way that I’m not made for days of back-to-back meetings), I’ve spent my entire career to date either agency-side or running my own B2B Marketing consultancy.

And I’ve had a few experiences with clients recently that made me realise that we marketers are guilty of the very same thing we tell our clients to stop doing: and that’s going heavy on the jargon when it comes to your own expertise. It’s the first rule of B2B tech (insert other niche as appropriate) marketing club. It’s simple: when you’re trying to sell people something, you should make it easy for them to understand your message, not make them learn a whole new language.

Owning up to jargon guilt

And yet, we marketers do the same thing when we talk about our own work.

There’s two reasons we make this mistake. The first is that a lot of the key concepts in marketing don’t feel like jargon. Positioning, messaging, content – these aren’t exactly terms that sound like you’re talking about the inside of a hadron collider (though we’ve got our share of those too).

The second is the same reason techies and other experts do it. We’re talking about our world, and it’s become second nature to us. Just like little kids, we struggle to understand that other people don’t know the exact same things we do.

I recently worked with a client who didn’t know the difference between messaging and copy. I’m going to admit that I did an inner eye-roll (not a real one as that would have been visible on zoom) first. But then I realised that I can’t assume that everyone I work with has the same experience I do. You might be working client-side, or maybe you’re an agency newbie, or you’re a non-marketer who’s been pulled into a project you haven’t signed up for. And you might find it helpful to understand a few concepts nobody ever defines because they sound so obvious.

This is the spirit in which I’ve put together this little FAQ – not to teach any of you marketing grandmothers to suck eggs (though, tbh, you all stink at egg-sucking) – but to actually hold ourselves accountable to what we promise to deliver, maybe challenge some assumptions, and hopefully, also invite some debate or pushback. So, here goes: 

Positioning

This is where you define the position of your company or product in the market, i.e. the field you want to play, to use one of those sports metaphors we all love so much. You take into account things like 

  • Your geography and any laws and regulations that might apply there (eg EMEA)
  • Your category (e.g. rebate management software) – if it already exists. If it doesn’t, many companies want to create their own. (This is incredibly hard to do though and I might explain why in a future post sometime)
  • Your target audiences (eg CIOs and COOs of small and medium enterprises)
  • Their pain points/the problem you solve for them (e.g data is so siloed that it can’t be used by the entire organisation) 
  • What outcomes your product delivers for each target (e.g. deal velocity, error-free automated processes)
  • What outcomes your product delivers for the entire business (e.g. faster time-to-market than their competitors)
  • What you’re selling against, ie your direct competitors and the alternatives your prospects have to your offer (e.g. they could continue to use spreadsheets)
  • Attitudes like misconceptions, fears, obstacles (eg “we bought a solution like this ten years ago and it didn’t integrate and compromised all our data”)
  • What they stand to lose by not buying it (e.g. they’ll leave money on the table)
  • Your look and feel, eg does your UX blow your competitors out of the water? Is your tone of voice edgier than the incumbent’s? Are you the app store favourite?
  • A few other things like your price point and/or pricing model, or delivery model 

Arriving at a positioning is usually a lengthy exercise that should involve at the very least competitor research, as well as stakeholder, subject matter expert, and customer interviews. It should also take into account past marketing efforts (if available) such as old messaging and performance data. Positioning is hard and gnarly and full moments of doubt and I absolutely love it. It’s my favourite marketing project to do.

A strong positioning is hugely important for both marketing and sales. First of all, it creates agreement on what your story is (though many lone wolf salespeople still make up their own), and who your best prospects are. Without positioning you can’t really create proper messaging or define a targeting strategy (eg who is a “Marketing qualified lead” or MQL; do we target them at a conference or on Linkedin?) or know where best to allocate your always-too-small budget. And it’s closely related to product development and roadmaps, too.

Having said that, you wouldn’t believe how many businesses don’t actually have a formalised positioning that’s written down and agreed on. Instead, a CEO or Chief Product Officer might have an idea of where they play and answers to all of the above, but they’ve never actually made the effort of spelling it out and sharing it with their marketing and product teams. Big mistake. Huge. Because it leads to uncertainty, misunderstanding, lack of direction, wasted budgets, and also: not enough good bloody leads. And also, it means nobody can challenge or update these ideas, and that’s never good. 

Messaging and the messaging house

Positioning and messaging work hand in hand. If you’ve done your positioning work thoroughly, your messaging will fall out of that. It’ll include your key value proposition, the benefits for your audience, what that looks like, and ideally some proof points, too.

While you might work with variations of your messaging for different targets (e.g. you’ll want to prioritise messages around ROI for a CFO or COO, but go all in on the fluffier benefits and employee experience when you’re targeting HR or the actual users of your product), you should have a core overall messaging framework defined for your offer. These frameworks come in different forms, from a simple Why/What/How, to the Why change/Why us/Why now model. One of the most common ones that you’ll probably come across is the “messaging house”. I’ve always found it a little naff to squeeze all that hard, grown-up, big-girl work into a template that looks like it should come with crayons, but it’s not a bad way to present a lot of information succinctly. I can’t share any of the ones I’ve created for my clients because I work under NDA. But if you image-search “messaging house” you’ll find plenty of examples (of varying quality) online.

One of the key misconceptions I come across is that people equate messaging and copy. 

Messaging is not copy. It’s a framework for agreeing on the key messages that you want to get across to your audience. It’s usually short (often bullet points, maybe all on one slide) and hasn’t been given the copywriter treatment. That means it doesn’t have all those beautiful headlines, examples, use cases and tone of voice that bring your brand to life. Very few people outside your marketing department will ever see your messaging. They will, hopefully though, see and read your copy.

So why do it at all? Again, it’s about getting everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet, and achieving internal agreement on what your story is first. It’s also useful for briefing creatives (copywriters, for instance) and approaching partners for joint value propositions.

Copy

Copy is what you create when you translate your messaging into a (usually client-facing) asset. This is where you expand on your messaging and fill in the details – the angles, the different applications, the secondary benefits, and infuse your copy with your brand tone of voice. This could be in headlines, social media posts, blog posts, ebooks etc

Here’s an example: Let’s say your product helps hospitals work more efficiently. Then one of your messaging pillars might be around cost savings, another around the patient experience and a third one about analytics on operations data. This messaging could be translated into headlines for an ad or subject lines for email (e.g. “Say goodbye to gaps in the staff roster”; “Optimise your hospital laundry schedule”); into thought leadership blog posts (e.g. “Why hospital efficiency isn’t just a funding issue: The measurable impact of optimised staff rotas on the patient experience”); into an ebook that demonstrates your authority on the subject (e.g. “7 metrics every hospital administrator should be tracking”) – you get the idea. Or if you wanted to go all in disruptor-style and coin a new industry standard, you could try and go for something like “Staff rosters don’t work. Why it’s time to embrace the continuous care operations model” (I hope that’s not a thing btw, I just made it up).

The point is, your copy will contain your messaging, but it does more than that: it will also deliver on other crucial elements of your marketing, like empathise with your audience’s situation; demonstrate domain expertise with the right industry terminology; make it easy, fun and engaging to read; and express your brand personality.

Content

Email, social media and blog posts, ebooks etc which mentioned above are all content formats. There are loads more of course, such as websites, videos and infographics, and Turtls and scroll-sites (and that mysterious thing Sales teams often demand from Marketing, the “two-pager”). All of your content should probably be copy-written (except for maybe some dry technical data where you might get away with just facts). Your content is your chance to demonstrate to your market what you know better than anyone else. While your messaging contains your key talking and selling points, content is where you expand on the claims you make in your messaging. It shows your expertise, and your belief in how to do things better. It’s where you deliver the goods. 

Creating good content, that is, the sort your expert target audience won’t dismiss as “marketing fluff” is actually pretty hard, and if you’re in B2B tech should always be done using the insights (though not necessarily the writing skills) of subject matter experts. 

While some stakeholders may want you to crank up the sales pitches in your content, I strongly advise against it. Fill it with valuable, actionable advice as much as you can and avoid claiming that there is only one solution to the problem you’ve identified and it’s – surprise! – yours. B2B decision-makers are being sold to morning till evening and they smell a sales pitch or thinly veiled pseudo-tips from a mile off. Content is your place to demonstrate your expertise, not just claim it.

If you’re still confused by content, don’t fret. The term ‘content’ has, over the past 15 years or so, been stretched to its limits to include everything under the sun. I would say that IRL most marketers use ‘content’ to refer to higher-investment (not just money but stakeholder and writing time, too), and longer-form pieces, such as blog posts and ebooks and video case studies. In some agencies, you’ll also find “copywriters” (for the conceptual, short-form bits such as ads and headlines and brandy, moody copy) vs “content writers” (who work on blog posts, ebooks and whitepapers). Classifying writers like that doesn’t really work for me, really, but I’m sure they have their reasons.

The funnel

One more thing to mention in connection with content is the funnel model. It’s unfashionable and outdated by now, and lots of people have (rightly) criticised the metaphor, but it’s still a concept you should at least have heard of when discussing content. The idea is that a prospect’s interest in what you have to say increases if you give them valuable content that’s relevant to their situation. But it also means you need to hook them first, and ideally with something short, snappy and sexy, before you expect them to actually read all of your longer-form stuff. You earn their attention over time.

So when you hear people talking about “top of the funnel” (or TOFU) content, they mean something attention-grabbing and relatively quick to consume, that’s interesting enough for the prospect to want to learn more (and click through to more, or leave an email address). Maybe a short video, or a manifesto. Middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) content is typically longer-form (eg an ebook) and substantiates the bold claims you made in your TOFU pieces. Bottom-of-the-funnel (you guessed it, BOFU) content usually delivers proof points (eg case studies, which we’ll talk about shortly). The reason it’s the bottom of the marketing funnel is because the idea is that by that point, if your prospects are still engaged, they’re ready to talk to a human, ie a sales rep. They’ve become a Sales qualified lead (or SQL) and can be handed over to that department.

Unfortunately, the real world isn’t quite as neat and logical as this, and I wouldn’t hammer the funnel metaphor too far, but the model is still quite useful when you’re thinking about your content strategy, ie the content you should be offering to your prospects, where your biggest gaps are, which of your low-performing pieces to tweak first, etc.

Case study

Case studies, sometimes called customer stories or client success stories, are pieces of content where you tell the real-life story of your product or company improving another business. They’re hugely important in B2B, because that’s where your marketing rubber hits the credibility road. You use actual customers to substantiate your claims and give their verbatim testimonials. This is huge because few things hold more weight than a product endorsement from a peer. Common formats are pdfs (yawn) and talking heads videos.

I believe that case studies are often wrongly given the step-child treatment and created as an afterthought, with not enough production value, when really, they’re some of the most hard-working content you’re likely to produce. Many years ago I wrote a blog post about the boringnesss of B2B case studies, which, if you’re interested, you can read here. 

Use case

One of the reasons I wanted to include case studies in this FAQ is because people tend to get them confused with “use cases”. It makes me feel petty to have to insist on the correct usage, but we’re talking about completely different things here. A use case is one of several applications for your product. A digital twin for instance, might be used to optimise the placement of wind turbines in the North sea, or to do predictive maintenance on a supermarket freezer, or to monitor drilling operations on an offshore oil rig, or to simulate the performance of a prosthetic limb before you actually build it. They are different applications of the same core product that often need explaining because just saying “it’s a digital twin” won’t make that obvious to everyone. If yor create a piece of content that explains each of these applications, you could call that a “use case”, I guess. And you could, of course, always create a case study or two for each of those use cases.

2500 words and we’ve barely even scratched the surface

That’s enough for today. Marketing has loads more terms in dire need of explaining, but for now, I’ve focused on some of the areas I know best. There are loads of obscure (also to me) terms in some areas of marketing where I’m not an expert (such as Demand Gen and Measurement) so I’ll leave it to others to identify and define the key concepts. But for now, I’d love to hear your thoughts – has this been helpful at all? What did you miss? Do let me know on the usual channels (and here) and I’ll be happy to update this to keep it alive, kicking and – hopefully – useful.

Update: if you’d like to ask me an anonymous, marketing-related question, you can do it here:

Ask me a question