I have been working in the Software Marketing Industry for close to 10 years and I still find most of the communication in the Industry incredibly boring and stiff. I don’t even have the energy to try to understand some of the Industry newsletters I get. What are they talking about? I am guessing that the goal of the fancy technical jargon is to put me in place and to show they know what they are talking about. The only problem is that “they” end up not reaching me at all.
You say: “But I am a B2B Marketer…”
If you are selling B2B software you may feel inclined to follow industry standards and use a somewhat higher flying language, and throwing in some buzzwords is never wrong, right? Well, I am here to tell you that you’re wrong. The difference between B2B and B2C is mostly existing in university literature and when it comes to selling software your end users and clients are people. And people are people.
How are you talking to your customers and clients? What language are you using communicating about your software? Take a look at this video, it will perhaps set off an alarm somewhere in the back of your head – Mind Your Language!
Also check out the guy 1:18 into the video. Find out why he switched software…
In fact, I felt that the message of keeping it simple was so brilliantly conveyed by Google that I immediately sent out an email to all my support staff asking them to check out this video. I also asked them to think about this when communicating to our software buyers. To make it easy to understand for everyone. The people in this video may very well be clients of yours and mine. Think about that.
Until next time 😉
Peter – Software Marketing Secrets
TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION: Ask your staff to “Keep It Simple” and ask them to check out this video:
http://softwaremarketingsecrets.com/sell-software/mind-your-language/
Thanks goes out to C Collins (see our Software Marketing Directory / Software Marketing Blogs ) for alerting me about this video.
A couple of minutes after publishing this article I received an industry letter.
The first paragraph reads:
“A result of Autonomy’s acquisition of Interwoven, Autonomy Interwoven TeamSite integrates Autonomy Interwoven’s Web content management platform with multivariable testing and closed-loop analytics to provide a “meaning-based marketing” approach where the software understands the meaning of, analyzes, and acts on all forms of information.”
I thought it was a good example…
Just a note that we should also consider who the target market is before evaluating terminology used. I would be the target market for Autonomy’s new offering and understood the language used with no need for dumming it down.
Too often I see advice offered on copy and positioning by people who have no point of reference on what is being offered or the intended buyer. What’s meaningless to the masses may be a very well targeted message to the intended audience.
That said, the video is potent proof that the reverse situation is sadly more often the rule rather than the exception.
what a marketing guy should do before the presentaion of Software.
In the company in which i am working having lots of Products so how to select the product to which i should sell.
Hi Vishal,
That’s very difficult to say. What products do you have?
Cheers,
Peter
am into online school management software product marketing
what preference I should take into consideration before
marketing the product. We concetnrate in Indian Market
KVG Menon
Kerala India
It is not really a comment to this issue, but a good tip for your website topic “software support marketing”;
I’ve disovered the perfect tool to offer all users of my client’s software a support platform: “getsatisfaction”.
It is structured in four areas: as a question / report a problem / share an idea and give praise.
Users can enter their question, problem, idea or praise and any other registered person can answer this – as well as the support team of course.
The company can also insert company updates – e.g. to announce a new release – and link to further support sites or helpful documents.
We use it as a kind of FAQ – as we just have established it. I’ve created a “user account” and was feeding this with support requests the company had received by email. I hope to get more registered members soon to let it become a vivid platform (big companies as Microsoft use it, too!). So it helps you reduce your support effort – as other users migth give answers. As we have announced in a press release and promote it on the website new users have a look at it. They may find their solution there and don’t have to get in contact with us – what reduced the incoming support requests in our mail accounts.
I guess it is a nice tool to offer quick, competent support and to get an idea about how users feel about certain features. You get an idea of the mood and what is wanted. So you can improve your software – concerning usablity, features or help texts …
I really like it (but I’m actually not convinced about the statistics they show you – the site visitor numbers seems way too high).
In the moment they don’t support multilanguage yet.
please send what type of software in this fields, next one what selling in SAP software India.
Hi Abdul,
Not sure what you are referring to?
Cheers,
Peter
I have opened newly software company both product & service based. i want to reputed in the market so what i will do in the market. Please give me the website for which is hep us to findout the Data like email id , phon numbers. etc .
Thanks
Hi Pintu,
I don’t follow exactly what you mean. Are you asking how to find out your clients information?