Air Fryers Should Give Software Marketers Hope
And a classy request
Hello Gobbledeers,
After spending the last few weeks thinking about words you shouldn’t put on your website, I have a pile of words that I wanted to put on this website. Or newsletter. Forgive me if this week doesn’t have a theme - I had a bunch of random notes saved up and now I’m dumping them in your lap. That’s the theme - I dump in your lap.
Sometimes Just Be Obvious
First, if you’re not reading Dave Kellogg’s Kellblog, you should. He’s been in software for years and has a level-headed perspective on how to think about software marketing (read: I usually agree with him, therefore he must be smart). Also, he uses a Wordpress theme from roughly 1997, so reading his site is like going into a time machine. Backwards.
That all said, I found an ad in a column on his site that I wanted to talk about, and now I can’t find the column but I have in my notes that I got it from him. Attribution complete.
Let’s imagine you’re the CMO at IBM. Congrats, your parents must be proud (“Our daughter is a very successful sales person at IBM! I think she sells typewriters.”).
You’ve heard for years that nobody gets fired for buying IBM. For a CTO selecting IBM represents safety. Safety for their job, primarily. But also that their data will be safe. Their systems will be safe.
That’s what IBM does. But the benefit that IBM provides is the CTO will sleep at night knowing that he won’t be fired (he’ll ultimately be fired for inappropriate comments made to a group of interns, but he doesn’t know that yet).
You, CMO, wracks your head about how to convey all of that - IBM provides security for your company but, perhaps more importantly, a feeling of security for the CTO. The feeling that you can sleep at night without worrying.
And then it hits you - why not be obvious?
More effective than “IBM provides blah blah blah encryption so you can be sure your data is protected using SOC2 etc etc etc.”
Sometimes obvious is better.
The Challenge with B2B Content
I’ve been reading a newsletter by Nik Sharma which is focused on D2C optimization (landing pages and content) - it’s really good. I have a general feeling that those of us on the B2B side of the world should perhaps pay more attention to the consumer-facing side of the universe because - shocker - the people buying our software also buy a bunch of crap for themselves.
He wrote a piece a week or so ago where he was talking about celebrity brands and how many are successful because of their ability to create huge amounts of content:
From my own experience, there's also a lesser "barrier" to creating content when the DNA of the leadership is content, versus living in an excel sheet with goals of direct traffic and Facebook ad spend numbers.
His point was that it was easier to get companies to invest in pumping out content when their DNA is in pumping out content.
I’ve found the same to be true in B2B (though Nik said it better than I have) - content creation for software companies is challenging when the DNA of the leadership isn’t content.
And here’s the bad news - almost no software companies are started by people who worked in content.
Instead, either they worked in product or engineering, and you end up with gobbledy to explain what the product does. Or they worked in sales, and then you end up with white papers that over-sell what the product can do. As Bloomreach shows here:
Oh - you mean I can avoid the global, once in a generation economic turmoil that we appear to be going through right now by sending more email? Why hadn’t I thought of that?
Once you’re done sending all that email, ecommerce platform Kibo has a suggestion for how to thrive in massive global downturn:
Yes, it’s a must.
Covid brought out lots of this type of thing. Salesforce was pretty helpful:
The world is falling apart, but personalization on your website should help.
I got sidetracked, sorry.
I was saying - I think good content will always be difficult because unless it’s hitting people over the head and overselling, it’s difficult to get non-content execs to believe in it.
My Newest Favorite Positioning Example
You might know what this is:
That is a tiny convection oven.
My non-tiny kitchen oven has a convection feature included - convection cooking involves circulating hot air around whatever is in your oven (presumably, food), which allows it to cook faster, brown faster, and cook more evenly. That’s helpful if, say, you’re roasting a chicken.
In the mid-2000s a Dutch gentleman invented the tiny convection oven because he wanted crispier french fries without having to deep fry them. Philips brought it to market and called it an Air Fryer because it was invented to fry food using air instead of oil.
This product could’ve been called L’il Convector or Cookrr.io or whatever. But it was not - it was created to do a specific job that solved a specific pain, and the product was named for that specific pain. It grew in popularity and other people found uses for it and voila - it’s a billion dollar category.
I tell that story because it is - as you’ve no doubt guessed - a good reminder for people in the software world struggling with positioning. Companies under $100 million in ARR are typically very afraid of getting stuck in a market that is too small, so they position themselves against a market that’s too big, and they struggle to grow because the pain they solve is not obvious.
L’il Convector would’ve had a huge market to compare itself to (the convection oven market) and it would’ve found some reasons why you needed a l’il one (perfect for the RV!). But the pain it was solving wasn’t obvious.
Being able to fry without oil is a pain that Americans have been complaining about for years. This solved that pain, and they told people they solved that pain by naming the product for the pain they solved and how they solved it. (God it sounds so easy as I’m typing it).
A Modern, Classy Finish
Of my 15 words not to use on a website 2-part newsletter, the only word where there seemed to be some pushback was “modern.” Reader Amy B. wrote that she’s used “modern” as a way to successfully position a product as the “new and improved” alternative to the dinosaur legacy product. "New and improved” is tried-and-true messaging, and I’m certainly in favor of breaking that out if you’re the new version of something old.
But then reader Monica S. wrote that “modern” sounded like “classy” - like it’s actually the opposite of what it’s trying to connote. I don’t think I’d ever suggest an actual nice restaurant focused on wealthy clientele was “classy,” though that’s what it’s supposed to suggest. Rather, it now suggests the opposite. Le Bernadin isn’t classy. But the Hustler Club on the West Side Highway is classy (I’m told.). I guess “classy” actually means “the best version of something awful.”
I think “modern” is like that. It reminds me of journalist Michael Kinsley’s quote about Al Gore - that he’s an old person’s idea of a young person.
“Modern,” to me, suggests that the company actually has no idea what “modern marketers” need.
There’s always a better way to describe it.
As always, thanks for sharing Gobbledy with your loved ones.
And if you’re looking for help with your software positioning and messaging, that's my day job. I’m always happy to talk.
Love this, Jared! Hilarious, but true. I'm going to share this with some "content' types and their software development (non-content) managers.
Well done.