Tag Archives: biometric product marketing expert

The Problem With Ready, Fire, Aim

(Ready, fire, aim wildebeest via Imagen 3/Google Gemini)

If I had to choose between acting too quickly and acting too slowly, I would choose the former. You already know I don’t like it when things never get done. But the ready, fire, aim method introduces problems of its own. Let’s look at how ready, fire, aim can adversely affect both external and internal content.

External content

If you haven’t figured it out already, I create a lot of external prospect/customer facing content. Not only for Bredemarket’s clients, but also for Bredemarket itself so I can get more clients. This blog post is an example.

Sometimes I meticulously plan a full campaign via a myriad of Asana tasks covering multiple blog and social media posts. Sometimes the entire project appears in a day or two, sometimes it takes a week, and one recent project took 3 weeks including teaser content, the main content, and follow-up content.

Yes, sometimes I meticulously plan. And other times I just do stuff.

Last Saturday I was struck with an idea for a 2 minute and 20 second landscape video about biometrics and Bredemarket. I knew it was long and many who encountered it wouldn’t watch the whole thing, but I wanted to make my statement and reserve it for bottom of funnel activities.

Only AFTER I posted the video did I realize that this was the logical second part to a 30 second video that I had previously created for biometric clients. 

If I had thought this through, I  could have started with the 30 second video, THEN introduced the longer video as the logical next step. Like a funnel, if you believe in funnels.

The proper first video

Well, better late than never.

The 30 second edition.

Watch this 30 second video that I made for Bredemarket’s biometric prospects and clients.

For Biometric Clients.

The proper second video

Hey, did you like that video? Would you like to learn more?

The 140 second edition.

Watch this 140 second video that I made for Bredemarket’s extra special biometric prospects and clients.

Biometrics and Bredemarket.

Hey, did you like that video? Learn more on my “CPA” page.

Bredemarket’s “CPA.”

Well, that’s what I should have done in the first place so I wouldn’t have to make this clumsy fix later.

But there’s still time to fix a future internal campaign before it happens.

Internal content

Because this content is internal I can’t really talk about it, but I anticipate that Bredemarket will be invited to a future event…and I am already planning NOT to attend.

There are a number of stakeholders associated with this event, and in a TLOI kind of way they will have different reactions to my non-attendance. Some of them probably don’t give a you-know-what whether I attend or not. But perhaps there are those who do care, ranging from mild curiosity about why I’m not going, to the other extreme of demanding to know how I could bypass this important event.

So I drafted three messages in case I was asked about my non-attendance: (1) a brief two-paragraph message, (2) a longer message, and (3) a detailed message which delved into my concerns.

But what if I don’t know which message to send? What if I unloaded my deepest darkest fears via the long message, when the stakeholder merely wanted to know if I had other commitments at the time of the event?

So I rewrote the messages so that they build on one another.

  • Let’s say Bob asks why I’m not attending. I would simply send Bob the first, brief message. If this satisfies Bob’s curiosity, we’re done.
  • If Bob asks more, then I will send those portions of the second message that weren’t part of the first one—namely, the 3rd and 4th paragraphs of the second message. (The first 2 paragraphs of the second message are identical to the entire first message.
  • If Bob still questions, I will unload parts of the third message on him—namely the stuff absent from the second (and first) message.

There’s my funnel. And if needed I can skip directly to the third message with certain stakeholders.

And if no one asks why I’m skipping the event, I don’t send ANY communication—and know that my decision to skip the event was the right one.

Future content

So in the future, whether creating external or internal content, I need to pause and think about how it fits into the tons of content I’ve already created.

So that I can tell the best stories.

And so I will achieve ready, aim, fire rather than ready, fire, aim.

Identity/biometric CMOs, Are You Content With Silence?

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

(Silence image Google Gemini)

If you’re a Chief Marketing Officer at an identity/biometric company, you are well aware that a challenging 2025 is just around the corner. How do you claim awareness for your products and services when your competitors are posting content?

I know how many firms approach this: silence, or saying nothing. It sounds like the wrong thing to do…and it is!

Bredemarket helps its clients say something, if they choose to speak. Some of Bredemarket’s prospects have opted to wait months before letting Bredemarket create content for them—blog posts, articles, case studies, white papers, proposals, analyses.

Some prospects never become clients, so I never create content for them. A few are no longer in business today. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but maybe Bredemarket could have helped keep the doors open.

For these reasons, I think that saying something is better than silence.

But not just anything. Before Bredemarket writes a single word for its clients, I obtain the answers to seven questions about your content:

Then I work with you in an iterative fashion to create the content you need.

So don’t maintain silence. Schedule a free meeting with me to move forward now.

If the World is Flat

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

(August 1, 2025: image img_2522-1.jpg and video flat2412a-1_mp4_hd_1080p.original.jpg?h=1378 removed by request)

(also deleted related content on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok personal, and YouTube)

If the world is flat…

…there’s no need to look beyond the horizon.

…only the current quarter counts.

If you want to survive…

…think beyond the current quarter.

…invest in the long term.

…invest in product marketing.

…invest in a product marketer.

John E. Bredehoft on LinkedIn: LINK

I’m seeking a Senior Product Marketing Manager role in software (biometrics, government IDs, geolocation, identity and access management, cybersecurity, health) as an individual contributor on a collaborative team.

Key Accomplishments

  • Product launches (Confidential software product, Know Your Business offering, Morpho Video Investigator, MorphoBIS Cloud, Printrak BIS, Omnitrak).
  • Multiple enablement, competitive analysis, and strategy efforts.
  • Exploration of growth markets.

Multiple technologies.

Multiple industries.

Over 22 types of content.

Currently available for full-time employment or consulting work (Bredemarket).

More details on the latter at Bredemarket’s “CPA” page.

Zip Code: The Factor of Disqualification

Not enough attention is paid to the critical importance of zip codes for U.S. tech product marketing job applicants. Identity experts know that geolocation can serve as one of the five factors of authentication. But geolocation (via zip code) can also serve as a factor of disqualification.

This video doesn’t directly have to do with Bredemarket—my clients ARE remote-friendly—but since it involves my status as a biometric product marketing expert I thought I’d share it here.

For more detail, see my LinkedIn post from earlier this morning.

Zip code (from a “91” person).

Educating the Fake Abbott Salesperson

A salesperson from Abbott just contacted me via LinkedIn InMail.

Well, she CLAIMED to be from Abbott. I’m not sure.

Anyway, she said she wanted to “get to know each other” because we are “in the same industry.”

Rather than dismissing the InMail out of hand as a #fraud #scam attempt with a #fakefakefake identity, I embraced the opportunity of a teachable moment and shared Bredemarket’s 2021 post on the difference between biometrics and biometrics. Excerpt:

In my circles, people generally understand ‘biometrics’ to refer to one of several ways to identify an individual.

But for the folks at Merriam-Webster, this is only a secondary definition of the word “biometrics.” From their perspective, biometrics is primarily biometry, which can refer to “the statistical analysis of biological observations and phenomena” or to “measurement (as by ultrasound or MRI) of living tissue or bodily structures.” In other words, someone’s health, not someone’s identity.

Fun fact: if you go to the International Biometric Society and ask it for its opinion on the most recent FRVT 1:N tests, it won’t have an answer for you.

Yeah, “FRVT.” Told you I wrote it in 2021, before the great renaming.

So Abbott salespeople, real or imagined, won’t be interested in what I’ve been doing for the last 30 years. ‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.

But those of you who use biometrics (and other factors) for individualization WILL be interested. Click on the image to find out more.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.
Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

Always Trust Anyone Over 30

I shouldn’t be telling you this, but…

…well, you’ll have to watch the video for my deep dark secret.

Thirty.

Contact me if I can help with the product marketing for your identity/biometric company.

#biometricproductmarketingexpert 

#id30and9 

My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbredehoft

Proven

This video is, in marcom words, “for immediate release.”

Proven.

It was fun to convert my Never Search Alone “candidate-market fit” text statement into a video with AI-generated music.

The text version:

“Proven Senior Product Marketing Manager who drives growth. Expert in identity/biometrics. Seeking an individual contributor role on a co-creative team delivering exceptional business results.”

Except that’s not the COMPLETE version. 

To see the full version, you’ll have to watch the video. Then you will know why I had to change one of my hashtags this month.

#biometricproductmarketingexpert 

#id30and9 

My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbredehoft

Go-to-Market Partners

The next paragraph is inaccurate.

Go-to-market initiatives have ONLY two audiences: the external prospects who are the hungry people (hopefully) wanting the product, and the internal staff in the company who deliver the product.

You know who I forgot? The partners. 

Such as the very important partner for MorphoTrak’s Morpho Cloud back in 2015:

“Morpho worked with Microsoft Corporation to develop a cloud service for Morpho’s flagship Biometric Identification Solution (MorphoBIS). Morpho Cloud is hosted on Microsoft Azure Government, the cloud platform with a contractual commitment to support several U.S. government standards for data security, including the FBI’s CJIS Security Policy. Backed by the Microsoft Azure Government platform, Morpho Cloud complies with the stringent security standards for storage, transmission, monitoring, and recovery of digital information.”

When Names Infringe (Biometric Products Coming to America)

Then there was the time I was performing U.S. go-to-market activities for a global identity/biometric offering.

The product marketing launch went great…

…until the home office received a communication from a competitor.

A competitor with a previously existing product with a name VERY similar to that of our subsequently launched solution.

Oops. 

We definitely made a mistake by not thoroughly checking the name.

Of course, with the way that some companies want to imitate the things their competitors do, I’m sure some firms perform this intentionally, rather than accidentally.

(McDowell’s 2017 West Hollywood pop-up image from Buzzfeed, https://www.buzzfeed.com/morganshanahan/we-went-to-a-real-life-mcdowells-from-coming-to-america-and)