competitive analysis – Page 10

Why Do Enterprises Become Dust?

Hardly anything is permanent. And this applies to boxing AND to B2B sales.

Mike Tyson and legacy

By Super Festivals – https://www.flickr.com/photos/superfestivals/53161465181, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136938246.

Perhaps you heard what Mike Tyson said a few days ago.

I don’t know, I don’t believe in the word “legacy.” I just think that’s another word for ego. Legacy doesn’t mean nothing. It’s just some word everybody grabbed onto.

It means absolutely nothing to me. I’m just passing through. I’m going to die and it’s going to be over. Who cares about legacy after that?

We’re nothing. We’re just dead. We’re dust. We’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.

With the life that Tyson has lived, it’s understandable why he’s echoing Ecclesiastes in this interview.

But you don’t have to have had Tyson’s experiences to realize that legacy does not last.

Neither wanted nor needed

In business (and in life), there are companies (and people) who don’t need you or want you.

This may be temporary. The company that doesn’t need you today may urgently (and importantly) need you tomorrow.

By White House – Eisenhower Presidential Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3025709.

Or it may NOT be temporary. There are companies that will NEVER need you or want you.

I recently ran across three such companies that will never need Bredemarket.

Six weeks (now less than six weeks)

Perhaps you noticed Bredemarket’s “six weeks” promotion over the weekend. It was addressed to companies that may have a final project that they want to complete before the year ends in six weeks. (Now 5 1/2 weeks.) I emphasized that Bredemarket can help companies complete those content, proposal, and analysis projects.

The promotion included a blog post, a LinkedIn post, a Facebook reel, an Instagram reel, a YouTube short, and appearances in other online locations. Which is probably overkill, since the promotion is already outdated and can’t be used again until possibly November 2025.

I also included email in this campaign, targeting prospects whom I haven’t worked with recently, or whom I’ve never worked with at all. I didn’t go overboard in my emails; although I have over 400 contacts in Bredemarket’s customer relationship management system, I sent the email to less than 40 of them.

As of this morning, none of the recipients has booked a meeting with me to discuss their end of year needs.

Some explicitly told me that they were fine now and did not need or want Bredemarket’s services for end of year projects.
Some didn’t respond, which probably indicates that they did not need or want Bredemarket’s services either.

And I discovered that three companies (four contacts) will NEVER need or want Bredemarket’s services.

Delivery incomplete

How did I discover that?

Via four “delivery status notification” messages.

So I visited the web pages in question, and they no longer existed.

I’ve been building up my CRM for over four years, so it’s not shocking that some companies have disappeared.

But one of the companies (“Company X”) DID exist a mere eight months ago.

I know this because I prepared a presentation on differentiation (see version 2 of the presentation here), and two representatives from Company X received the presentation in advance of a conference.

After the conference organizer distributed the presentation, I offered to meet with the companies individually (no charge) to discuss their content and differentiation needs, or anything else they wanted to discuss.

While some conference attendees took advantage of my April offer, the representatives from Company X did not.

And now in November, Company X no longer exists.

Could Bredemarket have created the necessary content to keep Company X afloat? Who knows?

But EVERY company needs content to differentiate it from its competitors. Otherwise the competitors will attack you. And your competitors may not be as merciful with you as Jake Paul was with Mike Tyson.

If you need Bredemarket’s help with content, proposal, or analysis services, book a meeting with me.

Bredemarket’s CPA: Content – Proposal – Analysis.

Six Weeks

Six weeks until year end.

Do you have a final project?

It’s not going to complete itself.

Bredemarket can help with content, proposal, and analysis services.

Schedule a free 30 minute needs assessment at bredemarket.com/cpa.

Six weeks.

Don’t Miss the Boat

Bredemarket helps identity/biometric firms.

Finger, face, iris, voice, DNA, ID documents, geolocation, and even knowledge.
Content-Proposal-Analysis. (Bredemarket’s “CPA.”)

Don’t miss the boat.

Augment your team with Bredemarket.

Find out more.

Don’t miss the boat.

Inconsequential?

Identity/biometric vendors, analyze your competitors to convert your prospects.

Bredemarket, with 30 years of identity/biometric experience, can help.

Inconsequential?

What Do You REALLY Know? The Reel!

Let’s talk about Bredemarket’s analysis services.

What do you REALLY know?

Find out more.

Do You Know Your Identity/Biometric Competitors…And Yourself?

Do you need identity/biometric analysis from an informed analyst with 30 years of identity/biometric experience?

Do you need:

Competitor and competitor product analysis?
Industry analysis?
Use case analysis?
Analysis of your own company?

Book a free meeting with Bredemarket and discuss your needs. Click the image below to drive informed analysis with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

Drive informed analysis with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services

Important and not urgent, but how important?

Whether and how you delegate something depends upon its importance, especially if you recognize three levels of importance. Sometimes the very important and critically important items require a CPA, or Content-Proposal-Analysis marketing professional. (I know one.)

When importance is simple

Last October I spent some time talking about the Eisenhower Matrix and its critical flaw, focusing upon the “important but not urgent” quadrant:

Adapted from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/developing-leadership-skills.

When you have a single level of importance, then decisions are pretty simple. For urgent things, do it yourself if it’s important, delegate it if it’s not.

When “importance” is more granular

But what if, instead of “Not Important” and “Important,” we had three levels of importance instead of just one? In other words, “Not Important,” “Important,” “Very Important,” and “Critically Important”?

A U.S. Navy plane flying over a Soviet ship in October 1962 is, um, classified as “Critically Important.” Oh, and it’s urgent. By USN – Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons Volume 2: The History of VP, VPB, VP(H) and VP(AM) Squadrons [4], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7328539.

In that case, you not only consider whether to delegate something, but who should be delegated that thing. (Or, as you’ll see, WHAT should be delegated that thing.)

If the need is not important, delegate it, but it doesn’t really matter to whom or what you delegate it. ChatGPT or Bard is “good enough,” even if the result is awful.
If the need is important, delegate it to someone you trust to create very good content. Let them create the content, you approve it, and you’re done.
If the need is very important, then you may delegate some of the work, but you don’t want to delegate all of it. You need to be involved in the content creation process from the initial meeting, through the review of every draft, and of course for the final approval. The goal is stellar content.
If the need is critically important, then you probably don’t want to delegate the work and will want to do it yourself—unless you can find someone who is better than you in creating content.

As I noted in October, a more granular approach to importance increases the, um, importance of Bredemarket’s services.

In the simple Eisenhower Matrix model, Bredemarket handles the Not Important stuff while you handle the Important stuff.
In the “three levels of importance” model, Bredemarket handles the Very Important and Critically Important stuff. Because the merely Important stuff and the Not Important stuff doesn’t require my 30 years of technology, identity, and biometrics expertise.

Sometimes you need a CPA (but NOT a Certified Public Accountant)

But if your needs are critical, and you require the services of a CPA (Content-Proposal-Analysis marketing professional), then you need to learn what Bredemarket can do for you. Click on the image to learn more.

Bredemarket’s “CPA”

Is your firm losing business and leaving important items unfinished?

I, John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket, am a “CPA.” Not a Certified Public Accountant; a Content-Proposal-Analysis marketing professional:

Content such as blog posts, case studies, data sheets, white papers, and more.
Proposal submissions from identity/biometric and technology firms to governments and enterprises.
Analysis of markets, companies and competitors, products, and websites and social media.

I offer over 30 years of technology experience—30 in identity/biometrics, where I am the biometric product marketing expert.

I ask questions first (why, how, what, and more) and collaborate later to ensure I deliver the right content to you.

I provide pre-packaged services or bill you at an hourly rate.

Click here to find out more about Bredemarket’s “CPA” services, and schedule a free 30 minute content needs assessment with me.

Bredemarket’s “CPA” (October 7, 2024)Download

Seven Essential Product Marketing Strategy and Process Documents, the August 30, 2024 Iteration

Due to the nature of my business, Bredemarket doesn’t usually get involved in strategy. The clients set the strategy, and I fill the tactical holes to execute that strategy.

I once worked for a former 3M employee. You can bet we did this. By Wikimedia Finland – Planning the strategy, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36476412.

But I recently welcomed the opportunity to envision a strategy to achieve a strategy, and in the process defined seven essential strategy documents to kick off a product marketing or general marketing program.

By I, Satyakamk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2507740.

Depending upon how you define product marketing, one of these seven goes above and beyond the product marketing function. I included it anyway, because if you ask 20 people what “product marketing” is, you will get 21 answers.

There’s a reason I dated this. I may want to refine it in the future. For example, some of you may recall how my “six questions your content creator should ask you” eventually became seven questions.

The seven strategy and process documents

Go-to-Market Process. I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating. You can’t just slap a few things together in three days and say your go-to-market is complete. You need a plan on how you will go to market, including the different tiers of go-to-market efforts (you won’t spend four months planning materials for your 5.0.11 software release), the types of internal (employee) content you will release in each tier, and the types of external (prospect/customer) content you will release in each tier.
Performance Report. I listed this near the top because you need to quickly establish your metrics, define them, and how you will gather them. For example, if you want to measure “engagement,” you need to define exactly what engagement is (likes on a blog post? reshares on a LinkedIn post?), and ensure that you have a way to capture that data. Preferably automated data capture; manual tabulation is horrendous.
Product and Competitive Analysis. Plan how you will perform these duties. Even in my simplest analyses when I was still with IDEMIA, I planned exactly what data I needed, what data I wanted to capture, and how I was going to distribute it. I refined this during my time at Incode, when a team of four released battlecards in a standard format, with data that highlighted items important to Incode. My subsequent analyses for Bredemarket, which were more comparative rather than stand-alone, refined things still further.
Brand Strategy. I must confess that I have never created a formal brand book. But it’s important that you define your branding, at least informally, so that your products and services are presented consistently on all platforms. And so you spell things correctly (it’s NOT “BredeMarket”).
Customer Feedback. If you want to institute a customer focus, you need information from your prospects and customers. What information do you need? How much? (Shorter surveys get more responses.) How will you get it? What will you do with it? (“Trash it” is not an option.)
Positioning and Messaging Book. Once you’ve created the brand strategy, you need a set of consistent positioning (internal) and messaging (external) content. The positioning and messaging matrix can get pretty complex if you are supporting multiple products, personas, industries, use cases, and geographies. I will again confess that I do not have a standard messaging statement for Bredemarket 400 prospects who are Chief Marketing Officers who need blog posts in the identity/biometric industry discussing privacy concerns in the European Union. My loss.
Demand Generation and Content Marketing Parameters. Now in many organizations, demand generation and/or content marketing are separate from product marketing. But sometimes they’re not. What are your plans for demand generation? How will you achieve your goals? What content is necessary?

So what?

As I said, I recently had the opportunity to envision these strategies for a prospect, and have scheduled a meeting with the prospect to discuss these. (Note to “prospect”: these are iterative, and I fully expect that up to 90% of this may change by the time of implementation. But I think it’s a good starting point for discussion.)

The prospect may secure my services, or they may not.

And if they don’t, I can develop these same documents for others.

Do YOU need help defining strategies for your business? If so, let’s talk.

If your company needs a full-time product marketer, contact me on LinkedIn.

John E. Bredehoft on LinkedIn.

If your company needs a part-time product marketing consultant, contact me on Bredemarket. (Subject to availability.)

Contact Bredemarket.

Winners and Losers, But Even Olympic Losers Can Become Winners

A single loss does not define your entire life. As the sporting world teaches us, Olympic losers and other competitive losers can become winners—if not in sports, then elsewhere.

The human drama of athletic competition

When I was young, the best variety show on television didn’t involve Bob Mackie dresses. It instead featured Jim McKay, introducing the show as follows.

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport…the thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat…the human drama of athletic competition…This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports!

A technological marvel when originally introduced, this variety show brought sporting events to American viewers from all over the world.

And these viewers learned that in competitions, there are winners and losers.

But since Wide World of Sports focused on the immediate (well, with a bit of tape delay), viewers never learned about the losers who became winners.

By ABC Network – ebay.com, front of photo, back of photo, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33302515.

Jim McKay and his colleagues were not retrospective, but were known for the moment. In one instance that was NOT on tape delay, Jim McKay spoke his most consequential words, “They’re all gone.”

Vinko Bogataj

(Note: some of this content is repurposed because repurposing is cool.)

Turning to less lethal sporting events, remember Jim McKay’s phrase “the agony of defeat”?

For American TV watchers, this phrase was personified by Vinko Bogataj.

Hailing from a country then known as Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), Bogataj was competing in the 1970 World Ski Flying Championships in Oberstdorf, in a country then known as West Germany (now Germany). His daughter described what happened:

It was bad weather, and he had to wait around 20 minutes before he got permission to start. He remembers that he couldn’t see very good. The track was very bad, and just before he could jump, the snow or something grabbed his skis and he fell. From that moment, he doesn’t remember anything.

While Bogataj suffered a concussion and a broken ankle, the accident was captured by the Wide World of Sports film crew, and Bogataj became famous on the “capitalist” side of the Cold War.

And he had no idea.

“He didn’t have a clue he was famous,” (his daughter) Sandra said. That changed when ABC tracked him down in Slovenia and asked him to attend a ceremony in New York to celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Wide World of Sports” in 1981.

At the gala, Bogataj received the loudest ovation among a group that included some of the best-known athletes in the world. The moment became truly surreal for Bogataj when Muhammad Ali asked for his autograph.

Bogataj is now a painter, but his 1970 performance still follows him.

Over 20 years after the infamous ski jump, Terry Gannon interviewed Bogataj for ABC. As Gannon recounted it on X (then Twitter), Bogataj “got in a fender bender on the way. His first line..’every time I’m on ABC I crash.'”

Some guy at the Athens Olympics in 2004

Since the Paris Olympics is taking place as I write this, people are paying a lot of attention to present and past Olympics.

The 2004 Olympics in Athens was a notable one, taking place in the country where the original Olympics were held.

But during that year, people may have missed some of the important stories that took place. We pay attention to winners, not losers.

Take the men’s 200 meter competition. It began with 7 heats, with the top competitors from the heats advancing.

Within the 7 heats, Heat 4 was a run-of-the-mill race, with the top four sprinters advancing to the next round. If I were to read their names to you you’d probably reward me with a blank stare.

But if I were to read the 5th place finisher to you, the guy who failed to advance to the next round, you’d recognize the name.

Usain Bolt.

He did a little better at subsequent Olympics.

Some other guy at the Athens Olympics in 2004

KBWEB Consult tells the story of another competitor in the same 200 meter event in Athens. Chris Lambert participated in Heat 3, but didn’t place in the first four positions and therefore didn’t advance.

Nor did he place in the fifth position like Usain Bolt did in Heat 4.

Actually, he technically didn’t place at all. His performance is marked with a “DNF,” or “did not finish.”

You see, at about the 50 meter point of the 200 meter event, Lambert pulled a hamstring.

And that ended his Olympic competition dreams forever. By the time the Olympics were held in Lambert’s home country of the United Kingdom in 2012, he was not a competitor, but a volunteer for the London Olympics.

“From Olympic heartbreak to Adobe leadership: Head of Business Strategy Chris Lambert.”

But Lambert learned much from his competitive days, and now works for Adobe.

KBWEB Consult (who consults on Adobe Experience Manager implementations) tells the full story of Chris Lambert and what he learned in its post “Expert Coaching From KBWEB Consult.”

From “Expert Coaching From KBWEB Consult.”

A final thought

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but it’s important to remember that just because you lost a particular competition doesn’t mean that all is lost. We need to remember this whether we are a 200 meter runner who didn’t advance from their heat, or whether we are a job applicant receiving yet another “we are moving in a different direction” form letter.

In the meantime, take care of yourself, and each other.