This is an admittedly extreme example, but we need to remember that our prospects’ experience may not be our own.
Focus on customer needs.
Tag Archives: customer focus
An IMEI Number Is NOT Unique to Each Mobile Phone
(Imagen 3)
Have you ever used the phrase “sort of unique”? Something is either unique or it isn’t. And International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers fail the uniquness test.
Claims that International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers are unique
Here’s what a few companies say about the IMEI number on each mobile phone. Emphasis mine.
- Thales: “The IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number is a unique 15-digit serial number for identifying a device; every mobile phone in the world has one.”
- Verizon: “An IMEI stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity. Think of it as your phone’s fingerprint — it’s a 15-digit number unique to each device.”
- Blue Goat Cyber: “In today’s interconnected world, where our smartphones have become an indispensable part of our lives, it is essential to understand the concept of IMEI – the International Mobile Equipment Identity. This unique identifier plays a crucial role in various aspects of our mobile devices, from security to tracking and repairs.”
These and other descriptions of the IMEI prominently use the word “unique.” Not “sort of unique,” but “unique.”
Which means (for non-person entities, just like persons) that if someone can find a SINGLE reliable instance of more than one mobile phone having the same IMEI number, then the claim of uniqueness falls apart completely.
Examples of non-uniqueness of IMEI numbers on mobile phones
People who claim IMEI uniqueness obviously didn’t read my Bredemarket blog post of April 1, in which I WASN’T fooling.
- I talked about an incident in India in which a cyber fraud operation “specialised in IMEI cloning.”
- And an incident in Canada in which someone was scammed out of C$1,000, even though the phone had a valid IMEI.
IMEICheck.net even tells you (at a high level) how to clone an IMEI. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible.
“In theory, hackers can clone a phone using its IMEI, but this requires significant effort. They need physical access to the device or SIM card to extract data, typically using specialized tools.
“The cloning process involves copying the IMEI and other credentials necessary to create a functional duplicate of the phone. However, IMEI number security features in modern devices are designed to prevent unauthorized cloning.”
So don’t claim an IMEI is unique when there is evidence to the contrary. As I said in my April post:
“NOTHING provides 100.00000% security. Not even an IMEI number.”
What does this mean for your identity product?
If you offer an identity product, educate your prospects and avoid unsupportable claims. While a few prospects may be swayed by “100%” claims, the smarter ones will appreciate more supportable statements, such as “Our facial recognition algorithm demonstrated a 0.0022 false non-match rate in the mugshot:mugshot NIST FRTE 1:1 laboratory testing.”
When you are truthful in educating your prospects, they will (apologizes in advance for using this overused word) trust you and become more inclined to buy from you.
If you need help in creating content (blog posts, case studies, white papers, proposals, and many more), work with Bredemarket to create the customer-focused content you need. Book a free meeting with me.
Biometric Marketers: What About WRITER Personas?
(Imagen 4)
Biometric marketing leaders already know that I’ve talked about reader personas to death. But what about WRITER personas? And what happens when you try to address ALL the reader and writer personas?
Reader personas
While there are drawbacks to using personas, they are useful in both content marketing and proposal work when you want to tailor your words to resonate with particular types of readers (target audiences, or hungry people).
I still love my example from 2021 in which a mythical Request for Proposal (RFP) was issued by my hometown of Ontario, California for an Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS). The proposal manager had to bear the following target audiences (hungry people) in mind for different parts of the proposal.
- The field investigators who run across biometric evidence at the scene of a crime, such as a knife with a fingerprint on it or a video feed showing someone breaking into a liquor store.
- The examiners who look at crime scene evidence and use it to identify individuals.
- The people who capture biometrics from arrested individuals at livescan stations.
- The information technologies (IT) people who are responsible for ensuring that Ontario, California’s biometric data is sent to San Bernardino County, the state of California, perhaps other systems such as the Western Identification Network, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- The purchasing agent who has to make sure that all of Ontario’s purchases comply with purchasing laws and regulations.
- The privacy advocate who needs to ensure that the biometric data complies with state and national privacy laws.
- The mayor (Paul Leon back in 2021, and still in 2025), who has to deal with angry citizens asking why their catalytic converters are being stolen from their vehicles, and demanding to know what the mayor is doing about it.
- Probably a dozen other stakeholders that I haven’t talked about yet, but who are influenced by the city’s purchasing decision.
Writer personas
But who is actually writing the text to address these different types of readers?
Now in this case I’m not talking about archetypes (a topic in itself), but about the roles of the subject matter experts who write or help write the content.
I am currently working on some internal content for a Bredemarket biometric client. I can’t reveal what type of content, but it’s a variant of one of the 22 types of content I’ve previously addressed. A 23rd type, I guess.
Anyway, I am writing this content from a product marketing perspective, since I am the self-proclaimed biometric product marketing expert. This means that the internal content fits into a story, focuses on the customer, highlights benefits, and dwells on the product.
But what would happen if someone in a role other than product marketing consultant wrote this content?
- An engineer would emphasize different things. Maybe a focus on the APIs.
- A finance manager would emphasize different things. Maybe an ROI focus.
- A salesperson may focus on different things. Maybe qualification of a prospect. Or eventually conversion.
So the final content is not only shaped by the reader, but by the writer.
You can’t please everyone so you’ve got to please yourself
With all the different reader and writer personas, how should you respond?
Do all the things?
Perhaps you can address everyone in a 500 page proposal, but the internal content Bredemarket is creating is less than 10 pages long.
Which is possibly already too long for MY internal target audience.
So I will NOT create the internal content that addresses the needs of EVERY reader and writer persona.
Which is one truth about (reader) personas in general. If you need to address three personas, it’s more effective to create 3 separate pieces than a single one.
Which is what I’m doing in another project for this same Bredemarket biometric client, this one customer-facing.
And the content targeted to latent examiners won’t mention the needs of Paul Leon.
In which I address the marketing leader reader persona
So now I, the biometric product marketing expert writer persona, will re-address you, the biometric marketing leader reader persona.
You need content, or proposal content.
But maybe you’re not getting it because your existing staff is overwhelmed.
So you’re delaying content creation or proposal responses, or just plain not doing it. And letting opportunities slip through your fingers.
Plug the leaks and stop your competitors from stealing from you. Bring Bredemarket on board. Schedule a free exploratory meeting today at https://bredemarket.com/cpa/.
How to Isolate Your Unfocused Company
(StealthCo picture from Imagen 3)
So what are you doing, Jane?
“I’m a Scrum Master. Very busy.”
Who are you working for?
“I can’t tell you. We’re in stealth mode.”
When will you emerge?
“When we are ready to blow the world away.”
Um, how do you know that you will blow the world away?
“Our leader says so. And she knows what she’s talking about. She attended Stanford.”
But is anyone checking your assumptions?
“Of course. All 23 employees…forget I said that number.”
But what about your prospects? What are they saying?
“We know they will love it!”
Did they say they will love it?
“We know they will!”
What if the prospects learn about your stealth product and decide it sucks? And all the years you’ve spent developing in isolation are in vain because of a lack of true customer focus?
“That won’t happen. Our leader knows what she’s talking about. She founded one successful company, and uses that experience to guide us remotely from Texas.”
Who is this leader?
“Elizabeth Holmes. Have you heard of her?”
Ending the Isolation
There are potentially valid reasons for entering stealth mode, including protecting trade secrets and keeping the competition away.
But…there is a risk if you also keep the prospects away from your stealth mode operations and fail to engage with them. Who knows—maybe your prospects might have some ideas of what they need, and that information might be good to know. Your unicorn rockstar fearless dear leader may not know EVERYTHING.
If you want to work out a strategy for getting prospects engaged, let me ask you a few questions. Book a free meeting at https://bredemarket.com/cpa/
Are Your Competitors Stealing From You? The Ultimate Guide to Increasing Prospect Awareness
Technology marketers, do your prospects know who you are?
If they don’t, then your competitors are taking your rightful revenue.
Don’t let your competitors steal your money.
Before I tell you how Bredemarket can solve your technology company’s awareness problem, let me spill the secret of why I’m asking the question in the first place.
The wildebeest’s friend
Normally I don’t let non-person entities write Bredemarket content, but today I’m making an exception.
My usual generative AI tool is Google Gemini, so I sent this prompt:
“What are the five most important types of marketing content to create for a technology software company?”
A little secret: if you want generative AI to supply you with 3 things, ask for more than that. Some of the responses will suck, but maybe the related ones are insightful.
In this case I only wanted ONE type of marketing content, but I reserve the right to “co-author” four more posts based upon the other responses.
Of the 5 responses from Google Gemini, this was the first:
“In-depth Problem-Solving Content (Think Blog Posts, White Papers, Ebooks): Your potential customers are likely facing specific challenges. Content that dives deep into those problems and offers insightful solutions (even if it doesn’t directly pitch your product) builds trust and positions you as a thought leader. Think “The Ultimate Guide to [Industry Challenge]” or a white paper on “Navigating [Complex Technical Issue].””
Now you see where I got the idea for the title of this post. Normally I shy away from bombastic words like “ultimate,” but this sage is going a little wild.
So the bot tells me that the most important type of marketing content for a technology software company is short-form or long-form problem-solving content.
Going meta
Let’s get a little meta (small m) here.
If your prospects don’t know who you are, create customer-focused content that explains how your company can solve their problems.
Now let’s get meta meta.
If you need help creating this content, whether it’s blog posts, articles, white papers, case studies, proposals, or something else, Bredemarket can help you solve your problem.
Let’s talk about your problem and how we can work together to solve it. Book a free meeting via the https://bredemarket.com/cpa/ URL.
(All AI illustrations from Imagen 3 via Google Gemini, of course)
Reel Customer Focus and Employee Focus
After creating my textual “Customer Focus and Employee Focus,” I used Facebook to repurpose the Imagen 3-created images as a short reel, “Do your prospects believe your claimed employee focus?”
See my original post for the answers to these and following questions:
- Do J.P. Morgan Chase’s employees matter to Jamie Dimon?
- Do Meta’s employees matter to Mark Zuckerberg?
- Do federal employees matter to Elon Musk and Donald Trump?
- Do Virgin employees matter to Richard Branson?
The song is Nick Gallant’s “Gonna Need A Little Help.”
Customer Focus and Employee Focus
(All images Imagen 3)
When you market to your prospects and customers, will they believe what you say? Or will you be exposed as a liar?
The Bredemarket blog has talked incessantly about customer focus from a marketing perspective, noting that an entity’s marketing materials need to speak to the needs of the customer or the prospect, not the selling entity.
But customer focus alone is not enough. When the customers sign up, they have to deal with someone.
Unless the customer is stuck in answer bot hell (another issue entirely), they will deal with an employee.
The expendables
And some employees are not happy, because they feel they are expendable.
Steve Craig of PEAK IDV recently shared a long quote from J.P. Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon. Here’s a short excerpt:
“Every area should be looking to be 10% more efficient. If I was running a department with a hundred people, I guarantee you, if I wanted to, I couldn’t run it with 90 and be more efficient. I guarantee you, I could do it.”
So J.P. Morgan Chase is doing very well, Dimon is doing very well, but he’s implicitly saying that his people suck.
Another CEO, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, is more explicit about how much his people suck.
“This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams. I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster.”
You may have noticed my intentional use of the word “entity” at the beginning of this post. Because while businesses have attracted much attention in the current culture of “layoffs will continue until morale improves,” these businesses are themselves “low performers” in the shedding people category. Chief DOGE Elon Musk, fresh from reducing X’s headcount, is coordinating layoffs in the public sector.
“Federal agencies were ordered by Donald Trump to fire mostly probationary staff, with as many as 200,000 workers set to be affected and some made to rush off the premises.”
Zuckerberg could only dream of saying “you’re fired” to 200,000 people. That dream would certainly increase his masculine energy, but for now Musk has trumped Zuckerberg on that front.
- Do J.P. Morgan Chase’s employees matter to Jamie Dimon?
- Do Meta’s employees matter to Mark Zuckerberg?
- Do federal employees matter to Elon Musk and Donald Trump?
Regardless of the answer (and one could assert that they like the “good” employees and don’t want them to be harmed by the bad apples), their views are not universal.
The other extreme
Richard Branson (reportedly) does not put his needs first at the Virgin companies he runs.
Nor does he prioritize investors.
Oh, and if you’re one of Virgin’s customers…your happiness isn’t critically important either.
Branson’s stance is famous, and (literally) sounds foreign to the Dimons and Zuckerbergs of the world.
“So, my philosophy has always been, if you can put staff first, your customer second and shareholders third, effectively, in the end, the shareholders do well, the customers do better, and yourself are happy.”
You could argue that this is a means to an end, and that employee focus CAUSES customer focus. What if employee focus is missing?
“If the person who’s working for your company is not given the right tools, is not looked after, is not appreciated, they’re not gonna do things with a smile and therefore the customer will be treated in a way where often they won’t want to come back for more.”
Think about this the next time you have a problem with your Facebook account or at a Chase Bank or with your tax return.
Whether back office issues matter to customers
Of course I may be over reading into this, because I have said that the customer doesn’t care about your company. If you solve their problems, they don’t care if you’re hiring 200,000 people or firing 200,000 people.
If you solve their problems.
I can’t cite the source or the company, but I heard a horror story about an unhappy customer. The company had heavily bought into the “layoffs will continue until morale improves” philosophy, resulting in turnover in the employees who dealt with customers. When the customer raised an issue with the company, it made a point of saying that employee John Jones (not the employee’s real name) could have solved the customer’s problem long ago if the company hadn’t removed Jones from the account.
What about your company’s marketing?
So think about this in your marketing. Before you brag about your best places to work award, make sure that your prospect will see evidence of this in the employees they encounter.
“Our 8th annual LinkedIn Top Companies list highlights the 50 best large workplaces to grow your career in the U.S. right now. Fueled by unique LinkedIn data, the methodology analyzes various facets of career progression like promotion rates, skill development and more among employees at each company.”
Number 1 on LinkedIn’s April 2024 list? J.P. Morgan Chase.
Number 2? Amazon.
Number 6? UnitedHealth Group.
Um, maybe not.
In the meantime, take care of yourself, and each other.
Jerry Springer. By Justin Hoch, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16673259.
Discovery With Your Ears
(All images Imagen 3)
You probably have meetings with potential customers. The common term for these meetings is the “discovery call.”
Because I’m contrarian, I never use the term “discovery call,” and instead just refer to a “30 minute content needs assessment.” I should add, a “FREE 30 minute content needs assessment.” (Although 99% of these initial meetings are free anyway.)
Whatever you call the meeting, your job in the meeting isn’t to be like Christopher Columbus and chart new lands and persist in the mistaken belief that you’re in China.
Your primary job is to LISTEN.
It’s not all about me
Using Bredemarket as an example, my primary goal in the meeting isn’t to blather on about my 30 years in biometrics, or my more than 30 years of writing, or how I was a former Radio Shack Battery Club card holder, or how I shook Gerald Ford’s hand once.
There is a well-known marketer who starts every one of their webinars with a five-minute introductory video that describes how great the marketer is. After sitting through a few of these introductions, I resolved to intentionally attend the next webinar five minutes later so that I didn’t have to sit through that again. But as time passed, I found I wasn’t attending any of the marketer’s webinars at all.
It’s all about you
Returning to Bredemarket, my goal for the initial meeting is to listen and focus upon what the potential customer needs.
Another in-vogue term is “pain points,” and that’s a term that I actually DO use. The potential customer has a problem, and maybe Bredemarket can help solve it, or maybe Bredemarket can’t.
And I’m not going to know that if I don’t let the potential customer speak.
It’s all about us
Now if you’re a potential customer that needs content, proposal, or analysis marketing and writing services, you can read about Bredemarket’s services on my “CPA” page.
And you can decide whether you want to book a “Free 30 minute content needs assessment” with me.
WHY Ask Why?
LHC shared this bit of history from the advertising world.
If you don’t remember, “Why ask why? Try Bud Dry” was a short-lived advertising tagline from a short-lived Budweiser product from some short-lived part of the early 90s…
But “why ask why” is not just an old advertising slogan. It’s also an excellent question in its own right.
If you’ve read my writing for any length of time, you know I spend a lot of time on the questions why, how, and what.
Heck, I even wrote a book about those (and three other) questions. Then I rewrote the book when I came up with a seventh question.
But during the last few years I failed to realize one true power of these interrogative questions—and other interrogative questions such as who (an important question for identity folks).
The power, according to Camp Systems, is this:
In negotiating, if you start asking questions with these words, you’ll invite more thoughtful and thorough answers.
Now look at what happens when you start a question with a verb….These questions can be answered in a single word, and it’s usually yes, no, or maybe.
I won’t go into detail about why the Camp Systems devotees—the “start with no” people—despise “maybe” responses and REALLY despise “yes” responses.
For my present purpose I’ll simply say that you receive a lot more information from interrogative questions.
And if you want to maintain a customer focus, don’t you want information from the customer so you can understand them?
Whoops, let me rephrase that. What are the best types of questions to ask when you really want to understand a customer?
Practice, practice, practice…
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.
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.
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.
If your company needs a part-time product marketing consultant, contact me on Bredemarket. (Subject to availability.)
Bredemarket 