Tag Archives: customer focus

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.

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. From https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/3-takeaways-from-start-with-why

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.

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.)

Bredemarket logo
Contact Bredemarket.

Content Marketing and Proposals are Pretty Much the Same

I’ve taken a very small break from my identity blog post writing business to help a biometric company with a proposal. I am, after all, the biometric proposal writing expert, so I’m at home working on identity proposals. After all, I’ve done it before.

This is NOT a depiction of the bidders’ conference I attended in Connecticut 20 or so years ago. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15798710

Bredemarket’s services are grouped into two distinct and separate functions: content marketing (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and proposals (RFI responses, RFP responses, sole source letters, etc.).

My division of my services makes sense in the real world. After all, in some employment situations, content marketing and proposals employ distinct and separate sets of employees.

The last Association of Proposal Management Professionals Conference I attended, in Chicago in May 2014. From https://www.apmp.org/assets/apmp-annual_report-2014_final.pdf.

But other companies are different. In fact, I’ve seen employment ads seeking marketing/proposals managers. Sounds like a lot of work, unless the company submits few proposals or performs minimal marketing.

And in many companies there are NOT dedicated proposals specialists. Which is why Bredemarket makes its money by helping the salespeople at these firms get the documents out.

Time for the truth

And if we’re truthful with ourselves, content marketing and proposals are pretty much the same thing.

I know this angers some people, who insist that they are content marketing professionals or proposal professionals, with all the proper certifications that a mere mortal could never attain. Or they did attain it, but it lapsed. Or is about to lapse unless I renew it in time.

But hear me out. I’m going to list four aspects of a particular document, and you tell me whether I’m talking about a piece of marketing content, or a proposal.

  1. The document focuses on the customer’s needs.
  2. The document describes benefits the customer will realize.
  3. The document targets one or more sets of people hungry for the solution.
  4. The document shall be in Aptos 12 point, single spaced, with 1 inch margins, and shall not exceed 20 pages.

Guess what? From that description you CAN’T tell if it’s a piece of content or a proposal.

Yes, I know some of you thought item 4 was a dead giveaway because it sounded like an RFP requirement, but maybe some company’s brand guidelines dictate that the firm’s white papers must conform to that format. You never know.

And I know that when you get into the minutiae, there are certain things that proposal writers do that content marketers don’t have to worry about, and vice versa.

But at a high level, the content marketer already knows 90% of the things they need to know to write proposals. And vice versa.

Can we all get along?

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sONfxPCTU0.

I Edited My “Customer Focus” Page

From the Gary Fly / Brooks Group article “7 Tips for Implementing a Customer-Centric Strategy,” at https://brooksgroup.com/sales-training-blog/7-tips-implementing-customer-centric-strategy/.

I just made a minor edit to my Customer Focus page.

In the introduction to the page, I previously talked about how adopting a customer focus leads you to address “what is important to the customer.”

I changed that phrase to reference “what is critically important to the customer.”

Because TLOI (three levels of importance) rules.

Putting the Focus in Customer Focus

This morning on LinkedIn, I was commenting that the March 2024 3.8% unemployment rate makes no difference to someone who is 100% unemployed.

My comment reminded me of one made by a far greater communicator 44 years ago.

By Michael Evans – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=257844

During the 1980 Presidential campaign, when candidate Ronald Reagan was criticized for not knowing the difference between a recession and a depression, Reagan commented:

“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

From the perspective of Reagan and his supporters in 1980, technical definitions of recession vs. depression made no difference when you’ve lost your own job. “It’s only a recession, not a depression” doesn’t feed your family.

Remember to apply this customer focus when talking to your prospects. They have a particular way of looking at the world, and as far as they’re concerned it’s the right way. They may be wrong, but you may or may not be able to convince them of this. If you can, focus on things from the customer’s perspective.

Because, as I said in my “Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services” video yesterday, the prospect doesn’t care about YOUR perspective.

Video: Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services

From the video below.

Last week I prepared a presentation for a conference organizer, thinking that I would give the presentation at the conference in question. Instead, the organizer emailed the presentation slides to selected conference attendees. The attendees probably liked it that way.

But I still wanted to give the presentation.

And I also wanted to generalize the presentation so that it applied to ALL technology companies, not just the ones who were attending the conference.

So I recorded myself giving the presentation “Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services.” It’s ten minutes long, and you can view it now.

Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services (April 9, 2024)

This video obviously discusses differentiation, but also discusses customer focus as well as the seven questions your content creator should ask you before writing (including benefits and target audience). Not only are the seven questions good for creating content, but they are also good for differentiating content. (For example, why is your product/service so great while all of your competitors’ products/services suck?)

If you’re watching this video on your laptop, be sure to keep your smartphone handy because at the end of the video I display a QR code to obtain more information. Just point your phone at the QR code.

Of course, if you’re watching this video on your smartphone, you can’t read the displayed QR code. So just go to https://bredemarket.com/drive-tech/ instead.

What is B2B Writing?

Business-to-business (B2B) writing isn’t as complex as some people say it is. It may be hard, but it’s not complex.

Why do I care about what B2B writing is?

Neil Patel (or, more accurately, his Ubersuggest service) um, suggested that I say something about B2B writing.

From https://app.neilpatel.com/.

And then he (or it) suggested that I use generative artificial intelligence (AI) to write the piece.

From https://app.neilpatel.com/.

I had a feeling the result was going to suck, but I clicked the “Write For Me” button anyway.

From https://app.neilpatel.com/.

Um, thanks but no thanks. When the first sentence doesn’t even bother to define the acronym “B2B,” you know the content isn’t useful to explain the topic “what is B2B writing.”

And this, my friends, is why I never let generative AI write the first draft of a piece.

So, what IS B2B writing?

Before I explain what B2B writing is, maybe I’d better explain what “B2B” is. And two related acronyms.

  • B2B stands for business to business. Bredemarket, for example, is a business that sells to other businesses. In my case, marketing and writing services.
  • B2G stands for business to government. Kinda sorta like B2B, but government folks are a little different. For example, these folks mourned the death of Mike Causey. (I lived outside of Washington DC early in Causey’s career. He was a big deal.) A B2G company, for example, could sell driver’s license products and services to state motor vehicle agencies.
  • B2C stands for business to consumer. Many businesses create products and services that are intended for consumers and marketed directly to them, not to intermediate businesses. Promotion of a fast food sandwich is an example of a B2C marketing effort.

I included the “B2G” acronym because most of my years in identity and biometrics were devoted to local, state, federal, and international government sales. My B2G experience is much deeper than my B2B experience, and way deeper than my B2C expertise.

Let’s NOT make this complicated

I’m sure that Ubersuggest could spin out a whole bunch of long-winded paragraphs that explain the critical differences between the three marketing efforts above. But let’s keep it simple and limit ourselves to two truths and no lies.

TRUTH ONE: When you market B2B or B2G products or services, you have FEWER customers than when you market B2C products or services.

That’s pretty much it in terms of differences. I’ll give you an example.

  • If Bredemarket promoted its marketing and writing services to all of the identity verification companies, I would target less than 200 customers.
  • If IDEMIA or Thales or GET Group or CBN promoted their driver’s license products and services to all of the state, provincial, and territorial motor vehicle agencies in the United States and Canada, they would target less than 100 customers.
  • If McDonald’s resurrects and promotes its McRib sandwich, it would target hundreds of millions of customers in the United States alone.
From https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/mcrib.html.

The sheer scale of B2C marketing vs. B2B/B2G marketing is tremendous and affects how the company markets its products and services.

But one thing is similar among all three types of writing.

TRUTH TWO: B2B writing, B2G writing, and B2C writing are all addressed to PEOPLE.

Well, until we program the bots to read stuff for us.

This is something we often forget. We think that we are addressing a blog post or a proposal to an impersonal “company.” Um, who works in companies? People.

(Again, until we program the bots.)

Whether you’re marketing a business blog post writing service, a government software system, or a pseudo rib sandwich, you’re pitching it to a person. A person with problems and needs that you can potentially solve.

So solve their needs.

Don’t make it complex.

But what IS B2B writing?

Let’s return to the original question. Sorry, I got off on a bit of a tangent. (But at least I didn’t trail off into musings about “the dynamic and competitive world.”)

When I write something for a business:

  • I must focus on that business and not myself (customer focus). The business doesn’t want to hear my talk about myself. The business wants to hear what I can do for it.
  • I must acknowledge the business’ needs and explain the benefits of my solution to meet the business needs. A feature list without any benefits is just a list of cool things; you still have to explain how the cool things will benefit the business by solving its problem.
  • My writing must address one, or more, different types of people who are hungry for my solution to their problem. (This is what Ubersuggest and others call a “target audience,” because I guess Ubersuggest aims lasers at the assembled anonymous crowd.)
From https://www.hinklefuncenter.com/attractions/laser-tag/.

Again, this is hard, but not complex.

It’s possible to make this MUCH MORE complex and create a 96 step plan to author B2B content.

But why?

So now I’ve answered the question “What is B2B writing?”

Can Bredemarket write for your business? If so, contact me.

Why Customers Benefit: Bredemarket Asks the Right Questions

Whether I’m creating content for Bredemarket or creating product marketing material for an employer (past or future), it’s important to ask some critical questions first.

My LinkedIn profile contains the three simple words “why customers benefit.” Not “what producers feature”—why customers benefit. Those three words encapsulate my approach to marketing…well, until I come up with three different words. Or two.

Song by Annie Lennox. Original reel on the Bredemarket Instagram account.

Bredemarket asks the right questions.

Why Your 17X Certified Resume Writer Pitches Are Failing

Dear 17X Certified Resume Writer,

You may think your marketing tactics and sequence are foolproof. But they’re not. Read on to see why.

And if you’re NOT a 17x certified resume writer, skip to the bottom to see how the resume writing market lacks differentiation. But what about YOUR market?

Why your marketing tactics and sequence don’t work

From observing you and dozens of your 17x certified resume writing competitors that I’ve encountered (and over 14,000 of your competitors that I haven’t encountered), here are the marketing tactics and sequence that ALL of you are using, and why they are COMPLETELY ineffective.

  • Find a LinkedIn profile with a green “Open to Work” banner.
From https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbredehoft/.
  • Send a message to the banner-bearer with canned phrases like “Thank you for connecting with a 17x certified resume writer,” or “May I ask what job you are seeking?” If you are using the same language as every other 17x certified resume writer out there, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.
  • Immediately demand that the prospect provide a copy of their resume. Never mind that the prospect’s LinkedIn profile already has the same information as the resume. If you are requesting information that is already available online, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.
  • When your qualifications as a 17x certified resume writer are challenged, respond with stupid stuff. For example, say that your services can place your prospect into LinkedIn’s top 10% of candidates for a position. If your “expert knowledge” betrays that you have NO expertise, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.
From a LinkedIn InMail from a 17x certified resume writer.
  • When all else fails, talk about the respectability of the third-party website where you advertise your services (usually Fiverr). If you talk about Fiverr (which has over 14,000 resume writers), then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.
From https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?query=resume%20writing
  • Most importantly, ensure that your pitch is the same as the pitch of your 13,999+ competitors. This is critically important—don’t provide ANY reason why your 17x resume writing services are better than those of your 13,999+ competitors. If you provide NO reason why you are better than your competition, all of whom are bombarding LinkedIn “open to work” folks with canned pitches daily, then the prospect has no reason to purchase YOUR services.

So this is why your tactics don’t work.

Why did I rewrite something that I already wrote a few weeks ago?

If you’re a regular reader of the Bredemarket blog—that’s a joke; if you haven’t read my LinkedIn profile, you certainly haven’t read the Bredemarket blog before—then you know that I recently wrote a post entitled “Five Reasons Why 17X Certified Resume Writer Pitches Fail.” It approached your marketing tactics from a different perspective.

But one afternoon when I received three separate LinkedIn InMails from three separate 17x certified resume writers in the space of five minutes, I figured that I needed to address this issue again, in a more pointed fashion. (Yes, I iterate.)

Now I don’t want you to read the entirety of my January 8 post. I know that you are very busy searching for “open to work” people to ask your canned question about their desired position. But I do suggest that you read the fourth of my five reasons why your pitches fail, and take the steps to ensure that you don’t sound exactly the same as your thousands of competitors.

Dionne Quintuplets – School Days, painting by Andrew Loomis, 1938. By Andrew Loomis – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/7797309642/in/album-72157631099965608/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56000992

Hope this helps.

That’s all I have to say. 17x certified resume writers can stop reading here.

Seriously.

Stop. Get to work.

For those of you who are NOT 17x certified resume writers

OK, time for me to talk to the rest of you. It’s just me, you, and the wildebeest.

Black wildebeest. By derekkeats – Flickr: IMG_4955_facebook, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14620744

Frankly, I doubt that any of the 17x certified resume writers have even made it to this point of the blog post. Like I said, they’re too busy seeking their next prospects.

But the whole 17x certified resume writer market strikes me as one which is sorely lacking in differentiation, competitive analysis, and customer focus. The vast majority of people who provide resume services don’t even attempt to say why their services are superior and the services of their 13,999+ competitors are inferior. And the vast majority focus on themselves rather than the specific needs of their prospects. Why should I choose one of these 17x certified resume writers, and not one of their competitors?

But it’s not enough to take a look at a lack of differentiation in one market. Now I have to take a look at myself. Have I done an adequate job of differentiating Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services from those of my other content marketing competitors? I already know that Canva content creator G from Ray of Social is a much better singer than I am.

From “epic Western” singing to Canva queendom. Sorry, G, but this is still my favo(u)rite song. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q04LZgFpP9Y

And perhaps you should take a look at yourself. Have you done an adequate job of differentiating YOUR company from the competition? Do your prospects have a reason to choose you?

If you are employed by a technology firm and need your content to stand out from the crowd, let me explain why Bredemarket’s services can drive content results, how I provide services that no one else does, and what we will do together to create that content your company desperately needs.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Technology Firm Services.

Postscript

Just in case these questions come up.

  • I have nothing against Fiverr as a platform, or against similar platforms such as Upwork. I’m sure that there are good people on Fiverr, and I don’t believe that there is a causation between people being on Fiverr and people providing bad services. But I do believe that there is a correlation between Fiverr and bad services, and that if you are on Fiverr, it is incumbent for you to prove that you are qualified to offer your services. (That goes for people like me who AREN’T on Fiverr also.)
  • In addition, I have nothing against Nigeria, or India, or any country where a service provider may reside. While the three separate InMails that I received from three separate 17x certified resume writers within five minutes were ALL from Nigeria (Anita from Abuja, Helen from Lagos State, and Renee from Akwa Ibom State), that doesn’t necessarily mean that Nigerians are bad service providers (or that people in the United States and other “first world” countries are GOOD service providers). But again a service provider’s origin is a risk factor that you may need to consider when selecting someone.
  • Well, unless they’re a rich and respectable person, like a prince, rather than some poor Fiverr user.
From LinkedIn, of course. https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrh-prince-akeem-joffer-b418b5b2/