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Tag Archives: features
When You Reduce a Product’s Feature Set
When engineers engineer products, they naturally pack in as many features as possible. Why? Because engineers, um, calculate that prospects desire a wide array of features.
Proposal managers and product marketers know the truth. Some prospects find too many features to be undesirable.
But first, a quote
This quote from my Biometric Update guest post is pertinent. These are three of my recommendations to biometric vendors (and other identity vendors) to ensure responsible data use.
“Collect only the minimum necessary personal information. If you don’t need certain data, don’t collect it. If it’s never collected, fraudster hackers can never steal it.
“Store only the minimum necessary personal information. If you don’t need to keep certain data, don’t store it. I’m sure our decentralized identity friends will agree with this.
“Comply with all privacy laws and regulations. This should be a given, but sometimes vendors are lax in this area. If your firm violates the law, and you are caught, you will literally pay the price.”
Two of these three recommendations came into play shortly after I wrote those words.
When “feature-rich” is undesirable
I recently fulfilled two roles for a Bredemarket client: first a proposal manager, and rhen a requirements manager. And as my role shifted, my focus shifted also.
Bredemarket the proposal manager
Some time ago I helped a Bredemarket client manage and write a proposal for a prospect. I can’t identify the client or the prospect, but I will just say that the proposal was for a product that collected personally identifiable information (PII).
The proposal not only presented the features of my client’s product, but also the benefits. And it presented several alternative configurations to the prospect, including an array of value-added options.
Bredemarket the requirements manager
Fast forward after proposal submission, and after my Biometric Update guest post was published.
The prospect wanted to hold further discussions with Bredemarket’s client, and Bredemarket shifted from consulting proposal manager to consulting requirements manager.
The prospect’s first request?
Remove ALL the proposal’s value-added options from the final deliverable.
Not because of cost, but because these value-added features would make the prospect’s life MORE difficult.
While the prospect had no issue with the data that the supercharged value-added configured product collected, it had other concerns:
- Some of the storage features of the value-added product ended up storing things the prospect didn’t need or want to store.
- In addition, the value-added product caused privacy issues with the prospect’s own end customers.
An added benefit to removing these features: the slimmed-down product would be easier for the prospect to manage.
Sometimes less is more, as a sculpture artist will tell you. A huge hunk of marble is less desirable than a sculpture in which much of the marble was taken away.
If you need Bredemarket to help shape your proposals, requirements, or other content or analysis, let’s talk.
Integrations Are a Feature
Can Artificial Intelligence Reduce Healthcare Burnout?
Burnout in the healthcare industry is real—but can targeted artificial intelligence solutions reduce burnout?
In a LinkedIn post, healthcare company Artisight references an Advisory Board article with the following statistics:
(T)here were 7,887 nurses who recently ended their healthcare careers between 2018 and 2021….39% of respondents said their decision to leave healthcare was due to a planned retirement. However, 26% of respondents cited burnout or emotional exhaustion, and 21% cited insufficient staffing.
And this is ALL nurses. Not just the forensic nurses who have to deal with upsetting examinations that (literally) probe into sexual assault and child abuse. All nurses have it tough.
But the Artisight LinkedIn post continues with the following assertion:
At Artisight we are committed to reversing this trend through AI-driven technology that is bringing the joy back to medicine!!
Can artificial intelligence bots truly relieve the exhaustion of overworked health professionals? Let’s look at two AI solutions from 3M and Artisight and see whether they truly benefit medical staff.
3M and documentation solutions
3M, a former competitor to MorphoTrak until 3M sold its biometric offerings (as did MorphoTrak’s parent Safran), has invested heavily into healthcare artificial intelligence solutions. This includes a solution that addresses the bane of medical professionals everywhere—keeping up with the paperwork (and checking for potentially catastrophic errors).
Our solutions use artificial intelligence (AI) to alleviate administrative burden and proactively identify gaps and inconsistencies within clinical documentation. Supporting completeness and accuracy every step of the way, from capture to code, means rework doesn’t end up on the physician’s plate before or even after discharge. That enables you to keep your focus where it needs to be – on the patient right in front of you.
Artisight and “smart hospitals”
But what about Artisight, whose assertion inspired this post in the first place?
A recent PYMNTS article interviewed Artisight President Stephanie Lahr to uncover Artight’s approach.
The Artisight platform marries IoT sensors with machine learning and large language models. The overall goal in a hospital setting is to streamline safe patient care, including virtual nursing. Compliance with HIPAA, according to Lahr, has been an important part of the platform’s development, which includes computer vision, voice recognition, vital sign monitoring, indoor positioning capabilities and actionable analytics reports.
In more detail, a hospital patient room is equipped with Al-powered devices such as high-quality, two-way audio and video with multiple participants for virtual care. Ultra-wideband technology tracks the movement and flow of assets throughout the hospital. Remote nurses and observers monitor patient room activity off-site and interact virtually with patients and clinicians.
At a minimum, this reduces the need for nurses to run down the hall just to check things. At a maximum, tracking of asset flows and actionable analytics reports make the job of everyone in the hospital easier.
What about the benefits?
As Bredemarket blog readers have heard ad nauseum, simply saying that your health solution uses features such as artificial intelligence makes no difference to the medical facility. The facility doesn’t care about your features or your product—it only cares about what benefits them. (Cool feature? So what?)
So how can 3M’s and Artisight’s artificial intelligence offerings benefit medical facilities?
- Allow medical professionals to concentrate on care. Patients don’t need medical professionals who are buried in paperwork. Patients need medical professionals who are spending time with them. The circumstances that land a patient in a hospital are bad enough, and to have people who are forced to ignore patient needs makes it worse. Maybe some day we’ll even get back to Welbycare.
- Free medical professionals from routine tasks. Assuming the solutions work as advertised, they eliminate the need to double-check a report for errors, or the need to walk down the hall to capture vital signs.
- Save lives. Yeah, medical professionals do that. If the Marcus Welby AI bot spots an error in a report, or if the bot detects a negative change in vital signs while a nurse is occupied with another patient, the technology could very well save a life.
Now I am not a doctor and cannot evaluate whether these artificial intelligence solutions actually work (unlike some other so-called artificial intelligence solutions that were in reality powered manually). But if the solutions truly work, wonderful.
What’s YOUR healthcare story? And who can tell your story?
Video: Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services
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.
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.
The Best Way to Talk About Complex Technology Features? Don’t.
Are you a product marketer or content marketer at an engineering-focused technology firm?
Have you been asked to tell your prospects about the marvelously complex features of your firm’s dazzling engineering products?
Well…why would you want to do that?
The complex product with a lengthy feature list
Many years ago I worked at a firm in which the products were driven by engineers, and therefore resulted in engineering marvels.
I recall one product in particular (not a Segway, but a biometric product housed in a tower) that was an impressive fusion of algorithmic and mechanical excellence. The complex design that went into developing the tower product resulted in a device that performed its function superbly.
The complex engineering also caused the product to have such a high price that no one would ever buy it…but I digress.
But there was another issue with the product. I was writing proposals at the time, and we certainly could have written up a product description that emphasized the product’s lengthy set of features.
But the people receiving our proposals wouldn’t have cared one bit.
Prospects don’t care about lengthy feature lists
You see, prospects don’t care about lengthy feature lists.
And they don’t care about your product.
Frankly, they don’t even care about your company.
- Even if your company has stellar engineers that develop wonderful products.
- Even if your company has won prestigious awards for technical excellence, or as a great place to work, or whatever.
- Even if your company just completed a successful funding round.
It’s painful to admit it, but prospects only care about…themselves.
And the prospects focus on their problems, not your technical superiority.
For example, if your prospects work for certain government agencies, they really care about terrorists who try to board airplanes.
If your product stops terrorists from boarding airplanes, then and only then will they care about your company or your product.
If your product can’t stop terrorists from boarding airplanes, or if there is another product that is better at stopping terrorists from boarding airplanes, then your prospects won’t care about your product.
So how do you get prospects to care?
You don’t get prospects to care by talking about your extensive feature lists.
Let me give you a tip. If you find an employee at the prospect’s company who wants to spend a lot of time talking about your extensive feature lists, that employee probably DOESN’T have the authority to approve the purchase.
The people who DO have the authority to approve the purchase don’t have time to talk about extensive feature lists.
The approvers want to know, in 30 seconds or less, how your solution BENEFITS them.
Do you need help explaining your benefits?
Talking about benefits rather than features is just one tactic to successfully appeal to your prospects.
If you need help ensuring that your written materials (blog posts, white papers, web pages) resonate with your prospects, you can ask Bredemarket to help you.
Four Reasons Why Differentiators Fade Away
I’ve talked ad nauseum about the need for a firm to differentiate itself from its competitors. If your firm engages in “me too” marketing, prospects have no reason to choose you.
But what about companies that DO differentiate themselves…and suddenly stop doing so?
There are four reasons why companies could stop differentiating themselves:
- The differentiator no longer exists.
- The differentiator is no longer important to prospects.
- The market has changed and the differentiator is no longer applicable.
- The differentiator still exists, but the company forgot about it.
Let’s look at these in turn.
The differentiator no longer exists
Sometimes companies gain a temporary competitive advantage that disappears as other firms catch up. But more often, the company only pursues the differentiator temporarily.
In 1985, amid anxiety about trade deficits and the loss of American manufacturing jobs, Walton launched a “Made in America” campaign that committed Wal-Mart to buying American-made products if suppliers could get within 5 percent of the price of a foreign competitor. This may have compromised the bottom line in the short term, but Walton understood the long-term benefit of convincing employees and customers that the company had a conscience as well as a calculator.
From https://reclaimdemocracy.org/brief-history-of-walmart/.
Now some of you may not remember Walmart’s “Made in America” banners, but I can assure you they were prevalent in many Walmarts in the 1980s and 1990s. Sam Walton’s autobiography even featured the phrase.
But as time passed, Walmart stocked fewer and fewer “Made in America” items as customers valued low prices over everything else. And some of the “Made in America” banners in Walmarts in the 1990s shouldn’t have been there:
“Dateline NBC” produced an exposé on the company’s sourcing practices. Although Wal-Mart’s “Made in America” campaign was still nominally in effect, “Dateline” showed that store-level associates had posted “Made in America” signs over merchandise actually produced in far away sweatshops. This sort of exposure was new to a company that had been a press darling for many years, and Wal-Mart’s stock immediately declined by 3 percent.
From https://reclaimdemocracy.org/brief-history-of-walmart/.
The decline was only temporary as Walmart stock bounced back. And 20 years later, the cycle would repeat as Walmart launched a similar “Made in USA” campaign in 2013, only to run into Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement actions two years later.
The differentiator is no longer important
The Walmart domestic production episodes illustrate something else. If Walmart wanted to, it could have persevered and bought from domestic suppliers, even if the supplier price differential was greater than 5%.
But the buying customers didn’t really care.
Affordability was much more important to buyers than U.S. job creation.
So while labor leaders, politicians, and others may have complained about Walmart’s increasing reliance on Chinese goods, the company’s customers continued to do business with Walmart, bringing profitability to the company.
And before you decry the actions of consumers who act against their national self-interest…where was YOUR phone manufactured? China? Vietnam? Unless you own a Librem 5 USA, your phone isn’t from around here. We’re all Commies.
The market has changed
Sometimes the market changes and consumers look at things a little differently.
I’ve previously told the story of Mita, and its 1980s slogan “all we make are great copiers.” In essence, Mita had to adopt this slogan because, unlike its competitors, it did NOT have a diversified portfolio.
This worked for a while…until the “document solutions” industry (copiers and everything else) embraced digital technologies. Well, Fuji-Xerox, Ricoh and Konica did. Mita didn’t, and went bankrupt.
The former Mita is now part of Kyocera Document Solutions.
And stand-alone copiers aren’t even offered.
The company forgot
Before Walmart emphasized “Made in America” products, former (and present) stand-up comedian Steve Martin was dispensing tax advice.
“Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!”
From https://tonynovak.com/how-to-be-a-millionaire-and-not-pay-any-taxes/.
While the IRS will not accept this defense, there are times when people, and companies, forget things.
- I know of one company that had a clear differentiator over most of its competition: the fact that a key component of its solution was self-authored, rather than being sourced from a third party.
- For a time, the company strongly emphasized this differentiator, casting fear, uncertainty, and doubt against its competitors who depended upon third parties for this key component.
- But time passes, priorities change, and the company’s website now buries this differentiator on a back page…making the company sound like all its competitors.
But the company has an impressive array of features, so there’s that.
Restore your differentiators
If your differentiators have faded away, or your former differentiators are no longer important, perhaps it’s time to re-emphasize them so that your prospects have a reason to choose you.
Ask yourself questions about why your firm is great, why all the other firms suck, and what benefits (not features) your customers enjoy that the competition’s customers don’t. Only THEN can you create content (or have your content creator do it for you).
A little postscript: originally I was only going to list three items in this post, but Hana LaRock counsels against this because bots default to three-item lists (see her item 4).
(Pizza Stories) Is Your Firm Hungry for Awareness?
I wrote a post about pizza that concluded as follows:
Tal’s lead was hungry for ghostwriting services, and when they saw that Tal offered such a service, they contacted him.
What does this mean? I’ll go into that in a separate post.
From (Pizza Stories) The Worst Time to READ a Pizza Post on Social Media.
Now that it’s time to write the “separate post,” I really don’t want to get into the mechanics of how posts that attract prospects (hungry people, target audience) increase awareness and help you convert prospects for your products and services.
So forget that. I’m going to tell a story instead about two executives at a fictional company that has a real problem. The executives’ names are Jones and Smith.
The story
Jones was troubled. Sales weren’t increasing, prospects weren’t appearing, and if this malaise continued the company would have to conduct a second round of layoffs. Jones knew that “rightsizing” would be disastrous, so the company needed another solution.
So Jones videoconferenced Smith and asked, “How can we make 2024 better than 2023?”
Smith replied, “Increasing sales calls could help, and ads could help, but there’s another way to increase our awareness with our prospects. We could create content on our website and on our social channels that spreads knowledge of our products and services.”
Jones exclaimed, “That’s great! We could get generative AI to create content for us!”
“No, not that!” Smith replied. “Generative AI text sounds like a bot wrote it, and makes us sound boring, just like everyone else using generative AI text. Do we want to sound like that and put our prospects to sleep?”
“So we need a human writer,” Jones realized, “one who can describe all of the features of our products.”
“Absolutely not,” Smith emphasized. “Customers don’t care about our features. They care about the benefits we can provide to them. If we just list a bunch of features, they’ll say, ‘So what?'”
“OK, we’ll go with benefits,” said Jones. “But why is content so important?”
“Take blogging,” replied Smith. “The average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors. B2B marketers that use blogs get 67% more leads than those who do not. Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI. And 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog.”
“Wow.” Jones was silent for a moment. “How do you know all of this stuff, Smith?”
“Because of the content that I’ve read online from a marketing and writing services company called Bredemarket. The company creates content to urge others to create content. Bredemarket eats its own wildebeest food.”
“Wildebeest?” Jones eyed Smith quizzically.
“Never mind. The important thing is that Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services could help us increase awareness, and vault us over the companies that have blogs but don’t bother to post to them. In one industry, about one-third of the companies with blogs HAVEN’T SAID A SINGLE THING to their prospects and customers in the last two months. If we were in that industry, we could leapfrog over the silent companies.”
“That sounds great,” said Jones. “Let’s contact Bredemarket today.”
“Wonderful idea, Jones. By the way, I hear that Bredemarket excels at repurposing content also.”
The excited Jones asked Smith to contact Bredemarket, and then walked to a nearby venue and sang a song.
When You MUST Focus on Features
Bredemarket has consistently preached benefits, benefits, benefits, since customers want to know what’s in it for them. Customers don’t care if Bredemarket has been in business for three years; they care about how Bredemarket will facilitate consideration of their offerings.
But Tamara Grominsky, in her article “High-Converting Homepages,” points out one significant exception to the “benefits over features” rule—or, in alternate terms, the “outcomes over capabilities” rule.
We’ve been taught to market the benefit, not the feature. The team at Fletch PMM believes there’s a better way. They focus on capabilities over outcomes.
In the startup world especially, buyers need to know the “how”. You don’t have the credibility yet to skip over what the product is and how it works. Buyers don’t believe the outcomes until these more basic questions are answered.
From https://newsletter.pmmcamp.com/p/edition-52
The remainder of Grominsky’s article, which you can read here, lists five steps that you and I can follow to ensure that prospects understand our capabillities so that they will “believe the outcomes.” Step 4, for example, includes Fletch PMM’s handy-dandy value proposition builder.
Now I just have to absorb this and get a little more feature-centric about my marketing and writing services.
And if you want to receive Tamara Grominsky’s insights in your mailbox every week, go to https://newsletter.pmmcamp.com/subscribe.
Your Prospects Don’t Care About Your Technology
Technologists, you know how tough it is to create a technology product.
- You have to assemble the technology, or perhaps create the technology yourself.
- You have to work on the most minute details and make sure that everything is just right.
- It takes a great deal of effort.
What if your product story is ignored?
But when you want to tell the story about your product, and all the effort you put into it, your prospects ignore everything you say. You might as well not be there.
Do you know why your prospects are ignoring you?
Because they don’t care about you. It’s all about them.
People want to satisfy their own needs
But the “it’s all about me” attitude is actually a GOOD thing, if you can harness it in your messaging. Let’s face it; we all have an “it’s all about me” attitude because we want to satisfy our needs.
- You want to satisfy your own needs because you only care about selling your product.
- I want to satisfy my own needs because I only care about selling Bredemarket’s services. (I’ll get to the selling part later.)
- And your prospects want to satisfy their own needs because they only care about their problems. And because of your customers’ self-focus, they’re only going to care about your product if it solves their problems.
So when it’s time to tell the story about your product, don’t talk about your technology.
Adopt a customer focus
Instead of talking about you, talk about them.
Adopt a customer focus and talk about things that your prospects care about, such as how your product will solve their problems.
- Do your customers struggle for visibility, or awareness? Will your technology help their visibility?
- Do your customers struggle when considered against the competition? Will your technology help them stand out?
- Do your customers struggle to make money (conversion)? Will your technology help them make money?
- Do your customers require better ease of use, speed, accuracy, or other benefits? Do the features of your technology provide those benefits?
In short, your customers need to understand how you can solve their problems.
How do you adopt a customer focus?
But how can you make sure that your story resonates with your prospects?
Perhaps you need a guide to work with you to craft your story. Yes, I can serve as a guide to solve YOUR problem.
- A guide who asks the right questions at the beginning of your writing project to ensure that your content meets your goals. (Bredemarket asks the right questions)
- A guide who can create many types of content for you, ranging from blog posts, case studies, and white papers to internal training materials. (Bredemarket creates many types of content)
- A guide who solicits your input as they develop the content, ensuring that it remains on track to meet your goals. (Bredemarket collaborates with you)
If you’re interested in how Bredemarket, the technology content marketing expert, can help you create a customer-focused story for your prospects, find out how to create technology content that converts…
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