Identity/biometrics/technology marketing and writing services
So I had to fulfill a medical appointment and got into my car WITH TIRES, started it, and positioned THE TIRES so that I would head north, then west, toward the medical facility. Once I got to the parking lot I parked my car WITH TIRES and went inside. Less than a half hour later I exited, walked to my car WITH TIRES, and drove home. (Did I mention that my car has TIRES?)
I just updated Bredemarket’s product marketing information page. It doesn’t list everything I’ve written about product marketing, but it touches on a good portion of my posts.
If you haven’t kept up, here are some of the latest posts from March, April, and May of this year.
You can see the entire product marketing information page here.
It’s the classic case of paralysis by overwhelmedness. (Not officially a word, but bear with me here.)
Your identity/biometric firm needs experienced product marketing contract help because you are drowning in work. But because you’re drowning in work you can’t take the time to set up that contract.
Bredemarket can help you contract with Bredemarket.
Now there are certain things that Bredemarket can’t do. Well, Bredemarket could do them, but you (understandably) won’t let me.
But there are things that I can do to make your life easier when you onboard Bredemarket as a contractor/vendor…especially if you are an identity/biometric firm.
So I can meet your partway. Then we’ll realize our mutual goal of making your products prominent and making the competitive products look weak.
So let’s talk and move the process forward.
Oh, and the title of this post was suggested by Google Gemini. AI is only a tool, but sometimes it’s a very effective tool. Sometimes.
I have been known to tell coworkers that I was going to “play” with something. Some were horrified, but others understood completely.
Regardless of the emotions you want to convey in the final content, it’s OK to let loose while you develop your ideas.
Luckily for me, a client recently requested some “fun” concepts. Obviously I can’t share the text I provided to the client, but here is a altered representation of one small idea I had.
So go ahead and have fun. (Even if you can’t tell anyone that you’re having fun.)
Incidentally, one of the seven questions I ask my clients is about emotions.
If you want to me “act” on behalf of your company and develop product marketing content, proposals, and analysis, then click below and schedule a free meeting with me.
There are no constraints, so you can say anything.
But there is no shape or substance.
Count me out.
Since I am not really a business-to-consumer guy, I tend to think of hungry people (target audiences) who number in the hundreds or thousands rather than millions. For example, if you want to sell your identity/biometric solutions to banks with total assets of over US$100 billion, there are only about 100 of them.
Marketing products in this environment requires a completely different mindset. Rather than hiring a Kardashian or Jenner as your influencer or spokesperson, you’d hire a Buffett. (If you could. You probably can’t, unless he owns the company.)
Therefore you need to concentrate on the players who make buying decisions, from the CxO level down to the users. That is the way to get your product into the enterprise.
But if enterprise penetration is your goal, you’re doomed to failure.
For example, enterprises usually don’t buy automated biometric identification systems. Government agencies do.
Believe me, I know. Many identity/biometric firms sell to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and their orders have been disrupted on and off since last October.
One acronym that I love to use is B2G—business-to-government. But I’ve learned the hard way that many people have never heard this acronym before. (Scan the job descriptions and spot the ones for marketing to government agencies that require “B2B” experience.)
So Bredemarket doesn’t seek clients that only sell to enterprises. I seek those that sell to organizations, both private and public.
If your identity/biometric or technology company markets products to organizations and you need strategic and tactical assistance, talk go Bredemarket.
You know that the video I shared earlier begged to be expanded into a television show. And that for the proper setting, the show itself would market products in a way that is illegal today; yes, the show would be sponsored by Marlboro.
So without further ado…
(The show introduction is followed by a Marlboro commercial.)
(Sharp-eyed Inland Empire residents will notice that this depiction is entirely fictional, since the real “Main Street,” officially known as Euclid Avenue, is much wider and less dusty than the street depicted here. Allow me artistic license.)
As the Ontario townsfolk were gathered on the street in late afternoon, a mysterious stranger rode into town. He was a most unusual man. For one, he was smiling, unlike the other strangers that have come before him. For another, his brown/tan/black official western wear issue (Montgomery Ward catalog, pages 333-334) was rudely interrupted by a blue patch with a “B” on it. There was something else odd about him, but no one spoke of it.
The mysterious stranger rode up to the saloon, dismounted his horse, and walked in.
The mysterious stranger slowly walked to the bar and took a seat as the bartender eyed him warily.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked gruffly.
“Strum,” the stranger replied.
(Hey, Inland Empire residents, I got that one right.)
As he sipped his drink, the stranger couldn’t help but notice the older man in a gray jacket staring at him. As everyone in the saloon quietly watched, the older man slowly walked toward the stranger.
“Sir,” said the older man.
“Yes?” asked the stranger.
The older man gestured toward the stranger’s belt. “Those aren’t guns you have in those holsters.”
The stranger paused. “No, they’re not.”
“In fact,” the older man scoffed, “they look like pencils.”
The stranger nodded. “Yes they are.”
The older man’s face betrayed the slightest smirk. “Why” – he paused – “would a man carry PENCILS in his holster?”
As the older man and the others in the saloon broke out into grins, the stranger eyed them all with a serious expression. He paused before responding.
In a loud voice the stranger replied. “Business.”
Everyone looked puzzled at that unexpected response.
After a long pause, the older man turned back to the stranger. “Sir,” he asked, “exactly what kind of BUSINESS are you in?”
(Time for another Marlboro commercial)
I created this for my personal use.
Product marketer for hire.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbredehoft
Bredemarket has consistently argued AGAINST “me too” product marketing, and FOR differentiating your identity/biometric product from its competitors. But your differentiators must resonate with your prospects.
This post lists three false differentiators, and why you should avoid them.
Does your company description place undue emphasis on the shiny happy people who work for you? Their competitive salaries? Their unlimited PTO? Their community days? Their “best place to work” awards?
Who cares?
While you would think happy employees are important to prospects, they really aren’t. Enron was a best company to work for, but definitely did not deliver for its customers. Other companies are slave drivers, but customers love their products.
Save the “best place to work” mumbo jumbo for your careers page, not your prospect-facing content.
Other companies take a different tack. Some emphasize their financial might: they’re a unicorn, a Series C, a NASDAQ-listed firm. Others take the opposite tack, asserting they are small and scrappy. (Bredemarket is in the latter category.)
So what?
Your prospects don’t care how big you are. Size doesn’t matter to them. Your performance does.
Stick the “unicorn” talk in your investor pitch decks, not on stuff your prospects read.
By now you’ve probably figured out that your customers care about your product, not your employee satisfaction or your valuation. So you start talking about your product and its impressive array of features. 1000 ppi fingerprint capture. Sub-second matching. Integration with over 100 third-party systems.
How so?
Prospects don’t care about your product and what it does. They care about what it does FOR THEM. Does it solve crimes and keep bad people off the streets? Does it ensure that bank account applicants really are who they say they are? Does it complete its checks quickly before e-commerce buyers abandon their shopping carts?
Talk benefits, not features. Save the feature lists for your sprints.
Your prospects need to see why your product is great for them, and why competitor products are terrible for them. How your product achieves their objectives: get stuff done, make money.
So what are the differentiators and benefits of your product?
Bredemarket can help your identity/biometric firm with the strategy and tactics of marketing your product. My services and process help you position your product for your prospects.
Do you want to learn more? Go to https://bredemarket.com/mark/ and schedule a free meeting with me to learn how Bredemarket can benefit you, so you can fulfill the needs of your prospects.
Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth I was a technical writer at a software company. These were the days when software came with printed user guides, which I wrote.
I was NOT the de facto product marketer at this software company; the owner was. But during my tenure I observed how he marketed the evolving line of products through three distinct phases. I’m presenting these phase in the chronological order of the company, not the logical order.
When I joined Logic eXtension Resources (LXR), the company was transitioning from consulting work to becoming the leading software provider for users of the THEOS (formerly OASIS) operating system (Wikipedia). THEOS could be configured as a multi-user operating system that could run on (souped up) microcomputer hardware, and thus was an attractive alternative to minicomputers running UNIX.
And LXR provided the business applications: multiCALC for spreadsheets, multiWRITE for word processing, multiMAIL (which I recall nothing about), and multiPERT for project management.
Speaking of dinosaurs, this was when Lotus 1-2-3 was prominent in PC-DOS and MS-DOS circles. You may recall the key word associated with Lotus: integrated. (One prospect at a trade show asked if multiCALC was integrated—it wasn’t—but I doubt he even knew what the word meant.) But in the mind of the consumer, Lotus and the future Microsoft Office caused these seemingly disparate software packages to be regarded as a unified offering.
So the four products I mentioned were loosely related, inasmuch as all of them were business applications, and all ran on THEOS. “Hey, you know that spreadsheet you have? We have a word processor also!”
So we had customers using all four products, and I was eating my own wildebeest food and writing all my user manuals in multiWRITE.
Until I didn’t.
Behind the scenes, LXR shifted to the Macintosh computer for internal work, including my user manuals. We all admired the elegance of the Mac for developers and users alike.
At the same time, the owner decided to pursue his personal interest in education and launched a product that didn’t fit on THEOS and didn’t fit in the “multi” product line.
Enter LXR*TEST, an educational measurement/test generation software package for the Macintosh that created test banks of questions incorporating text and graphics. Questions from the test banks could then be incorporated into individual tests. And if you didn’t want to create your own test banks, third parties were creating test banks in LXR*TEST format.
So, how did the owner/product marketer market LXR*TEST along with all the “multi” products?
He didn’t.
The two product lines served two completely different target audiences. THEOS business prospects didn’t care a whit about test generation, and educators on Macs had no use for a THEOS word processor.
So LXR marketed separately to its target audiences, addressing their individual needs.
Eventually I left LXR and after a few years drifted into the wonderful world of biometrics.
I can’t remember exactly when LXR discontinued its THEOS products, but eventually it concentrated exclusively on LXR*TEST, bowing to the inevitable and releasing a Windows version to complement its Mac version.
Even after LXR was acquired, the parent company continued to offer LXR*TEST for years afterwards.
Of course this allowed LXR to devote its product marketing attention exclusively to the testing market.
Until LXR*TEST, and LXR itself, faded away.
Like several of my other employers that no longer exist in their initial form.
Bredemarket