Ic3 Letter-1 Marketing Technology

Marketing Technology Letter

February 2002 – NO.1

Marketing Technology Some technology marketers are in a paradoxical situation. They have to take their own medicine and show that technologies for marketing are not ‘technology in search of a problem’, but rather ‘solutions’ to real marketing challenges.

“Humans are the only animals that stumble twice on the same stone” old Spanish proverb

“For anybody with a hammer, anything looks like a nail”

Marketing essentials:

The term ‘marketing technology’ has two possible meanings. On one hand, it is the act of marketing technology products or services. The marketing of technology has some aspects that are quite different from the marketing of high volume consumer goods or of industrial commodities. For example, new technologies (a.k.a. hi-tech) require an extensive ‘market education’ (via specialised publications, infomercials, white papers, etc.) until they become part of the every day environment. Marketing technology also means technology for marketing. Marketing has always used and needed the latest technologies to progress, from the rotating printing press to photography, from the simple telephone to automated call centres, from radio to television, from the Internet to e-business. On most occasions, marketing has advanced faster though the combination of such technologies. People who present ordering pizzas via the web as a cool innovation should look back to the 1920s when the “phone for food” slogan already was an example of innovative media combination (ads in newspapers with the telephone). The interesting twist here is that the loop is closing for the marketers of products and services that use Internet and software technologies to support the marketing function itself. They have to show how to use the marketing technology they sell properly — the old shoemaker story. Excesses of the dot.com mania have highlighted, in many cases, what not to do. The burst bubble has left room for more common sense, but there are still quite a few marketers who repeat past blunders or invent new ones. Read the copy of ads presenting new companies in the hi-tech sector: in many cases it is abstruse and one has no idea of what the company is doing. Will the marketers of marketing technology take their own medicine and prove its value? There is a lasting debate on whether marketing is an art, a science, a discipline, etc. Let’s assume it is an art more than anything else and compare it with photography. Under this angle, technology is clearly a means to an end. A good photographer has to clearly understand how to use it to his/her advantage. But, above all, he/she has to master the basic principles of photography (framing, lighting, depth of field, etc.). And, finally, he/she must have talent, taste, flair, instinct, whatever you call it. A marketer faces the same challenges. The problem, today, is that many of them fall in love with technology and use it to excess, forgetting it’s a means to an end. They rush to market with expensive programmes without having done their homework and checked some marketing essentials. Marketing essentials belong to the foundation of a sound marketing strategy. Before diving into the intricacies of channel development, media selection, relationship management, and so on, a company has to get maximum clarity in three domains:

− Identity & Vision - In the background, it needs to understand where it stands

in the market and its direction to the future. This doesn’t have to be published but the boss needs to tell his/her team where she/he intends to go.

− Differentiation & Positioning

- To beat its competitors, a company and its products or services have to offer a positive difference and use it as a basis for occupying a unique position in the mind of customers, partners and opinion makers.

− Attraction & Persuasion - Ultimately, the rule of the game is to get customers’

attention with a message that stands out of the market noise, raises their interest, and persuades them to buy.

Hi-tech companies must also pay early attention to human factors in product conception, design and marketing. To avoid getting to market with a technology in search of a problem, they must integrate the needs of ’normal people’, solve real problems, or exploit opportunities with new products that are both usable and useful. This is, of course, even more important when a company markets technology for marketing, isn’t it?

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