Technology Marketing Has to Be Holistic
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One of the benefits of going to a top school is having very talented professors. The best have a way of describing a concept so simply and “matter of factly” that it sticks with you forever.
When I attended Emory’s Goizueta school, one of those professors was Dr. Jagdish Sheth, known to his students as Jag. He had a great way of describing marketing dynamics using elegantly simple constructs. One of my favorites, and the one he based his marketing textbook on, talked about the Buyer, Payer, and User.
In a nutshell, the Buyer is the person who is looking for a solution to a need that they have. They Payer is the person who approves the funds to pay for the solution. The User is the person who will be using the solution. It is important to separate these roles so that you can better understand how to structure your products, marketing and support materials, go-to-market activities, and sales efforts.
For technology companies, these roles are often played by separate individuals. A buyer might be a business-unit executive, or a CIO, or a director of development. A Payer is usually going to be the Controller or CFO, and they are going to want to know the business case for the investment. (This dynamic changes the higher you go in an organization, where non-P&L buyers are at the mercy of those who own a P&L, but that’s a different post for another day.) Finally, the User is the individual or group of individuals who will be using the solution on a regular basis. The User is generally a front-line employee, such as a member of the accounting department, operations staff, or software engineers.
As a product manager or marketing manager, you may need to target each one of these groups in a holistic manner. Let’s say that you are the product manager for a solution used by software engineers to enable new business functionality. The most likely target audience most people would think of first is the business owner. Which would be the Buyer in the model above. You need a crisp message to find the Buyer to get them in the funnel for your solution. You need to help them understand your value proposition so that they will feel comfortable going forward with the buying process if they are a P&L leader, or justify the investment to the Controller or CFO if not.
Great, you’ve got the Buyer and the Payer covered! But what about the User? In this day and age of rapid technology commoditization, usability is a major part of your competitive advantage. If the User has trouble getting up to speed with your product, or doesn’t understand how it can help them, you are going to experience great friction getting your products in the market. This might include intuitive user interfaces for business users, or intuitive documentation/naming conventions/examples for highly technical solutions for engineering.
I’ve worked in global marketing, software sales, and have been on both sides of the transaction. The companies who do a good job taking care of these three roles are a pleasure to do business with. What areas can you improve in your business by thinking about your market in terms of these three roles?
© Mark Travis – All Rights Reserved http://www.travis-company.com
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