Insights

Brands often want to influence and change the world around them – sometimes within the bounds of authenticity, and sometimes not.

Tech is no different, but when it comes to platform brands, it’s perhaps more true than other segments. Platform brands are often the youthful upstarts and yesterday’s unicorns with high regard for their market contempt and trouble making. They’re often the ones making up the new rules, and zigging when others zag.

A strong belief system or manifesto aligned with their carefully carved niche is super critical to success. There’s little room for the meek and mild here.

New economics of platforms brings new entrants

Platform plays have disrupted many established markets and industries – Uber in taxis, AirBnB in hospitality/travel, Doordash in fast-food – to name just a few. Most markets have received some challenge to norms and business models from a platform-upstart that’s looking to shake-up the status quo and entrenched commercial agendas.

To do it, they (largely) use existing technology to create unique IP to introduce a new route-to-market. But they also come at it with an ecosystem mentality, looking to introduce value to actors that are critical for the platform to be a success. These are often fellow disruptors looking sideways at a market and thinking, ‘We could do with some of that action’. 

In fact, six of the ten most valuable companies in the world today are platform businesses: Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Tencent, and Alibaba. They all allow ‘vendors’ to use their platform to monetise their wares. And they’re doing well out of it!

Now, the winners are not necessarily ‘the tech pioneers’ – they’re often ‘the pioneers with tech’.

But while the platform-model is loved by shareholders and business leaders alike, these brands are faced with some unique pressures. Notwithstanding existing businesses undergoing ‘platform-reincarnation’ and looking to benefit from recurring revenues and sticky services themselves.

Platforms need an engaging core

More than many other tech businesses, platform co.’s need a rock-solid raison d’être for others to exist. They often provide an alt. route to market that still needs to compete with old world models as well as subsequent waves of disrupters.

The kernel of their original business plan needs to surface for ecosystem ‘contributors’ to believe in their vision and collaborate/co-create to the underlying business intent. These participants – together with the end-buyer – need to believe in the operating model as much as they do the character of the marketing. There ain’t no hiding here!

What should the platform marketer look for?

To achieve the relationship above, platform marketers should ensure:

• The business purpose is very clear and sustainable for ecosystem participants – even more so if a market is experiencing various disrupters with similar models.
• The purpose is translated into persona-based messages/journeys at key touch points.
• The value of the model is seen/projected to carry substantial value to contributors (i.e. lean/efficient route to market) and end-buyers (i.e. ease of selection/provision).
• The brand purpose (i.e. what the brand believes in) must co-exist neatly with the business purpose (i.e. the reason for invention).
• Bullets 1 and 2 must sense and respond to changing plays of new entrants.

Addressing these issues head-on will get you well into the success zone.

Long live the tech-centric business

This new breed of tech-centric business, or the enlightened leadership team of a ‘platform-reincarnation’ play, are generally in-tune with the needs of the end user. They understand the self-empowered and open business mindset and how that’s good for the market – and their prosperity.

As such they’re generally less infatuated with ‘tech-spec marketing’ than the tech pioneers of yesterday. But they still need to enact the bullets above to make sure their play engages and endures.

The Rubicon Agency has significant experience in platforms play – whether the original platform disruptors or the re-incarnators. 

Check out our experience in platforms.

An Invisibility Cloak is a magical garment that renders the wearer or whatever it covers invisible – and brought to infamy in the Harry Potter film and book franchise. These cloaks are exceptionally valuable within the wizarding world as they are made from the hair of a Demiguise, a magical creature that possesses the power to become invisible at will.

It’s a shame that many infra marketers seem to be using them on their infra plays – making little effort to display their own magic.

The world needs infrastructure visible

Infra may not be the new rock & roll, but it is undergoing a new dawn in appeal and recognition – driven by software defined capabilities, domain convergence and new cloud operating models amongst other market shifts.

Further, infra has arguably become more key as industry moves toward platforms and marketplaces – and (digitally-transformed) business processes become even more infra-dependent. Goals for corporate agility, sustainability and Net Zero have turned up the pressure too.

Technologies that run global industries, markets and communities like 5G, IoT, blockchain, and smart grids rely on infra – and in themselves they ARE infra too.

But to succeed, the impact of this ‘digital plumbing’ must be manifested in a very real and visceral manner. But not all vendors and service providers do a good job in landing this.

More than digital plumbing

It’s probably worth a few words defining infra here – we mean WAN, LAN, mobile, data centre, security, Wifi, interconnectivity. You get the gist.

It doesn’t matter whether it drives a private, public or hybrid environment – the backbone is critical, and its invisibility needs to be overcome with very visible benefits. Often, it does more than connect A to B – it’s linked to possible shifts and transformations in business operations and posture.

Top marketing tips for infrastructure campaigns

The key messaging and creative watch-outs for the tech marketer include:

• Build bridges between incremental technical/functional benefits and specific business indices. These are likely to be steps towards the bigger goal(s) of the next bullet.
• Establish a credible link between the holistic, improved operations story and (business or tech) aspiration.
  • By ‘credible’, we mean elevated but within the elasticity of the brand and the authentic purpose of the tech.
  • And by ‘aspiration’ we mean contribute towards goals such such Net Zero, competitiveness, boosting NPD, service acceleration etc.
• Create an emotional attachment with the above messaging. This is likely to be linked to personal, team or business reward and success
• A positive response to all these principles will propel you well in the right direction.

Businesses generally invest in tangibles

The above sub-head may not ring true with NFTs and crypto, but most organisations demand highly measurable results.

None more so than big-ticket deals in ‘digital plumbing’. From service/cloud providers to enterprises/SMBs and public sector orgs, all need to act with prudence and diligence – but also with a next-gen mindset. Decisions made can have long-term consequences – good and bad.

The b2b tech agency or tech marketing function needs to make sure their technical argument commands an RFI/RFP, but their aspirations and promise secure brand preference.

The Rubicon Agency has deep experience with networking, cloud and data centre propositions, working with many of the leading vendors in the space. 

Check out our experience in infra.

Not everyone can possess the scientific, literary or mathematical brilliance of Einstein, Wilde or Turing. Luminaries and intellectual gamechangers like these don’t come along every day.

However, brilliance manifests in various ways, reflecting exceptional intelligence, talent, or skill in specific areas. Brilliant individuals think deeply, solve complex problems, and generate innovative ideas daily.

It’s a shame that this truth seems to lack recognition in much of the tech services marketing for professional services (PS), managed services (MS) and engineering consulting (EC). How can we change the record here?

The new services universe

‘Old-world’ IT Consulting has long been a complex industry, where well-paid organisations are charged with ‘integrating the un-integrateable’. And managing the (almost) un-manageable.

Big advisory firms, boutique players and top-drawer resellers have feasted over the space for decades. Their success stories had/still have the potential to influence corporate client success – and for institutions to deliver-on policy pledges.

But times are changing.

1. The new world of IT is more integrateable, more composable, more modular.
2. IT itself can now deliver more profound business capabilities than previously dreamt of.
3. Tech offers are now (generally) configured to be consumed as a service.

But while this is all true, it still needs the power of people to make it happen. We must make sure the value of human ingenuity, assurance and experience shines-through in marketing PS, MS and EC offers. This is not always the case.
Articulate the potential of people

As technology marketers, or b2b tech agencies, we’re used to extracting and communicating the value/potential from a software, device or platform. We’re experts at projecting the impact to the user or buyer. But advisory plays are a little harder to land.

Yes, explaining process and operational pathways are part of the job – especially for complex, high-risk tasks that benefit from a ‘good-old’ methodology. But don’t forget about the value-add. And it needs to be better than competing offers too!

What’s the checklist for services marketers?

For b2b tech marketers with a people-driven service portfolio, they should:

• Ensure each play expresses the very difference of human input – not just a flow of tasks.
• Cluster service propositions into meaningful bundles where collaboration and intersection of expertise can flywheel success.
• Create constructs that express the escalation of value aligned with human inputs – possibly around a lifecycle or buyer experience.
• Establish interlocks between individual services – creating a pathway around the incremental plays that can deliver compounding gains.
• Embed a vision/ultimate customer destination that can only be achieved with the right combination of tech play + services play.

Manifested properly, these principles will set marketers and tech agencies on the right path.

Blending empathy with expertise

With services plays, tech marketers have more chance to apply empathy and emotional intelligence. Here they’re selling people to people. They’re addressing highly-human concerns – ‘is that something we could do?’, ‘do we trust that to happen?’,’ how can that possibly be achieved?’.

It takes b2b tech agency expertise and mind-shift to get the balance right. But, after all tech still needs people, and people still need tech…

For now, until AI fully takes over! (wink)

The Rubicon Agency has deep experience with consulting, engineering and services propositions, working with many of the leading vendors in disruptive innovation. 

Check out our experience in consulting and services.

Imagine the scene. A TV ad for a world famous anti-perspirant, where our hero is just about to make the rock climb of their life. Picture the director, sizing the dramatic perspectives that show the peril of the route in-frame and the atmospheric shots of the climber’s preparations. Edit-in the adrenaline-inducing ropes and apparatus – and the climatic joy at the summit. You get the picture.

Now imagine the ad where the focus is just the anti-perspirant and its ability to reduce sweaty arms. It’s a passion killer isn’t it. Well, this is much like the state of software marketing – where there’s a lack of craft and flair in blending perspiration with aspiration.

New models in software make things worse

Software has been core to the tech industry since day one. And as decades have rolled by, the delivery model has changed radically – and more recently the software supply chain and operating models have been turned on their heads too.

But in all that time, software has been engineered to fulfil specific roles – such as office tasks (Word/Excel etc.), processes (SAP/Oracle etc.), horizontal functions (Workday, Adobe etc.) and many more. All are positioned to make things easier, save time, improve accuracy – and fulfil basic needs in our workday lives.

But these binary messages/measures are now table stakes and not enough to express the real value of modern software applications to a business with zeitgeist challenges.

Modern architectures, APIs and AI bring massive potential to what software can do and achieve. And now (as tech marketers and b2b tech agencies) we need to place more emphasis on presenting how it’s going to change the business – rather than the basic performance it achieves. The potential and accomplishments of our erstwhile climbing hero need to be evident and authentic.

Software needs to dare to dream

We’re now talking about new messages and yardsticks – accuracy of experience scoring, quality of predicted outcomes, performance of virtual behaviours – the list goes on.

All these messages are visionary, and all yardsticks were unthinkable just a few years ago. But what principles should be applied by modern software marketers to make sure they’re on the right track?

The modern software marketer checklist

Here’s how to achieve the right level of pitch for the software or app:

1. 1. Don’t think that the traditional high-touch nouns of agility, flexibility and productivity are enough these days. Break beyond these barriers into fresh air. Go beyond the blah, blah, blah
   2. Get up close and personal with the customer use cases to extract the most valuable essence(s) of the application.
   3. Get empathetic and imaginative in equal measure and apply your own ‘language translator’ to create and pitch a story for business managers/leaders, users and the IT function. All use different languages and have different care abouts.
   4. Loosen-up a bit – apply some b2c thinking (even in b2b propositions) to enforce a fresh perspective and brand expression that buyers and users can relate and buy into.
   5. Finally, don’t over-egg it! Make sure there’s authenticity and reality around the dream you’re selling to the customer. Overdo it and you’ll damage your brand and reputation.

The comfort in aspiration

The above 5 points take patience, rigour and high standards in knowledge extraction and message elevation to achieve the right results. But they sure feel like a breath of fresh air when you get there! The aspiration feels real, sweet and attainable.

The result. You end up with a differentiated, engaging and enduring pitch to your software play. And you’ll feel like our climbing hero from the outset.

The Rubicon Agency has 30-years’ experience in marketing software and applications, working with many of the leading vendors and engineers

Check out our experience in software.

We all know one. An inquisitive, passionate petrol head that knows the inner workings of the combustion engine. Someone who can explain the mechanics of the turbocharger, crankshaft and gearbox. They’re a great source of free education – but they can be very heavy on the minutiae you pretend to be interested in, just to get the educated answer you’re after.

Cloud and AI vendors can have similar traits – super keen to show what they’ve learned and built over the years – and wanting to share technical detail that exceeds your need, desire (and let’s be honest), comprehension.

More innovation and bamboozling ahead

When cloud started to gather on the horizon a couple of decades ago, little did we all know the profound effect it would have on our lives – whether in the tech or marketing industry or just as a plain old consumer. We’ve needed to introduce and normalise emerging technologies rapidly – and sometimes we’ve overcooked it.

What started as ‘some virtual storage somewhere in the ether’, gained momentum, surfaced disruptive innovations and was the catalyst to a fundamental rethink of computing. It unlocked an Alladins Cave of possibilities and potential that not only reinvented what tech can do, but also business operating models, software supply chains and consumption models.

Tech marketing pros and b2b marketing agencies have spent the last 2-decades marketing cloud services in a way that’s made XaaS the de-facto that it is today. But like our erstwhile petrol heads, we’ve done some bamboozling and blindsiding along the way too.

Don’t love the tech too much

Early adopters can have a habit of thinking everyone ‘gets it’ and ‘instinctively knows where things are going’. And with that can come a false presumption of awareness and understanding.

Cloud upped the ante on what’s possible – but AI has taken that onto a whole new level. All segments, industries and economies are looking over their shoulders for what it could mean. It’s fair to say that (as of writing this blog) much of the AI market is still in its early adopter and (some in segments) early majority phases.

The early majority onwards need tech marketers to join the dots. We need to translate what the emerging tech is – into what it does and what it achieves.

We can’t afford for these emerging innovations to not achieve lift-off just because their value hasn’t been articulated. After all, not all tech vendors are led by visionaries with skills in crisp and eloquent distillation. We need to play our part.

Technologists – programmers, architects, engineers – are all understandably proud of their efforts and their stack. But product/portfolio management and marketing teams need to step in and stop this hitting the market without decoding the value.

What do cloud and AI marketers need to consider?

Solution, product and marketing teams should ask themselves these 3 key questions:

1. Does your current marketing decode what’s enabled and achieved with your technology, rather than what it does and how it does it?
2. Do you have tiered messaging to translate functionality and capabilities for varying levels of technical proficiency?
3. Do you present crisp use case benefits and stories against the status quo?

If some of these answers are no, you may want to think again.

Serving a more tech-friendly audience

Cloud and AI technologies are great for audience levelling – often bridging the needs of the business managers while offering something more progressive and flexible for IT pros.

Alongside that shift, the business manager is becoming more digitally able (with greater workforce representation of millennials and Gen Z).

So, while business decision makers are becoming more technically literate – you still need to keep ‘Team IT’ on-side – especially in larger businesses. This means tech marketers (and their tech agency partners) must balance the need for simplicity with crisp business benefits and technical depth.

Campaigns and collateral produced by b2b technology agencies (and internal marketing functions) need to land the purpose of the tech proposition – without patronising or bamboozling buyers and users.

Collectively, we don’t want to be known as the petrol heads that no-one wants to sit with at the Christmas party!

The Rubicon Agency has significant cloud and AI expertise, working with many of the leading vendors in disruptive innovation.

Check out our experience in cloud and AI.

The Scream movie franchise has been a box office smash over the last 3 decades (yes, the first one was 1996!). It’s used wave after wave of dramatic storyline, unsuspecting victim and bad guy to get bums on seats. And it seems much of the cyber security market is following the playbook.

Yes, IT markets like cyber security and infosec are all about risk and exposure – and leveraging the underlying vulnerability and fear of the buyer is part of the script. But how much scaremongering is required for good business? And when is it bad for building a positive positioning?

Scary is getting scarier

For cyber sec vendors it’s all about outplaying the bad guys and not being taken-out in scene 2 – but it’s clear that things don’t always go to plan. Popular media is full of data-theft, ransomware attacks and compromises – whether it’s public services, high-profile figures or household brands. And now industry must deal with AI-generated adversaries too, with every facet of digital engagement in the threat zone. In IT security, it must seem like the Scream boxset is playing repeat.

So, it’s easy to see why impending doom is an appropriate lever for cyber sec marketing – but REALLY, does it have to be turned-up to the max and with so little respect to the brand and customer?

The pitfalls of scare mongering

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (or FUD) have been around since the birth of marketing. It’s applied to most industries – but perhaps there’s never been such a good vehicle as the security market. Here regulatory pressures and an ‘at-risk’ CIO/CTO/CiSO can lead to over-zealous scare tactics.

With shadowy underworld figures, storm clouds and a complement of hoodies, the average cybersecurity campaign can look closer to a low-budget horror flick than a b2b campaign selling a 6-figure resilience solution.

What should cybersecurity marketers look for in their marketing?

Campaign and product marketing heads should ensure their portfolio is marketed with a healthy balance of optimism/opportunity to offset the threat being faced down.

The customer takeaway should be that the solution is a force for good:

• Positioned as an enabler rather than just a defender. This avoids the overly negative positioning that impacts perception and brand.
• Serving progressive capabilities that can be promised and practiced. Telling a measured story of business liberation and beyond the value inhibitor of ‘a restrictive shield’.
• Customers are looking for subtle cues that instill cool, calm confidence. Continuity isn’t achieved with dashboards alone.

Does your marketing provide these takeaways? You may want to continue reading if you’re not sure.

Businesses need a happy ending

As we covered above, not all stories have a happy ever after. But it’s incumbent on the security vendor (and their tech marketing agency) to ensure that positive forces can (and should) prevail against these ‘mongers of doom’.  After all, the modern CiSO needs to understand and believe in the fundamental promises of tech – not that there’s lots of Ghostface’s out there.

With so many threat vectors, actors and connected processes these days, the CiSO decision-making will be structured, diligent and conscious. They won’t be scared into making the purchase. Not anymore. They want to be treated in a respectful manner – making professional decisions on business exposure AND enablement.

The best approach to address this is with the optimum balance of ‘measured threat’ x ‘actionable resilience’ x ‘business state achieved’ with the solution. Not too much FUD – but similarly not over-arrogant either.

We want to avoid the genre of Scream – but likewise we don’t want to lose the edge and end up with Scary Move either.

This needs an expert b2b tech marketing agency with deep experience in cyber security. One that has proven methodologies to elevate plays and an operating model to create empathy and appetite in buyer groups.

The Rubicon Agency has significant cyber security expertise, supporting many of the leading security vendors to raise their game in security marketing.

Check out our experience in infosec.