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The Rubicon Agency
In Our industry, Proposition development, Strategic content, Thought leadership, Video content

Video focus – a guide for technology marketers

Video focus – a guide for Technology Marketers

Edited around 9 chapters on producing best practice content, 'Video focus - A guide for Technology Marketers' is a new free guide published by The Rubicon Agency.

Based on years of writing and producing influential B2B video content, the guide is aimed at any technology marketer who suspects or already knows that video can be a uniquely effective medium for strategic and tactical purposes.

Video marketing – an increasingly influential and integrated channel

With the rapid growth and acceptance of video in all marketing, senior tech marketers are increasing their investment in corporate, industry and open channels that broadcast this content – accelerated by the growing commitment to the medium from publishers and social platforms.

Marketing teams are expected to demonstrate the flare, innovation and communications clarity that they apply to other marketing assets, without necessarily having the training and skills development required to deliver a quality product.

Distilling over a decade of expertise in video production

The guide distils over 10 years of experience, insights, practices and pragmatism from a marketing agency dedicated exclusively to the technology sector. It’s not a comprehensive DIY guide or a geek’s guide to video technology – nor is it a budget-busting view from a creative ivory tower.

Written in a no-nonsense, plain English style, the guide provides a broad overview of the key principles and considerations for various types and formats of video.

What types of video are covered in this guide?

Check out the chapters contained within the guide:

Take 1: About this guide
Take 2: Video types
Take 3: Three considerations for a teaser video
Take 4: Why make a trailer video?
Take 5: The explainer video in three acts
Take 6: Show and tell with a demo video
Take 7: When it’s showcase time
Take 8: Keeping it real with a documentary video
Take 9: What makes a good vision video?
Take 10: Specialist agency or production company?
Take 11: The closing shot

At The Rubicon Agency, we are enthusiastic and experienced advocates of video as a technology marketing asset. From launch trailers to aspirational vision videos, they have a unique ability to stimulate interest, accelerate understanding and influence decision makers – three key goals for any tech marketer.

Download your copy of the guide today, or check out our video gallery if you need some inspiration.

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, M4 in action, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Proposition development

Fast Marketing fails: bland ingredients

Fast Marketing fails 3

Fast marketing happens when marketers are institutionally influenced to choose quantity over quality, and convenience over content.

When engagement assets, landing pages, outreach or conversations are simply quickfried with little culinary skill, the results can leave customers feeling hungry or, worse still, with a bad aftertaste.

Like fast food, fast marketing can suffer from bland, artificial ingredients.

Fast food and fast marketing may be predicated on convenience but both come with compromise.

One significant compromise is typically a lack of quality ingredients in content that lacks distinctive flavours. The compromise is compounded when fast marketing means offering a limited menu of formulaic food for thought – with little choice other than ‘supersizing’ – or in other words, quantity over quality.

The Tech sector can be particularly prone to the ‘McMessaging’ approach. With access to the content equivalent of a beef herd the size of Texas, it can be very tempting to simply throw it into the marketing mincer and churn out a patty of generic messages with a side order of undifferentiated propositions.

Fresh, carefully selected ingredients are key to whetting an audience appetite for tech marketing content. Rather than re-heat a stale white paper or de-frost content that can be found in any competitor’s digital deep freezer, it pays to source and prepare your own content ingredients for a menu that offers more distinctive flavouring and ultimately a more satisfying meal to an audience that has an appetite for quality over convenience.

Fast Marketing fails:
– The all-you-can-eat buffet
– The cold take-away
– Bland ingredients

To make your marketing more enduring and sustainable, contact The Rubicon Agency for your personalised workshop.

This article compliments ‘McMarketing in the tech sector – Does fast marketing just create indigestion?’

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Proposition development

Fast Marketing fails: the cold take-away

Fast Marketing fails 2

Fast marketing happens when marketers are institutionally influenced to choose quantity over quality, and convenience over content.

This article compliments ‘McMarketing in the tech sector – Does fast marketing just create indigestion?’

When engagement assets, landing pages, outreach or conversations are simply quickfried with little culinary skill, the results can leave customers feeling hungry or, worse still, with a bad aftertaste.

Like fast food, fast marketing can run the risk of being disposable.

Fast food and fast marketing may be a quick, convenient solution but if either is served cold then they’re likely to be quickly discarded.

Rather than satisfy a hunger for information; without a clear and relevant call-to-action or a next-step, the fast marketing meal turns into a cold offering. When that happens, customer audiences are inclined to look for the nearest waste bin.

The cold take-away is a common fail in sales enablement assets. So, why do thought leadership, business case, use case and other assets typically offer a next-step to an audience when sales enablement assets are often left without any clear call-to-action?

The answer lies in planning. Rather than expect sales to keep the heat under prospects by providing the critical next-step, it makes more sense to give it to them on a plate. Building the offer of an integrated presentation, webinar, white paper, or good old-fashioned conversation into the menu not only keeps your audience at the table but also satisfies their appetite for information without the indigestion.

Fast marketing fails:

– The all-you-can-eat buffet
– The cold take-away
– Bland ingredients

To make your marketing more enduring and sustainable, contact The Rubicon Agency for your personalised workshop.

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Proposition development

Fast Marketing fails: the all-you-can-eat buffet

Fast Marketing fails 1

Fast marketing happens when marketers are institutionally influenced to choose quantity over quality, and convenience over content.

When engagement assets, landing pages, outreach or conversations are simply quickfried with little culinary skill, the results can leave customers feeling hungry or, worse still, with a bad aftertaste.

Like fast food, fast marketing can be served up in a number of ways.

Take the all-you-can-eat buffet for example. With everything you might like to taste, there’s no menu required. You can fill your plate to the brim, tuck in, and go back for more as often as you like. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

But how satisfying can a meal be when it’s a confusion of cuisine? With so much on offer, do you grab a bit of everything but ultimately leave most of it untouched.

The all-you-can-eat content buffet is the result of marketers forgetting that buyers have developed particular tastes for the content that they are prepared to digest. Yesterday’s buyer may have been fed the equivalent of meat and potatoes, with a menu restricted tech features rather than business benefits, but today’s buyer is far more discerning.

The fast marketing buffet fails because it offers too much, with copious amounts of unstructured content simply being poured into multiple paid, owned and earned content channels and spread across digital marketing platforms. And if too many ingredients are simply too bland; stale or reheated, then covering them with a thick gravy of ‘brand character’ doesn’t make the buffet any more palatable.

Ultimately, the ‘feast’ offered by the fast marketing buffet can quickly turn to famine as it leaves dining customers feeling hungry for content that not only caters to their specific tastes but also has enough nutrition to feed a healthy decision-making process.

Fast Marketing fails:

– The all-you-can-eat buffet
– The cold take-away
– Bland ingredients

To make your marketing more enduring and sustainable, contact The Rubicon Agency for your personalised workshop.

This article compliments ‘McMarketing in the tech sector – Does fast marketing just create indigestion?’

The Rubicon Agency
In Our industry, Programme planning, Proposition development, Thought leadership

Dealing with disruption

Dealing with Disruption blog header

How to be a credible disruptee in your technology market.

To be in the tech industry is to continually be in the path of disruption.

In a relatively brief period, disruption has been frequent and rapid in the tech industry – from the demise of mainframe computing to the replacement of twisted copper pairs with fibre cable and onwards to the arrival of the Internet. From the growth of Big Data; the transition to cloud computing; mobile, and the Internet of Things (IoT) – disruptions have created a ripple effect that’s transformed businesses, markets, commerce, behaviour and culture.

When disruption arrives, it divides technology players into two camps: those who create it (the ‘disruptor’), and those who have to deal with it (the ‘disruptee’). And while it may seem that those who create it are assured a market advantage, history has shown that’s not always the case. Think back to Steve Jobs acquiring the fruit of someone else’s labours on personal computing technology and making it the first of many Apple market disruptions that changed the world.

Two responses are key for those tech businesses that are obliged to deal with disruption:

The first is recognition – of the true impact that disruption will have on your market, your customers and at a higher level – brand and future success.

Of course, analysts and commentators love a bit of disruption. With every claim of next-generation technology and ‘game-changing’ innovation we see a raft of five- and ten-year predictions around who will or won’t survive in their current form, and who tomorrow’s winners will be.

For some organisations disruption means rethinking the portfolio, delivery and the value chain – for others it’s more deep-rooted and about changing organisational behaviours, culture and skillsets. Whatever the level of ‘organisation reinvention’, the marketing function must consider what level of commitment it wants to invest to propel the cause:

  1. focus efforts on promoting and amplifying the effects of individual change projects around the business
  2. exert greater commitment and influence by supporting a broader programmatic transformation, together with other business functions sharing common beliefs
  3. prepared to lead the charge and act as a change agent and debate-generator for a more progressive model

Every level of commitment is not right for every business. But the point is that marketing leadership need a strong internal point of view about the stance they are taking and the role they should play.

The second response is authenticity – because you can’t ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ in the tech sector.

A thin veneer of IoT or a fluffy cloud proposition can cause more harm than good if it’s not credible, supported and sustainable. It’s not enough for the business to merely charge marketing with creating a quick fix – it needs more than a campaign or a sprinkle of ‘trouble-making’ on an existing portfolio.

Marketing is a key partner in propagating and communicating a culture of innovation – but the task needs to be around broader programmes that affect the value proposition, operating model and mindsets.

The process of recognition can benefit from impartial insight and an objective assessment and articulation of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. At this point, you begin to discover authenticity ie. what you and your technologies can truly offer now, and promise for the future.

Unless you’re able to match or even trump a technology disruption then your best strategy is to meet it with brand, marketing and ecosystem fire. But beware, a veneer of marketing won’t hide weaknesses such as a vision vacuum, unempowered sales people or a siloed portfolio.

Wherever your marketing leads, your portfolio, services and solutions must follow – with customer education, thought leadership and business-focussed benefits that demonstrate vision and a command of new disruptions. Those technology companies that can achieve this have the opportunity to catch the wave of disruption and leave others in their wake.

The Rubicon Agency
In Brand strategy, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Programme planning, Proposition development

McMarketing in the tech sector

McMarketing in the tech sector blog header

Does fast marketing simply create customer indigestion?

Like fast food, ‘fast marketing’ may appear to satisfy customers across the digital equivalent of a takeaway counter. But, with a limited menu and ingredients that may be lacking nutritional value, does it cater to the needs of marketers more than customers.

Fast marketing happens when marketers are institutionally influenced to choose quantity over quality, and convenience over content. When engagement assets, landing pages, outreach or conversations are simply quickfried with little culinary skill, the results can leave customers feeling hungry or, worse still, with a bad aftertaste.

Across client-side and agency environments, four aspects appear to have contributed to a rise in fast marketing:

Professionalisation of Marketing Operations – introducing rigid, process driven leadership into marketing planning.

DevOps, Pivot and Agile Marketing – encouraging a ‘test/fail/learn/adapt’ approach to most disciplines in marketing.

Marketing from a platform – new build, automation and monitoring tools enable non-marketers to have marketing involvement.

Agency left-braining – agency culture and expertise has been skewed in favour of exploring tech possibilities ahead of – and often in absence of – content and creative considerations.

In an ‘all you can eat’ digital marketing age it would be wrong to imagine that markets and customers are so hungry for content that they’ll consume anything. It’s far better to assume they have the time and discernment to look for something more satisfying. And if you can feed them content that forms a healthy diet, they’ll not only be happy to digest but also keen to come back for more.

Extending the analogy further, imagine catering to an extended decision making group (typical of the tech sector). The CIO wants an appetiser of tempting strategic advantages, a main course that has an aroma of innovation and finally, a selection of tasty testimonials. IT tend to prefer meat and potatoes with a gravy of integration and lifecycle benefits. And the CFO? He or she may want to spend longer comparing menu prices before making a final selection.

Four fast marketing fails that create customer indigestion

McMarketing in the tech sector - Mystery menu

Mystery menu – brand and product marketing fail to describe what’s on offer and why it should whet the customer’s appetite.

McMarketing in the tech sector - Cold Takeaway

Cold takeaway – call-to-action and sales enablement assets lack the intellectual rigour that may be baked into thought leadership, business case, use case, and other assets.

McMarketing in the tech sector - Bland flavours

Bland flavours – marketing serves up undifferentiated messaging that lacks any distinctive flavour.

McMarketing in the tech sector - Confusion cuisine

Confusion cuisine – paid, owned and earned content programmes provide a baffling buffet of themes, arguments and messages.

Fast marketing may be perpetuated by the speed and immediacy of a digital marketing age which continues to mature. Compare this to the introduction of fast food some six or seven decades ago and you realise it may take some time yet before we fully realise the downsides of convenience over quality. In the meantime, let’s not be too pious about the occasional equivalent of a takeaway content kebab or a McMessaging proposition but continue to strive for quality over convenience.

Fast Marketing fails:
– The all-you-can-eat buffet
– The cold take-away
– Bland ingredients

‘For a balanced diet of marketing – and one that’s trusted by leading tech brands such as Cisco, AT&T and Xerox – contact The Rubicon Agency.

The Rubicon Agency
In Digital lead generation, Enterprise demand generation, Marketing resources, Proposition development

Vanilla technology videos

Vanilla technology videos blog header

As a marketing content asset, video can be uniquely powerful and effective. But don’t assume the medium will compensate for deficiencies in the message.

If the plot is thin, the characters are wooden, or the ending is disappointing, your investment in a video production could fail to see a decent return at the marketing box office.

Think of the technology marketing video like a film genre and you can begin to see how best to approach production. As a genre it may not have the mass audience and populist appeal of a romantic comedy or a sci-fi blockbuster but it can follow some similar basic rules for success.

Analyse almost any movie you’ve seen and you’ll realise there’s a tried and tested method to the plot. It begins with establishing ‘normality’ for a single protagonist or a group of people before introducing an event or situation with the potential to change the norm and present the main character with a challenge. From there, we see a journey through events and encounters (with twists and turns for added interest) and finally a resolution which usually changes one or more of the characters and/or their world.

So, how does this have any relevance to a video for a Wide Area Network solution or a cyber security portfolio? Well firstly, characters and protagonists are involved- in the form of business and technical decision makers. These are the people who are about to be presented with a challenge to their ‘norm’. The challenge arises from whatever is being marketed. The plot continues with twists and turns usually in the form of user scenarios, product or solution comparisons, testimonials and cameo appearances from experts. And finally, resolution is offered in the form of a call to action.

Of course, all of this is simply a playful way to say that the plot is critical to any technology marketing video. And without the right content and contributions to support the plot, you can end up with the equivalent of an arthouse movie playing to an empty house.

With a good plot, and production values that don’t try to create Star Wars from a Blair Witch budget, the technology marketing video can educate, motivate and activate influencers and decision makers with an immediacy and clarity that can often be difficult to achieve with other marketing content assets.

And..cut!

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency
In Programme planning, Proposition development, Strategic content

Avoiding the technology vision vacuum

Vision vacuum blog header

Here’s an apocryphal story about ‘vision’. During the space race of the 1960s, a NASA employed road-sweeper was tending the rail path for the Apollo 11 rocket to reach its launch pad. He was asked what he was doing. ‘I’m putting men on the moon’, he replied.

Fast forward to 1984 and Steve Jobs is proclaiming that ‘the world will never be the same’ with the introduction of the iMac personal computer.

The importance of vision and thought leadership

Vision can be a powerful marketing asset when it’s developed and applied properly. On the other hand, an apparent lack of corporate vision and brand positioning can create a vacuum for competitors to fill with their own thought leadership. But vision is not necessarily about establishing a thought leadership position that few have seen before. It’s about painting a picture of an aspirational and positive future.

For a technology marketer, vision has to be more than a strapline or a cut and paste copy block from brand guidelines. With extended influencing and decision making groups amongst customers and prospects, the vision for a technology proposition has to pass through several lenses. It can’t be blurred or so distant it can’t be seen. And it has to be focussed on customer needs and aspirations. An effective vision or thought leading view of a tech marketing future has the power create a positive glow around a product or service.

Making thought leadership work harder

Once the vision or thought leadership notion is articulated it should permeate all content assets – from product sheets to high-level presentations – and everything else between. So instead of leaving the vision itself in a vacuum, it becomes credible, useable and attainable. In short, it becomes the glue that holds technology, service and brand propositions together.

The most successful examples of thought leadership promotion not only stimulate brand enthusiasm but can also create expectation and anticipation in the customer’s mind. Think of the zeal of early-adopters queueing overnight outside Apple stores.

If it’s a disruptive vision or thought leading position it needs careful articulation. People don’t buy disruption, they buy what’s best or better.

A message elevator can help to establish a vision or thought leadership that’s credible and supported by a portfolio of technology propositions capable of helping customers to achieve that vision. The vision itself can be elevated or grounded. It can be universal, or tailored to a vertical market. And if the idea of communicating a vision sounds awkward or even pretentious, you only have to remember that successful technology either begins with a vision, or aligns with a vision as market success grows.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency
In Enterprise demand generation, Event & experiential marketing, Marketing resources, Partner marketing, Proposition development, Sales enablement

When the corporate deck is a wreck

When the corporate deck is a wreck

Amongst the many manifestations of content for a technology business there is one asset that can evoke a range of emotions - from frustration to fear.

If content is king, surely the corporate deck should be the jewel in the crown for the field marketing or sales enablement professional. However, more often than not, that jewel simply fails to sparkle. Worse still, it can often be consigned to the equivalent of a ceremonial curiosity cabinet where it gathers dust and rarely sees the light of day – along with a pile of other unused corporate presentations and presenters intended to inspire customers and partners.

On occasions when the corporate deck is revealed by obedient courtiers it tends to be announced with an air of apology. And once revealed to a waiting audience it runs the risk of someone from the assembled crowd exclaiming ‘the king has no clothes!’

The imperative for sales enablement and field marketing

It may sound like a fairy tale but for many technology field marketing and sales professionals the corporate presentation presents a very real challenge. We’ll refer to it as ‘the deck’ because that’s the most common form that it continues to take.

Frequently the problem can be characterised as simply ‘too many hands on deck’. That’s understandable when it’s meant to represent the sum of the parts that a technology company can offer- which means a range of stakeholders find themselves involved in contributing to the content. That can lead to a patchwork assembly that lacks cohesiveness or balance between business propositions and the technicalities of the portfolio. The sales enablement solution requires a level of objectivity that’s unlikely to be found amongst the stakeholders and can’t simply be imposed by the CEO (assuming they are involved).

The solution also requires a hybrid set of skills that blend field marketer experience and sales support mindset with brand sensibilities, in-depth technology knowledge, content expertise and even political astuteness. Together, that can add up to seeking help from a specialist agency with experience in tech sales presenters and marketing presentations.

And as a final thought: in a world where content segmentation is so much easier to achieve perhaps the ambitions of the corporate deck are outdated as it often tries to be all things to all people. Another aspect that a specialist agency can help with.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

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