BMT 006 | Martech gobbledygook
foreign [Music] the show where we talk about the big ideas and the big topics of marketing technology and what and I'm Scott and we are here to open up a big topic for this week which is kind of a big can of worms that I opened uh on LinkedIn uh the other day where all right bear with me on this I've spent 20 years studying martech I have visited literally thousands of vendor websites not saying I'm the world expert on this but generally speaking should have a pretty decent comprehension level I was on the site of a major martech vendor that just announced a new new product I'm not going to name them here because you know and we'll be nice here but I don't need you to see the product page for this and I read it once and I'm like well yeah this all sounds like really nice like magically all these wonderful things are going to happen I'm like what exactly does this product do though and I read it twice and I still I couldn't figure out what the thing actually did that was different than what the company originally does Maxwell has figured out like how it would actually do this and so in a in a moment of frustration I posted out on LinkedIn uh yeah that like hey what is it about this Market Gobbledy book you know like how can you have this stuff where people who you know again like you know not saying I'm the world's expert but generally printing you know in touch with what martech is and what it can do can we have this at me like I have no idea what this is going on so my first question for you by the way so this triggered a whole storm of you know people saying yes here's yeah I've run into this all the time let me start with you Juan because you're another one of those you know pretty Savvy yeah people when it comes to martech um how much more Jack Gobbledy book do you run into well I uh I would be lying if I I didn't say I haven't seen a few uh beta base SAS websites in my my time uh but uh you know like I was looking at the term gobbledygook and it's a funny one it basically means that you know it's it's word salad really it's this whole idea of you know you're saying things but it doesn't make any sense or you know you're speaking in language it's so vague and so complex so no one can really access it maybe in outside of your marketing team or your PR team copywriters who are putting it together and you know what's interesting is that um I think there's a few Trends around this whole concept of like marketing gobbledygook so I've been onto a ton of websites similar to yourself and uh so many of them talk about the benefits of the product they talk about the wonderful aspirational things about this marketing technology that you can do you can activate audiences you can grow Revenue you can drive acquisition you can blah blah blah and so much of the languages aspiration that it actually neglects the the fundamental principle of any copywriting which is Clarity Trump's persuasion Clarity trumps persuasion which is but just be clear about what you're doing with your product I mean just be clear what you're actually selling I mean can you imagine if you're going say I don't know if you go into the to a mechanic or something you're like I need a car service or I need new tires and then the mechanic starts going on well you know with these new tires and you can you know really go out into four-wheel driving and you can be or do all these aspirational things and you're like well actually no I'm just here for this thing and I think that this is a really interesting Trend right now and we'll touch on a few angles on this in a in a bit but I kind of agree with you that this this really interesting um change in them particularly in how B2B SAS marketers go about their work is that so much of a disaster rational but for the neglect of clarity the wrap products service and what kind of correct value they create for a customer yeah it's funny you you use that phrase saying like yeah gobble the York didn't like a word salad um yeah one of my colleagues uh you know so this exact thing is just like oh well yeah you know yeah so much we're in salad out there and stuck me like wow we should like start a golden salad award in market and it's like a shaming award you know that basically all right what is the most inscrutable product web page from a major Market company that you run across this year and I mean the trophy designs itself right it'll be a little salad ball with stuff flying out of it you know kind of like they have the razzies uh you know the golden raspberries for like the worst movies um but all right so in all seriousness I think I actually really honed in on something here it's amazing with System Dynamics of this stuff where for so long marketers were told you got to sell the benefits not what the thing does or how it does it sell the benefits which sounds nice but it's got this problem that at the end of the day once you start distilling benefits down to like okay well what's a few bullet point what what is the ultimate benefit well we're going to make you rich and good looking um and then all of a sudden like every martek you know product on the planet yeah what do you do well we make you rich and good looking um you know and it's funny because you and I you know we come across so many times the feedback of like oh there's nothing new in my tech like all these martech products are basically all the same they all do the same stuff and well there is certainly overlap in many products in many categories the truth is there is actually a lot of product differentiation out there but maybe there is a lot of differentiation in the product marketing um I I want to read out one headline I just came across um which I think Scott you sent to me which is turn your data into real-time customer magic discover the real-time platform for customer magic Scott what is customer magic I mean seriously I just like like I I see that the the the pr team The Branding team have gone at this landing page and we're not going to name the vendor of course because we're not mean people hopefully we're not mean Scott but I mean I think the pr and the marketing team um branding team have gone at this and they've gone way too aspirational and way too thematic in their their content but you know I I do I do think that there's there's something in the um the aspirational concept of you know really showing you know as you say you know you want to be you want to look smart or you want to be you lose weight or you want to you know um you know look famous or you know all of those sort of aspirational things like people want that people are navigated to that and what I find with more of the sort of spammy scammy type content is that they really dial up that whole aspirational piece it's like you know um I visited a um an agency a growth marketing agency website a few months back and I remember it's like you know the content is all about solving a pain point which is to drive revenue and they're like you know you're sitting there at your laptop you don't know what to do you're upset you never know you know the sort of main strategies to grow Revenue well we know those main strategies to grow Revenue download our book you know buy our course you know sign up for Consulting Services because we'll help you out of the trenches you know and you're like that's emotional that elicits a reaction from a user and I get that that's quite valuable important but I just think that we've dialed up too much I just think that we I think there's a retreat I think there's a few examples that you've called out as well within that dredge Scott of companies that really get that right the balance between under resonating with the user and that emotional dissertation but then on the other side which is the actually just explaining what the product is and what it does yeah listen a benefit selling um fine with I'll put a little aspect next to that but you know UFO could benefit needs to be something a little bit more concrete like we have to come down out of the you know like 50 000 foot uh view um you know and so like um yeah I mean uh we won't shout anyone that we uh had problems with their website but it's okay to shout out to you know someone that we thought was wealth you know I it was asked like okay well who do you think does a good job of this and I've just been on like uh you know the high touch uh the river CTL like their website I thought they did a great job you know I mean it was very concrete um but it was really clearly about hey these are the pains you know you're probably having here with you know uh the date of it's in your data warehouse how you make this actionable inside your marketing let's explain how this works and I thought it was a really nice balance now one question you could raise is like okay well who is the audience for this because you know there's a fair question of is this a problem with the product is it a problem with the product marketing or is it a problem with dare I say the buyer that you know so many martech companies feel like oh well ultimately the CMO is the decision maker and so we need to sell to the CMO uh but the CMO maybe doesn't actually know maybe doesn't actually even care about like how the data management between my data warehouse you know my Frontline apps is you know I think they've got other higher level strategic Concepts that they're worried about you know and so like the the the the the copy you know on some of these uh you know Market Pages it's like oh well we're going to speak to the CMO and the CMO doesn't want to know what the details is so we're just going to say we're going to grow revenue and that will be convincing enough I don't think that's that that works but I mean what where's the problem here are we trying to sell to the wrong audience um I see I've gotta maybe it's a bit of a uh controversial take on this whole idea of communicating to CMOS and c-suites um there's this assumption and I think it's a bit of a fallacy that people and executive teams are not interested in the detail but they're interested in the ask racial as you point out like a lot of sort of copy and messaging around products targeting c-suites like CMOS or cdos Etc um a lot of it's about the aspiration we'll help you grow Revenue we'll give you the bottom line you know and they never go into the product and I actually think that's wrong I actually think that I've made a ton of CMOS that are really interested in the details of the product and how things actually work and they'll spend the time and they'll pay attention because they don't really value it just as much as somebody who will actually be on the tools and building it out we've got this weird thing in the industry where we're always sort of positioning around the executives you know there's all these courses out there it's like how to speak this language of the CMO and you know how to buy selling technology the CMR how do you get your business case run over by your CMO but at the end of the day I mean like maybe we're just doing way too much positioning around a specific role not talking to a person like a person that you know obviously someone who's leading a business in marketing cares about what they're doing in marketing and I get that most people in those roles are very busy and they've got a lot of things and working on High level ideas but I I just think that there's a bit of a fallacy to say you know only talk about the aspirational stuff with the c-suite and never talk about the check I've met some wonderful CMOS who are so so invested in their technology in the martech stack that you know I I just think that um that it's a bit of a fallacy but I don't know do you think we're doing too much of this positioning around Executives and that might be contributing to this uh March Air Gobbledy group problem what are your thoughts Scott yeah I think you really nailed it here it is a false assumption about the the level of the audience uh and what they actually want um at both levels so first and foremost uh yeah I think I I agree with your controversial take uh that uh yeah yeah you know most Executives you know they're they're in the positions they are because pretty smart people um you know and they stay in those positions because they don't sort of take things at face value they're like you know I wanna I won't understand just enough here to make sure this is really the right thing to do um you know again challenging in martech for everyone because yeah there's so much happening changing all the time but yeah a willingness to dig deeper if the vendors are actually able to rise to that occasion and provide that Insight uh and then certainly at the level below that right I mean the folks who are actually responsible for like evaluating you know these options and making recommendations and ultimately like implementing it and having success with this they want that information I feel like boy because anytime you have these discussions with people like you know it is such a mantra of marketing benefits over anything else you know the features or how or no benefits benefits benefits but is it too much benefit selling like one person I was chatting with it was like listen if you explain to me in very clear concise language what your product does and it's speaking on what it does to something that either is a pain point for me or something that I've been wanting to be able to do for me to then derive from that the benefits of like oh wow well now if I can actually do that boy I'll be able to apply that in these campaigns this is going to cut down the time here we should be able to get like much greater lift over there you know like smart people can like derive those benefits versus if you just start with the high level benefits of like you're going to have what was it a customer magic yeah like oh well that sounds now let me try and derive from customer magic just what the hell you actually do you're like yeah no I can't do it um it's it's just Alicia it's a one-way door it's a distillation in the wrong direction I think there's a few other angles on this which I uh which I think is probably important to call out um the one is the concept of Blanding so Bland ing Blanding and the whole idea of Landing Fast Company actually did a really great um I've had on this a couple years ago um and they were talking about d2c I think a lot of these the what they were talking about applies here and also B2B SAS companies was this topic of Landing this idea of homogeneity where everyone looks like everyone else uh one of those um sort of design or style choices that's so prevalent now is uh corporate corporate Memphis and corporate Memphis is a sort of a style around illustration but you probably have seen it it's the people with the geometric shapes everything's uh Illustrated they're maybe they're riding a bike or you know you see all these people on a platform and they're looking all these cool dashboards you see those illustrations and those design choices but there's actually a name for a corporate Memphis and now you know I think Google about five years ago uh in Mata and some of the bigger tech companies they really introduced this style and then everyone copied it and it's almost the same dynamic in which you see say you know Apple releases a new product and then you see all these copycat competitors come in the market following that you know for example airpods when they announced when Apple announced the airports you know revolutionary product in terms of Bluetooth you know really popular and then you just had all of these new companies come out and then do something similar similar formats shape size in terms of the product and you're seeing that I think with say big Tech has this trickle down I think affected terms of design Choice um illustrations copywriting messaging as well you know so um you know one of that example you know the platform for customer magic that's from one of the biggest companies in marcheck I mean you know it has this trickle-down effect and I feel like what's what's wrong with that Scott I mean why are we missing this element of creativity and marketers really want to differentiate with their design choices their illustration and their imagery but also their copy and their messaging as well I mean are we in this sort of creativity crisis almost where everything is just so homogeneous so Bland if you want to use that term uh that we're not really looking at how do we we communicate in the best way to our customers of our segment maybe it's symptomatic of big Tech but then also this homogeneity that's happening in the industry as well that's a that's a fair shout um yeah I mean I kind of feel like there's and maybe these two things are entangled I feel like there's two things here one is boy what I'm looking for I'm not even looking for creativity I'm just like looking can you please explain what the hell the product is I mean I just want to be able to read it understand and say in fact ideally like you won if not only I could read it and understand it but then I could go and you know when I'm on with my friend Juan and Juan says oh well tell me about that product what does it do I can say oh yeah here's what it does you know and not sound like a complete and total idiot um I mean so so that's just one my expectations are really low level I'm just like I just want to understand what the hell the thing is but I think you're right there's sort of a second level of like okay for people who feel the ground truth is not sufficient and I get a little bit nervous whenever that's true being allowed to catch people's attention that we have to find some sort of way to package this you know that's going to snag you know the attention that's going to get people engaged that's going to you know help all the wonderful things we want to do with marketing with recall and you know uh you know reach and share and all this sort of stuff okay fine I I agree there's a lot of room for creativity and on either Dimension you can look at some of these gobbleding pages and you can say they're failing on both basically they're failing that they're not actually explaining clearly what the hell the product does and they're failing that you know even the aspirational stuff that they've uh you know fluffed together there is kind of the same aspirational fluff that you know uh yeah dozens of other companies in the same category are doing too and they're like yeah what's what's new what's different yeah I mean there's there's some really like you mentioned a high touch example but there are some great examples out there and we'll drop some into the show notes so companies that maybe do this quite well in terms of their how they position themselves how they talk about the product and really simple easy to understand ways um but Scott I want to touch on something that um that you mentioned in that post that I think you reach more than 80 000 people uh which is pretty incredible this kind of touched the nerve there in the industry of like B2B product marketing SAS uh but you know because I think the I think what you said is a lot of people think about it but they've never said it themselves kind of gave them the words that's my hypothesis on that why people gravitate towards it but you talk about you know uh you can with B2B marketing you could sell a pain relief or you can sell a vitamin but are you saying that maybe we're in a vitamin deficient industry I'm very curious to know what you meant by that yeah all right so you know uh I am not a marketer but once upon a time I played one on TV um you know and right one of the age-old things uh you know in Market positioning marketing positioning is like okay well you're selling a pain reliever or a vitamin right um and the conventional wisdom is selling a pain reliever is a lot easier you know that's if someone's in pain and you can alleviate that pain that is a very compelling offer uh shorter sales Cycles you know okay I get that versus like selling gym memberships where yeah you know you have to go to the gym every week and it's going to take you a lot of effort you know you will end up you know healthier you know you know but yeah you gotta put a lot of work in it's harder it is harder and so that's fine I'll acknowledge that as the truth but what has happened is that conventional wisdom has been yeah basically warped where like everyone's like well I don't want to sell a vitamin then all I want to do is sell pain relievers and so whatever the product is like all I'm looking to do is just talk about you know like the pain relief thing which again kind of you know converges down on yeah these like meta benefits that are the same for everyone are you having trouble growing your Revenue yeah dude you know okay well this thing will help you grow your Revenue more awesome that's the pain I was hoping you would relieve um and so I don't know I mean like some of these things in you know Mar attack around like you know uh particularly once you get into things like you know building Community you know maintaining uh you know like uh you know a brand um uh having um Point what I mean like uh you know any of these things that you know like require you to put in effort over time to grow something you know that's meaningful yeah these are vitamins but this is again like the chip membership it's things you have to do to grow and become healthy you know and maybe we just don't have enough vitamin sales people uh in the martech industry yeah I mean nobody wants to do work right I think that's one of the assumptions that we bring on to this that's I think this whole concept is that you know like I think that's maybe systematic or martech gobbledygook is this uh presumption on the part of the market of the copywriter that nobody wants to do work nobody actually wants to do something meaningful right like a vitamin or going to the gym there's aspirational aspects to that I mean even like even myself right like I'm like I've joined a gym because I'm like yeah I want to get fit I want to get laid you know but on the other side of things I think that um asking a marketer to do it more work never really plays out very well you know you wouldn't see a landing page to say download this new platform and by the way you're going to spend half a million dollars to set it up and you're going to have to really work it and it's going to be a lot of learning for you to to get that up and running for it to start creating value and you'd never see that on a landing page like send me a landing page audience if you have a landing page that has something like that where it's basically leveling with the marketer and saying hey uh you're gonna have to work for 12 months really hard for this to work but it will be valuable uh I I haven't seen it right but that's a reality right like if if you're implementing a marketing automation platform a CDP or if you're working on some of the interesting AI Tech that we've mentioned in the show all of that stuff is hard work I mean it's not easy to use that technology to learn it to make make sense of it and then actually try and create value out of it right that's hard um but I feel like that's what's missing there is I think you agree that the vitamin aspect or actually just leveling with the market and say hey this is going to be hard you're going to hate it for a little while if I look here's our what our customers have been able to do it once they get over the learning curve or once they get past that initial um difficulty I mean I I haven't seen it I don't know if you've seen anything like that Scott but I haven't seen anything that really just levels with my marketer and talks to them as realistically about what looks like to use a product yeah expectation selling it makes a tremendous difference um I think yeah you're right um you know again it depends on the particular product uh you know that you're selling some are easier to adopt than others um but yeah some of these like big platformy things like cdps right I mean this is this is not a like plug it in and like okay well you know leads magically just start popping out uh the customer magic coming out of the other end of it um you know and so to to level with folks I mean again it doesn't have to be like super negative but you know to really be able to spell out like okay here's what you need to do to be effective with a technology like this here are the things concretely that we do to actually make that process shorter better easier you know higher success rates you know but I'm not just telling you we have you know hey yeah it'll be shorter faster I have higher success rates I'm just taking down to the next level of like specifically these are the things about our product act in the way in which we serve as our customers you know that actually delivers that just getting to that level of concreteness and honesty um you know there's one last thing I'll just shout out on this and then you know and we should probably like wrap this up and we have a homework assignment for our audience this time you know but there was a stat you and I had talked about this before uh you know one of the more recent partner reports they're like okay people report that they utilize only 42 percent of their martech stack um you know and I I have a lot of problems with that analysis but for a moment just that you had face value and people are basically saying yeah I've got all these martech tools but I don't use like a fraction of the capability it struck me maybe this isn't just like a product marketing problem like when people are in the buy stage we can't even explain what the product does or how it does it maybe it's like actually you know plums all the way through to the actual experience where people have then bought the product and they're like yeah I still don't really know what the product does um there's one or two things I think I figured out over here and I do that but yeah who knows what the rest of it is um there's an opportunity here to get a lot more value to a lot more people at every single stage you know of the mar Tech life cycle I agree I agree but Scott what is the big question this week for our audience uh what and this is as you mentioned we've got a bit of a homework assignment for uh big Market listeners and Watchers uh but we want to introduce more q a and discussion within our within our show so what's our first question uh kick us off all right friends listeners uh what is wrong with product marketing in martech today and how do we fix it uh we're gonna open this thread up on LinkedIn uh want you to weigh in uh we will share the best responses we get back uh you know in next week's episode come on we got a lot of expertise among you like tell us what is wrong with product marketing and martech and how do we fix it all right with that I will say thank you for joining us for another big week in martech don't miss an episode by subscribing at bigmartec.com go do big things one and I are rooting for you foreign [Music]
2022-11-02 08:55
