Marketing Technology Letter
Some technology market-
ers are in a paradoxical
situation. They have to take
their own medicine and show
that technologies for market-
ing 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:
CONTACT US : IC3 Limited
February 2002 – NO.
Marketing Technology
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 func-
tion 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 man-
agement, 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 mak-
ers.
− 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 inter-
est, and persuades them to buy.
Hi-tech companies must also pay early attention to human factors in product concep-
tion, 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?
www.IC3marketing.com tel : +44 (0) 20 8339 0709 e-mail : Henri@IC3marketing.com
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