7 optimistic words that strike fear in your tech customer's soul.
Nathan C Bowser
Founder Awesome Future. Instigator of innovation and culture. Host of The Glow Up & The AR Minute. Helping the world's leading companies realize sustainable returns on innovation. Ex-AWE, Torch, Streem, Delight Conf.
There are 7 words that will strike fear in your tech customer's soul every time, yet product leaders insist on using them over and over again.
What are they? "You can build anything you can imagine!"
I'm telling you this as a marketing leader and a creative director who has a mandate to try new XR technologies in my work. I work on multiple filters, apps, and business experiences with AR and VR every year.
I'm often your target customer and "You can build anything you imagine!" is a red flag for me. I barely have time to think about all the stuff I already need to do— I'm not sitting on a million ideas that just need the right tool.
The minute you tell me - "You can build anything" - I freeze and start thinking of all the ways your project is going to give me more work to do:
I have to teach you my goals
I have to understand what is your tech good at.
Then I have to find a use case that fits my customer goals and your tools
Then we have to understand if the use case is feasible. Will it work under the pressures of an event?
Then I need to have a creative direction for this new app/channel
Oh, crap resourcing, NDA's, access to files, new meetings
Learning curve for sharing feedback and managing project development
These are all the details I'm worried about when you think you've just inspired me.
The best pitch I've had all year did 3 things:
1. The team showed me they researched my org and what I do
2. They brought 3 examples of how they might approach the goals they found in their research.
3. The best idea included a rough paper prototype of the idea that showed me the team could communicate and work strategically, like I needed.
Oh, sure they offered to customize things and make the work what i wanted - but they didn't lead with their tech, they didn't lead with "endless possibilities."
They led by listening and helping me see my goals in a future they could support. Made all the difference.
Now I know what I want them to build and have a lot of confidence we'll be able to work it out on the way.
Stop telling busy people they have infinite options. Instead show them the future they want and how you'll help them get there.
(*This was an agency interaction, but website messaging for too many creative tools still focuses on the possibility of their tech and not the actual needs of the users.)
#marketing #techmarketing #ar #vr #xr #metaverse #augmentedreality #virtualreality #creativetechnology #techsales #techmarketing #value #productmarketing
Engineering Leader @ Heroku
1yThis is so right on, Nathan. There's also another side of it that often gets forgotten. Almost no one is sitting around doing their job and imagining ways of building new software to do it. Most people are just...doing their job. Telling them I can build whatever they can imagine isn't inspiring at all! It's a solution in search of a problem, or all the problems. In both cases, your summary fits perfectly. Do the research first. Figure out how you can specifically make their lives better, and pitch that. Having been on the side of offering "we can build whatever you can imagine" I can also tell you that's a terrible experience to try to fulfill.