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B2B technology marketing: solution-talk haters and feature-talk lovers

Do you think there are any feature-talk lovers?

B2B marketers agree that if you pound your audience with "we-we" messaging - meaning talk about your products and services and what they do and how they're different - they'll be turned off.

 

Writing B2B tech marketing content - are we due for a shift?

Access this video hosted on YouTubeI espouse this very message with clients - or, I should say, most clients. The paradigm shift that so many companies need to make is articulated by David Meerman Scott in his video "Nobody Cares About Your Products and Services."

Still, when I watch this video I think about how business decision makers and most consumers are Solution-Talk Lovers, while technical decision makers are generally Solution-Talk Haters.

Here's my case: I've been business to business technology marketing since about 1997. And I've found that there is a strong correlation between geekiness and love of feature talk. But geekiness is not limited to just high tech geeks (who, like Devo and Napolean Dynamite, are totally hot...).

For example, think of the Car Geek who reads articles about the design of a new type of overhead cam. The Camping Gear Geek who reads all the Consumer Reports rankings on sleeping bags then goes to the store and reads all the pull sheets on sleeping bags at REI. There is the Coffee Geek who hand roasts coffee - but only coffee grown in the shade of native trees and without supplemental watering. Diaper Geeks who review the latest diaper tape innovations in parent forums.

 

Writing for B2B tech marketing: if the shoe fits...

And there are guys, like my husband, who want every feature of their full size operating built-from-the-ground-up R2D2 to exactly match the movie version. Getting features right is intrisincally valuable, in their view... not just pragmatic. The features themselves are art.

The only Feature-Talk Lovers who have rattled me, though, are the mid-level IT guys. They are Solution-Talk Haters and proud of it. They'd rather chew their own leg off than listen to a bunch of girly marketing fluff about how I understand their problems and have a solution etc etc. They want to get down to brass tacks and hear what the damn features are without the patronizing spoon-feeding of conclusions, thank you very much.


Writing B2B content: toward a solution

How can we reconcile the existence of Solution-Talk Haters with the marketing worldview that says ‘features talk bad, solution talk good'?

Do we have to do this?

No One Cares About Your Products and Services*
*Unless your best customers really do

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Topics: Performance Lead Generation