Here's an interesting story reporting on the recent FOSE exhibition in Washington. It makes reference to the marketing communications challenge faced by technology and service providers in the fast growing security space. It seems that more than 100 of the 500 exhibiting vendors at FOSE were security technology or service providers and that attendees (Federal IT buyers) were having a hard time figuring out how one was different from the next. Here's how asymmetric marketers address this basic issue of category clutter.
Define a Category of One
Don't waste your marketing dollars on trying to get Gartner to place your company into a magic quadrant somewhere. Instead, work with a specialist agency to really focus your messaging around a 'category of one' story. This is a non-trivial challenge, but it will really pay off when it your sales folks ask your marketing team to really explain 'how we're different from XYZ Inc.'
Engage in Overhang Communications
Overhang communications means that you talk about the 'future roadmap' just as much as you talk about what you have to sell today. All the real asymmetric marketers (IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle) do this to pre-empt the upstart providers who are nipping at their heals in some niche market. It's what hockey legend Wayne Gretzky meant when he said 'Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is now.'
Promote Your 'Thought Leader'
Great tech companies (security included) all have a 'thought leader' who provides the 'vision thing' for their company and their category. The thought leader may be a CEO, a CTO, or even a CMO. Bill Gates re-assignment as the Chief Software Architect at Microsoft is in part designed to free him up to engage in more industry speeches and thought leadership around Microsoft's long term agenda.
It's About Stones on Eggs
The security space is exploding, and the spoils will go to those companies that are not just able to 'differentiate' but to define the 'sound bites' that get broadcast to the industry as a whole. As Sun Tzu said, asymmetric warfare is like 'Throwing stones on eggs'. You want to be the stones, not the eggs.
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