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Do or Die – The Adoption Venture Funding Quagmire

November 14th, 2013

For disruptive technology companies, the key is to become less disruptive in your adoption. For technology venture investors, the key is to minimize your cost of adoption to the buyers, which will drive your market adoption. Investing in the market before buyers is an expensive proposition for which there is a better use of funds.

Venture capital is a risk management game. Invest in a certain number of companies, expect a certain number will fail, but make sure you have a minimum number of “wins” sufficient to drive a return. Simple, right? Not really because the elephant in the room is adoption. Great technology, but unable to find a market, couldn’t capitalize on the early wins, couldn’t get it to market, beat by a weaker technology, bigger guys moved in, etc.

Let’s face it, if technology investing was really about “technology”, every venture firm would be really a R&D shop. Good technology is the first step in developing a technology company on the way to building a market to driving a return.

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Posted in Buyer Adoption, Marketing Strategy, Problem Adoption

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Example of “Defining the Problem” for Buyers

October 28th, 2013

Our Target Companies have BtoB Complex, Innovative Technologies with the 4C’s of Adoption Complexity = Problems, Markets, Buyer Organizations, and Solutions

What Problem Do We Solve for Them?
Fix “problem adoption” which is underpinning their market adoption. Problem is not pain. Problem is the underlying cause, pain is the resulting symptoms. Buyers buy to fix a problem, not buy a really cool technology. Well, in more sophisticated buying organizations with adult supervision over their investment in technology or solutions. Very few organizations have a blank check on their spending, but most have to justify to management why they need the latest and greatest in terms of business impact, risk, prioritization, return, adoption, etc.

How Do We Fix the Problem?
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Posted in Buyer Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Problem Adoption

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BtoB Lead Generation is Wrong

August 22nd, 2013

What we call “lead generation” today is really short-hand for multiple processes, none of which is “lead generation” and all of which is causing major headaches for BtoB companies today. This short-hand is actually the root cause of the declines BtoB technology companies are seeing in “traditional lead generation” channels. In reality, leads are the outcome of a several step process. With the changes in buyer behavior over the last couple of years, digital has really split our “pipeline” into 2 separate distinct staged funnels.

First is the awareness marketing funnel which is pretty simply the goal is to get prospective buyers aware of our solution and hopefully our brand of solution. Almost all lead generation activities fall into this pipeline – anything with a campaign (email, search, direct), PR, shows, etc. The goal is to now get them to come to our website for education and conversion. In short, we use our websites now to qualify on interest.

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Posted in Buyer Adoption, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy

Understanding Buyer’s Adoption

June 18th, 2013

Last few weeks, we have had some pretty intensive conversations as to why ADOPTION?

  • Like, I get it, but why do you call it adoption?
  • I know about technology adoption, but buyer adoption?
  • I do X, we can’t do it, but I think my buyers need to understand this because this fixes some problems upstream of me.
  • Why isn’t everyone doing this?
  • Sales does this one-to-one, why can’t our marketing team do this?

So, I am not going to answer all of these directly, we put a deck together http://www.slideshare.net/mrosenhaft/social-gastronomy-defining-the-adoption-problem-130611 which introduces why you might have an adoption problem. I suggest that you read it and then read the rest of this post as it will make a lot more sense. But, here is my take on understanding buyer’s adoption: Continue reading “Understanding Buyer’s Adoption” »

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Posted in Buyer Adoption, Marketing Strategy

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Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to Buyers

November 7th, 2011

Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to BuyersWe owe you a mea culpa…. We’ve been seller driven, not buyer driven. We’ve focused on selling you what we think you need (what we sell) versus helping you make better decisions.  We haven’t helped you make the business case for why this is a significant problem.  We’ve automated our marketing systems to better reach you, but never asked if or what you’re interested in.  We’ve treated you as a company, not as a group of individuals with different needs, perspectives, and roles.  We don’t know what a “day in your life” looks like to give us context as to why you don’t have the time to sit through our “canned” presentation, educate us on your business, and sift through all of our market claims.

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Posted in Archive 2011, Marketing Strategy

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