Marketing is Not About You and It Never Will Be

If you disagree with the statement, you're a corporate-centric organization. And you may be one of the reasons only 12% of IT buyers surveyed by the CMO Council believe B2B technology vendors are customer-centric.

If you don't think you're part of the problem, take this little test.

Go to your own web site. What's the first word of the first sentence? If you're like most organizations, it's the name of your company, the word "we" or "our." Now look at the next sentence or paragraph. Ah, there you are again. It's a problem easily corrected, by simply flipping the focus of your messages from you -- to what you do for customers.

For example: Cisco says, "Our IOS Software delivers a seamless integration of technology innovation, business-critical services, and hardware support."

A quick study of their solution reveals that "IT managers quickly scale 24/7 environments, maintain high availability - and protect their existing investments with self-healing Cisco routing systems."

Check out Accenture. They love to talk about themselves. 

"Our proven change management approach enables organizations to identify the changes needed to achieve high performance. Our research and insights bear this out."

Okay, Accenture - bragging points are fine. But you could have just as easily said,  "Many organizations achieve higher performance from process change using the proven business transformation techniques of Accenture." 

Organizations like Accenture and Cisco are not alone. Go to any web site and you'll see coorporate-centricity is everywhere despite what we were taught in Marketing 101.

And of course, the mother of all software companies (Microsoft) says:

"We take on big challenges, and pride ourselves on seeing them through. We hold ourselves accountable to our customers, shareholders, partners, and employees by honoring our commitments, providing results, and striving for the highest quality."

Certainly admirable stuff, but again, it's all about Microsoft. Check out microsoft.com and you'll see most sentences begin with the name of a Microsoft product. It's rarely about you.

It's an easy habit to break. Just remember, when a prospect says "What do you do?" they are really asking what you do for them.