“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”

Turns out, it takes more than a mousetrap for the world to beat a path to your door.  Check out this post on LinkedIn to read more.

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

For example, a friend recently checked into a new hotel that had only been open for one month.  And he was the first person to stay in his guest room… imagine the “new guest room smell”.  As he entered his room, he did the usual scan to see what was what… bathroom, closet, a thermostat by the bed with up and down buttons below.

As he got ready to go to sleep, he went to turn down the shades to block out the light. Simple right?  Not exactly.  Turns out the shades lacked pull cords.  And as he scanned the room, he couldn’t locate the cords or an obvious on/off or up/down switch for the shades.  He called the front desk which offered to send someone to check on it for him.

He turned back to the thermostat.  He was certain that the buttons below belonged to the thermostat, and, having had bad thermostat experiences in the past, he was not about to touch the buttons. But he decided to throw discretion to the wind and push the down button anyways – et voila, the shade went down.  No need for the front desk to send someone up.  And he was able to get a good night’s sleep.

So what happened?

Whoever designed the hotel room assumed that guests would understand the purpose of the buttons. The buttons lacked a label or an information sheet about how to move the shades up or down.  And it’s not that a label was really necessary – had the buttons been placed near the windows their purpose would have been obvious.

It’s easy for we solution marketers to do the same as we talk about our solutions on websites, in collateral, sales presentations or just about anywhere else. Too many solution marketers assume that the other person will understand what we are talking/writing about without thinking it through.  But if you know your customer well enough, you will understand everything about them – how they think, what they do know, what they don’t know, the terms and jargon they use.  And you’ll use that knowledge to communicate to them in their language, not yours – without making assumptions.

I have always found that when I do that, I increase credibility (“Hey this guys understands me and my problems”) and can have more meaningful and successful discussions or marketing campaigns with my target audience.  And you can too – when you avoid making assumptions about what your solution buyer/user knows or does not know.

Cyber Monday is now about 10 years old.  Says Wikipedia,

In late November 2005, The New York Times reported: ‘The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked.

That and the fact that you can’t be both at your desk and in a physical store at the same time.

Cyber Monday 2015 saw an avalanche of sales through mobile devices, especially smartphones.  Mobile now accounts for 28% of Cyber Monday sales, with smartphones accounting for a whopping 61% of that number.  Interestingly, tablets have declined from about 66% in 2012 to just 39% of sales today. What’s more, according to Adobe, some 49% of Cyber Monday online visits took place through mobile devices, up from 29% in 2013.  Maybe that’s why IBM and others added the moniker “Mobile Monday” last year.

Of course, the massive switch to mobile is driven as much by increasing smartphone penetration, larger phone screens, secure mobile payments, and an improved mobile shopping experience. Mobile shopping makes more and more sense today.

The shift to mobile won’t happen for all solutions of course.  But looking back, say 10 years, who would have thought that so many of us would be shopping on mobile devices today. What is clear is that more and more, solution users will expect a quality mobile experience, even in B2B environments. They’ll expect it both in the way they experience your solution, and in the way that you educate and engage (aka marketing) with them. Mobile is here and of course, it’s not just a fleeting 1-day experience or a consumer-only experience. Rather, we’re living in the era of mobile 365.

What do you think?  How is mobile changing your solutions and how you market them?

I’m presenting at two great upcoming events in the Boston area – see you there!

Digital Transformation:
New Solutions, New Marketing Opportunities
Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 6:00 pm
Boston Agile Marketing Group
Boston, MA
Presentation Slides (Slideshare)

Digital transformation enables companies to innovate in new ways and better serve customers.  Learn how to create disruptive solutions from the leaders.

Solution Marketing – Best Practices
Thursday, Nov. 19 at 6:15 pm
Boston Product Management Association
Waltham, MA
Presentation Slides (Slideshare)

Everyone has a “solution” – or do they?  Learn how leaders like Apple, Uber and EMC are transforming markets to drive growth.  You’ll learn what solutions are, how they’re different from products, and how solutions help winning companies to better meet customer needs. 

If you’re a solution marketer today, there’s a good chance that you are, or will be, using agile marketing.  Read on to learn more.

Last night I attended a great event at the Boston Product Management Association, The Marketing Plan is Dead, by Jon Gatrell of Pragmatic Marketing.  For some companies, agile marketing is replacing the traditional waterfall marketing plan. Problem is, agile marketing is a “newish” discipline, so many attendees were left wondering what to do next.  Where can you learn more?  What companies are successfully using agile marketing today?

To answer that challenge, following is a very short list of my favorite resources:

• Creating an Agile, Data-Driven Marketing Team – A must-watch presentation by Ellie Mirman, VP of Marketing at Toast, formerly of HubSpot – one of the best presentations on how to do agile marketing, period
• Boston Agile Marketing Group (meetup) – Meets once each month and is led by some of the top experts on agile
  (disclosure: I help run this group)
• What is agile marketing – Blog post by Jim Ewel
• Agile marketing resource list – Also by Jim Ewel
• HubSpot’s presentation on agile – HubSpot uses agile to varying degrees throughout marketing
• Agile marketing manifesto – Developed a few years ago by agile marketing thought-leaders from around the country
• Monthly Agility Podcast and Agile Marketing Blog – By Frank Days and John Cass
• A quick guide to agile marketing – Blog post by Jeff Julian
• BCG – The Agile Marketing Organization – Just published by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
• Syncing marketing with agile development – Discussion from ProductCamp Boston 2013
• Twitter – There’s always something new

Be sure to comment below on additional resources that have helped you.