It’s an exciting time to be a part of the cloud industry. The disruption that’s long been predicted is happening, now.
2019 marks the brink of a cloud explosion that will expand beyond small-to-medium businesses, disrupting the enterprise and fundamentally changing the future of work. According to Forrester, investment in the cloud is expected to spike as enterprises increasingly adopt cloud tools and services that work best for their business needs and business users. In fact, more than a third of organizations see cloud investments as a top-three investing priority.
The bottom line – the opportunity for companies to put a stake in the [sky] and take advantage of this cloud boom is virtually limitless, literally.
This is great news, right? Well, all this opportunity brings with it significant challenges for marketers who must find a way to differentiate their messaging in a crowded, fast-changing marketplace that presents a number of barriers to break through the cloud clutter.
SaaS Marketers: Get to the Point, Establish Credibility and Deep Dive on Your Cloud Story
SaaS. PaaS. iPaaS. Integrated. Automated. Innovative. Jargon is ripe within the cloud industry and it presents a significant challenge for marketers trying to communicate clear differentiators for their companies and solutions. Even more challenging is how to describe solutions without using jargon.
At Alloy, we know this challenge is real, and regularly advise clients on how to get to the heart of the matter by using clear, concise and compelling messaging that resonates with target audiences and buyer personas, ultimately setting your company apart from competitors and bringing customers down the funnel.
Where to begin? Here are a few tips to get you started on your cloud messaging journey:
Start with the “who.” Buyer personas are your first stop in the messaging journey. Take the time to develop detailed profiles for each target buyer, and build messaging and content with these targets in mind. Every piece of external content should be anchored with how it will help move them one step further down the funnel.
Establish executives as thought leaders who can credibly speak to cloud technology, trends and market dynamics. Carve out a niche area for executive thought leadership that hits the sweet spot at the intersection of their expertise and passion.
Get to the point, faster, making it easier to understand what the technology is and does, and how it makes you different from competitors. Address market implications and provide use cases in order to validate the “powerful integration capabilities”, putting them into meaningful context for the reporters you’re pitching and customers you’re nurturing.
Dig deep and proactively think through answers to the “why” questions about your company and solutions, and use these insights to feed your messaging, content and spokesperson talking points. How is your platform different from competitors X, X and X? Why do your platform’s X capabilities matter? How are customers using your solution to make an impact on their business and bottom line? What is your company’s mission and vision for powering the future of work?
Delete “innovative” from your marketing and PR vocabulary. Jaded technology reporters will not respond to jargon terms as differentiators and could even perceive your company’s solutions as no more than “vaporware” that isn’t worth their time...taking to Twitter to blast your jargon-filled announcement or kitschy pitch.
In sum, the cloud IS the future of work. Don’t let the opportunity to carve out your company’s cloud niche pass you by – business development depends on it!
And just like cloud technology is powering the future of work, Alloy is an award-winning tech PR agency at the epicenter of the future or PR. Ready to soar? Contact us today to learn more about our capabilities and how we help clients tell a more impactful story to Propel what’s possible for their businesses.