Cloud Marketing

By Michelle Glennie, The Partner Marketing Group

Before I begin it is important to note, I will be discussing cloud marketing, where to focus and strategies to implement. And with my title being so off the cusp – I must have you thinking about “Buggy Whips” and what in the world do they have to do with the cloud? More than a hundred years ago, buggy whips were in widespread use and were a necessary solution to help you speed things up when horses were the main source of power. Unless you are Amish (in which case you aren’t reading this) or are a carriage driver at a tourist destination, most people realize that buggy whips have little value in today’s world. Someone came along and offered the modern car which uses an accelerator pedal instead of a whip as a solution to get somewhere faster. Whether it’s a whip or a pedal, it doesn’t really matter as long as we get there, right?

Cloud Marketing and Where to Focus

The same logic can be applied to the how you market your solution in the cloud. Too many companies focus on selling the “Cloud” without focusing on what problem they are trying to solve with it. The focus shouldn’t be about buzzwords and technology. While it is necessary to educate customers when making a decision about your solution, they are more concerned with solving a problem with the best method for them than to understand every nuance of the technology. The focus you should keep when marketing your solution is using the “Cloud” simply as the means for delivery. That way your customers are less likely to get lost in the nitty-gritty of the architecture and deployment.

When you focus on understanding the need of the customer and design a unique solution that suits their needs rather than a one size fits all, then you can explain the value of the solution and the services they are getting. If you both focus on the supporting infrastructure, this value ends up being missed.

Here are a few strategies to follow for marketing the solution, not the technology:

Strategies for Marketing Your Solution

• Highlight the success of implementing the solution(s) and what it can do, not the fact that it is in the cloud.
• Educate customers about the cloud as a secondary element of your solution not the primary focus. This will help them to make an informed decision.
• Listen to the problem of the customer and propose a solution to fix, not a technology.

For more marketing tips, visit thepartnermarketinggroup.com, or opt into our monthly newsletter by texting the letters TPMG to 22828.