How NZ tech marketers compare to the USA

YAY! The first official episode of The Tech Marketer Podcast is now live. If you tuned into Episode 0: The Three Whys, you’ll know to expect a mix of short knowledge bites with tech interviews. First up, I was lucky enough to chat with Greg Williamson, Director at Concentrate, a NZ tech marketing consultancy.

I’ve followed Concentrate’s work since reading the 2014 Market Measures report. In 2015, their report questioned if NZ tech companies were bringing knives to a gunfight. We had a chat about their benchmarking report and how NZ tech companies compare to our US counterparts.

Episode 1: How NZ Tech companies compare to the USA

Take a listen and learn:

How to get started with content marketing – unlocking the value of legacy content and finding the sweet spot for releasing content often enough to gain traction
Shifting our mindset to inbound – The primary source of leads for 80% of USA companies is typic ally indirect marketing activities such as email, advertising and social media. Only 35% of Kiwi companies utilise this more scalable, cost-effective source. How do we catch-up with our US tech counterparts?
The seven principles of tech marketing success – how this aligns with traditional marketing fundamentals, and how it differs. The importance of focus, and fighting the temptation to market to “everyone”.

Get your copy of the 2015 Market Measures Report: Bringing knives to a gunfight?

Greg and Concentrate have kindly provided The Tech Marketer Podcast listeners with a free copy of the latest Market Measures report. Use the promo code TM15.

Show notes: Episode 1 – Greg Williamson, Concentrate

Links mentioned in this episode

The Concentrate blog
Market Measures report – which benchmarks sales and marketing efforts by NZ technology companies with those in the USA. To read the report, use the promo code TM15 (thanks to Concentrate for sharing this valuable resource with us!)
Seven principles of tech marketing success
US tech companies have the opposite problem to NZ. Sometimes over investing in marketing, without the product to back up their claims [Link to study].

Highlights from Episode 1

Accountable marketing [1.00 mins]

With marketing technology we now have better transparency of what is working and have access to data that previously would have required expensive research projects to obtain.
Benchmarking encourages continuous improvement, by comparing ourselves to the best tech marketers in NZ and USA we have a standard to measure against.
The US tech industry is bigger and grows faster than any other tech market. It’s also fiercely competitive, make it in the US, and you have a good shot in other export markets.

Content marketing [4.33 mins]

Subject matter experts often work outside the marketing team. Create quality content depends on getting internal buy-in.
Prove the value of content marketing through small proof of concept projects using “legacy content”. Greg shared a great example of a successful campaign that used leveraged legacy content through different formats like blogs and infographics.
Concentrate walks the talk, repurposing their annual Market Measures report into talks, blogs and infographics, drawing in new insights while pointing back to the original, lead generating content.

The sweet spot – how often to release content [6.55 mins]

US tech companies release content multiple times per week compared to in NZ where monthly is the average. The same cadence difference applies to social media
NZ tech companies still rely on “lone wolf” selling – forcing the sales person to help the customer along the process alone. Content marketing can/should aid the sales process.
Hubspot studies have shown companies that blog at least 14 times per month generate three times higher leads [original source]
You can’t rely on one piece of content to get to your potential customers, you need to release regularly to keep top of mind.

The maturing of NZ tech companies [9.24 mins]

Greg pointed to the growing adoption of marketing automation in NZ as a sign that we are maturing and starting to catch up with our US counterparts.
In the 2015 Market Measures report, marketing automation adoption increased to 36%, up from 3.8% in 2013, but this still remains a long way behind the typical USA technology company.
Marketing automation accelerates your ability to drive content marketing. Making marketing results transparent helps with internal buy-in. Show teams outside marketing the results of content marketing. At SilverStripe, we share the reader stats on our blog posts, this encourages healthy competition amongst those writing for us!
NZ tech companies still rely on referrals to generate leads. Concentrate found 55% of NZ companies rely on referrals, compared to only 7% on the US.
Tech marketing is still quite new and previously marketing has been brought in as a promotional/branding tool late in the piece. However, this is but is maturing into more strategic use.
As a country, we have some of the best minds in the world, but our ability to sell our ideas needs to catch up!
Sometimes our US counterparts have the opposite problem to us, over relying on marketing with the product to support their strategy [Link to study].

The Seven Principles of Tech Marketing Success [14.32 mins]

Being focused takes courage. You need to say no to attractive opportunities. But without focus you’re marketing will lack intensity, and be diluted by trying to market to “everyone”

Framework developed by Concentrate that covers: Focus, marketing understanding, acquisition, content marketing, clear messaging, channels and drive.

Our discussion focussed of focus (sorry couldn’t help myself!)
Principles are enduring and apply to tech and any marketing, but the real difference is the complexity of tech products.
Tech companies have to work a lot harder to uncover customer value propositions
Technology product features, particularly with software, are fluid. You can add a feature quickly that will unlock a new market or to appease a client demand. But this approach can lead quickly to trying to please everyone, but pleasing no one.
Greg shared a great example of a company they worked with, who had the courage to focus. They had to narrow their market to provide stronger messaging, marketing intensity and a more tailored product. This meant making hard decisions like saying no to some customers.

Understand the customer problem(s) you solve… And then work out what market segments have that problem to the greatest degree. ~ Greg Williamson, Concentrate
Prove focus works with pilot programmes: Greg’s advice on getting buy-in from sales to say no to some customers was to start small. Work out small projects to prove it works and then roll out bigger to grow momentum. Show sales that marketing can provide warm leads that makes their job easier too.

Hope you’ve learned a lot from this interview – I did! Don’t forget to download your free copy of Market Measures with the promo code TM15.

I’d love to hear your feedback on my first interview podcast. You can leave a comment below, or a review on iTunes.

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Header photo credit: Flickr