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Advertisements are typically designed to stand on their own. Expensive ad firms frame comps on black construction paper, focusing attention and emphasizing isolation.

But how would your advertisement stand up if it were displayed side-by-side with your competitor's ads?

This happens a lot actually. Your Google Ads are likely to come up next to competitor's. Product listings in catalogs and websites usually group products with their competitors. Magazine ads are often juxtaposed. Potential customers may even print out your website and physically place it next to your competitor's on their desk. In color.

How does comparative advertising affect your message?

In the age of user-driven information flow, you can assume that a person looking at your website is in the market for a product like yours.Therefore expending effort justifying your market space in general might be a waste of those precious few seconds when a person visits your website for the first time. Besides, extolling the virtues of your market validates your competitors as much as yourself.

Instead, what features (and benefits) does your product specially have to offer? What are your strongest claims, the ones your competitors have trouble competing against? If you're the fastest, explain how speed enables new features that would otherwise be impractically slow. If you're the most customizable, emphasize how your tool can support a process rather than dictating the process.

That's not to say you shouldn't address general market advantages at all. In fact, it's often possible to simultaneously fold general benefits into your specific ones.

For example, which of these ads is more compelling:

1. Relieves painful migraine headaches.
2. Relieves migraines faster than anyone else.

The second ad conveys both the general benefit ("relieves migraines") and the competitive advantage ("fastest").

This also points out that communicating the general market benefit is often unnecessary because the end user already gets it. If I have migraines, I already understand my pain and I understand the benefits of pain relievers. You don't have to tell me migraines are "painful," just get to the point!

As another example, this time from Smart Bear, we claim that one way Code Collaborator saves time with code review is that we show chat next to code, and the chat sticks with the code even when you upload fixes (where the line numbers shift around). On one hand, we're describing a general feature (chat in context with code) shared by all 3 of our major competitors, but at the same time we point out features that only we have (i.e. two competitors show chat in a separate window, not with the code, and no competitor is good enough to keep chat in the right place even after files are updated).

If you want to stick out from the crowd, explain why you're the best medicine, not why I need to take medicine.

P.S. Exception: If you're pioneering a new market space, this idea doesn't apply. In that case you need to explain and defend your very existence; in fact this was the case at Smart Bear for the first 5 years.

Limiting Options

The 1990's was the golden age of computer AI's for the board game Othello. OK, it was pretty much the only age.

Programmers love the thought of computers beating humans at "intellectual games." For me it's the "mad inventor" idea of creating something more intelligent than myself (whatever that means).

At the time, Checkers had been solved and even Chess was close. It was Othello's turn to fall.

What's interesting is how the winning strategy worked.

The typical computer board game strategy is to look many moves ahead and rate each resulting board position. Then you pick the next move that maximizes the ultimate board position you can achieve. The trick is in rating the "goodness" of a particular board position.

In Othello you win by having more tiles of your color than your opponent once there are no more possible moves. Therefore, typical metrics for Othello included things like "How many tiles of my own color do I have" (more is better), and "Tiles of my color at the edge of the board are more valuable than in the middle" (the edge is a better strategic position).

What's neat is that the winning strategy used a completely different "goodness" metric. Specifically the metric was: How many valid moves does my opponent have? Fewer is better.

The flip was that it's not primarily about how many tiles you have or even the positions of your pieces. Instead it's about limiting how many choices your opponent has. Limiting choice is more important than what the choices are.

This principle is common in defensive theories of sports. The defense can never cover all contingencies so instead it forces the offense into higher-risk, lower-percentage moves. In basketball you can't simultaneously cover the long shot and the charge, so you elect to give up the low-percentage three-point shot. In football you can't cover both in-routes and out-routes, so you force a throw into as much traffic as possible.

In business your competitors always have options. How can you limit their choices to things that are low-percentage or expensive? Make them have to spend more money, get more lucky, or be more creative.

An example is honoring a competitor's coupons. This eliminates the coupon as a way for your competitor to "beat" you; coupons are no longer a "choice" to develop a competitive edge.

You can think of patents as a way of limiting choice. If no one else can use your method, they'll have to think of another way. That means research time and money, and maybe it won't be as good or it will be more expensive to manufacture or support. (That is, if you believe in patents...)

We've done a few things at Smart Bear to limit options. For example, we're so strongly established as "the experts in code review," it would take an expensive, time-consuming effort for someone else to claim par, much less surpass what we've done. We literally wrote the book, we did the largest-ever study on code review, we have years of history, we have the most popular tool. It's possible, but very hard, for someone else to compete on that particular basis.

This matters because in my opinion, being "the expert" is the best qualifier for our particular market. Our customers would be less interested in "lowest cost" or "simplest installation" (even though our installation is simple). If my opinion is true, I've removed the single best choice from competition, and they'll have to find a less desirable, lower-percentage path.

Agile marketing interview at GeekAustin.org

I just got interviewed about "agile marketing" over at GeekAustin.org. It was fun to show how we apply principles from agile software development to business and marketing efforts.

If you're involved software or marketing in Austin, you should meet Lynn Bender, the founder and organizer at GeekAustin. Maybe come to the Agile Happy Hour in two weeks! They're always a blast.

The Anti-Bullet Test

I'm sick of generic feature/benefit bullet points. They're just too easy to make fun of. Here's a sampling from a website that will remain nameless to protect the guilty:

• Easy to use
• Robust features
• Innovative systems

Really, it's easy to use? As opposed to what, difficult and temperamental? Robust, huh? Great, because it looks tenuously held together, the slightest breeze threatening to crumble its delicate construction, so it's good to know that, actually, it's robust. Oh I'm sorry, its features are robust, whatever that means.

If you want to not stand out from the crowd, use generic statements. The ones everyone claim. Would anyone claim to be non-innovative?

So here's Jason's Anti-Bullet Test: For each feature/benefit bullet point, construct its negative and see if that statement is ridiculous. If it is, it means the bullet is obvious, or at least unoriginal. It's not strong, it isn't adding excitement, it's not differentiating you from your competition.

Let's apply the test. The negative of "Easy to use" is "Difficult to use." That would be a pretty funny statement! No one would ever claim that, so throw it out.

The negative of "Enables communication" is "Blocks communication." Crazy; no one would admit their tool does that.

The negative of "Stores files as big as 100 gigabytes" is "Cannot handle very large files." Not ridiculous, in fact this is sadly true of most computer systems of any kind. It passes the test.

Here's a good one from our own product: "Integrates with seven version control tools." Negative: "Not integrated with seven version control tools." Not particularly funny; in fact this statement is true of all our competitors. So this statement differentiates ourselves in a specific way.

If you're using generic bullets now, you'll find that replacing them isn't easy! You have to really think about what's strongest about your product, about how specifically it beats the alternatives, and how make it pithy. This is a useful exercise in itself.

One exception to the Anti-Bullet Test: You can use a generic if it's your single biggest differentiator, and if you're willing to put lots of energy behind it.

A good example here is "Fastest." The negative is funny ("Slow operation means lots of time staring into stagnant progress bars"). But if you make it your highest priority, it can work. Make your bi-line "The fastest ____." Prove it with benchmarks. Explain how speed is not only about saving operator time (the obvious benefit) but how it enables entirely new features. For example, perhaps operation X is typically so slow that people can't take advantage of it. But since your system can complete operation X in two seconds, suddenly it becomes a feature. Even if a competitor technically has the feature, you make it practical.

All this is just another way of saying: Be specific, be fully committed, and tell the truth.

Identity Crisis

This (stolen) picture of logos demonstrates a property of corporate image done well: Even when the logo is obscured in an unusual way, I can still identify the company.

I even distinguished the "The" from "The New York Times" and the "The" from "The Wall Street Journal."

Is your corporate image so unique that this trick would work for you? Here's a hint, if your logo is just some meaningless shapes made by a Photoshop weenie, the answer is no.

If your logo were a performer on American Idol, would Simon Cowell say "It was OK, it was safe, but your problem is you're forgettable."

So change it! I know that sounds scary, but if your image is already forgettable, changing it isn't a big deal.

Don't worry about confusing existing customers. Customers love you, not your logo. They will be pleased to see something interesting. They'll be happy you're making a bold statement about who you are. You can announce it to them if you're afraid they'll get lost. When we upgraded our logo not one person was confused and many complemented us on the new look.

Don't worry about resetting your brand equity. Unless you're Google or IBM, the vast majority of your potential customers never heard of you, much less have an attachment to a logo. Even if they've seen it a few times, if you're forgettable, they will have forgotten. Better to reset now and start spending money on an image they can remember.

Finally, remember that "image" is more than logo. It's the attitude of your prose, it's a cool give-away, it's a killer idea presented clearly. Make a bold, unique statement if you want to be remembered.

Caricatures

Political caricatures are less about exaggerating features and more about telling a story.

A caricature emphasizes unique features. Every candidate has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but only one has big ol' ears. A caricature also has a point of view -- is the candidate cool? Old? War-hungry? Defensive?

All in a picture. No words.

If your product had a caricature, what would it look like? What are the unique features you would emphasize?

It's useful to think this way because you can't throw 800 typical marketing words into one picture. "Easy to use." "Scalable." "Fast." "Enterprise-class." "Flexible." "Customizable." "Reporting."

Everyone claims these things. Snore. What if you had to pick just one? Or better yet, find something else that few others can claim. Something you can assert that your competition couldn't even try to say.

And putting it into a picture without words is useful too. Communicate a powerful, unique message in 3 seconds. Something that might otherwise take a paragraph. A paragraph your potential customer might not take the time to read.

An example from Smart Bear is our side-by-side screenshot. If you're a developer, and you reached our web page because you're looking for help with code review, this image is all you need to know. The "content difference" concept is obvious; the fact that it's in a web browser implies you can do this from anywhere, at any time; the piece on the left is obviously a chat area, which implies you can talk; the blue borders around code-line and chat implies you can talk about code.

You can use the same trick for identifying how you treat customers. Now you can't get away with saying trite, meaningless drivel like "we value our customers" or "we exist to serve our customers."

If you really exist to serve your customers, the picture might be of an average-Joe being served wine by a suit-wearing executive. I like that image! But is it accurate? If so, put it up on your "Our Customers" page and show you mean it. But if you the thought of that image makes you laugh, if that's not truly how you picture your relationship, then rethink your values.

P.S. The image above and comes from a fascinating entry in the NY Times Blog.

Discount gambit

Which of these pricing strategies is more persuasive?

1. If you buy now, I'll get you a discount.
2. The price is going up, but if you buy now I will lock in your rate.

Both are types of discount. The typical software sales strategy is #1. It's often applied to get the customer to "close" before the end of the month or quarter or some other arbitrary time boundary.

At first blush it seems harder to persuade with #2. After all, #1 means the customer pays less than #2, because #2 isn't a real discount -- it's a discount against some future price, which is a lot harder sell than a discount today.

But for me, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of #2. Here's why, from the point of view of the customer.

You've already established your price. In strategy #1 there's a discount if I "act now." Hmm, so that means the old price wasn't really the price after all. The old price must have included a nice slice of pure profit that apparently you're willing to leave behind. So you were gouging me before. And the only reason I found out about it is that it happens to be the end of the quarter?

This is how #1 breeds mistrust -- the opposite of what you're trying to establish with me, your customer. In #2 you're looking out for my interests. You're cluing me in that there might be a rate increase, and you're actively protecting me from it. Sure, I know there may not be an increase, or it may not come for a while. But it's still protection, not a gouge that you graciously chose to reveal.

Four years ago I was trialing .TEST from Parasoft. It was buggy; even after hours of remote desktop control with tech support we couldn't get it to stay up long enough to scan my code.

But the salesman was persistent. The conversation went like this, minus many minutes of sales-speak on his end of the phone:

"How much will this cost me?"
"$20,000."
"Wow, I thought you were going to say $2,000. That's way out of my price range for one person and this product. In fact, I've looked at FxCop and NUnit and [something else] and it seems to me I can do the same thing with free tools. I was willing to pay for some convenience, but not that much."
"Let me see what I can do."
"No nevermind, it's, like, an order of magnitude problem."

He called back the next day.

"$1,500."

I didn't buy. I talked to someone who did, though. A reference customer. That guy said he paid $20,000. I asked how he liked it and whether he encountered the crash problems I was seeing. He said they hadn't installed it yet, but the demo looked great. I made a mental note to try to understand the mentality and budget that forks out $20,000 for a nice demo.

But getting back to the point. If he can go from $20,000 to $1,500, maybe he will go to $1,000. Yes, this strategy means often you will extract extra money from me. But it also means I don't know where the floor is, and I have every incentive to haggle. The process drags out, ending at gunpoint. Meanwhile your "customer relationship" is now more of a "hostage situation."

So let me get this straight: It's better to get an extra 10% on every order, but create an adversarial environment with me, your cherished customer? This is enterprise sales, right, where the pilot is 30 seats and the roll-out is 2,000? And you're going to risk pissing me off over 10% on the 30-seat part?

And now imagine if I had called back that reference customer and told him he could've had it for $1,500? Yet another problem with discounting -- word gets around, meaningless differences in pricing is unfair, and now I, the customer, see you as plain old dishonest. Goodbye 2,000 seat order.

Even if we set the honesty/relationship argument aside, there's the matter of image.

What kind of company provides a #1-style discount? Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreens. No, software companies. Try to get quotes for Microsoft or Oracle or IBM products for 1000 desktops. Everything's negotiable, everything's discountable. At best it conjures images of haggling and struggle; at worst of low-quality or the desperate need to "meet numbers" at the expense of everything else.

Which companies don't discount, ever? Apple, Google, Constant Contact. No discounts on iPhones. No haggling over AdWord prices. What's the image? Desirable. The best. Worth paying for. The leader doesn't have to compromise. The leader isn't desperate for orders.

Strategy #2 implies growth. You've planted "higher prices" in my head now. Supply in software is unlimited, so that must mean demand is increasing. I won't go through that calculus, but certainly I feel the product is becoming more valuable, not less. Discounts feel like unloading unwanted product; price increases feel like success.

Strategy #2 implies I'm part of a club. I've gotten in early, on the ground floor, before the product explodes in popularity and prices go up. And I'm rewarded for this support and loyalty with price protection. A "thank-you" from you to me because I was part of it, because I was there before you were big and expensive, because I took that risk with you.

So there it is. #1 means less money now, an adversarial relationship, a never-ending struggle over money, and a message that maybe the product needs a discount to be desirable. #2 means more money now, a consistent and fair pricing policy, an inclusive, special customer relationship, and a message of market leadership and growth.

So why do 90% of software companies pick #1?