The Marketing Ziggurat

Wednesday, April 12, 2023 1


IntroductionThis talk is about a marketing communication metaphor,

the Percolating Ziggurat, its relationship with Crossing the Chasm models, and how it relates to the evolving

story of the marketing of a software product.


Why new models

In recent years, there has been an evolution of both the market and the offering, that has deep impacts on software marketing.

Also the ideas concerning how to market have evolved, in parallel with marketing changing from a one-way to a two-way communication.


Context

This model is meant for software product creators that are doing something that needs global reach.

Some of what I say does not hold for very small niches.


Context

Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore

Tribes by Seth Godin


Context

Basic problem of startups: time scarcity, limited resources.

You all know that you should fail fast.

Model can help define what to do, when.


Context

What and when things should be done when creating product should be dictated by

a schedule based on acquiring different kinds of attention at different times.


The model

Sometimes a silly visual metaphor can help.


Percolating Ziggurat


The model

People at a step are a set of potential customers who have a common set of needs or wants or potential to have new similar needs that reference each other when making a try / buy decision.

(Adapted from CtC).

Percolating Ziggurat



Percolation

The force of indexing and social propagation. Today there is “gravity”, a intrinsic force of the Internet.

Social and SEO gravity induces percolation. Percolation is slow, and drop by drop.


Communication changes

What and how you should communicate changes in function of the Ziggurat step at which you are.

Creating relationship with users is pursued with different means in function of which kinds of users you are talking with.


Crossing the Chasm

Comparing CtC model with today’s situation can help understanding

the Percolating Ziggurat idea.


Crossing the chasm – very short version





Innovators pursue new technology products aggressively.

Early adopters are not technologists but buy products very early in the product lifecycle.

Early majority relate to technology but need practical hooks.

Late majority need to see other using it.

Laggards are hopeless


From Gaussian to Ziggurat

The ziggurat is the Gaussian of CtC turned by 90° and using different techniques (also no techniques) for easing percolation.

Crossing the Chasm is not a discrete process, because of the evolution of communication.


Step 0: having something to show

Enough models: lets get into details and see more examples


Before approaching the first step people

Before trying to get the attention of the people of the first step, you must have something that may get attention.

What can get attention is not necessarily a finished, perfectly working, fully tested product. A home made video of a mockup in some cases may be enough.


Before getting to the first step people

Most product ideas never pass step 0: they never get anything that can be presented.

Or better: that gets presented.


Step 1: attempting to enter the ziggurat

Now we try to let the world know about our product / prototype.


Entering the ziggurat

What is the top of the ziggurat composed of?

How do you enter the top of the ziggurat?



• Start a blog• A tweet channel• A page on Facebook• Tell your friends• Talk about it at a local event like this



DOES NOT WORK** Unless a miracle...

What you need is…



“That's the press, baby, the press. And there is nothing you can do about it.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgdE-qPv6kw





Seems obvious – for many its not so.

The press- its scary.

Win the fear and write.



Fearful because it is (a second) reality check.Examples from my experience:Bugsvoice – Fail

Patapage -> Fail

Licorize -> Passed


And what IS the press?

A blog with 5000 loyal followers in a field connected to what you dealing with can be more effective than a little blurb on Wired.


Build a marketing story for the press

Writing to the press is OK, but write about what?


Marketing stories

“Potential customers cannot buy what they cannot name”

Journalists cannot write about something that has no novelty: you’ve got to serve them the concepts, the story, the novelty. A new feature is not a novelty.


Marketing stories

“Most people resist selling but enjoy buying”.

If you manage to define the buy situation, victory is in your hands.


Create the story

You have to define an original context, inhabited not by your product, but by users. Once you created this story, here comes your product that saves all.

You can also put in the story an evil, cunning wolf – the competitor – that does not fit well in the story, in today’s (fictional) happy life of the users. Your product, instead, fits perfectly.


Marketing stories

Example: With Licorize, we started telling the users (the press) again and again that their bookmarks are precious, that they have ideas that they should not lose.

There is Delicious, of course, but the context is lost, the app is old, it integrates nothing, needs have evolved…

And Licorize, in this story context, is your help, your savior.


Marketing stories

Teamwork “Alternative to Microsoft Project” – we tell a completely different story about managing work.

Licorize “Beyond Delicious”

This somehow puts you on the same status level of the competitor you are referring to. Referring to a well-known competitor, which in your story looks old and grumpy validates you, which is what lower level users need.


First steps examples that worked and that didn’t


Didn’t work: Patapage

We were in love with the idea and the technology – but we had a wrong picture of the market i.e. of user needs. The idea was cool. Nobody needed it.We were so happy to introduce discontinuous innovation that we didn’t really ask whether anybody would be interested in it.


Didn’t work: Bugsvoice

We were in love with the idea and the technology – but we had a wrong picture of the market i.e. of user needs. The idea was cool. Nobody needed it.

We were so happy to introduce discontinuous innovation that we didn’t really ask whether anybody would be interested in it.


Did work: Licorize

First time that we started from imagining a need. Not a need of developers like us. Needs of web marketers bookmarking. Way, way simpler needs w.r.t. the convoluted product ideas we had before.


Did work: Licorize

Result: 50 positive reviews (by meaningful sites) in 90 days, thousands of tweets. And they both keep coming.

Reviewers fell in love with the story – which we had written for them.Also a bit of luck helped – Delicious crisis.


Second step: getting to early adopters

Having got some water at the first step, you have just started, not finished.


False impression

After the first step, this is something I told at an internal meeting:

“One may get the false impression that we are done with Licorize. Technically, we probably almost are. But communication wise, we surely are not.”


Stuck at the first step

Being stuck at the first step is not great: lots of promises and few results.

“fame and famine”

How to figure your way into mainstream?


Stuck at the first step

My point is to focus on changing communication, not on sales.

Achieving a few forced sales to visionaries does not alter the basic problem of Crossing the Chasm percolating to the second step.


Why a story can help also the second step to start going


Story for the second step

“Resistance from inertia can come from commitment to status quo, fear of risk, lack of a compelling reason to buy.”

Again the story idea can help you out of this. Maybe a new story.

With a story you can also define the contest of your competition. By telling a good story, its you establishing the context.


Story for the second step

You have to distinguish:

• actions that increase (or create) conversion

• actions that keep you visible - though the two things are not completely separate


Down the ziggurat

How to appeal to non-technologists?

The story, amplified and enriched by the press, will help a lot, because a wide spectrum of people can understand it. A feature based approach here will not help, instead, and this is likely one of the causes of failure to cross.

The power of “word of mouth” has been greatly extended by “word of Twitter”.


Down the ziggurat

Important way to get down and wider in the ziggurat is to make others integrate you.

Evernote, Balsamiq Mockups (actually he started by using only this “piggyback” technique), and in these days Instapaper, which already got mainstream by using this technique.


Another line of change in time: user’s application’ life

Here too we must provide different kinds of interaction and support to our customers.


Down the zigguratOnline services percolate very slowly. Amy Hoy

with http://letsfreckle.com/ Took two years to get 10.000 $ month. Given

that it is developed by 2, its ok.

http://letsfreckle.com/


HELPING GRAVITY DO ITS JOB

You can help gravity. Somehow.


Use creativity to replace budgets

To maintain the percolation and diffusion is a continuous battle. That is why being a startup as a side project does not work.

You need full time dedication: new ideas, experiment and flexibility are the only thing that can beat budgets.


Help gravity

First step:

- Create a press kit page on your site

- Give away licenses / Premium access (gave 1600 for Licorize)


Help gravity

• access to press can open other small doors, like having a product page on Wikipedia

• Show somehow that you are a market leader, or are becoming one:

“pragmatists care about the company they are buying from”


Help gravity

- Create documentation / videos / tutorials

- Supply several mapping models

- Provide localizations

- Run on “other” devices, browsers, machines.


Help gravity

• “Used by Oracle” becomes more important (for some) than reviewed by Lifehacker.

• Going down the ziggurat, you need to give more certainties. That is why you should move from FAQ to user guide, from a flashy video giving the idea to one that shows it working in detail


Step definitions depends on the product’s nature


Games, micro-payments

The “battle” technique can hardly be applied to games with micro-payments. Its all percolation there.

For games there is no fight to replace other applications, the figth is for who will get the next layering.


Early adopters may be enough

Consider Minecraft: doing nothing for going down the ziggurat. Using gravity and word of mouth.

Transparency is highly appreciated.


1,000 True Fans

“A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce.”

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.phpDepends on the industry.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php


The Ziggurat Plan

Make a Ziggurat Plan (not a business plan) -> how am I going to pass this step.

A blog post with PPT will be online athttp://pietro.open-lab.com

Booklet of links: http://bit.ly/mziggu

http://pietro.open-lab.com/

http://bit.ly/mziggu

Technology

The Marketing Ziggurat