Analyst Connections

Understanding the market for which your technology solution is designed is important to your business strategy. If not for a well-defined opportunity, how do you go to market with the right solution, messaging, use cases and a targeted sales offer? So what market are you in?

Oddly, many software vendors struggle to answer this fundamental question. Analysts often hear, “Our proprietary technology is revolutionizing the industry,” or “We don’t see anyone else competing in our space.” Does this sound familiar to you?

AIM FOR A TARGET

Analysts spend a lot of time defining categories for the purpose of finding market size and opportunity, building forecasts, acknowledging vendor share and recognizing leading vendors.

Segment definitions will vary between analysts and evolve over time but the largest IT categories are universal; Digital Transformation, Edge and 5G, Cloud Computing, Security, Data and Analytics, Mobile Solutions, IoT, AI and Automation are on the long list of IT sectors that shape the market. Technology sectors also run horizontally through vertical segments to further cultivate opportunity in industries like Telecommunications, Banking, Retail, Healthcare, etc.

The more precise you are in defining your opportunity, the more successful you will be in delivering a solution that fills a buyer’s needs AND in convincing analysts you are for real. This is where you want to be – distinguishable on your merits but within a definable market space for comparison, positioning and leadership outcomes. When you cannot define your market or your market definition is too big, too small or your solution too unspecific, Analysts will see you as a party of one. An analyst I work with once said “a market defined by one vendor and a single solution is not a market.”

NOT HAVING COMPETITION IS NOT AN OPTION

Competition is necessary to prove market leadership. Forbes finds 5 reasons why competition is good for your business. As technology segments ebb and flow to reflect ongoing industry disruption and emerging technology trends it becomes difficult to identify where solutions map to the market landscape – and who are your competitors. So, while innovative solutions can have tremendous growth and market making potential, without a healthy dose of competition, a unique market opportunity can fade as others shape and define the space.

Here are some questions the Analysts will lead you to consider:

What is the core value my solution is delivering and who needs it?
Is my value proposition differentiated and do the case studies show ROI?
Do I know who my competitors are and what are they doing?

If you are interested in knowing more about how to work with an analyst to improve product and market alignment, understand market categorization and your specific market opportunity, I’d love to hear from you.

Public Relations, a Short “Tail”

Without a lot of collateral in-hand, it can be tempting to go all in on a PR strategy to secure coverage and raise brand visibility with articles that can be repurposed as sales collateral and featured on websites. Media coverage is an essential part to any marketing program. It can provide useful product validation and integrates nicely with sales enablement strategies.

However, while good PR serves an important purpose, the effort tends to have a short tail, generating immediate and short-lived results. Which means, you need to keep up a constant drumbeat of news, announcements and thought leadership to fuel a regular cadence of media outcomes. And the more media outlets you target the better your success at getting ink.

Analyst Relations for the Long Tail

On the other hand, Analyst Relations offers more long tail results that are supported by industry acumen. AR requires significant investment in time (and often money) that is spent to inform, review and occasionally debate the merits of a solution. Successful relationships are cultivated through the careful proving and vetting of technology and earning the analyst’s validation through evidence.

Product briefings and demos, customer testimonials and site visits are all par for the course in helping an analyst understand your technology well enough to express an opinion about your company. Confirmation of an analyst’s support is often realized through independent research notes, signature reports, quotes shared with the press, event and conference presentations, and the holy grail, being included on a short list for prospective buyers.

Weaving it Together

There are several symbiotic dependencies between AR and PR. For this reason, your marketing plan should consider incorporating elements of both in its strategy. Analysts can be an important element to your PR strategy. They provide 3^rd party validation and opinions that help construct and complete a media story. IT reporters often use analyst findings and statistics to help frame a topic or explain trends and opportunities. If you are interested in understanding how to build and leverage cooperative analysts and press relationships to support and drive your marketing strategy, let’s connect.