"After some research and customer interviews, Mark built a persuasive message around one of the most important advantages FotoMagico offers - creating great shows fast. I am very happy with the results."
Oliver Breidenbach
Director
Boinx
Software Ltd.
TechPromo, September 2009
Marketing Newsletter For Technology Promotion
Interviews Say Customers Want No RAID & No Involvement
Getting The Real Story
They may be time-consuming. The goodness of the information depends on who you select and the questions you ask. And you only get one data-point at a time. But one-on-one interviews are the best way to find out exactly what customers want from your product, and how they use it.
Interviews give specifics
Interviews are the difference between the wall-sized paint smears of market surveys and laser-focused applications data from individual customers. The survey numbers won't tell you exactly what the customer puts on his storage system, or if he uses it only for backup in a remote data center, or if he carries it with him when he goes overseas to the next oil-drilling project. Sure, things like how much storage maintenance customers will put up with, or how many need cross-platform storage for Windows, Mac and Linux are important. But you need to ask them how they use the features to get their own clients up and running again after disk failures, or how they use the system's high-speed access for real-time video editing.
Believable Stories From Real Users
I was hired to interview customers and write their success stories for a maker of an automated data storage system. It's well-proven that testimonials are a powerful persuader for prospects sitting on the fence, but the company wanted quotes and stories from less-exotic sources than the celebrity testimonials on their website. Your prospects may find stories from customers doing the same thing they are to be more believable - and useful.
The company chose 20 customers in fields like professional photography, advertising, IT consulting, campus security, and publishing. They offered a 1TB hard drive in exchange for a 20 to 30 minute interview, a picture, and a release to use each customer's story.
Prepare Questions But Follow The Story
I took the company-provided list of questions and added more to flesh out each story. I asked things like "What were you looking for when you bought the system?" and "How does the system help you serve your customers?" The questions led customers from why they bought a system and how they use it in their business to unexpected applications. Then I asked about the difference in recovery from disk failures before and after the automated system.
If the customer had an interesting story to tell, I listened.
An IT consultant mentioned looking at stand-alone drive alternatives, so I asked about traditional RAID systems. He described the complexity and time to recover with his old RAID system, and that made him shy away from RAID. When he talked in general about services for small-business customers, I prompted him about the part the automated system plays and how many of his clients see him as their de facto IT department. That led to a description of what his clients value, and the experience he brings to the party from work with hundreds of small firms. I also asked about remote backup and restoration over the Internet to get that part of his story.
A photographer mentioned the automated system's reliability with his clients' archives, so I suggested that their images were always there if they want a tweak or change five years down the road. That prompted a story about the photographer's fine-art work and having it there to revisit for a different interpretation after a few years.
I heard first-hand about the value of the automated system's plug-and-play storage solution versus the maintenance hassles with any RAID system. The difference was a couple days and lots of hands-on effort to recover from a drive failure with RAID, compared to swapping out a bad drive and continuing to work while the automated system restored the new drive in the background. That story was repeated over and over again by several customers.
A blood bank's IT department had their the automated system dressed up as a toaster. That made many visitors ask, "Is that really a toaster? How does that work?" The department manager also sent a picture of the automated system Toaster.
Interviews And Surveys - You Need Both
You don't get these stories from surveys and statistics. Yes, you need to know which features most of the market wants your product to have, and what they'll pay. But you also need to show customers how your product helps recover their client's crashed drive over the internet in less than a day. Interviews show your product's personal side to you and your customers.
Mark Bohrer is a marketing consultant and technology writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared in EDN, Portable Design, Electronic Design, and Elektronik i Norden. He's also written technical advertising and white papers for agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Mark is a 25-year engineering veteran of Silicon Valley. Visit www.precision-copywriting.com to download his free report, Technical Articles For Leads And Sales: Nine Ingredients to Grab Your Customers.
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