What is your message?

Last post I wrote about 'clarity' of your message. Essentially, if your message is not clear to the 'audience' - the message is lost. To start in getting a clear message, it is crucial to decide what you want to say. Some companies want to emphasize a certain point. This is usually with companies with many products and solutions for different users. Even if you have one software product or service, usually it makes sense to highlight a few features or uses. Lets look at some software companies and their product. Adobe develops a few applications for content creation and management. One of their main web development product is Dreamweaver. The product does many things and can be used in many ways. Essentially its a toolbox for 'wysiwyg' designers (who do site design without content management). After you move down from the banner and a promotion for the new version, there are a few tabs: "what's new", "product overview", "feature tour", "product selector" and "news". It is obvious that this page screams "new version". Now, I don't think that Adobe marketing or the Dreamweaver product manager would turn down new-unfamiliar users. But they chose to go after people who essentially "know" the product. Not just people who know "about" the product. The message is that "we have CSS, XSLT and XHTML now!"

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Dreamweaver - October 2007
~ If a user is unfamiliar with web standards, this could be interpreted as a turn-off. But I don't think Adobe is worried about this problem. The few totally new potential customers for Dreamweaver would have to put up with a little discomfort. The new users are probably going to be confused about lots of things, so that would not be a problem.
Also notice that Adobe has kept the page simple and fairly clean. I am sure that there are opinions in the Adobe camp that would choose other messages. If there are changes in message from time to time, the page can change. For now it says, new product version, come get it.
If you have ideas on clarity of the message. If you want to tell the audience about product marketing in the software area, send me a message and I will post or write an article.

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Actually, the concept of making the main message simple and clear is something that can help marketing. The Internet has made us all "impatient readers". We tend to look at the screen and quickly search for the few words that will tell us "what is going on here?" This way, we know if to keep on reading, go further down, settle down for a 'slow read' ... lots of things can be done at this point. This gives marketers the opportunity to send a message in small capsules. It also gives the audience the chance to process one idea at a time. Sometimes you can put two messages in one place, but not much more. The good news is that the web allows us to change the priority of the messages very quickly. When Adobe Dreamweaver gets a little 'older' and this version is not such hot news. They can move to another 'message' and actually keep the ideas to the audience fresh. This is something that is hard to do with printed brochures and video DVDs. It is even hard with CD presentations that you used to hand out in trade shows a few years ago. Anyway, I will review a few more 'messages' from software products in the next few entries. I think this answers last entry's issue of "why doesn't marketing tell the customer what the product does?" (so the salesman will not have to travel twice to make the sale?) But than again, doing it on the web is a little easier and more elegant than a two page brochure (I think)