Why You Might Not Want A Check-Up By the doctor
One of the regular features on Sourcing Innovation are vendor solution reviews, which occur only after the doctor has seen the product. Normally occurring in the spring and fall, these vendor posts, which provide solution providers with a great opportunity to reach a broad global audience, are always well received. But not all vendors who receive a demo invitation accept. For a while now, I've been trying to figure out the most likely reasons why. These are the best I could come up with:
- 5. The product doesn't exist.
- 4. The product doesn't work.
- 3. The product works completely differently than the marketing spin around it.
- 2. A discussion of the product's capabilities "gives too much away" to competitors.
- 1. the doctor is distrusted for some reason.
With regard to 2, companies should understand that their competitors know them well, perhaps better than they know themselves. Nothing that the doctor might say is going to give away any secrets.
Finally, with regard to 1, the doctor has never slammed a company with a product that accomplished its designated task reasonably well, especially when the company is open about its strengths and weaknesses. The Sourcing Innovation vendor post archives prove this, far better than any claim I could make here.
So, vendors, what are you waiting for? Let's share your accomplishments this fall with the highly targeted audience that constitutes the readership of Sourcing Innovation!
Someone asked
"What About #6: What's the Benefit?"
And since I liked my answer, I'm going to reprint it here.
What's the benefit to doing anything on a PR / Marketing Front? What's the benefit of talking to an analyst? What's the benefit of talking to a journalist? Are they going to write about you / promote you? Where? And even if they do talk about you in their offering's premiere publication, is anyone going to read it.
"They have 100,000 'subscribers' to the print pub." So? Are even 10,000 going to pick the magazine up? Or is it going to sit in their lobby? Are the 10,000 that might pick it up going to even flip to the page with your article? Read it?
"The analyst firm is the most prestigious in the space?" So? What if only their membership has access to the brief? Since most of us won't pay 495 to 995 for a 5 page 'report' that contains information we can probably get for free on your website and the blogs, that won't do you much good.
What's the benefit of talking to a leading blogger? Hard to say ... depends on the blog, the following, and their spin on your solution.
But I can tell you this:
(1) SI is pull, not push. People come here to read and find information. 1,000 pulls are generally MUCH better than 10,000 pushes.
(2) SI does extremely well in the search engines ... and the entire archives are always available. There are posts from year one that will still get hundreds of hits a month.
(3) While it is certain that a single post will not be noticed to the same extent as a lead sponsor's logo on every page of Sourcing Innovation, a well-written contribution could easily be seen by a few thousand eyeballs looking for innovative solutions and solution providers. I know of multiple instances where a single guest post on Sourcing Innovation generated almost a dozen contacts for the author (and his or her firm). And even though those contacts might not be looking to buy at the moment you post, that could be a dozen contacts you might not have made otherwise... and who might be looking for new solutions as we approach a new budget season.
(4) Generally all you have to do to get a post is give me a live demo (not a PowerPoint) that demonstrates your product meets its worthy goals and contains innovation.
(5) It's totally FREE. It only takes a couple of hours of your time to prepare the demo, deliver it, and answer any questions I might have as I am thinking about it and preparing a write-up.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. In the worst case scenario, where only a few of the individuals who make the fifteen hundred to two thousand daily visits to SI read it and none of them are interested, you still have an independent review you can point to on the resources section of your website that buys you credibility. And it stays there ... and maybe in three months time a potential customer on the edge reads it and decides to give you a shot.
What are you waiting for?