Marketing transcendence: brand marketing for software and technology businesses

A few weeks ago I wrote about grift vs. marketing. TL;DR don’t sell what isn’t real or you can’t deliver.

Last weekend it was the Sydney Marathon down here in Sydney, Australia (where I live). With the likes of Eliud Kipchoge and Sifan Hassan gracing our streets, it was inspiring.

…and alongside these all-time athletes, we got to see the marketing of all-time brands, like Nike.

It reminded me of the fact that some brands, such as Nike, rarely mention their features at all. You don’t see many Nike ads saying “The ZoomX midsole: optimum responsiveness, half the weight”.

I mean, I’ve never seen a Nike ad like that?!

This is a Nike ad:

We all know this as “brand marketing”. Nike is perhaps the canonical example. “Just do it” is an epic slogan.

Brand marketing like this transcends the features of the product.

It sells a worldview rather than the feature set.

It got me thinking: software and tech-enabled businesses don’t seem to leverage this sort of transcendent brand marketing enough, and I find that interesting. Can it work? Are there any examples of success? Let’s dive in.

A primer on types of marketing

Marketing frameworks tend to break down the types of marketing into these concepts:

• Brand marketing. Built around emotions, identity, selling a lifestyle or way-of-life.
• Feature-benefit marketing. Built around product attributes and their direct benefits.
• Performance marketing. Short-term, action-driven marketing. E.g. “Get 20% off your next order”.
• Content marketing. Educating and helping potential customers.
• Event-driven marketing. Marketing around a point-in-time, e.g. Black Friday.
• Viral/guerilla marketing. Unconventional or surprising marketing that leads to massive word-of-mouth.

I also like this breakdown:

	Rational(Informational)	Emotional(Identity/lifestyle)
Short-term(Activation)	• Performance marketing (feature ads, promos)• Event-driven marketing (Black Friday, conferences, etc.)• Feature-benefit marketing (new releases, updates, etc.)	Guerilla marketing (Viral stunts, hype drops)
Long-term(Association)	Content marketing (thought leadership, trust-building)	Brand marketing (identity, value-driven and purpose-driven campaigns)

Thought leadership vs. brand marketing

Back to software companies.

Content marketing, particularly thought leadership, is massive in the world of software, particularly in B2B. Hubspot is credited with popularising “inbound marketing”: educating your potential customers for free in a specific niche such that you build trust and, as a result, potential customers seek you out.

It takes time to build the knowledge base but, once you do, theoretically all of your customers will one day find you: because they need your knowledge!

It’s logical and it works. For a real-world example, we need look no further than this very newsletter you’re reading. I’m hoping to share useful, hard-earned knowledge from marketing my own business and working with thousands of B2C and B2B software marketers. In turn, I hope to answer questions that our potential customers will have across their career and, as a result, make them aware of Vero.

According to our framework above, content marketing is long-term and rational in its approach.

So what might the long-term, emotional approach—brand marketing—look like for software or tech-enabled companies?

There’s strong overlap with content marketing in approach but it’s less about education and more about sharing a worldview or philosophy.

Examples at play

There are undoubtedly examples. Apple’s “Think Different” stands out.

More recent examples are the likes of Mailchimp, who championed the small business and told a story of the underdog. The small business who could fight against the big guys. Their brand was playful, different to that of their more corporate competitors, going after more corporate customers. We all recognise Freddie, the chimp. Off-beat campaigns like “It’s Mailchimp, not Mailshrimp” stand out in the memory.

Some other examples are from very well-established, traditional B2C industries like insurance or fitness.

Lemonade Insurance is a great example. Differentiated by their tech-first approach to service and claims and their fixed percentage fee on premiums they have also invested in brand marketing, promoted by their values-driven approach which gives back “excess profits” to charities at the end of each year.

In the fitness industry, there’s Peloton. Driven by the software component of their product they pushed a brand narrative along the lines of “we’re better together”.

Relative to software, insurance and fitness equipment are old industries. Decades older. Perhaps to launch anything in these markets requires good branding.

Chicken or the egg?

When sharing a list like the above, it’s easy to suggest “Those are all big companies, this tactic isn’t for small or growth businesses”.

But that suggestion is wrong.

Having a point of view, a philosophy is free.

Buffer is a great example of a company that championed their transparent approach from very early in their existence. They chose to be transparent and have been consistent in doing so for over a decade now.

Stripe sold a brand as much as a product in the early days too. I remember 2011 and 2012. Absolutely Stripe’s engineering-first approach was novel in the world of payments processing but the brand was built around the craftsmanship and care taken in those early APIs and was bolstered by the founding legend of two Irish brothers who’d built-and-sold a business by 19, coded a Lisp dialect at 15 and generally represented the sort of engineering-driven success any coder aspired too.

For a B2C example, Airbnb built a brand around “live like a local” and “belong anywhere” in the early days. When compared with a hotel, sharing someone’s home was a much more personal and curated experience of a town or city. You got to meet someone and get an insider’s take on the place you were visiting. Their product was so different that they really needed to build and promote this worldview, this brand: whilst the idea of “couchsurfing” was not new it was niche and, as a concept, a lot of trust. Building their brand was key to building the belief that customers needed to try the service.

And, finally, 37Signals. DHH and Jason are next-level at this stuff. They sell a very clear, very strong worldview and have done so for a very long time. They champion philosophies like:

• Growth doesn’t have to come at all costs.
• You don’t have to “win” in your market to build a successful business.
• Design and craft matter.
• Small companies can craft great products: you don’t need to be a giant.

…and more. Their books, like Rework, rarely talk about their software or its features. Instead they describe a world, a promised-land, that their ideal customers might aspire to.

They’ve promoted a world view. Further, they themselves have walked the walk and lived that world view. Their success has been phenomenal, further reinforcing the whole narrative. None of this is by accident. For me, 37Signals are one of the benchmarks for brand marketing that transcends the featureset, when it comes to software companies.

You gotta be genuine

A key to making this sort of marketing work is being genuine.

In ordder to start down the road of brand marketing we can reflect on the concept of noble failure.

What if the worldview Buffer or 37Signals’ espoused, that they lived, hadn’t worked for their own businesses? There’s no guarantee that the transparency would lead to success, or that going remote, promoting a calm environment and staying small would sustain over the long-term. They’ve both succeeded and grown into shining beacons of the view they promote.

If they hadn’t been successful, perhaps we’d never have heard of them.

But, if we had, we’d have to respect their commitment to not only building a brand they believed in but in living by it too.

I think that might be the key to brand marketing: having the passion and courage to promote a worldview you believe in but can’t guarantee will resonate, will be economically viable.

If it doesn’t work, at least you know you’ve been genuine.

And that paradox may be just what’s required for your brand to work.