How to nail product positioning when your company needs a refresh

Transcript

1. How to nail product
   positioning when your company
   needs a refresh
   Matt Allen
   VP, Corporate and Product Marketing, MarkLogic
   

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2. Great technology
   Great investors
   Great customers
   But…
   A turnaround story that began five years ago...
   

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3. Challenges
   § Engineering-driven – Technical, complex product
   § Brownfield market – Competing against Oracle
   § Adoption – No open source distribution channel
   § Getting heard – Crowded marketplace
   § Hyperscale dominance – David vs Goliath (AWS)
   § Gaining buy-in – Disagreements among stakeholders
   MarkLogic-specific
   Challenges everyone faces
   MarkLogic didn’t have a story people could believe in
   

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4. MarkLogic pitch circa 2014
   

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6. If there was one piece of advice I wish I could
   phone back and give to myself, was just
   concentrate on that storytelling part, on the
   convincing people.
   “
   Stewart Butterfield
   CEO & Cofounder, Slack
   Because if you can't do
   that, it doesn't matter how good the product is,
   it doesn't matter how good the idea was for the
   market, or what happens with the external
   factors, if you don't have the people believing.”
   

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7. You cannot win without a great story
   

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8. Evolution of MarkLogic
   XML Content
   Server
   Enterprise
   NoSQL Database
   World’s Best
   Database for
   Integrating Data
   from Silos
   Data integration
   simplified
   What it is Why you should use it
   2001 – 2013 2014 - 2015 2016 - 2017 2018 - present
   

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9. Our story today
   FUTURE VISION THE PAIN / REFRAME RATIONAL DROWNING
   A BETTER WORLD VALIDATION BUSINESS RESULTS
   

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10. Focus on Business Results
    SOURCE: GARTNER 2019
    

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11. § Big vision for PR and AR
    § Clarity for customers
    § We sell product…
    - Faster demand gen and deal cycle
    - Largest deals of any modern database company
    - Unicorn status
    MarkLogic results
    

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12. How we changed our story
    

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13. Start by developing your framework
    CEB/Gartner – Duarte – StoryBrand – SiriusDecisions
    

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14. CEB (now Gartner)
    Business Problem and
    What the Customer Is
    Currently Doing
    New Customer
    Approach
    (Leading to Your
    Solution)
    Highlight What
    Customer Is
    Missing
    A B
    SOURCE: CORPORATE EXECUTIVE BOARD
    

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15. Duarte
    SOURCE: DUARTE
    

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16. Duarte resources
    Emotions
    Repeatable Sound Bites
    Choosing Your Delivery Style
    Transformational Words
    

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17. Storybrand (SB7)
    SOURCE: STORYBRAND
    

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18. SiriusDecisions
    SOURCE: SIRIUS DECISIONS
    

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19. Formula for writing your value prop
    AUDIENCE = Business Leaders
    NEED Need a unified, actionable 360º view
    + ASSERTION (WHY?)
    Simplified data integration makes it faster and easier to achieve a 360º view so that IT can keep up with the speed of
    business.
    + OUTCOME Achieve a 360º view 4-12x faster in order to better serve customers, improve operations, and answer regulators.
    + DISTINCTION Simplest platform to integrate data
    = VALUE PROP
    The MarkLogic Data Hub Platform simplifies data integration, enabling organizations to achieve a 360º view faster
    than ever so that IT can keep up with the speed of business. The MarkLogic Data Hub Platform removes¬ friction
    from every step of the data integration process, allowing IT to keep pace with the speed of business.
    

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20. Our approach… keep is simple
    

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21. Deliverables and process
    Company Core Product Product/Campaign Launches
    1. Mission
    2. Vision
    3. Market
    4. Value prop
    1. Future vision
    2. Challenges (A state)
    3. Insight
    4. Solution (B state)
    5. Differentiators
    6. Results
    7. Validation
    1. Future vision
    2. Challenges (A state)
    3. Insight
    4. Solution (B state)
    5. Differentiators
    6. Results
    7. Validation
    8. User stories
    RESEARCH WRITING BUY-IN TESTING LAUNCH ITERATION
    

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22. Avoiding feature paralysis
    

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24. “
    Reid Hoffman
    Co-founder of LinkedIn, Partner at Greylock
    Rather than sell the whole Swiss Army
    knife, VMWare focused on the most
    pressing use case. It was as if they said:
    ‘Forget the blade, the scissors and the
    screw—let’s just sell the tweezers.’”
    

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25. Kano model
    NEED NOT MET NEED FULLY MET
    USER DISSATISFACTION
    USER SATISFACTION
    Performance
    (more is better)
    Delighter
    (wow!)
    Must-have
    

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26. Winning requires more than
    great features and a great story
    

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28. PCs running Microsoft
    90+% market share
    Apple computers
    7% market share
    Apple iOS and Android
    98% market share
    Nokia and Blackberry
    2% market share
    Strong
    connections
    Weak
    connections
    

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29. Similar stories, Different outcomes
    

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31. Position for growth by telling a great story
    and building connections
    

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32. Thank you
    matt.allen@marklogic.com
    

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