The past couple of days have reminded me of just how abysmal a lot of corporate marketing really is, particularly in the technology space.

A very common marketing problem is the manner by which smaller companies attempt to copy the marketing efforts of significantly larger ones. A large OEM has a much different intent when creating a pull marketing strategy through a strong brand marketing campaign. That large company usually also has significantly deeper pockets than most of the companies in its distribution or reseller channels.

A large company with a reseller network engages in a brand image strategy because it usually offers some solution that spans a horizontal end-user market space. For example, Microsoft promotes SharePoint Portal Server as a stand-alone brand across all industry segments, because the technology itself is "niche-agnostic". In essence, there is no real purpose or intent to "verticalize" the benefits of the horizontal technology to serve a specific application niche within a vertical industry market. The OEM spends lots of money promoting the generalized solution, creating a recognizable, global marquee brand.

The job of tailoring the message to a specific customer niche or vertical market segment is left to the distributor or reseller network, who the OEM assumes will effectively convert the features of the horizontal technology solution into a set of specific benefits for a given industry vertical niche. In the case of an technology integrator or VAR (value added reseller), by far the most successful ones target very narrow vertical niche markets and specific application areas. SharePoint Portal Server for Human Resources.... SharePoint Portal Server for Personal Injury Law Firms... you get the idea.

At least from the OEM’s standpoint, that’s how it’s supposed to work anyway.

That’s where things start to break down. Smaller companies tend to imitate the marketing of bigger companies – even though, as I just pointed out, the things that big companies do are typically designed to serve a much different purpose with a much wider view. The smaller companies try to imitate the brand campaigns and sales strategies of the larger company because – well, because that’s what the big company does, so that’s why the big company must be successful.

This is why it is dangerous to employ copycat marketing as a small company. Carbon copying a vendor’s advertising and marketing strategy doesn’t work on a small scale. In fact, it’s one of the most common money pits that I’ve run across in my professional career. I’ll go so far as to say that bad marketing (or inappropriately copied marketing) is one of the biggest causes for business failure – especially amongst startups and very small companies.

A large company engages in a giant branding strategy to serve multiple interests – not just creating brand awareness with customers, but to generate interest with the dealer or channel distribution network, create a media PR image, and to even satisfy shareholders who need to feel confident that the company is projecting a global aesthetic consistent with the size and scope of the firm. So large corporate marketing is ultimately designed to appease a large swath of constituents for different reasons, not just to sell something – and sell it right now.

But a small company doesn’t have the money to engage in supporting all of these stakeholder camps. It doesn’t have those stakeholder camps, or at least to the degree that a large, multinational brand entity does. But instead, as a matter of basic survival, a small company MUST sell something – and that company must sell something right now – this very minute.

When a small company adopts a big company marketing strategy, it also tends to adopt the same, generalized, watered-down message. Instead of focusing on a specific customer problem, and then providing a specific solution for that specific type of customer, the small company marketing becomes this abysmal hodgepodge of generic language that almost certain to be based on features and specifications instead of practicing benefits selling.

Instead of crafting a very targeted message to a very specific customer around the solution to a very specific problem, many small companies simply re-broadcast the message they interpreted from the OEM, which tends to be a very generic one. Of course, that's the result of the intent to serve a horizontal market and appeal to the multiple constituencies.

This forces a customer to take the horizontal, feature-based conversation and invent the specific solution for itself. That’s a huge effort that frankly, most people don’t have the time or directive to spend their resources. And in essence, the small business reseller focuses on the tool itself. To use an analogy, they have a hammer, so they run around looking for a nail – all the while hoping that someone will pay them to drive that nail.

But by shifting the focus onto the specific problem itself, the small company reseller could be increasing engagement and sales simply by relating to the customer where the customer has the direct need. For example, instead of looking for a nail to use the hammer on, they look for a customer who needs two boards attached together. Of course, the solution may be a nail that gets driven with the hammer, but it could also be a screw. It could be a lag bolt with a sinker. It could be a hot glue gun.

But the one thing that is proven time and again is that focusing on the problem vs. the tool itself nets a much higher rate of sales conversion, simply because the problem focus is context specific. That means the conversation is tailored to the specific needs of the specific customer in the specific vertical space. This automatically creates more anchor points for resonating with the customer simply because it’s a story tailored to their exact situation vs. one they have to work to invent on their own.

I sort of live by the philosophy of not making my customer work so hard to buy from me, and I happen to believe that it starts with my own focus before I ever get to the storytelling part.