I’m at a talk about marketing at a conference, sitting in the audience, blending into the mix of SEO students and experts. Unlike most conference, I am not speaking, not helping with sales at a booth and not scheduled with back-back meetings. This is a chance for me to sit and learn.
At the end of a fantastic panel discussion on SEO tools, demand generation and technology, the panel went into the Q&A section of the talk. One panelist was asked what made her technology better than the next tool.
“We spider the entire Internet, every day. Every site and keyword, everything, so we have more data to work with.” She said.
Looking around me, I saw eyes wide and heads nodding. They swallowed it. What happened next was like an out-of-body experience.
“Buuuuullshit!” I said, just-loud-enough for the group in the small theater to hear. I just couldn’t help myself.
I was then asked by the moderator to, basically, explain myself. I proceeded to talk about why “spidering the entire Internet” was not possible. This is an area that I am a subject matter expert. I won’t explain it hear, but if Google can’t do it…well, you get the idea… I then asked if she borrowed Google’s new quantum computer and got a few laughs. My goal was not to ridicule, but to recover from my sightly louder than expected comment. Next, I basically said that I was impressed with what their technology did, actually do, but it shouldn’t be misrepresented as “everything on the Internet”.
Her comment was that she was not the “techie person” and that she got over-enthusiastic. People laughed and that was the end of it.
The point is that Marketing does not need to lie, it would have been just as impressive if she portrayed, accurately, what they actually do and how. This is a problem in many technology companies. The process starts very much like a myth or legend.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke
The technologist creates something that looks like magic and Marketing tries to explain it and the legend grows. Soon, Sales is fabricating any explanation that sounds good and a technology myth is born.
Don’t do this. Technology, Sales and Marketing need to be on the same page. If you don’t achieve unified messaging someone else is going to call bullshit and you will lose a sale.