Do not sell your IoT offerings as Products!
Most customers do not buy IoT Products. Depending on the segment, they buy Services or Experiences. I recommend adjusting the marketing messaging accordingly.
B2B offering
Let’s start with the Business Owners (the B2B Customers). I will use a Restaurant Owner as an example.
That person is not interested in Technology or IoT Devices. There is no value in positioning your offering as a Connected Fridge Appliance.
B2B Customers might have several restaurants in various locations. Every site requires multiple devices to operate. As a result, that person owns a fleet of devices critical for business operations.
To make things more interesting, we should mention real-time stock monitoring, on-time supplies delivery, and constant storage conditions supervision. Adding yet another asset (Connected Fridge) certainly does not make our B2B Customer any happier.
Could you, the IoT-Enabled Product Vendor, help that Restaurant Owner? What if you offered the Service instead of a Product?
By the Service, I mean an automated solution providing:
- Real-time stock monitoring.
- On-time supplies delivery.
- Constant storage conditions supervision.
That positioning totally changes the conversation. All of a sudden, you are not selling a Product. You are selling the Solution in the form of a Service (that happens to be provided using your Product). From a technical perspective, you are offering the same device. What differs is the value proposition perceived by the B2B Customer.
Summary
I hope this simplified example clearly demonstrates the importance of IoT positioning. Very few executives care about the technology used under the hood; the majority of Business Owners care about their companies.
The B2C market typically requires a different perspective. I will write about it the next time.
Live stream recording
I explained this topic in detail during my live stream:
