Hyped Hope is not a GTM Strategy

If you work in any form of tech marketing, you’re expected to understand what trends are piquing your target customer’s interest.  Are they obsessed with the latest developments in Generative AI?  Is the grand entrance of Apple’s new VIsion Pro making them rethink how to incorporate virtual or augmented reality into their business?

No matter what you sell, there’s no harm in sharing a point of view on these trends as part of your social media and content plan.

Where things can get screwy is when the noise and hype around these trends turn into undisciplined hope that they’re a non-negotiable silver bullet to growing your business.

If you recall in my article discussing “My 80/20 rule obsession”, I can’t stress enough how important it is for any business to focus the majority of their resources on the short list of activities that will generate the greatest return. For example, if you’re going to pivot your entire product roadmap to embedding or creating GenAI capabilities, you better be sure your addressable market and target customers know what they want from AI in your solution space, and are prepared to pay for it.  And avoid the lipstick on a pig approach, getting a commoditized GenAI feature embedded quickly versus actually doing the due diligence to understand how and where this innovation will generate the greatest experience and value for your customers.

Hype isn't market research and Hope isn’t a plan

My goal here isn’t to be a party pooper. If your business can ride the wave of an exciting tech trend and it helps you to become a market leader, that’s amazing! But sticking with the current GenAI hype theme, there are hundreds (if not thousands by now) of tech companies - both startups and established - that now claim to offer GenAI capabilities within their solutions.

If tech history has taught us anything, it's that the majority of players in a new tech space will undoubtedly fail - leaving a much smaller number of winners. Once the market matures, most players will either be out of business or their investments here will not deliver long term value.  Many already predict this will happen with GenAI.  

Stop being a buzzkill Rob. Tell us something useful already!

Okay, fine - I'll try, since you asked nicely.

As I discussed in my article, “Differentiating your differentiators”, you want to ensure any R&D investments will enable your business to deliver a Distinctive, Credible, Easily provable, and Valuable benefit to your target customers. This holds true for trendy hyped technology and innovative bleeding-edge features. But it's also true for basic security, scalability, usability, or other improvements that make your product that much more usable than alternatives. 

Using my differentiator checklist above, here's the challenge when trying to adopt immature, hyped technology as a business priority:

• Distinctive. Are you doing something unique with the technology that all of your competitors aren’t also working on? Maybe a controversial hot take, but let’s be real: customers don’t care about who gets first to market. They care who delivers most effectively. So consider letting your competitors dump their resources into risky experimentation, and you jump on the bandwagon once there’s a clear value proposition.
• Credible. Is the new technology truly integrated into your products workflow and user experience, or has it been bolted on quickly to demonstrate “we can do it too” but it delivers a disjointed and unclear experience?  Instead of doing it fast, do it right.
• Easily provable. It’s also hard to convince customers that this new capability is going to change their overall experience if it’s a hidden black box that requires a long demo or deep technical review.  Can you prove its value either through customer testimonials, hands-on user experience, or a short demo?
• Valuable. Please answer the “so what” question! And the answer should not be, "because this is exciting technology and we’re using it."   

This is where your product, sales, and marketing leadership need to be aligned when considering an investment in any new technology direction. If these discussions lead to an agreement that the investment would create differentiated value for customers while blocking out competitive alternatives, then everyone can move forward confident that this is the right path for the business.