All right. Fine. Your customers care about the product. And it’s obviously critical that the product works and solves their basic needs. But I’d bet they don’t care about it nearly as much as you think, especially about its nuances. 

And the gap between how much your customers care about your product and how much you care leads to huge strategic errors — if you’re like the vast majority of adtech companies. 

What Adtech Customers Actually Care About

I sometimes spearhead brand redefinition exercises for my clients. As part of that process, I talk to anywhere between a handful and a dozen of their customers. There’s one trend I see across nearly all my clients: The customer doesn’t know or care about the differences between my client’s product and that of their competitors. In fact, brands, agencies, and publishers often state that one of their top challenges is differentiating among indistinguishable products.

So, what are the factors that actually drive product use and preference?

1. Perception in market: what the adtech company is known for — which is sometimes years removed from the actual state of the product.

2. Inertia and existing relationships: I’ll ask customers why they use a given platform and not others if they can't distinguish among them. The answer: "We just always have." Or “The higher-ups have selected a handful of preferred providers, so we just prioritize them.”

3. The people or service: "The product isn’t super different, but my old vendor didn’t respond to my emails, where as the current vendor’s team goes the extra mile for me."

Why Adtech Companies Need to Shift Their Theories of Victory

Adtech companies are, well, tech companies. They’re typically founded and led by engineers (at least partially). So, they’re very proud of their product, and they’ve poured a lot of resources into differentiating it from alternatives to solve a market problem. I respect that and don’t begrudge them that pride. I also take a lot of pride in my craft while recognizing that whether I’m actually better at marketing tactics than my competitors is a small part of whether I win business.

But pride clouds judgment, and an obsession with the technology at the heart of an adtech company — with its product and its difference from other products — leads to a misguided theory of victory. The problem is that you can’t win on product differentiation if customers don’t know about how your product is different. So, you need a theory of victory that accounts for that ignorance — both by combating it and winning on other grounds.

In other words, when it comes to allocating resources and setting strategic priorities, we need to be honest about what will actually make the difference in terms of customer acquisition and retention. Different product features alone ain’t it. Instead, what talking to adtech customers reveals is that you have to win by playing two games: the perception and relationship games. 

And marketing is the discipline of crafting your perception and building relationships at scale. 

How You Win in a Market Where the Key Challenge is Differentiation

If you want to win, you have to consider the three factors that actually determine whether adtech customers work with you or competitors:

1. Perception of the company

2. Relationships

3. Service

A better product is great, but it is only as valuable as the perception of it. In business, if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it really doesn’t matter. Likewise, you could’ve poured tens of millions of dollars into improving your product over the past five years, but if people only know it as the thing it was five years ago, that massive investment won’t help you win.

So, you need to come up with a brand story predicated on differentiation, it needs to tap into visceral pain points for customers or touch on an industry injustice that you’re rectifying, and you need to distribute it clearly, widely, and frequently. Adtech companies aren’t hot consumer products; they won’t go viral of their own accord. If you want people to know that you’re different, you need to tell them. That’s what marketing is for.

Similarly, suppose you want to win on relationships — and everyone in this industry wins or loses on them. Marketing is the art of building relationships at scale. Yes, going to events helps. Hiring salespeople helps. But marketing is the air cover that gives sales reps a reason to reach out and increases the chance that they’ll get the time of day when they do. It’s also the way you win hearts and minds at scale before you’ve even directly spoken to your future customers — or before you know they’re reading or listening. If you’re not defining yourself and grabbing your customer’s attention, your competitors are. I wouldn’t want to be a salesperson in that position.

Your products may be ingenious; it doesn’t mean anything if customers don’t know about them. So, why is marketing, the discipline of crafting your perception and building relationships at scale, a complete after-thought for so many adtech companies? Up against these challenges, how do you expect to win while spending 2% of revenue on marketing?

No one cares about your product — unless you’re so persuasive and pervasive that they have to pay attention.