Technology Marketing Training

 

Taking Technology Products to Market

Strategies for Effective Positioning, Branding, and Launch

Winning mindshare and budget dollars in today’s environment – whether from the customer or within your own organization – requires a new level of strategically sound positioning, branding, and launch.

Attend Taking Technology Products to Market to learn how to create:

	Compelling value propositions that address not only benefits, but also address how you’ll help today’s resourcelimited customers deal with the costs of adoption
	Company positioning and branding that carries a clear and credible promise of value for the future—to get you on supplier short-lists and gain early access to customers’ new programs
	Unified post-M&A product and company positioning and branding
	Solutions to the pressures created by shorter launch runways, limited budgets, and temptations to pre-launch
	Proper take-to-market timing so you don’t spend too much or too soon

Attend this course to prepare for today's changing technology markets:
	Elevating to the Executive Suite. The economic buyer now prevails over the technical champion. How can you elevate your positioning to a ‘C-level’ executive sell?
	Winning the Internal Positioning and Branding Battle. Learn how to win the hardest positioning and branding battle – inside your own company
	Creating a New Category. If you can’t win in your current technology/product category, create a new one. Learn when and when not to employ this powerful competitive strategy
	Branding in an Era of M&A. Trying to blend identities or distance yourself from past associations present major branding challenges. How can you retain and leverage individual brand strengths and correct key gaps?
	Time to Acceptance, not Just Time to Market. Skeptical customers and wary investors are demanding more confirmation from trusted sources. How do you build market support when customer references are increasingly hard to get?
	Pressures to Pre-Launch. Economic cycles and competitive pressures are pushing for earlier launches. With a limited marketing budget, how do you pre-condition your markets and choose the right early customers? How do you resist organizational pressures to pre-launch?

Course Content
Technology Positioning and Branding
	Business-to-business and industrial technology marketing versus traditional consumer mass marketing
	The value of leadership positioning
	Why high-tech branding is important in both rapidly changing and maturing markets

Positioning Development
	Defining your space in the marketplace
	Signs of ineffective positioning
	Perceptions, reality, and the customer mind
	Strategy checklist: is your organization ready to position your product
	Matching positioning elements to the stage of the market
	Competitive positioning options and strategies
	The positioning statement
	Corporate positioning: can you position a company

Exercise: Develop and test a positioning statement for your product and market

Technology Branding
	Branding myths and misconceptions
	Understanding brand identity and value
	Branding the experience, not just the product
	Brand positioning—more than product positioning
	Branding leverages—line extensions, naming, ingredient branding
	Internet and the customer-managed brand experience

Exercise: Develop and assess the fitness of your own brand

Market Infrastructure Communications
	Why market infrastructure is critical to positioning and communications
	The influence-reference model
	Amplifying your communications
	Developing and managing the infrastructure marketing plan
	Messaging: communicating your position and brand
	Messaging tests
	How the Internet is changing the traditional market influence model

Launch Planning
	Why a technology product launch is so important
	Launch readiness tests
	Launch sequencing and timing
	Making the launch last—why post-launch is as critical as pre-launch
	What to do when the product is behind schedule
	Launch strategies and styles

Who Should Attend
Taking Technology Products to Market is for business-to-business and industrial high-tech marketers.

You’ll walk away with practical strategies, insights from industry colleagues, and tools to better confront your marketing challenges today. Bring your executive team to plan your product launch and gain a shared understanding of how to position and brand technology products.

Special Features
Each participant will receive the book, The New Positioning by Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin.

Participants are invited to attend a dinner the first evening of the course, providing an opportunity to share information and ideas with the instructor and other participants.

Instructors: Jim Blakeley
Fee: 2008 - $2495
Credits: 1.4 Continuing Education Units (CEUs)
Dates: June 26-27, October 6-7, 2008
Time: 8:30am - 4:30pm 1st Day; 8:30am - 4:30pm 2nd Day
Dinner: 5:00pm 1st Day
Program Coordinator: Judy Donohue, 626.395.4045

Taking Technology Products to Market - pdf brochure
Technology Marketing Certificate Program - pdf brochure