I recently had the pleasure of delivering marketing consulting services to an up-and-coming South American data engineering firm with an eye on global growth. A large part of what we worked on was the differentiation of their firm in a crowded market. My market research into my client’s competitors gave me an idea of what many data firms offering the services of data scientists, data analysts or data engineers are doing to market themselves. I offer some suggestions, below.
Generic case studies
Case studies are the opportunity to showcase relevancy to your ideal client. But often I read case studies that detail services supplied but not the customer outcomes. The language stays super-generic and misses out on the specificity, detail, or technical language that shows your expertise. When reading a case study on your site, nobody is expecting a top-level summary of what a data lake is. Use the opportunity to get to the nitty-gritty.
Copycat content
Too many data services websites use the same words and expressions.
Many technical services copy each other when it comes to the language they use to describe what they are selling. With data services, it’s common to find words like ‘actionable insights’, ‘empowering’ or ‘leverage’. Or phrases such as ‘in today’s data-driven world’ or ‘in today’s ever-connected world’?
These phrases aren’t wrong to use, per se,. But if they are the only words you use in your marketing and sales collateral then you will fail to distinguish your data services from everyone else’s.
Fence-sitting
Language that lacks precision or confidence does not come over well in any B2B marketing. But a data service is particularly poorly represented if its marketing can’t project surety. Here are some examples taken from live sources:
‘ChatGPT can be used as a tool for testing user interfaces’
‘Leveraging the expertise of machine learning… can deliver game-changing benefits.’
‘Bringing together these data sources in a single platform can provide opportunities to transform the way your business operates ‘
From the very top of your marketing funnel through to delivering your services to clients, you should be clear on what your services are capable of doing.
Lack of data
It’s ironic, but not many of the smaller data firms seem to gather much data about their services when putting together a website. Use performance metrics or industry data to support your USPs. Or show statistical data analysis that leads to some conclusions that are of value to your readership. In other words, if you work with data, show us some of it.
