Last week, Distribion was featured as a client case study in the Wrike blog. There are numerous parallels between Distribion and Wrike.

Users have individual preferences in a branded product.

Both Distribion and Wrike are Software as a Service (SaaS) brands in the B2B space. Wrike offers project management software, which Distribion uses around the office to foster productivity in managing complex tasks and projects. Distribion provides distributed marketing management software to enable brands with distributed marketing models to automate complex marketing activities. Both brands offer a value proposition to the end user of achieving greater efficiency in their work activities. Both offerings have a wide variety of features, but not all features are valued equally by all clients. In the Distribion use case of Wrike software, features that are valued most highly are time allocation and ticket management. It is likely that other Wrike clients value different aspects of the Wrike software than what Distribion values.

Distribion’s marketing automation software offers an immense amount of potential solutions. Not all of Distribion’s clients use the software in the exact same way. Each company has their own individual needs that they use the software to address. The purpose for a company to use the software is crucial. For some clients, customer acquisition is a key motivating factor. Others are motivated more so by the ideas of customer retention and cross-selling product offerings to existing customers. Some wish to create more effective communications with sales partners through use of webinars. Some like the marketing asset management capabilities and permissioning, items within the software that address brand compliance issues.  Purpose also impacts what features a client perceives as most beneficial. Some users like the email bundle capabilities, some users embrace the idea of creating alignment between email and social media, some users value the e-commerce storefront and print management capabilities, etc. Because the software is comprehensive, there are a lot of functions that it can be used for. This idea is hardly unique to Distribion. As an example, the features that I appreciate most in the car I drive may not be all that important to another person that drives the same model of car I drive.

From a marketing standpoint, the variance in features that certain end users will appreciate creates a communication challenge. This is why segmentation is a fundamental concept to marketing. Most brands have to realize this and communicate the features that they know segments within their target market will appreciate the most. Going back to the car analogy, some people might value a car brand for its performance features, but the car might also possess some impressive safety features. Theoretically, it would be possible to communicate a set of performance issues and a set of safety issues to sub segments of an overall target marketing without diluting the essence the brand. Depending upon the product category, a brand is often tasked with the idea of communicating about disparate product features, some of which may not matter to all users. Within the target market of key users, a brand must find which message will resonate best with a certain set of users. When that is done, it facilitates a brand’s marketing communication efforts.