I’ve worked for companies that produce “need to have” software + services.
I’ve worked for companies that produce “nice to have” software + services.
I’ve bought “need to have” products + services.
I’ve bought “nice to have” products + services.
And the following realization SMACKED me in the face the other week when chatting social media complaints + customer support rep abuse with the team:
There’s a direct correlation between the type of vocalness the market has towards a company depending on if it’s a “nice to have” or “need to have.”
A few examples
Let’s breakdown a few examples that fall on this correlation line to help illustrate just what this looks like with companies/providers you know.
“Nice to have” + positive vocal
We see this one a lot in consumer purchases. Why? Because these are often “luxury” type purchases. Not literally luxury items costing you thousands of dollars, but luxury in the sense that you could get on with your life just fine if you didn’t make those purchases.
I spoke about the Liquid Death x YETI collaboration a few newsletters ago, and these two brands are honestly perfect examples of companies that fall into this category, so let’s talk about Liquid Death for a minute.
Liquid Death runs at $18.47 for a 12-pack of…water. So for 16.9 oz, you pay $1.54/can for something you can get from your faucet for $0.01 for that same amount of water.
But you don’t see their customers complaining about them left + right online. It’s honestly quite the opposite - they have developed a cult following of social champions. Why is that?
My theory:
Liquid Death has a unique POV that their customers want to associate themselves with
Individuals who spend more than they know they receive back in value need to justify the purchase to themselves, so they proactively make it a badge of honor
“Need to have” + negative vocal
This group is seen commonly in both consumer + business purchases, but I’ll continue down the consumer side since that’s where we started.
Two common consumer purchases that are made across most every demographic are for utilities (water, electric, internet, etc.) and travel (airlines, trains, etc.).
QUICK: name a utility company or airline that you proactively shared an experience about publicly in the past 12 months.
…I bet 99 out of 100 of you couldn’t do it.
Now flip that on its head + name a utility company or airline that you proactively complained about, whether to their support team or publicly on social media, in the past 12 months.
…I bet a lot more of you are raising your hand now.

So let’s ask the same question as we did with the “nice to have” + positive vocal group - why is that?
My theory:
These companies are seen as “necessary evils” in the sense that we only have so many options to pick from, so we choose the least of the “evils”
Since these are “need to haves” for us to get on with our lives (water for drinking, internet for working, transportation to get somewhere), any time we feel they aren’t providing 100% of the value we expect, we’re quick to call them out on it
Translating to B2B
I’m sure many of us can think of B2B software/services companies + where they fall onto this chart based on whether they’re a “nice to have” or “need to have.” But all hope isn’t lost, especially for those on the “need to have” side of things.
Personally, I’d rather market a “need to have” than a “nice to have” to avoid market fluctuations drastically impacting pipelines + revenues. Think back to the past year, take your marketer hat off for a second and be an end user. What software/services did you get rid of due to budget cuts? What software/services did you still keep? You may have been disappointed to lose some of the ones you cut (aka “nice to haves”), but you were still able to get on with your job. Meanwhile those working at “nice to have” companies were unfortunately the ones seeing layoffs impact their colleagues or themselves.
So back to translating this to B2B and what can “need to haves” do to try and position themselves not so high on the “necessary evil” spectrum? Well, let’s go back to the two reasons we see the market skew towards positive vocal with the “nice to haves”:
Have a unique POV that customers want to associate themselves with
Individuals who spend more than they know they receive back in value need to justify the purchase to themselves, so they proactively make it a badge of honor
Now, let’s translate these to B2B:
Have a unique POV that customers want to associate themselves with
This one doesn’t need to change one bit. Develop a unique POV that means and stands for something.
Individuals who spend more than they know they receive back in value need to justify the purchase to themselves, so they proactively make it a badge of honor
Look, rarely does anyone want to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that they “need.” So companies should probably do better to help demonstrate ALL of the value that customers get from them.
One theory I’m looking to start testing is on new customer intake, to pick 1-2 key goals for a customer and measure against those over time. How did they perform against this goal prior to using our software/service? How are they performing to the goal after using our software/service? We don’t have to go crazy here, but aligning on these early on and showing progress towards these is a great way to demonstrate they’re getting 100% of the value they signed on for.
What do you think? Does this pattern follow what you’ve seen + experienced? Have you seen otherwise? Would love to hear from you!
Marketer matchmaker
You know that "mythical marketer" that every company seems to be searching for? I know one of them, and they're looking for their next role. This individual is a peer of mine that when they speak, I listen + take notes.
Let me drop their highlight reel for you real quick:
PLAYER/COACH
This person truly loves being strategic at the 30,000 ft view, but when they see an opportunity to improve something, they're quick to fly down to 300 ft to either make the execution themselves or to coach a direct report on not just what + how to do it, but why they're doing it as well.
DATA-MINDED AND CREATIVE
I know, it's usually a "pick one" type scenario, but this person can truly do both. It's honestly not fair when they've told me what they've done before by sorting through data to gather insights about something and then go on to do some of the most creative marketing I've ever heard of.
M-SHAPED MARKETER
T-shaped marketers are great, don't get me wrong. But instead of having one deep expertise + working knowledge of other aspects of marketing, they have areas of deep expertise. And in today's market, the 3 expertise that they have are 3 of the areas most every company needs help with: marketing operations, field marketing, and demand generation.
I could go on about this person, but I said I'd keep it to the highlight reel + that's what I'm sticking to.
Now's the part where you come in. They could take a job at most any software company, but I've seen firsthand that magic that happens when a perfect "match" is made between a candidate + company. So I want to help make that match.
Here's what they're looking for:
A tech company that is truly making a difference (there's a superpower behind what a team can do when they believe in the product)
A startup/scale up
An organization that serves the IT/developer/engineering space (not 100% required, but nice to have as that's where they have heavy experience)
Anywhere from a Director of Marketing/Demand Gen role to a VP of Marketing role, depending on the size + stage of the company
Interested in being introduced to this person? Reply back to this email and we'll make some hiring magic happen.
One TWO posts I bookmarked this week
I’ve been going down an AI rabbithole lately. Not the "how can we add AI into our product???” type of rabbithole, but in the “how can our team leverage AI practically in our day-to-day?” type of way. And that’s where these two posts jumped out to me.
First one was a resurfaced newsletter by Paul Stansik that he wrote back in May on the topic of how AI can analyze your call recordings (side note: subscribe to his newsletter if you aren’t already - he’s one of a few writers I read every time he sends something out). Below is a quick example of how he recommends going about doing this + is something I’m geekily excited about getting into over Q4.
The second one was a post by Katie Berg about how her team is using AI to add some structure to their “How did you hear about us?” open text responses. From there, they were able to continue prompting to understand general themes, what was/wasn’t working, and ideas for where they could drive more revenue.
See you next Saturday,
Sam