Asymmetric Marketing – The 21^st Century Reality

We’ve started our review of how the enterprise market segments are shaping up for the 2003/2004 horizon and one fact is coming through loud and clear – the days of horizontal marketing of high tech solutions across most industry segments are gone and in their place is something that we’re calling Asymmetric Marketing to describe marketing very deeply in a few segments and thinly in the remaining ones. 

Obviously, we’ve lifted this term from the military’s Asymmetric Warfare.  Its meaning varies based on whether you’re trying to describe a battleground where guerrilla fighters have an unfair advantage due to their ability to outmaneuver the enemy as well as describing the overwhelming advantage that well equipped troops have over an ill prepared enemy.

What we mean by Asymmetric Marketing is the situation that high tech companies are facing today when only a handful of market segments are responding well to their sales pitches while the other market segments are apparently sitting on their hands.  Whether a recovery in high tech starts next month or twenty four months from now, it’s apparent that this recovery will be, at best, modest, and will be nothing like the boom that went on in the 90’s.  But modest doesn’t mean that all industries, regardless of categories, will increase their high tech spending by an equal percentage.  Instead, what will happen, is that a few markets will increase high tech spending significantly because they see an opportunity for business improvement, other industries may increase high tech spending somewhat and still others either remain flat or even decline.  As few as fifteen of the sixty plus market segments in the Fortune 1000 may drive the next recovery.

Unfortunately, most high tech companies aren’t paying attention to what’s happening and they’re acting today, pretty much like they’ve been operating in the past, by selling the same thing to all markets.  The reality of Asymmetric Marketing means that high tech companies need to re-design their approach to their most important markets by selecting a few key verticals to provide comprehensive solutions which will yield greater sales revenue and customer penetration.  In other words, they’ve got to come up with a plan to sell deeper in fewer markets rather than skimming with equal penetration across lots of market segments.

The good news is that things get better. The bad news is that if you’re not an Asymmetric Marketer, the recovery may end up being such a small blip you might not notice.  High tech marketers need to take a page out of the US military’s play book by reengineering their plans for the battle that they’re about to engage.