Making the cloud attractive: Is your marketing team your own worst enemy?

The cloud is essentially a product up for sale, which means cloud provider big-wigs need teams of marketing and advertising specialists to make the cloud look as appealing as possible to potential clients.

Advertisers are typically trained to list the most enticing qualities of their product, avoid jargon or deceptive claims, and demonstrate why their products are the best. But what happens if the marketing team is playing up the wrong qualities? Would this hide the real value of the cloud, underrepresent its most desirable attributes and fail to convince enterprises to make the switch?

In a word: Yes. According to David Lithicum of InfoWorld, this is exactly what is happening. The typical cloud pitch that providers offer highlights the short deployment times by making the need for hardware and software obsolete. This is not where the real value lies, which means providers are marketing the wrong “cloud feature” to potential customers.

Lithicum feels that what cloud providers are missing is the “home run” of cloud advantages: the ability to easily adapt to continuously evolving requirements. But the problem lies in the fact that this concept of adaptability is hard to define, and it is therefore overlooked.

Need help developing the right marketing message — or avoiding the wrong one? Check out some of these resources:

• Bring on the cloud marketing stunts!
• Conflicting definitions of hybrid cloud model cost you customers
• Cloud APM services win customer trust by monitoring app performance
• Which cloud business model involves the least risk?