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Spiceworks Marketing

Some of the founders of Motive have started a new company in Austin, Spiceworks. From their web site, it appears that the company is working on some sort of IT product or service.

Several things about the web site impressed me:

  1. Almost every page on the site had the same call to action.
  2. The call to action was to sign up to be a co-creator of the product, which is powerful for generating word of mouth.
  3. For the most part, the content of the site is simple, direct, and avoids meaningless marketing jargon.
  4. The 'about' page succinctly states the problem the product is supposed to solve.
Here is an excerpt from the 'about' page:

"After talking with dozens of IT pros in small businesses, a team of systems management pioneers had their suspicions confirmed: these pros don't like the complex and expensive IT management solutions they're forced to choose from today. But no one has been listening to them... until now.
We listened carefully to what these weary IT warriors said. And now together, we're creating a simple, easy to use, yet powerful solution -- one that will help them win their daily IT battles."
The one criticism I have is that they do not state what their product does. I suppose they don't want to divulge much before the product debuts. It may also enhance the "whisper" campaign to be somewhat secretive. But I'm not sure how many serious prospects are going to enroll in their alpha program if the web site doesn't give them a bit more information.

Comments

Jay Hallberg said…
Thanks for the kudos. We're trying to avoid the overload of three letter acronyms and jargon that have grown like kudzu in the IT market.

We intentionally haven't stated what the product does yet -- that will come when we launch this summer. Participants in the alpha program will find out when they get their invitation e-mail.

So far we're doing great on registrations. I think this is because we are saying that we will have an alternative to complex and expensive IT solutions. These IT pros are really unhappy with the products they have today.
Tue May 16, 01:22:00 PM 2006
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