Perceptions of your company’s value can be improved by:
- Drawing attention to its full palette of intellectual assets;
- Emphasizing the IP rights being sought or already obtained for those assets; and
- Clearly explaining the significance, potential, and value of your company’s most game-changing intellectual assets.
To successfully convince the market, your company can take any of probably a gazillion different approaches, but in general, it likely will need marketing communications that at least:
- Interrupt,
- Engage, and
- Educate.
That is, your company’s marketing materials need to reach their desired audience on both an emotional level and an intellectual level. Interrupting strikes at the emotions, getting prospects to pay attention to your company’s message. Engaging and educating aim for the target’s intellect, encouraging them to dig deeper into your company’s message, advancing their understanding of the advantages provided by your company’s intellectual assets, and assuaging their concerns and hesitations.
Generally, the development of strong marketing communications for your company’s intellectual assets will start by thoughtfully answering each of the following 7 questions:
- Who is your company’s target market?
- Who are your company’s primary competitors?
- What would generally cause somebody to want/need to be involved with intellectual assets like those of your company in the first place? That is, under what general circumstances would your company’s prospects start to think about intellectual assets such as your company’s?
- What specific problems, frustrations, annoyances, etc. do prospects experience that are solved by your company’s particular intellectual assets? Which of these “hot buttons” generate the most emotional response from your company’s prospects?
- What are the important and relevant issues and concerns buyers should be aware of when negotiating for your company’s intellectual assets, and how should your company address them? How would you advise your best friend if they wanted to enter such a deal? That is, what do your company’s prospects need to know so they can confidently, and wisely, enter a deal for your company’s intellectual assets?
- What are the main advantages of doing business with your company versus its competitors? That is, how well does your company give prospects for its intellectual assets what they really want?
- What kind of evidence can your company produce to prove its case? That is, what information do your company’s prospects need to feel they are well-prepared to make the best decision possible? What will it take to assemble that information in an attractive, educational, and well-received format?
With carefully considered and detailed answers to each of these questions in hand, your company will be well-positioned to begin drafting its marketing communications.
Persuading the market of the value of your company’s intellectual assets, the IP that protects them, and the products that implement them won’t necessarily be easy, but the rewards can be outstanding.
Want to learn more?
Feel free to get in touch. I’d be happy to help.