How would you craft messaging when your differentiator is extremely technical and proprietary? Think a proprietary algorithm that has been tweaked for a decade.

Having a very technical and proprietary differentiator is great! To craft a message around this, the key is understanding for whom you are telling the story around this differentiator. For a more technical audience, you may not need to change much about how you describe the differentiator - just work with your technical subject matter experts to ensure it’s described as accurately as possible. For a less technical audience, you’ll need to lift out why this algorithm is differentiated, minimizing ...Read More

The key is to translate the complexity into clear, customer-focused value. You can use this approach: Focus on customer benefits: Highlight how the proprietary technology solves key customer problems more effectively than competitors, without overwhelming them with technical details. Tailor messaging to the audience: For technical audiences, emphasize key innovations, unique features, and performance metrics that demonstrate the algorithm's advanced capabilities. For non-technical stakeholders, ...Read More

Divide the facts vs. opinions of their existing value proposition, and then see where you can deliver a better product and/or story for the particular audience. If you don't have the facts of the proprietary technology and the capabilities are hidden, you can go after a strong story for a particular audience. I think the best example of this is Google Search vs DuckDuckGo. Google Search vs DuckDuckGo is a strong case study of how positioning can work for a certain audience vs. a proprietary algo ...Read More

For this, it has to be about the output/what you get. Do you know what the latest spec of an iPhone’s camera lens is? But do you feel and believe that an iPhone has a better camera than its competitors? If your audience is super technical and specs matter, however, then you have to include them. But focus on how it improves their workflow and their experience with using your product vs a competitor. For example, at Pomerium, we provide a clientless experience that we think is better than legacy ...Read More

The first thing to ask is, who’s your audience? Whether you're speaking to a technical end-user or a business audience, always start by leading with the differentiated outcome or solution you unlock. This is the high-level message that sets the stage. A great example is Suno’s "Make a song about anything"—they don’t focus on their proprietary tech but the end result it enables. For a technical end-user, once you’ve established the unique outcome and problem your algorithm solves, follow up with ...Read More

It can be challenging to navigate articulating differentiation when a capability is highly technical and your audience is not. As I mentioned in another response, focusing on differentiated value can be really helpful here. Rather than try to do a lot of messaging or education around the algorithm/technical capability itself, focus on what it uniquely delivers in terms of the outcome for the customer. For example, at Seismic, our product includes a unique architecture for organizing sales conten ...Read More

I haven't worked in a space where the differentiators were algorithms or what I would describe as extremely technical or proprietary. BUT - I think my experiences and perspective still apply. The short story is to anchor on value (not the specifics of the secret sauce) and use analogies. So here's my thinking (mostly drawing from my experiences around API platforms and developer tools/technologies): Anchor in Value, Not Just Tech: Ultimately the differentiator should result in something concrete ...Read More

We went through a similar exercise when messaging our AI capabilities for SurveyMonkey (what we call SurveyMonkey Genius). Similarly, we have a lot of proprietary/technical differentiation, but AI is noisy and everyone's doing it now. Here are a couple bits of advice you can consider: Know what your ICP cares about most when it comes to your technology: Sometimes the best way to craft messaging is to see your product through your customer's eyes. Interview existing customers to understand how th ...Read More

With any great messaging — but especially in this case — the key is articulating why this differentiator is valuable to your target audience. What standout outcomes does this proprietary algorithm unlock? What about this approach makes it more valuable to a customer than the alternatives? You may have to ask 'why would a customer care?' a few times to get to true benefits. This was the case at Klaviyo. We spent hundreds of hours trying to compellingly articulate one of the platform's most valuab ...Read More

To craft any messaging, I recommend always starting with the customer and defining specific value your product delivers. Depending on how technical your customer is, you can either lean into the specifics of what makes your product special or zoom out to focus on expected results. For example, a more technical audience may get excited about some of the specific inputs into your algorithm, or critical milestones achieved across the past decade. Whereas a less technical audience will want to ensur ...Read More

My current company Watershed is actually a similar case here so I'll use them as an example. Watershed is a software platform that helps companies measure their carbon footprint so they can report on it and make plans for reductions. Measuring emissions is an incredibly complex data cleansing, standardization and calculation process that can be highly error-proned and one of the ways Watershed differentiates is by the level of rigor that goes into its proprietary methodology for measurement. But ...Read More

If it is truly a differentiator, then it will have benefits, and that is what you should focus on. What does that proprietary algorithm allow your product to do that others products can’t, and how does that benefit your customer? Does it make your product faster? Does it make your product or its output more accurate, or more efficient? And how does that added capability benefit your customer? Does it save them time, make them more money, etc.? Even the most technical business buyer wants to know ...Read More

Even with a highly technical product and audience, I've found that it's important to remember that attention spans are limited and that budget holders don't always need or want a ton of detail, at least upon the first intro to the product. I'd approach this in a couple ways. First, I'd focus on the higher level messaging. This is to help build awareness of this product across any channel. Here you want to focus on the customer outcome that helps build a bridge for your audience on the technical ...Read More

When your differentiator is deeply technical, such as a proprietary algorithm developed over a decade, it’s important to focus on the “so what” factor. Instead of going too deep into the technical specifics, highlight the outcomes and impact this technology enables for the customer. For example, "Our proprietary algorithm reduces operational overhead by 25%, giving teams more time to focus on high-value tasks." Tailor your messaging to your audience’s level of technical fluency, offering deeper ...Read More