FTP Client, SharePoint Client or Multi-Protocol Network Redirector

Technology marketing is hard. On the one hand, you want to position your product or service in clear simple terms that most people can understand. But at the same time, you don’t want to dumb it down so much that you insult the intelligence of the tech savvy buyer. Non-techies want to hear about how your product or service will benefit them, while techies may have a long checklist of acronyms and geek-speak that needs to be addressed before they can move forward.

Our WebDrive product is a perfect example of the challenges technology marketers face.  In simple terms, WebDrive maps a drive letter to web servers that run supported internet protocols. Because it extends the functionality of the Windows operating system, it’s not really a client application, technically it’s a network redirector. And because it supports many protocols, it’s not really an FTP client in the pure sense of the word.  What further complicates the issue is that some users may not know what protocol they are running – they just want to connect to their MyDocsOnline account or their corporate SharePoint server.  Both of these run WebDAV protocol, but if you don’t know that, you won’t search for “WebDAV Client”.

So in a world that loves to categorize everything, how do you categorize WebDrive for marketing purposes?  As it turns out, no one in history has ever googled the words “multi-protocol network redirector.”  Well, except for maybe me.  So you have to market WebDrive for each of the individual purposes it can serve:  both SharePoint Client and WebDAV client.  You specify the protocols for the techies amoung us and the applications for the less techie folks.  And then you rely on your excellent technical writing staff to guide the SharePoint Client users through configuring a WebDAV Client that happens to talk to a SharePoint Server. 

Maybe in my next career, I’ll market toothpaste. 🙂

 

 

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Tags: SharePoint Client, WebDrive

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