Table stakes aren't differentiators
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In 2011, the accounting software company Xero changed its tagline from "world's easiest accounting system" to "beautiful accounting software."
At the time (I worked there as a 24 year old baby copywriter), I thought it was a bad move. My thinking was that "world's easiest accounting software" was super-clear. It was a tangible benefit, one that you could instantly wrap your head around.
Eleven years later, I'm willing to admit I was wrong about that. Moving away from "world's easiest accounting system" was a good move
It's about table stakes. Here's what I mean.
Table stakes are tickets to the game
Table stakes are the aspects of a product that people just intuitively expect. Like a/c in a car. Or double glazed windows on a new build house. Cameras on phones.
When Xero launched in 2006, accounting software was a waking nightmare. There were not intuitive, easy or (as far as i know) cloud-based options available for small business owners. So back then, it made a lot of sense to call out "easy" as a differentiator.
But, fast forward five years, and the landscape had dramatically changed. By 2011, Xero had something like 50,000 customers. Competitors like Freshbooks, Wave and Kashflow were popping up. Intuit was soon to launch Quickbooks Online.
All of these were much easier to use than the clunky stuff available in 2006.
Fast forward to early 2022, and things have just exploded. There are now 756 accounting software products on Capterra. All of them easy to use, most of them in the cloud.
That's the shift - "easy" is no longer an important differentiator for accounting software. Rather, it's just a baseline feature that people expect. It's not interesting or notable to mention it anymore, even though it was in 2006.
"Simple" and "powerful" - the bane of my existence
I thought of this because I keep seeing the words "simple" and "powerful" used to describe software like CRM and email marketing.
Both of these categories are similar to accounting software in that they had been around in one form or the other for aeons, but really exploded in the last decade or so. Consumers are absolutely spoiled for choice.
And as the market has matured, and all these competitors have shown up, the same thing has happened in these spaces that we saw in the accounting software space.
Certain expectations get bedded in. "Simple" and "powerful" would have been useful terms in 2007, when the alternatives were neither simple nor powerful.
But that was then. This is now. In a mature market, you have to work a bit harder to differentiate yourself. Customers have higher expectations than they did in the early days.
The interesting thing is that it seems to be only software companies who miss this point. Other mature industries intuitively get it.
For example, imagine a fast food restaurant using "burgers in just a few minutes" as its benefit statement. That would have worked in 1960, when fast food was an emerging technology, but fast forward to 2022, and you're just reiterating what customers expect from your category anyway.
That's why you don't see the likes of McDonalds bragging about how fast they can get a burger in front of you. Those are table stakes. They need to go a level further than that to get people to buy their burgers.
Stay on top of it
The point is, table stakes change. And they change fast. The feature that was a killer differentiator five years ago may just be expected by your customers today. The messaging that got your first 100,000 customers might not be the right messaging for your next 100,000 customers.
A great way to test this is to look at a bunch of competitors. If they're all saying the exact same thing as you, then bad news - you're probably bragging about table stakes.
And if this is the case, it's your job to figure out what your new positioning is going to be. Why do your customers work with you, and not one of the hundreds of competitors? Who are your best customers? Who has the fastest sales cycle?
Hard questions - but answer them, and you'll buy yourself another few years.
Have a good week.
Sam
PS: I'm trying to get more disciplined about consistent video production. Here's last week's one - covering demo pages, and how to make them more effective by selling the demo itself, not the product. Take a look on Youtube, or drop a comment on it over on Linkedin (it's good for my reach).
PPS: If this positioning stuff is interesting to you, you should read Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. All about product positioning, with really practical how-to steps. Seriously one of the best marketing/business books I've ever read. No this is not sponsored. I wish man.
PPPS: And of course, hire me to write stuff for you. Home page review for $799. Page-in-a-day for $1997. Bespoke landing page copywriting for around $3,500. Home page, about page and positioning work for $7,500. You know the drill by now.
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