WHAT’S A MARKETECTURE (or sometimes called MARCHITECTURE)
Marketecture is a strategic approach companies use to simplify their product offerings into a hierarchical structure. The Marketecture document combines a non-technical overview with the strategic positioning required to compete in the market. It can also be used to mask a company's weaknesses.
Marketecture forms the foundation for how products are packaged, marketed, and sold and provides the vision for how they will evolve. Product teams can use Marketectures to plan roadmaps, with each launch representing a new building block. Despite its importance, no standard or universal Marketecture definition.
At it's core, Marketecture is a non-technical representation of products, systems, and services and how they interact and relate to one another. The purpose of a Marketecture is to unify the various components of a product or service into a digestible format and illustrate the necessary core functionality versus what is flexible and additive. A Marketecture should make it easy for an audience to understand how products and/or services work together to solve problems.
WHAT DEFINES GOOD MARKETECTURE
Several vital characteristics can define a good marketecture:
It should effectively convey a single, clear idea. Using a multitude of rectangles and words will not make for good architecture and can result in a confused audience who will only remember a few aspects of the picture. Therefore, ensuring that your marketecture communicates the essential aspect of your solution in a concise and crisp sentence is crucial.
Secondly, a good marketecture should be distinctive. Borrowing ideas from others is acceptable. Copying is not advisable because the audience may have seen similar diagrams before, resulting in a lack of attention and interest. Copying will also lead to market offerings that need to be differentiated. A good marketecture should be unique and thought-provoking.
Finally, a good marketecture provides depth. Although it doesn't need to be overly complex, it should go beyond a simple logo or image. A salesperson should be able to use the marketecture diagram to explain your solution to a customer in various time frames, from 30 seconds to half an hour, reflecting vital aspects of your product without requiring any supporting slides. Overall, a good marketecture effectively conveys your solution, captures the audience's attention, and provides depth to your product.
5 SIMPLE STEPS TO DEVELOPING A STRONG MARKETECTURE
To develop a strong Marketecture:
it's essential to start by simplifying your products or services into core buckets, usually 3-5, representing the full solution you offer.
Once you have established these core areas, you can assign each product or feature within your offering to one of these core areas, highlighting which are fundamental to your core offering and which are flexible or upsells.
It's crucial to showcase your Marketecture to internal stakeholders and trusted external contacts to ensure it is easily understood and refine as needed.
Cross-functional sharing is also an opportunity to clarify and align product and feature names with their positioning.
To develop a Marketecture, consider hosting a workshop with key stakeholders, which can help to align and refine the Marketecture while also informing your packaging and pricing strategies.
A MARKETECTURE DIAGRAM
A marketecture visualizes a system's structure and interactions, typically presented on a single page. This depiction highlights the major components and their relationships while conveying the design philosophies underpinning the architecture. The marketecture should have a thoughtful design to include only the most essential elements, with labels and text boxes carefully selected to communicate the key aspects of the product offering or service within the structure. The goal is to provide a clear and concise view of the architecture that allows stakeholders to understand the system's structure and design principles at a glance. Below is an example of a Marketecture for Office Printer line.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BUILDING MARKETECTURE.
1) BRING INTERNAL ALIGNMENT AND ENABLES CUSTOMER-FACING TEAMS
The complexity of technology solutions can often make it difficult for both technical and non-technical individuals to grasp the bigger picture of how the different components work together to form a complete solution. Providing the bigger picture is where a Marketecture can provide significant value. By depicting the system's structure and interactions in a simplified, one-page format, a Marketecture can help internal teams come to a shared understanding of how various components fit together. Depicting the system's structure enables internal alignment and equips customer-facing teams with a clear and consistent message to effectively communicate with prospects and customers. Additionally, a Marketecture can serve as a platform for stakeholder discussions during the design, build, review, and sales process, providing a starting point for deeper analysis and exploration.
2) PROVIDE THE FOUNDATION FOR PRODUCT ROADMAPS AND EXTERNAL MESSAGING
Product Managers often find themselves deeply immersed in their day-to-day responsibilities, making it difficult to step back and see how their product fits into the bigger picture. Marketectures offer a valuable opportunity for Product teams to gain a high-level perspective on the overall solution and identify areas for improvement that will benefit the entire product suite. By aligning their roadmaps with Marketecture's foundation, Product teams can enhance the core areas and build on them with each new product launch.
Effective Marketing campaigns often highlight specific capabilities of a product or service that differentiate it from competitors. For example, Intel has positioned its CPUs as superior to AMD's products based on higher clock speed. AMD responded with Marketecture literature emphasizing other performance metrics and debunked the "megahertz myth."
Since a company's communication strategy should be tailored to its audience, creating multiple versions of product literature is often necessary. Marketectures, in particular, are designed with the end-user in mind, whereas technical documentation may be more detailed and free of marketing language. Technical representations of product architecture are sometimes called "tarchitectures."
3) PRICE YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES MORE EFFECTIVELY
Leverage your Marketecture to effectively showcase your range of products and features by creating distinct packages that follow the "Good, Better, Best" format, which can serve as the foundation for solutions selling. Ensure each package includes products and features from all core product areas, with incremental enhancements as customers progress through the packages. This approach will help reinforce your solution narrative and highlight the unique selling points of your products.
Packaging your products into bundles rather than selling them individually can help instill confidence in customers during decision-making by providing them with targeted choices that align with their needs. Meeting customers' needs can lead to higher win rates and ultimately result in a higher customer lifetime value.
To learn more about how to use marketecture as part of your product marketing strategy, contact us at B2C Product Marketing Agency. We are your is the go-to place for B2C, Consumer Tech, and Fintech startups, and we will work with you as your internal product marketing consultant. We have a history of success and are at the forefront of helping consumer startups grow. We are passionate about helping startups to grow. Click here if you would like to learn more about our product marketing services, or use this link if you want to set up a free 30-minute initial consultation.