Does Your Firm Suffer from Feature Creep?

I have a software development client that is always complaining about “feature creep.” This is their industry term for a software development project that continues to grow as users determine they need little add ons along the way. Next thing you know, nobody can really remember what the software was supposed to do because it doesn’t really do any one thing particularly well after the weight of the creep carries it down.

I think a lot of businesses do this to themselves in their marketing. In an attempt to appeal to the broadest possible audience they add or make up features about their products and services in order to sound bigger or more impressive – thus creating their own version of feature creep. The net result though is they don’t really appeal to anyone because the message is watered down.

What if you figured out one or two things that your firm can get really good at and communicated that over and over again. What if your business was more iPod like? Here’s what we do, we do it better than anyone and we’re happy about that. What if you trimmed all the fat out of your marketing content and said – this is who we are, this is why we are passionate about it and this is the end result you can expect from a relationship with our firm.

See also: Featuritis

Like this post? Share it with others
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • del.icio.us
  • Sphinn
  • Google Bookmarks
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg

Posted by: John Jantsch on Jan 12, 07 | 7:07 pm
Category: Positioning | Tags:

View Comments
  • <pingback>...recent posts of John’s: Does your firm suffer from feature creep? (How true it is!!) Basecamp for Lead Generation (Very ...</pingback>
  • <trackback>Growin' like a 'shroom
    Has your company grown like a mushroom? You know...perhaps it has grown through referrals and you might have been tied up in all the responsibilities and tasks of running the business. By being so customer service focused, it's easy then</trackback>
  • That's definately true. I had to stop taking feature requests for a script I wrote because people were asking for features that would turn the script into an "it does everything" script.
blog comments powered by Disqus


Popular Searches

Small Business Marketing Magazines


Free - No strings attached - Business and Marketing Magazine Subscriptions

Target Marketing
CRM
Internet Retailer
eWeek
Electronic Publisher
Print Media and more


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial
-NoDerivs 2.5 License
.
Subscribe



Subscribe to the Duct Tape Podcast
subscribe via iTunes

Duct Tape Marketing System

Duct Tape Marketing System

Duct Tape System - Complete small business marketing system in 14 workbooks and 4 audio CDs.


Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Plan Pro

The Duct Tape Marketing System now comes as Marketing Planning Software. We teamed up with Palo Alto Software, the makers of Business Plan Pro, to bring you the most powerful small business marketing plan tool going. More info here . . .


Referral Flood by John Jantsch

Referral Flood by John Jantsch

Referral Flood - How to create a flood of new business without spending one dime on advertising - by John Jantsch

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter

First Name * Last Name * Email *

Connect Socially