Speaking your customer's language: learning from Huddle.net

While drafting new marketing pages for KeepMeBooked (web-based hotel software) , I was browsing around different web-based software providers, looking for some inspiration. I was struck by how well Huddle.net (web-based collaboration software) describes their product to radically different types of customers - from small businesses to government bureaucrats.

Here's the basic pitch for Huddle that you'll see if you are a small business:

Simply powerful collaboration to get your business rocking.

Starting at just $15/month, Huddle.net provides all the collaboration, sharing and project tools you need to get your team, partners and clients working together, regardless of where they are.

If you are middle-ranking civil servant in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, that's probably not going to float your boat. But maybe this will:

Making cross-government collaboration work

Foster innovation and drive productivity. Break down silos and support successful stake-holder collaboration. Deliver transparency and efficient public services.

Break down silos? Support stake-holder collaboration? Gobbledegook to most of us, but probably everyday, meaningful language for today's public servant.

Huddle presents these messages as different versions of their home page for each customer segment. You can scroll through each version yourself, but presumably Huddle will be targeting particular marketing efforts towards particular versions of the page.

As well as Small Business and Government, they also have versions for agency businesses:

Use Huddle.net to create a client portal that works for you

Clients can be demanding so give them an award-winning project portal with powerful asset management, online editing, approval workflow and task management. You can even brand it to look like your own system.

For corporates:

Secure collaboration across the firewall

Huddle.net's enterprise packages give you the added security, customisation and support you need to successfully roll out a collaborative platform to unlimited users inside and outside your business.

And educational bodies:

Affordable collaboration for educational institutions

Huddle.net compliments existing learning management systems or virtual learning environments by providing additional tools such as file sharing, task management, discussion forums and live collaboration.

Each version consists of a simple headline followed by just one or two sentences. Even with such limited real estate, Huddle manages to send out a very different message to each type of customer.

Each customer is getting basically the same product, but Huddle carefully emphasises different benefits to different groups.

Are you pitching the right benefits of your product to each of your potential customers?

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