Aerospike
Positioning Against Deep-Pocketed Competitors
“I’d recommend ZOOM to my peers because I know of no other agency that has the proven experience and history of helping disruptive B2B brands achieve their goal of dominating a hill.”
Reason to Reposition
Outshining Big-Budget Rivals with an Advanced Product Portfolio
We’ve worked with Bill Odell three times. The third time as CMO at Aerospike when he faced two big challenges:
How to outshine competitors who outspend us?
How to align our cutting-edge product portfolio with our market position?
Bill knows positioning is tough. He tried other agencies and even took it on himself. But once he turned to ZOOM, he never looked back. Our creativity, techie deep dive and data-driven process won him over. The CEO and exec team engaged in the process and embraced the winning positioning strategy we crafted together.
Positioning Breakthrough
Bigger Category, Bigger Addressable Market
Aerospike had outgrown its NoSQL Database roots. Now, they empower real-time personalization for industry giants like PayPal, Wayfair, and Adobe. The challenge? How to define Aerospike's new capabilities that breaks through the noise. Through ZOOM's data-driven approach, we nailed it: "Real-Time Data Platform for microsecond moments that matter." This is the most clear and succinct way to describe their new category, while providing a thought leadership platform that Aerospike could support with examples of their customers’ moments that matter.
Breaking Through the Noise
“We closed the single biggest sales transaction last quarter, replacing a competitor that had been embedded for many years. The reason we could do that is because we positioned ourselves as fundamentally different.”
We discovered a unique problem when pitching Aerospike: it almost seemed too good to be true. Our concepts sounded like exaggerated marketing promises. But, by delving into customer insights, we found a concrete game-changer: significant server footprint reduction. This resonated with technical buyers who envisioned agility and massive cost savings.
We set out to make Aerospike's immense scalability tangible without jargon. "Billions of transactions" became the clear measure of operational success. In a survey, 90% of customers and prospects endorsed our winning pitch: "Act in real time across billions of transactions while reducing server footprint."
Business Results
Today, Bill is proud that the CEO, sales and the entire team is aligned around a differentiated story. He’s especially proud that, since repositioning with ZOOM, Aerospike has achieved historic results:
Best company performance ever
Doubled quarterly revenue YOY
Largest pipeline in company’s history
The single biggest sale, displacing a long-time embedded competitor
Bill attributes this success to their move beyond a single point solution to a value-add platform, unlocking opportunities they’d otherwise miss.
Market Insight
Aerospike’s Game-Changing Edge
We market-tested a number of ideas to nail Aerospike's Point That Matters (or hill as it applies) in both concept and words. Here's the data behind the winning idea, what didn't work, and why.
Data-Driven Win
Act in real time across billions of transactions while reducing your server footprint
90% of prospects & customers really liked or liked
“‘Act in real time’ on a large amount of data is a winner for the business.” - Prospect
“Reducing server footprint on billions of transactions is everyone’s benefit.” - Customer
Comparative Concept
Aerospike powers business at the scale and pace of digital
38% of prospects really liked or liked
“Too salesy and generic. Amazon, Azure, Google, every cloud vendor says the same.” - Prospect
Why Being Concrete Matters
"Act in real time" conveys agility and time savings
"Across billions of transactions" appeals to both business and tech audiences
"Reducing server footprint" is a measurable breakthrough, delivering cost savings
The comparative concept was too generic, sounded like marketing, wasn’t meaningful and couldn’t be measured