‘Every company is a tech company…’ – but what if it’s not? 

‘Data is the new currency…’ – but what if it’s unusable?

Legacy organizations don’t tend to disrupt their own markets, even when they want to; having existing brand perceptions, deeply-ingrained processes, and perhaps sometimes a sense of inertia to contend with.

Marrying up strategic vision with market reality is complex, unwieldy, and imperfect. But the brand can’t be. Confusing messaging, unclear positioning, technology offers that look like add-ons, rather than integrated portfolios. All result in brands diluted rather than elevated by new technology and innovation.

In this blog, we call on learnings from clients in human and animal health – tightly regulated, ‘traditional’ industries who have successfully created disruptive, tech-led offerings. 

These are professions committed to caring for others – those impacted are patients and pets – and our work in positioning and branding them has given us insight into how legacy companies can maintain long-standing values, embrace digital change, and create compelling, empathetic brands. 

In working with these clients, our offer has evolved. We’ve become more embedded in their businesses as we support internal and external activation in a way that brings customers and colleagues along on the strategic journey. A joined up narrative has never been more important.

Here are some of the key elements to getting it right.

Articulate the offer

As products and services evolve, positioning and portfolio placement should be reviewed holistically. A thoughtful product architecture is the basis for a consistent brand, and a tech evolution that doesn’t dilute the masterbrand. 

New and legacy services need to be rationalized, regrouped and repositioned to avoid fragmentation and audience confusion.

It starts with insight. What are your sales team or customer service people hearing day in day out? How does the new service solve common pain points or complement existing products? How do new offers protect and enhance the ethos of the company? Clear, hierarchical brand and product messaging is essential to maintaining consistency and trust. You need to be absolutely clear on the ‘why?’ – what does your new offering provide to your customers that you couldn’t previously?

In making a move “towards tech”, you may have opened up a whole new potential customer base, but be wary of scaring off the old one. Personas may need to evolve beyond traditional job titles or ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Consider creating sentiment-level messaging for your customers and prospects: those that are eager to adopt, and more conservative folk. Test these messages and segment nurture campaigns accordingly.

Protect the legacy brand

Thanks to huge interest rate hikes, tech startups are winding down operations at ‘the fastest rate in a decade’. According to a PitchBook survey, ‘approximately 3,200 private venture-backed U.S. companies have gone out of business [in 2023].’ And – in theory – legacy businesses should have an advantage anyway, not least in terms of brand equity. It’s important to maintain the connection, heritage and trust that brought people to you in the first place. 

Any tech evolution should be rooted in the core offering that has made you successful to date, so talk in the language you’ve always talked in. Focus on the benefits of the technology and how it aligns to values and long standing services. Stay literal and talk about exactly who the digital offering is for, what it does, and the problem it was developed to solve. SaaS-style formats like micro-demos are useful, but as a legacy brand, you have the luxury of the support of the logos, testimonials, and proof points that your successful track record has unlocked.

Concerns about data use abound, how do you reassure the more conservative customer base while ‘exciting’ the early adopters? In sharing their data with your platform, think about other value exchanges beyond access to the technology. This could include peer to peer community and information sharing, or highlighting access to bigger data pools as business intelligence and insight, with your organization as facilitator. 

Manage internal expectations

You’re not just asking your customers and prospects to rethink perceptions and approaches. Moving to the iterative feedback loops and agile ways of working required of a technology offering requires a huge behavioral shift from colleagues.

Be realistic about how long this is going to take, tell a clear story about the vision of where you want to get to that people – both internally and your customers – can get behind, and offer a clear roadmap towards that desired future.

Be explicit about how they fit into it. How will their roles change? What information will they be expected to communicate?  What will the journey look like for moving existing customers to new services? Whose expertise will make that transition seamless? 

As your data grows and technology scales, there will continue to be new features and functionality for sales teams to get to grips with. There should be a clear narrative that everyone can grasp. Too many times, we see technical information and complexity surfacing, leaving sales teams without a clear story to tell. 

Create a robust plan for how information will be communicated and where sales enablement will be shared at the outset and ensure it’s fed as proactively as marketing channels.

Avoid mixed messages

Informing and empowering the wider business is key; from galvanizing brand ambassadors and bringing the brand to life for employees, to readying effective, consistent sales enablement.

We’ve seen outstanding innovations and messaging fall down due to a lack of consistency as prospects get further down the funnel. This often stems from the need or desire to push a product to market quickly, often before the business is bought in.

From C-suite to sales rep, everyone needs to be on board.

The agile, fast-fail nature of a tech offering doesn’t sit naturally within more ‘traditional’ industries. A mindset shift is required across sales and marketing, to embrace this constant state of change management. 

Strategy before tech

‘81% of customers expect faster service as technology advances.’

— Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer, 2023

Professional expectations are increasingly driven by consumer experience. Users expect intuitive, instant results, and transparency (through tech) into how those results were attained. 

Internally too, your martech stack, backend systems and data flows need consideration. How much do you transform existing processes and link them to new offerings? 

Any legacy company’s tech stack is likely to have grown organically, and be a little unwieldy. How do you integrate and share in a way that provides a 360 customer view and improves customer experience? 

According to our co-founder, Emmet, “Any organization going through this brand transition is innovating with purpose. The intentions are always good, and the need to stay true to brand principles and complement the existing offer is front of mind. The challenge is communicating the ‘why’ as clearly as possible. Whether new technologies are driving new services or new ways of working, the real challenge and marker of success is whether people – both customers and colleagues – share the vision and behaviors change. Afterall, no company will ever just be a tech company.”

About FWD People

Working as a strategic thought partner, we help legacy businesses market and sell technology in a way that enhances and builds brand equity.

We can help you unknit complex tech offerings; making them make sense and bringing them to market effectively. Let’s talk.