As cloud infrastructure platforms expand their product portfolios into the world of industry-specific microservices, one of the biggest challenges is to market these innovative solutions effectively.

Eron Kelly (pictured), general manager of enterprise services marketing at Amazon Web Services Inc., revealed what AWS is doing to get the word out about the company’s new developments — including 13 new machine learning services, eight new capabilities for storage, and four new capabilities for building internet of things applications — and how the company is marketing to consumers in such a fast-paced, innovative field.

“First and foremost, it’s all about education, right?” Kelly said. “We really want to make sure that whenever there’s a new service that comes out, we’re super clear on what does it do, what is the benefit, and how can customers take advantage of it.”

Kelly spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. They discussed AWS’ recent innovations and releases. (* Disclosure below.)

The keys to marketing effectively

While product education is crucial, making sure that education hits at different levels is just as important. Marketing needs to be simple enough for everyone to understand, but informative enough for engineers to dig into the technical details.  It’s always a balance, according to Kelly.

“We’re trying to position [products] in a way a non-technical CIO can understand,” Kelly said. “But we don’t want to lose track of those builders, those tinkerers that … want the knobs. Part of their differentiation as a developer is understanding all the details.”

It’s also important to get away from sales tactics that push quotas, but really making sure that people have the right option when they need it, according to Kelly. This comes down to education and communication with AWS marketing and sales employees, as well to ensure that every scenario a customer might have can be dealt with in an efficient manner.

“Part of our challenge as a product marketer is not only educating customers on our products, but educating the field on our products and which ones are most viable for which scenario — and so that’s a big part of our focus as well within the product marketing function,” Kelly said.

As its services and products grow at a rapid pace, AWS is committed to listening the customer and innovating from their feedback, Kelly added. “Ninety percent of our innovation comes from customer input,” he said. “And so now we’ve got a new wave of services we’re introducing, we’re going to spend time with customers, they’re going to give us feedback, we’re going to make those services better, and then we’re going to find new places where they want us to go.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc., sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE