By Peter Hanschke
I was a panelist at the latest Agile Ottawa meeting where we discussed our experiences with the process and concepts of Eric Ries‘ lean startup methodology. Today, I will share some of the points I made during the discussions.
By the time I got to reading Eric’s book, I was well on my way to using and advising clients and my employers on many of his teachings. Even though he focuses on startups, the principles in general are applicable to larger companies that need to bring new products to market with little investment. Note that larger companies have other challenges to successfully introduce new products quickly with little investment — Clayton Christensen‘s book The Innovator’s Dilemma does a good job of outlining these challenges.
The area I want to focus on is the balance between investment, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and time to market.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Joe Pulizzi, Fast Company, ReadWriteWeb, SpinSucks and The Accelerator Gazette.
Five reasons why content marketing is no buzzword
Most people who aren’t involved in the industry on a daily basis may think that the term “content marketing” and the industry came out of nowhere. Joe Pulizzi puts together an interesting list of happenings that may (or may not) change your feeling on the matter.
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By Ken Rosen
Cadillac versus BMW
Neiman Marcus versus Macy’s
Macintosh versus PC
Dogs versus cats
Product marketing differentiates your products from other products. Brand marketing differentiates your customers from other customers.
Imagine walking on a solid, enormous, continuous surface presenting all the possible features of products in a category. Customers can and do wander anywhere along the surface: over here is higher quality, walk over there and the price goes down, walk over here and the product gets faster and more efficient. Product marketing inherently assumes this continuous surface connects all the products customers can consider as competitors.
Product marketers look for differentiation. They look for a spot on this surface they can own. And when things go exactly right, they look for customers to self-select based on a deep preference for that spot in the landscape.
In this sense, the Holy Grail for both brand and product marketing is differentiation. But how differentiation is defined in each case is very different.
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By Alexandra Reid
My colleague Leo Valiquette came to me with a thoughtful question the other day: When the same article is being syndicated across the web, does that have negative consequences for search? While I have some basic knowledge in search engine optimization I was eager to learn more and so I turned to Chris Biber, president and CEO of SearchingWorks and our SEO advisor, for answers.
Generally speaking, thoughtful content syndication is a great way to increase online visibility for a company, said Biber. But he also drew the distinction between content syndication and article marketing. All too often marketers fall off the tracks by not following best practices and resorting to black hat content distribution (aka article marketing) methods that can ultimately damage a company’s search engine ranking and online reputation.
Google’s goal is to find the most authoritative and relevant results for your search query. For content syndication purposes, Biber says it’s best to work with Google, not against it, to help it identify you as the original content creator.
“There are no short cuts to online authority and you don’t do yourself any favours by trying to trick Google into thinking your site is authoritative,” said Biber.
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By Rob Woyzbun
Marketers and their agencies need to shift from “cool tools” and “campaigns” towards an integrated design-thinking approach to products and services — it’s not about social media anymore, it’s about social business. And marketing basics!
I recently attended ICA Canada’s (Institute of Communication Agencies) annual Future Flash conference. Future Flash is a members-only event featuring some of the most innovative minds and companies in the global advertising, brand and communications industry. ICA members include most of the global ad giants as well as many independent Canadian companies, ranging from media planning companies, digital agencies and PR companies to full-service ad agencies.
The title of this year’s conference was Innovation, Brands and the Human Experience with speakers representing Canada, U.K., South Africa and the U.S.
The underlying theme for the conference was nicely captured by this snippet from the promo materials: “Too much technology, not enough value or relevance for consumers…”
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