By Francis Moran
Whenever I present to groups or prospects on my Four Steps on the Road to Revenue™ marketing methodology, the first sentence out of my mouth is always, “It all begins with the customer.” My point is that marketing must start with identifying a customer requirement that your product or service can fulfill. Too many companies, and especially technology companies, start with building a product and then go looking for someone willing to buy it. It is far more effective to first find that burning pain or unmet need that you — and, preferably, you alone — can address in a unique manner that creates high value on both sides of the transaction.
I will admit that it is getting easier all the time to persuade folks of the sense of this approach. Every time we have rigorously applied this methodology, the client ends up with a clearly defined market need, a well-described customer, a sharply articulated value proposition, a product-development strategy that compells alignment with that market need, and an effective and measurable tactical plan to bring the product to market. In every case, the process is anchored by a detailed understanding of the customer, whether that comes from the client’s own reliable knowledge of customer requirements or from independent executive-interview-based or third-party research.
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By Alexandra Reid
Holger Schulze recently conducted a valuable LinkedIn survey on 2012 B2B content marketing trends that managed to attract an immodest 740 responses, the majority of which came from senior marketing professionals in high technology companies.
The survey provides answers to content marketing questions about: what’s working and what’s not; who is creating content and what they are creating; and how marketers measure content marketing results.
Overall, the report demonstrates that content marketing is expanding dramatically in terms of tactics, forms and volume of content, with 84 percent of marketers reporting an increase in content marketing production over the next 12 months, and more than 30 percent of those respondents saying they are increasing their production significantly.
However, many B2B marketers are struggling in these activities because of tight budgets and are outsourcing much of their content production to agencies to keep up with competition.
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By Denzil Doyle
Prime Minister Harper is to be congratulated for his efforts to diversify Canada’s international trade so that we are less dependent on the U.S.
The cornerstone of his initiative is the signing of free trade agreements with as many countries as possible around the world. His advisors have obviously alerted him about what would happen to Canada if the U.S. ever becomes energy self-sufficient and does not need our oil, whether it be clean or dirty. They have also likely reminded him that Obama is a protectionist who has goofy ideas of how economies really work. (He obviously studied at the McGuinty School of Economics and majored in windmills and solar panels.)
Harper’s efforts, and the environment in which he is operating, can be looked upon as those of a mother bird who leaves the nest every morning in search of food for the baby birds. However, when he returns he finds that the baby birds have been defecating in the nest all day and that he really doesn’t have anything nice to show to the other big birds with whom he has been cavorting. The baby birds are fighting over things like how many extra worms they should get because they have pipelines running through their corner of the nest, or some of them want to throw their worms overboard and replace them with windmills and solar panels.
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This is the eighth article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screach, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screach is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.
By Alexandra Reid
When we last caught up with Screach, then called Screenreach Interactive, the startup was in the process of hiring a PR firm to promote its existing platform and to give the world an idea of the diverse projects that it was helping to create.
But just two months after beginning its relationship with a London-based firm, Screach decided to try a different approach to garner the attention of media, the general public and prospective customers.
“We couldn’t have been happier with the overall support we got from (the PR firm), and we’re definitely open to working with them in the future,” said chief strategy officer David Weinfeld. “However, the decision came down to the whole idea of how we were going to promote ourselves as a startup in a crowded market.”
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By Rob Woyzbun
You’ve spent hours to design what you thought was a perfect, logical, competitive, customer-focused, go-to-market marketing plan. Despite all that effort, the results are underwhelming, revenue nowhere near target, and members of your team are buffing their LinkedIn profiles. What’s happening?
Well, it could be a strategy issue or a problem with implementation, or both. Poor execution has been a weakness for many, especially in the tech and B2B sectors. The sad reality is that great implementation of an average strategy can often trump a poorly executed gold-medal plan. And while this all sounds like basic “project management” stuff, marketing implementation is arguably more complex and risky than for most business functions. Why? Because marketers often have responsibility for success without the ability to directly control all the downstream groups involved in the process!
In this post we’ll look at three ideas that can help bulletproof your marketing implementation.
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By Francis Moran
