By Francis Moran
Imagine you want to go to New York. And New York is a five-hour drive away. You start out on a certain route but after two hours, you haven’t reached New York yet. So you conclude that the route you’re on isn’t the right one and you change routes. An hour later, you’re still not in New York, so you change routes again. After yet another hour, you’re still not in New York, so you change routes again. And then you run out of gas. So you abandon your trip to New York; indeed, you begin to wonder whether New York ever really existed or whether there was any way at all that you could get there from where you were.
Nobody in their right minds would try to get to New York this way. Or come to those conclusions about getting to New York if their efforts failed.
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By Alexandra Reid
As usual, we covered a lot of ground last month on our blog. We talked about social media, customer service, content marketing, trademarks for small businesses, neuromarketing, the trials of RIM, government funding for startups and what they have to get right to go global. In case you missed any of our posts, here’s a handy roundup:
July 9: Trademarks for small businesses in little towns
July 23: What technology firms must get right to internationalize quickly
July 25: Have the feds finally found the right way to back winners?
July 30: The pitch from a neuromarketing perspective
And on a related note…
In addition to our series, our associates and guest bloggers were also busy writing on a great range of topics. Here are our other posts from July, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
July 26: Hard-cabled for success
July 31: A nice little story about the value of storytelling in content marketing
July 16: The best time to start a business
July 17: 5 qualities of a great ghostwriter
July 24: Throttled by those five ubiquitous rings
July 10: 7 reasons why people hate your B2B business blog
July 11: Your audience will judge you by your cover
July 3: The top 10 truths of social media
July 18: Where is Ottawa’s International Startup Festival?
July 12: Managing perceptions and product at RIM like Apple did
July 19: Why I like customer advisory boards
July 5: The price of everything, the value of nothing and customer service
Image: Cynthia Frenette
By Bob Bailly
In the July 13 post on Francis Moran and Associates blog’s Great Articles Roundup, this excerpt was referenced and it caught my eye: The startup pitch in the corporate context.
You can tell a lot about a company by its approach to the business pitch. This post argues that the corporate business pitch could take some pointers from the standard VC pitch, which should always identify a clear problem, provide a compelling solution and be differentiated, aspirational, inspirational, and visually communicative.
The excerpt references a longer blog piece written by Joe Lee that contains great practical advice on the corporate pitch. I’m pleased to say his ideas are also supported from a neuro-scientific point of view.
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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 Marketo, NextGen Journal, ReadWriteWeb, B2B Bliss, Ventureburn, and Montreal Tech Watch.
Building a B2B marketing brand advocate army
Great information on how to create a program to reward B2B brand champions, modelled after Marketo’s own champion program.
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By Jeff Campbell
I recently had a very refreshing day in terms of strategic marketing. I spent several hours with two entrepreneurs in Toronto who are building a great business. It is the way they are going about building the business that is so refreshing to me. It is a well-focused, pragmatic, and calculated strategic campaign to ultimately be the 800 lb. gorilla in a well-defined niche market. I am speaking of Shaun Ricci and Somen Mondal, co-founders of N4 Systems, and their safety and compliance service, Field ID. More about their success and future plans in a moment.
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By Francis Moran
