By Francis Moran
I’ve been doing a lot of work with clients lately on refining their messaging and marketplace differentiation. It has always been clear to me that this is not a trivial thing. Unless you can carve out a unique value proposition for your offering, and communicate that proposition in an arresting and compelling fashion, you’re dead in the water. What I am increasingly coming to understand, however, is how courageous companies need to be in doing so.
Okay, maybe courageous is going too far; courage, after all, is reserved for heroes. Maybe daring is a better word. Here’s what I mean.
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By Rob Woyzbun
In today’s hyper-paced marketing and advertising world, it’s easy for marketing management to “lose the plot” related to the purpose of the firm, the understanding of the customers it serves, and finally the profitable creation, production and delivery of products and services.
There are numerous internal and external demands and distractions experienced by today’s marketing managers:
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By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are copyblogger and Read Write Web and three great articles from Fast Company.
Forget the mission statement. What’s your mission question?
Questions (as opposed to statements) can provide a reality check to a business and are designed to keep a company focused on what matters most, writes Warren Berger.
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from June 2011. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
Marketers are well familiar with the concept of segmenting their marketplace. Segmentation is the process of dividing a broad and undifferentiated set of consumers into ever-smaller segments until you have identified that group of potential customers that is the best match possible for your product or service. My wife is also afflicted with this contagion we call marketing and that gives rise to some strange conversations in our household. One such conversation a few years back resulted in our developing an easy-to-understand explanation of market segmentation we refer to as finding your gay Acadian dog lover. The key to segmenting the marketplace is to identify those traits — some demographic, some taste-based, many certainly geographic — that define the customers most likely to be interested in your product or service. Not only does the process tell you a lot about who you’re trying to sell to, it also gives you a lot of insight into how you might reach them.
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By Jason Flick
We made a very happy discovery this year at Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES): There’s a $200-billion market out there for the taking. A market in which almost every customer is unhappy with dated products and overall experience, but expected to tolerate regular price increases.
I’m talking about the global TV market (video on demand, cable, satellite, IPTV), which totaled $137 billion in the first half of 2012, according to Infonetics Research.
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Is that writer worth the cost of the ink?
March 19, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
When I worked in the newspaper business, there was a screening practice for job applicants that I wholeheartedly embraced – giving the strongest prospects freelance assignments on tight deadlines. There is no better way to gauge someone’s abilities […]
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Some dos and don’ts of governance
March 18, 2013 by Denzil Doyle
In my last article I wrote about the role that a board of directors can play in the success or failure of a company and how to go about recruiting one. In this article, I will give an example of a board model that shareholders […]
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Great articles roundup: Product-Market Fit, fundraising, content marketing, mentorship and social media
March 15, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Version One Ventures, Ventureburn, MarketingProfs, Techvibes and SmartBlog on Social Media […]
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Before you jump on the content-marketing bandwagon …
March 14, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
As Francis wrote yesterday, content marketing is nothing new. It’s the ways in which that content can be presented, distributed and promoted that has changed dramatically since the days when we had to use these dusty things called books to do research. I define content marketing as […]
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It’s still rock and roll to me
March 13, 2013 by Francis Moran
I gave a presentation yesterday to a new networking meeting, the Montreal Startup Breakfast Club. I talked about developing a content marketing strategy, and reviewed the rigorous methodology we have developed to govern our own internal content-marketing activities as well as those of clients […]
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Don’t give your customers reasons to ask for apologies
March 12, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
This is a story about a dining room set and organically grown frozen meat products, but it could just as easily be a story about a B2B technology product or service […]
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Drafting your own patent disclosure document
March 11, 2013 by David French
In our previous posting, we addressed the issue of getting to the point in drafting a patent application. I suggested that inventors would be well-served if they did make the attempt to draft their own patent disclosure document. I strongly recommended against proceeding without the support of a patent professional […]
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Great articles roundup: Accelerators, gunslingers, customer service and startup founders
March 08, 2013 by Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Techvibes, MarketingProfs, Co.Create and GigaOM […]
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The Future of A&R – Walabe : [...] http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/top-10-questions-every-strategic-communicator-should-ask... [...]
Traditional Marketing is Dead – Long Live Bikini Waxer Marketing | Scalexl : [...] pointed out by Alexandra Reid on the Francis Moran website content marketing is becoming more and more like journalism. So, it is not just about the content, [...]
It’s Summertime…and the Networking is Easy? | THE MERRAINE BRAIN : [...] In fact, summer is perhaps one of the times least used to network, yet at the same time has shown to be the most productive time to network. People tend to be in a brighter mood compared to during the gloomy winters-especially where I am from in England! Networking needs to be fun and not approached as another chore, like mowing the lawn. (http://francis-moran.com/marketing-strategy/social-media-strategy-why-meeting-in-the-real-world-matt...) [...]