By Anil Dilawri
I saw close to 300 business presentations last year – lucky me.
Unfortunately, most of them were not very good. They were just plain boring and resulted in the most tragic response from their audiences – indifference. That’s right. In most cases when I asked audience members for their thoughts following a presentation, they responded with shrugs of their shoulders. They would say “I don’t know” or some other meaningless comment that really meant “I don’t care.”
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By Leo Valiquette
Just when I think it’s a dead horse that has been well and thoroughly flogged on this blog, I have a conversation with someone who gives it a fresh gasp of life.
It comes back to this: The real effort in a public relations launch begins when you hit “send” on the media release.
And yet, here I was this very morning, having a conversation with a new client about an upcoming PR launch that illustrated, once again, that too many practitioners in the trade would have their clients believe otherwise.
It was a typical touch base kind of phone call, in which I outlined the process of the standard Ramp Up and Roll Out media launch that is a fundamental part of what we do through our affiliated inmedia PR practice.
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Our blog is taking a break today as we enjoy Family Day in Ontario and our U.S. readers observe President’s Day. We would like to take this opportunity to express a warm thank you to all of our readers. Our blog recently passed 1,000 posts thanks to your continued interest and support.
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 Fast Company, Startup Professional Musings, Velocity and Memeburn.
We’re marketers, not soldiers: How combative competition is killing creativity
Douglas Van Praet argues marketers should focus less on conquest and more on unleashing the imagination of creators and customers.
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By Francis Moran
Ah, tech marketing. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
1. The learning curve can be wonderfully steep
It’s not true of all the tech companies and products I have worked with during my 25-year career, but my favourite clients have invariably been the ones that require me to go deep in order to understand them. I don’t have an iron ring on my pinkie finger and although I was once a Canadian math Olympiad, I abandoned the maths and sciences in favour of writing, journalism and business strategy when I hit university. (However, I couldn’t resist taking Calculus — as an elective! — in first year. And it was my best mark.) So it’s a real blast for this engineering wannabe when the subject matter is technically dense and I have to learn all kinds of new stuff. I’m an old dog but learning new tricks is one of my favourite things.
My enthusiasm for complex scientific and engineering subject matter does translate into a swift understanding of all aspects of a technology client’s business, something that has been a key differentiator for me over the years.
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Getting to the point in drafting a patent application
February 13, 2013 by David French
Inventors often aspire to draft their own patent application. This is something that they can and should do. But they should never go through the process of filing a patent application without consulting with and using the services of a patent professional […]
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Do you have the key ingredients for an effective board?
February 11, 2013 by Denzil Doyle
The recruitment and retention of a good board of directors can be formidable tasks in any company, particularly in a high technology company where a knowledge of the technology as well as an understanding of corporate governance is required […]
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Great articles roundup: Startups, MVP, customer development, content marketing
February 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 Mark Suster, PandoDaily, Jason Cohen and MarketingProfs […]
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The trouble with mentors is…
February 07, 2013 by Francis Moran
I just this minute got off the phone with a CEO who has twice been a client. Along with a technical founder, he’s been working on a new startup for about a year now, and he wanted to pick my brain a bit on messaging and positioning […]
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Does your business suffer from multiple personalities?
February 06, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
There’s a fitness club in my neck of the woods that broke away from its corporate mothership and rebranded itself with a new name a couple of years ago. I shake my head every time I visit the place and still see the mothership’s name on […]
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Is the ‘last mile’ of sales automation keeping your reps from closing more business?
February 05, 2013 by Jeff Campbell
A recent CSO Insights survey found that B2B sales people spend an average of 57 per cent of their time on things other than selling. In my 33 years in the technology business doing sales, managing sales teams and building software businesses it has always felt like something was missing […]
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January roundup: What does it take to get technology to market?
February 04, 2013 by Leo Valiquette
We were back at full steam last month after a welcome holiday break in December. In addition to our usual counsel about effective and strategic marketing practices, we featured guest posts on topics ranging from the ongoing patent battle between Apple and Samsung to regional economic development […]
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Great articles roundup: Series A crunch, content marketing, social keywords, crowdfunding, startups
February 01, 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 Silicon Valley Business Journal, 451 Marketing, ventureburn and Startup Professional Musings
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