By Leo Valiquette
In early May, I blogged about the need for everyone in the National Capital Region involved with getting technology to market to check their baggage at the door and work together for the common good.
It was a post sparked by my recent discussions with various entrepreneurs and other economic stakeholders at a time when the newly minted Invest Ottawa was getting its house in order and engaging in a long-overdue dialogue with the business community.
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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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By Francis Moran
When the Canadian federal government announced in its April budget that it would be kicking up $400 million to help increase private sector investments in early-stage risk capital and to support the creation of large-scale venture capital funds led by the private sector, I figured it wouldn’t take long before someone stepped up to tell the feds what to do with the three quarters of that pot of money that wasn’t earmarked for the Business Development Bank of Canada.
First past the post with its recommendation was the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance, or CATA Alliance, which this past week issued a well-reasoned report that examined and rejected three possible models for doling out the new money before making the case for Canada adopting what has generally become known as the Israeli, or “Yozma-inspired,” approach. The model would see the BDC — which is essentially the government’s own venture capital arm anyway — manage a competitive RFP process to select Canadian or international VC firms, or groups of firms, that would act as general partners for new funds. Those GPs would then recruit additional limited partners who would match or better the government’s contribution to create new funds of at least $200 million each.
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We launch new content marketing service offering
June 07, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
Over the past few years, working first on our own behalf and then with a growing array of clients that turned to us for help, we have refined what we believe is a highly effective process for the development […]
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Getting the marketing right at an event product launch
June 06, 2012 by Francis Moran
Last time we checked in with Screenreach, the company was dealing with issues at the Apple application store to launch the new version of its Screach application. After coordinating efforts with external organizations and working through the problems at hand, the team […]
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Levering the power of teamwork to drive a successful content marketing program
June 05, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
Running a successful content marketing program has many challenges, a number of which Joe Pulizzi expertly cites in his post, 12 challenges that stop marketers from creating epic content marketing. I propose that many of these challenges could be solved if […]
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Why RIM could and should bounce back: Mobile needs to innovate
June 04, 2012 by Jesse Rodgers
RIM has had a hard time since Apple’s iPhone came out. Apple did more than bring the world a touch screen and the app store. It took apart the carrier/phone mode on which RIM was an absolute genius at building a strong company […]
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Great articles roundup: Big news, Internet freedom, the road to ruin, marketing tactics, business tips
June 01, 2012 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 ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, Inc., Financial Post, and MarketingProfs […]
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May roundup: What does it take to bring technology to market?
June 01, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
As usual, we covered a lot of ground last month on our blog. We covered the Startup Canada launch, introduced a new “born global” startup concept, discussed the future of accelerators, and highlighted that the Canadian university ‘innovation gap’ is more illusory […]
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Canadian university ‘innovation gap’ more illusory than real: Kurman
May 31, 2012 by Francis Moran
I was invited a couple of weeks ago to facilitate a group discussion on the marketing of university technology transfer offices at a forum organised by the Technology Transfer Partnerships. The forum was held in […]
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The future of startup accelerators
May 30, 2012 by Ben Yoskovitz
I’m not much of a prognosticator, but recently Sarah Needleman from the Wall Street Journal called me to ask my thoughts about startup accelerators. She had found a blog post I had written (How to Maximize the Value of Mentors in Startup Accelerators), and […]
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By Leo Valiquette
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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...) [...]