Why Your Marketing Campaign Sucks
Creating awareness for your brand and products is one of the lifebloods of technology startups yet in a world where so many companies are being created it becomes difficult to rise above the noise. Ever notice how some companies tend to be in the press all the time and your big new product launch struggled [...]
Hire the Right Type of VP Marketing — Or You’ll Just End Up With a Bunch of Blue Pens with Your Logo On Them
Apologies to all those to whom this is already well known. But, I know many of you have never hired a head of marketing before. And as soon as you get your MSP (Minimum Sellable Product) out the door, and you’ve got your first 10 customers under your belt — you’re probably going to want [...]
HP’s Cloud: The Giant Ship Lost its Way
HP stands still, not taking the initiatives and real risks expected of a true industry leader. At the Discover conference, I learned why some companies don’t last and why this IT giant is at risk of losing in this new era IT battle.
Why Lead Velocity Rate (LVR) Is The Most Important Metric in SaaS
One thing that is great in SaaS, from a 20,000 foot perspective at least, is You Can See The Future. It’s the benefit of a recurring revenue stream in a B2B model. If you did $100k last month, and have grown 6% a month each month for the last 12 mos, I can pretty much [...]
54% of blog posts contain pure facts
A post by Dion Hinchcliffe on “social business maturity” made me laugh and cry at the same time. It’s one of those misleading semi-analytical semi-research posts that will be joyfully accepted by most people as solid truth. However, it ain’t. If it’s anything solid, it’s solid suggestimation. Why? The post smacks the reader in the face [...]
Read before you share – otherwise it’s gossip
A rubbish post by Business Insider titled “This Survey Is Devastating For Microsoft: 42% Of Windows Users Plan To Switch To Apple” and a very dubious post by the New York Times titled “The Tablet Market Grows Cluttered” drew my attention today – the latter claimed that About 98 percent of Web traffic from tablets comes [...]
Marketing Your Collaboration Initiative Internally, a Lesson from Yum! Brands
We underestimate the crucial role that marketing plays when it comes to enterprise collaboration initiatives. I’m not necessarily referring to the marketing department but to how the organization notifies and encourages employees to participate. When companies release a new product or service they spend a considerable amount of time and resources behind marketing, messaging and branding. [...]
Microsoft, the bleedin’ advertisers
This week Microsoft produced their annual report for 2012. It’s been commented on by many and the main theme seems to be that they’ve reported their first quarterly loss since ages (or ever). Well, yes. And so what? The Online Services Division, a eufemism for “we wanna go where Google went” has been a [...]
Book Launch Party for “The Collaborative Organization” in San Francisco (first 200 people)
Fresh on heels of the book announcement I wanted to let everyone know that on July 26th I’m going to be having a book party in San Francisco from 6-9 pm at the Mindjet Corporation office which is in downtown San Francisco at: 1160 Battery Street East, 4th floor San Francisco , CA 94111 Mindjet is [...]
Why Your Presentations Suck!
Ok, so everybody’s presentations don’t suck. But the vast majority of them do. I know I’m not the first person to make this statement. I’d include a list of others who have said it but it would take more space than my entire blog does. Take this example slide deck from a presentation I saw [...]
Marketing Presentation from Blue Glass Conference
I recently spoke at the Blue Glass conference on the topic of marketing. I’ll write up some thoughts in a blog post format soon. I’ve been spending time looking at marketing conversion metrics at portfolio companies lately. We’ve been testing things like: How do Facebook “Likes” perform relative to FB ads that drive you directly [...]
SaaS Branding | 6 Challenges of Killer Cloud Brands
SaaS branding has some unique challenges that aren’t covered in the average MBA program. As a new communication channel, the Internet has altered the rules of branding for almost every category of product. However, cloud brands that owe their very existence to the Internet often find that the message, the medium and the merchandise are [...]
The New New Metrics for Advertising: The SuperBowl Versus the Academy Awards (infographic)
For big brands acquiring customers it used to be a simple formula. Create a great ad + advertise in media with a large audience of potential customers + have a call to action = sales. Brands that follow the old formula can still advertise to millions of people and have plenty of traditional brand impressions. [...]
B2B Startup Marketing | Blog Your Way to Leads
B2B startup marketing is tough. It used to be that you could polish off a high level message and a slide deck and let the salesperson handle it from there. Today, online marketing is the primary driver of revenue at the typical B2B startup. The new breed of B2B buyer expects your online content to [...]
Afraid of socmediots? Email works just as well.
A giant reputation drama has been unfolding in the past days: Ocean Marketing’s Paul Cristoforo has made a complete ass of himself and his company. A nice compilation is provided by Doug Collins on his blog, and it’s aptly called How to Commit Career Suicide The (apparently almost) entire email thread can be found on [...]
