Cloud, DevOps and Herding Cats
The conventional wisdom is that 2014 is that year that enterprise IT finally “rolls up the sleeves” and gets serious about cloud adoption. But what does this really mean? Basically we’re seeing the era of cloud pilots and proof-of-concepts in the enterprise drawing to close, especially around IaaS and to a certain extent PaaS. CIOs […]
CMO strategy session: The new discipline of ‘social lead management’
The relationship between IT and marketing is symbolic of larger changes taking place in enterprise technology. The proliferation of sophisticated end-user software, often based in the cloud, has created deep technology expertise in functional areas such as marketing. I asked the Chief Marketing Officer of LexisNexis, Steve Mann, for a snapshot of marketing innovation that intersects […]
Cloud Marketing, IBM Does it Wrong (personal letter attached)
The 102 year old veteran IT company seems to have taken countless steps toward the development of CloudSmart, the IT giant’s proprietary cloud that, despite its large investments, has not demonstrated any sort of progress… until now, that is. In July, IBM upped its game by announcing its acquisition of Softlayer, an open cloud platform […]
Tell your work story with an infographic
I have recently found myself updating my resume. Why? After 4 1/2 years at Spigit, I have moved on as the company has been acquired by Mindjet. It was a good run there. So I needed to dust off the resume. And you know, it was eye-opening how limiting resumes are. They are great for their […]
Marketing: Community emerges as a source of customer ‘truth’
During a recent CxOTalk conversation with Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction (disclosure: I am an advisor), we discussed the value of online communities in brand marketing. Although support organizations have long used communities to improve customer service and reduce costs, the relationship of community to marketing is particularly interesting. You can view the entire discussion […]
What job are people hiring your product to do?
I am a product guy, dating back to my days as a design student at Stanford. I’ve been a fan of Clay Christensen ever since “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” and even interviewed him for the student newspaper when I was a Harvard Business School student. Which is why I’m shocked that I hadn’t heard of Clay’s […]
Marketing: ‘Context will eat the software industry’
For years, marketers have used the phrase “content is king” to signify the importance of substance and depth in selling to both enterprise and consumer buyers. Meaningful content is a foundation of marketing strategies, influencer programs, and other efforts to attract eyeballs in the digital world. Of course, content as a driver of engagement and […]
Influence tools: the devil is in the details
For those of you who haven’t heard of Klout, let me give you a brief history: they started back in 2009 with a lot of marketing, a so-so product and non-existent service. They had two ways of handling criticism: either shower the critic in increased Klout score, or ignore him (or her). With criticism multiplying […]
SaaS Marketing | Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value
What’s the stronger driver of SaaS company growth: customer acquisition or customer lifetime value? The answer is yes. Rapid, sustainable SaaS growth is equal parts customer acquisition and customer lifetime value. Simply multiply these two numbers and you get your SaaS growth ceiling, the most revenue your SaaS business can ever achieve. Period. The end. […]
Sports marketing and technology with the New England Patriots
The business of professional sports depends on a team’s ability to attract fans into seats but also generate licensing, merchandise, and concession revenues. In this day of the large-screen man cave, with all the comforts of home, teams must work even harder to create an appealing stadium experience. Finding new ways to deepen fans’ emotional […]
Fake Testimonial Tweets Teach an Enterprise Lesson
In an effort to boost its ad marketing platform aimed at television advertisers, Twitter fabricated positive comments from several users. The company apologized, but only after the SF Gate newspaper outed these fake testimonials. As Twitter well knows, user testimonials occupy a significant role in the worlds of both enterprise and business-to-business marketing. For technology vendors, […]
The Right and Wrong Ways To Use Scarcity in Marketing
Nir Eyal is one of the top minds in applying psychology to the startup world. His posts are a must-read, and he’s also a nice guy. My only complaint is that I foolishly went barefoot running with him and developed a foot problem that kept me on a cane for months (I had a problem […]
SaaS Marketing | Accelerating Customer Acquisition
Tweet Me! SaaS marketing professionals know that customer acquisition is the name of the game. What they generally don’t know is that sustainable SaaS growth requires accelerating customer acquisition. In the long run, acquiring more customers is not enough. Your SaaS marketing strategy must aim to acquire more customers, faster. Otherwise, churn wins and you […]
Three foolproof ways to price your startup’s product
One of the big questions entrepreneurs ask me about is how to price their product. 99% of the time, I tell them that their product is underpriced. But this begs the question, how should I price my product? The advice I tends to be very specific to the product and industry. For example, I urge […]
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 […]
