A couple blog entries ago, I suggested that while most companies think of the “home page” as their entry to their web experience, most people googled their way into a website doing a deep dive to perform a surgical strike and get just what they needed and get out. I’ve started to think about it [...]
Tag Archives | Marketing
Marketing is the way we tell our story so it’s relevant to real people in their real lives. Telling our story is more than branding and logos but how the price, the value proposition, the routes to market and all that tie together as part of a whole.
The guides
I met last week with this incredibly zany guy named Nick Hayes of Influencer 50. His firm understands influencer marketing at a very deep level and he’s now in the Bay Area establishing a presence here. In doing so, he’s studying the top 50 influencers who influence the influencer marketing field. Trying following that. But [...]
Google is your UI
Let me paint a picture of the world today as a company sees it and then again as a customer experiences it. Company View: A company, say yours, has a “home page” where they organize the user experience so users can learn more about the company, its products, its vertical solutions and so on. The [...]
Spotlight on HP’s Campaign
Great marketing is about demand creation. It’s about filling an unfulfilled need, or creating a need and then filling it. When done right, it’s magical to experience. Marketing has many elements, of course. There’s: – inbound marketing which helps define customer requirements into the technology group, or – product marketing that makes sure the product [...]
The Devil Dials Prada
Knowing and understanding various ways to drive growth is tied directly to knowing what market (or segment) you’re serving. If Motorola, Nokia and other firms in the communications industry view themselves as handset makers, that’s actually just the start. For a certain customer segment, handset makers are in the accessories business. Apple’s iPhone is the latest proof that the market is not just about phones but about lifestyle. Apple’s phones are not even in user’s hands yet, but it’s a powerful signal to the industry–ignore design and fashion at your own risk.
Branding 301: The Advanced Level
Branding. Is only as meaningful as it is consistent. That means colors and type fonts. But it also means experience vs. marketing. So the questions: How consistent is yours? What will you do to make it consistent? What has to change to increase its value in the marketplace?
Has Yahoo Lost Its Mojo?
The jury is still out. There are those who believe Yahoo has lost the clarity of vision needed to complete with a juggernaut like Google, and an increasingly hungry Microsoft. They’re convinced Yahoo has lost the pulse of its community. Other observers believe Yahoo can recover from its recent stumbles, if it recaptures the cachet it once had.
Let’s quickly review some of the facts. Yahoo is battling slowing sales growth, a slumping stock price and a steady stream of executive departures. In spite of these troubles, it is still the dominant player on most of the web. Yahoo is the most visited website on the Internet today with more than 412 million unique users. Since November, 2006, it’s been battling MySpace for the title “Top US Visited Website.”
Who Controls Brands Now? The Rise of 360° Marketing
At the most recent meeting of the American Marketing Association, Ad Age reports, “The speakers at the podium kept changing, but their words remained the same. One after the other, the marketing world leaders took to the stage and declared that it’s time to give up control and accept that consumers now control their brands.”
Of course, in some ways, they always have. A brand has always only been as good as a consumers’ experience of it. The difference today is that consumers have lots of ways of communicating those experiences and trust each other’s views instead of marketers’ overt sales pitches. A more interactive environment gave them the tools to be better informed and less susceptible to the traditional one-way communication model. Consequently, they are influencing marketing strategies as never before.
4 levels of belief; 5 ways to market
Promise Phelon, CEO of the Phelon Group recently spoke at the fall WITI Conference in Santa Clara during a session called “the Changing Customer Conversation”, and introduced these 4 levels of belief. People are most likely to believe, in this order, from these sources: #1. Their own experience #2. Peers / someone they can validate [...]
Value of Customers, Real Time @ Web 2.0
I’m amazed at how much people love to listen to real customers. At Web 2.0, the longest line for the microphone wasn’t to ask a question to Ray Ozzie, Jeff Bezos, Bruce Chizen (who, notably, had no questions asked of him), or other industry leaders or innovators. Nope. The longest line at the microphone was [...]