I normally cover startup technology on this blog but occasionally I think it’s good to look at what’s happening in the wider world of marketing to see if there are lessons we can learn and apply to our little corner of the world. This week Starbucks launched Starbucks Via, a product they describe as a …
Last week I was having a heated discussion with another marketer about Google’s marketing and my position was that Google’s marketing hasn’t impressed me much. And by marketing I mean the way they launch, message and position products. The exception has been Google Chrome which I’ve written about before and I thought was a good …
Google Chrome OS: Dissecting A Great Marketing Announcement Read More »
Chris Brogan is a social media marketing smarty-pants. There are a lot of folks out there (in marketing especially) that bill themselves as "Social Media Experts" because, like, they use Facebook a lot, but Chris, my friends is the real deal. If you don't read his blog you should and following him on Twitter is …
What Marketers can Learn from Chris Brogan’s “Next Media Company” Read More »
You might not have heard of Wolfram|Alpha yet, but you will. The purpose of this post isn’t to get into what it is or what it does. Instead what I wanted to do is highlight a few things that I think that team is doing well from a Product Marketing perspective. They understand that positioning …
I had an interesting chat with a startup and I wanted to share their story because I think that it’s one that product marketers and product managers could learn a lot from. The founders of this company were founders of a successful company called Workbrain. Workbrain provided solutions for workforce management and grew to close …
There is a lot of talk this week about the new Facebook redesign and how much some users dislike it. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly said that “the most disruptive companies don’t listen to their customers.” On the surface this sounds completely insane! We’re supposed to listen to customers, aren’t we? Well, sort of, sometimes. …
Is Facebook’s Zuckerberg Right? Sometimes Listening to Your Customers is “Stupid.” Read More »
Why aren’t you running a customer advisory council? A customer advisory board or council is a great way to gain market insight, attain feedback on strategy and direction as well as build deep relationships with key customers. Here are some tips I wish someone had shared with me before I ran my first one: 1. …
10 Rules for Running a Customer Advisory Council Read More »
I’ve found that in general for a V1/Beta launch, teams are too focused on technology and not focused enough on customer pain points, user experience and the market. Why? Because by definition, they don’t have much customer experience yet! If you don’t have any pre-launch customer experience then what makes you think you know anything …