I got a thoughtful comment on my post called “3 signs your market segmentation might suck” from Rob saying: I worked in a company that had some good software and some smart folks that solved hard problems. They were small, about $5M in revenue and they were in Financial Services, Health Care, Government, Automotive, Transportation, …
Segmentation Redux – Have one but Don’t be a Moron Read More »
In my last post I said I was going to talk next about how to get started with a decent segmentation. In my practical experience the whole reason you want to have a few target segments is so you can build company expertise around a particular business problem in a particular market. This understanding helps …
I think most start-up execs don’t really believe in segmentation. Sure, if I ask for their segmentation they dutifully blow the dust off a fairly nice looking slide that shows what markets they are targeting. Then I look at the customer list and the two things don’t line up whatsoever. The execs know they’re supposed …
We’re in the middle of a recession and suddenly all of the smaller companies I’m talking to are concerned about whether or not they should be dropping their prices. The thinking is that in times of tighter budgets, the lowest cost provider has a market advantage. Is that really true? And if it is, are …
The Risks of a Low Cost Provider Strategy, Even in a Recession Read More »
Traditionally really small software companies have Development, Marketing, Sales and that’s about it (Ok I am generalizing here – there might be a lawyer, a finance person or two, possibly an IT person, work with me on this one, ok?). Once the organization has landed a customer or two, and have started thinking beyond release …
Product Marketing vs. Marketing Communications (and MarComm Must Die) Read More »
We all know references are critical to closing deals but most companies don’t get around to actively managing them until the 2 referenceable customers they do have are all yelling “Am I your only crummy reference?! Pick on someone else!!” I launched a customer reference program from the ground up once and it was PAINFUL! …
I’ve had a lot of branding discussions this week that were spawned from my branding rant earlier. One of the most frequent questions I get is “How do I measure branding?” and then “How much does it cost to do that?” At the bigger companies I have looked at there were two big pillars of …
Seth Godin wrote a post a couple of days back called “Your Brand is Not Your Logo”, where he called the recent re-branding efforts of a couple of big consumer brands “Cluelessness on the half shell”. I couldn’t agree with that more. I wrote a post a while back on product naming and this one …
Logos and Other Stuff You Should Not Worry About Read More »