by Barry Curewitz
Marketers love talking about products like the Swiffer or iPod, two colossal successes in terms of brilliance in innovation and new product development. In fact, rumor has it there are more consulting firms taking credit for Swiffer's development and success than can fit into the new Yankee Stadium.
The puzzling question remains: Why aren't there more examples of unabashed new product successes?
To gain insight, we recently implemented a research study exploring the factors that have an impact on a company's ability to succeed in the ever-important CPG growth domain.
Our survey, titled "Creativity in New Products, A Reality Check," queried 128 senior CPG marketers to gauge the challenges they face in growing their businesses as well as the strategies and thought processes they employ.
In planning the research, we theorized that new-product development efforts could be influenced by both strategic and tactical elements. Therefore, we developed a list of five strategic and five tactical pitfalls that could limit a company's ability to succeed.
Then, we asked participants to identify those issues that currently challenge them; those they addressed three years ago; those they expect to face three years from now; and which single factor occurs most frequently.
Based on our experience, we hypothesized that strategic issues would be the most relevant causes of new-product disappointment. We were way off base. We learned that, yes, there are strategic issues affecting the outcome of new product activity, but the more relevant issues focus on tactical elements—those things that can be addressed in the short term.
In fact, 63% of survey respondents identified tactical issues as the leading prohibitive factors in the development and launching of new products.
The need to satisfy stockholders (Wall Street) has had a profound effect on our ability to identify, develop, and launch new products as reflected in the lack of human capital, financial resources, and company competencies (another form of human capital). Strategically, we're confident we know where to "place our bets," it's just that financial limitations prevent us from doing it.
The following data illustrate that three of the strategic categories we identified have become less of an issue in the last three years and are expected to become even less relevant over the next three (or at least remain status quo). These include the identification of differentiated opportunities, identification of the key consumer insight, and development of a motivating consumer proposition.
Two issues that will become more relevant to marketers have to do with competitive challenges and the elasticity of brand equities. It appears our own tactical issues have caused a bit of paranoia that the competition is moving faster than we are. And, the research further suggests that brand equities (perhaps our most valuable asset) have reached their breaking point and can't go any further.
Tactically, while all but one factor (the lack of product technology) are expected to decline over time in the amount they can limit our success, several of them are working against higher levels of frustration today, as compared with three years ago.
For example, the lack of human capital and financial resources are more relevant today than they were three years ago, but they are projected to be less relevant in '10 than they were in '04. Why? Because new product development efforts are often disrupted or delayed in order to meet the immediate corporate financial obligation—we're responding to the financial needs of the current quarter.
What are we to do? Well, we're called "managers" for a reason. We need to manage the innovation process so that we can support the best, most promising initiatives, with the limited resources available to us.
And, when possible, convince our management that additional resources are prudent in order to realize the success that the Swiffer and iPod have enjoyed.
Barry Curewitz is managing partner of Whole-Brain Brand Expansion (www.wbbe.biz); reach him at barry@wbbe.biz.
Published on December 11, 2007
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Recovering the Lost Art of Product Marketing
by Laura Patterson
When the CEO asks questions such as...
1. How can we bring products to market faster?
2. What can we do to eliminate development mistakes?
3. How can we ramp up sales faster and lower the overall cost of sales and marketing?
4. How can we improve our customer retention and referral rates?
5. What can we do to create better product margins?
...the CEO is asking product-marketing-related questions. These questions go to the heart and soul of marketing and actually go beyond what Marketing has evolved into—a function that has come to mean communicating the company's message and creating and implementing a product promotion strategy.
But if this is all Marketing has become, then Marketing has lost its way and is no longer doing its job for the organization.
Peter Drucker, the father of contemporary management, said "the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."
The essence of marketing requires that Marketing understand the market problem, enabling the company to create products people want to buy. Understanding the market problem is what drives product decisions, the messaging for these products, the key elements of selling, and Marketing's ability to encourage people to buy from your company.
From this perspective, marketing is knowing what to build and for whom; subsequently, a market-driven customer-centric product strategy can be defined.
This competency of defining and bringing market-driven customer-centric products to market use to reside within what was traditionally known as product marketing, a role that is disappearing from the marketing function.
Yet if marketing is knowing what to build and for whom, then this role, regardless of what we call it, is at the cornerstone of everything we do in marketing. Without this capability, Marketing will fail.
Today many companies no longer have marketers who bridge the gap between the market and product. Rather, they have replaced this expertise with product managers that reside in the engineering or development ranks.
The product manager is generally responsible for ensuring that a product gets created, tested, and shipped on schedule and that it meets the specifications. This function is primarily internally focused, bridging Marketing and Development. This person generally has excellent technical expertise but rarely has the marketing expertise needed to bring a product to market.
That may explain why Robert Cooper in his book Winning at New Products writes that for every four projects that enter development only one makes it to the market, and he estimates that 46% of all resources allocated to product development and commercialization by US firms is spent on products that are canceled or fail to yield an adequate financial return.
If your company is developing great products and services that are either missing their potential or failing altogether, it may be time to retrieve the lost art of product marketing to facilitate a more market- and customer-centric orientation. Organization and process changes might be required to make this transformation.
The following illustrates an example of the types of organizational changes that might be required.
In July 2002, Steve Ballmer reorganized Microsoft into seven business units focused on market segments, not products. Ballmer stated, "We were pretty product-centric in our marketing, which meant we weren't always delivering a higher-level perspective on the value of technology in key areas." The company embarked on a 10-year initiative to reinvent its worldwide marketing team in order to "institute a consistent customer value proposition across the organization." As a result the company renewed its focus on problems their customers need to solve, not products the company wants to sell.
The Microsoft example illustrates how a company can shift from a product-centric view to customer- and market-centric focus. This type of change requires that a company revisit the role of Marketing in its organization, because to be successful the company needs people who truly understand customers and facilitate the company's ability to define, develop, and market products that customers want to buy. This type of company will need product marketing. The transformation isn't an easy one and, as illustrated by the Microsoft example, may require management-team commitment and process and organizational changes.
It may take a while to realize the benefits, but recovering the art of product marketing will be worth the effort. As a result, your company will have individuals who understand your market and what factors and people impact the purchasing decisions about which products to buy. These product marketers will bring the insights needed to make creating the right message—delivered in the right place, at the right time—possible. The benefits far outweigh the investment.
With product marketing, your company will be able to prepare the sales channels to relate to the buyer and enable these channels to focus on the most effective messages and programs. You will be able to develop outbound marketing initiatives that move prospects into and through the pipeline to drive revenue and increase customer retention and loyalty. You will have people on your team who are always thinking about how to use what they know about the market and buyers to influence the product strategy.
With this change, your marketing will be more than just selling and advertising. It will help you define the target market, position yourself as different and superior in that target market, and permit you to stay ahead of the competition.
And you will be able to answer the five questions that we began this article with, because the company can now develop specific metrics and key performance indicators around time-to-market, time-to-revenue, time-to-value, and time-to-profit that ensure a new level of proficiency and confidence.
Laura Patterson (laurap@visionedgemarketing.com) is president and founder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc. (www.visionedgemarketing.com) and author of Measure What Matters: Reconnecting Marketing to Business Goals and Gone Fishin': A Guide to Finding, Keeping, and Growing Profitable customers.
When the CEO asks questions such as...
1. How can we bring products to market faster?
2. What can we do to eliminate development mistakes?
3. How can we ramp up sales faster and lower the overall cost of sales and marketing?
4. How can we improve our customer retention and referral rates?
5. What can we do to create better product margins?
...the CEO is asking product-marketing-related questions. These questions go to the heart and soul of marketing and actually go beyond what Marketing has evolved into—a function that has come to mean communicating the company's message and creating and implementing a product promotion strategy.
But if this is all Marketing has become, then Marketing has lost its way and is no longer doing its job for the organization.
Peter Drucker, the father of contemporary management, said "the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."
The essence of marketing requires that Marketing understand the market problem, enabling the company to create products people want to buy. Understanding the market problem is what drives product decisions, the messaging for these products, the key elements of selling, and Marketing's ability to encourage people to buy from your company.
From this perspective, marketing is knowing what to build and for whom; subsequently, a market-driven customer-centric product strategy can be defined.
This competency of defining and bringing market-driven customer-centric products to market use to reside within what was traditionally known as product marketing, a role that is disappearing from the marketing function.
Yet if marketing is knowing what to build and for whom, then this role, regardless of what we call it, is at the cornerstone of everything we do in marketing. Without this capability, Marketing will fail.
Today many companies no longer have marketers who bridge the gap between the market and product. Rather, they have replaced this expertise with product managers that reside in the engineering or development ranks.
The product manager is generally responsible for ensuring that a product gets created, tested, and shipped on schedule and that it meets the specifications. This function is primarily internally focused, bridging Marketing and Development. This person generally has excellent technical expertise but rarely has the marketing expertise needed to bring a product to market.
That may explain why Robert Cooper in his book Winning at New Products writes that for every four projects that enter development only one makes it to the market, and he estimates that 46% of all resources allocated to product development and commercialization by US firms is spent on products that are canceled or fail to yield an adequate financial return.
If your company is developing great products and services that are either missing their potential or failing altogether, it may be time to retrieve the lost art of product marketing to facilitate a more market- and customer-centric orientation. Organization and process changes might be required to make this transformation.
The following illustrates an example of the types of organizational changes that might be required.
In July 2002, Steve Ballmer reorganized Microsoft into seven business units focused on market segments, not products. Ballmer stated, "We were pretty product-centric in our marketing, which meant we weren't always delivering a higher-level perspective on the value of technology in key areas." The company embarked on a 10-year initiative to reinvent its worldwide marketing team in order to "institute a consistent customer value proposition across the organization." As a result the company renewed its focus on problems their customers need to solve, not products the company wants to sell.
The Microsoft example illustrates how a company can shift from a product-centric view to customer- and market-centric focus. This type of change requires that a company revisit the role of Marketing in its organization, because to be successful the company needs people who truly understand customers and facilitate the company's ability to define, develop, and market products that customers want to buy. This type of company will need product marketing. The transformation isn't an easy one and, as illustrated by the Microsoft example, may require management-team commitment and process and organizational changes.
It may take a while to realize the benefits, but recovering the art of product marketing will be worth the effort. As a result, your company will have individuals who understand your market and what factors and people impact the purchasing decisions about which products to buy. These product marketers will bring the insights needed to make creating the right message—delivered in the right place, at the right time—possible. The benefits far outweigh the investment.
With product marketing, your company will be able to prepare the sales channels to relate to the buyer and enable these channels to focus on the most effective messages and programs. You will be able to develop outbound marketing initiatives that move prospects into and through the pipeline to drive revenue and increase customer retention and loyalty. You will have people on your team who are always thinking about how to use what they know about the market and buyers to influence the product strategy.
With this change, your marketing will be more than just selling and advertising. It will help you define the target market, position yourself as different and superior in that target market, and permit you to stay ahead of the competition.
And you will be able to answer the five questions that we began this article with, because the company can now develop specific metrics and key performance indicators around time-to-market, time-to-revenue, time-to-value, and time-to-profit that ensure a new level of proficiency and confidence.
Laura Patterson (laurap@visionedgemarketing.com) is president and founder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc. (www.visionedgemarketing.com) and author of Measure What Matters: Reconnecting Marketing to Business Goals and Gone Fishin': A Guide to Finding, Keeping, and Growing Profitable customers.
HOW TO WRITE BETTER ADVERTISING COPY
by Brian Konradt
A successful marketing plan relies heavily on the pulling-power of advertising copy. Writing result-oriented ad copy is difficult, as it must appeal to, entice, and convince consumers to take action. There is no definitive formula to write perfect ad copy; it is based on a number of factors, including ad placement, demographic, even the consumer’s mood when they see your ad. So how is any writer supposed to pen a stunning piece of advertising copy -- copy that sizzles and sells? The following tips will jumpstart your creative thinking and help you write a better ad.
KNOW THE BASICS
All good advertising copy is comprised of the same basic elements. Good advertising copy always:
Grabs Attention: Consumers are inundated with ads, so it’s vital that your ad catches the eye and immediately grabs interest. You could do this with a headline or slogan (such as VW’s “Drivers Wanted” campaign), color or layout (Target’s new colorful, simple ads are a testimony to this) or illustration (such as the Red Bull characters or Zoloft’s depressed ball and his ladybug friend).
Promises Credible Benefit: To feel compelled by an ad, the consumer must stand to gain something; the product is often not enough. What would the consumer gain by using your product or service? This could be tangible, like a free gift; prestige, power or fame. But remember: you must be able to make good on that promise, so don’t offer anything unreasonable.
Keeps Interest: Grabbing the consumer’s attention isn’t enough; you’ve got to be able to keep that attention for at least a few seconds. This is where your benefits come into play or a product description that sets your offer apart from the others
Generates Action: This is the ultimate point of advertising copy -- it must make the reader react in some way. This doesn’t necessarily translate to buying the product immediately or using the service. Your ad could be a positioning tool to enable the reader to think about you in a certain light. Speak to your audience, or the audience you’d like to reach, and you’ll be surprised how frequently they come to you in the future.
KNOW THE MEDIUM
How you write your advertising copy will be heavily based on where you will place your ad. If it’s a billboard ad, you’ll need a super catchy headline and simple design due to the speed at which people will pass. Online ads are similar; consumers are so inundated with Internet advertising that yours must be quick and catchy. Magazine advertising is the most versatile, but this is solely dependent on the size of your ad and how many other ads compete with yours. If you’ve got a full page, feel free to experiment; more page space gives you more creative space. If the ad is tiny, you’ll need to keep things as simple as possible.
KNOW THE STYLE
Advertising copy is a unique type of writing. As the ad copywriter, your aim is to balance creativity and readability into something persuasive and entertaining. Keep the following points in mind when you write your copy:
Be Succinct: Messy wordiness will completely destroy an ad campaign. Use short sentences with as many familiar words as possible; save the thesaurus for a thesis or dissertation. Always make sure to use precise phrasing (why use five adjectives when one good action verb would do?); and eliminate any redundancies, such as “little tiny” or “annual payments of $XXX per year.”
Talk To Your Audience, Not At Them: Though you are announcing the availability of a product or service, avoid being clinical or overly formal. Write as if you’re talking to your ideal customer; use a style they’d use, words they’d be familiar with, slang they’d probably know. But be absolutely certain that you’re using these terms and phrases correctly. A recent McDonald’s campaign attempted to reach a certain audience by using the phrase “I’d hit it” in reference to a cheeseburger, unaware that the phrase is almost always used as a sexual reference.
Avoid Clichés: It’s easy for writers new to advertising copy to fall into this trap, but it’s a trap that can severely damage the writing. Clichés fail to ignite the imagination; and consumers so numb to the phrases will often skip right past them, effectively ruining the succinct element of your ad. If you find yourself tempted to use a cliché, think about the message you want to convey with that cliché and try to rephrase it in a more imaginative, personal way.
Always Proofread: It’s an obvious point, but you’d be surprised how many ads run in a magazine or on a billboard with an error of some sort. Go through your advertising copy carefully to make sure that every word is spelled correctly, the grammar is impeccable and the punctuation is dead on. Even the best ads can be ruined by a misplaced comma or dangling modifier.
© B. Konradt
Brian Konradt is a freelance writer and founder of FreelanceWriting.Com (http://www.freelancewriting.com), a free web site to help writers master the business and creative sides of freelance writing, and BookCatcher.com (http://www.bookcatcher.com), a free website to help authors promote their books.
A successful marketing plan relies heavily on the pulling-power of advertising copy. Writing result-oriented ad copy is difficult, as it must appeal to, entice, and convince consumers to take action. There is no definitive formula to write perfect ad copy; it is based on a number of factors, including ad placement, demographic, even the consumer’s mood when they see your ad. So how is any writer supposed to pen a stunning piece of advertising copy -- copy that sizzles and sells? The following tips will jumpstart your creative thinking and help you write a better ad.
KNOW THE BASICS
All good advertising copy is comprised of the same basic elements. Good advertising copy always:
Grabs Attention: Consumers are inundated with ads, so it’s vital that your ad catches the eye and immediately grabs interest. You could do this with a headline or slogan (such as VW’s “Drivers Wanted” campaign), color or layout (Target’s new colorful, simple ads are a testimony to this) or illustration (such as the Red Bull characters or Zoloft’s depressed ball and his ladybug friend).
Promises Credible Benefit: To feel compelled by an ad, the consumer must stand to gain something; the product is often not enough. What would the consumer gain by using your product or service? This could be tangible, like a free gift; prestige, power or fame. But remember: you must be able to make good on that promise, so don’t offer anything unreasonable.
Keeps Interest: Grabbing the consumer’s attention isn’t enough; you’ve got to be able to keep that attention for at least a few seconds. This is where your benefits come into play or a product description that sets your offer apart from the others
Generates Action: This is the ultimate point of advertising copy -- it must make the reader react in some way. This doesn’t necessarily translate to buying the product immediately or using the service. Your ad could be a positioning tool to enable the reader to think about you in a certain light. Speak to your audience, or the audience you’d like to reach, and you’ll be surprised how frequently they come to you in the future.
KNOW THE MEDIUM
How you write your advertising copy will be heavily based on where you will place your ad. If it’s a billboard ad, you’ll need a super catchy headline and simple design due to the speed at which people will pass. Online ads are similar; consumers are so inundated with Internet advertising that yours must be quick and catchy. Magazine advertising is the most versatile, but this is solely dependent on the size of your ad and how many other ads compete with yours. If you’ve got a full page, feel free to experiment; more page space gives you more creative space. If the ad is tiny, you’ll need to keep things as simple as possible.
KNOW THE STYLE
Advertising copy is a unique type of writing. As the ad copywriter, your aim is to balance creativity and readability into something persuasive and entertaining. Keep the following points in mind when you write your copy:
Be Succinct: Messy wordiness will completely destroy an ad campaign. Use short sentences with as many familiar words as possible; save the thesaurus for a thesis or dissertation. Always make sure to use precise phrasing (why use five adjectives when one good action verb would do?); and eliminate any redundancies, such as “little tiny” or “annual payments of $XXX per year.”
Talk To Your Audience, Not At Them: Though you are announcing the availability of a product or service, avoid being clinical or overly formal. Write as if you’re talking to your ideal customer; use a style they’d use, words they’d be familiar with, slang they’d probably know. But be absolutely certain that you’re using these terms and phrases correctly. A recent McDonald’s campaign attempted to reach a certain audience by using the phrase “I’d hit it” in reference to a cheeseburger, unaware that the phrase is almost always used as a sexual reference.
Avoid Clichés: It’s easy for writers new to advertising copy to fall into this trap, but it’s a trap that can severely damage the writing. Clichés fail to ignite the imagination; and consumers so numb to the phrases will often skip right past them, effectively ruining the succinct element of your ad. If you find yourself tempted to use a cliché, think about the message you want to convey with that cliché and try to rephrase it in a more imaginative, personal way.
Always Proofread: It’s an obvious point, but you’d be surprised how many ads run in a magazine or on a billboard with an error of some sort. Go through your advertising copy carefully to make sure that every word is spelled correctly, the grammar is impeccable and the punctuation is dead on. Even the best ads can be ruined by a misplaced comma or dangling modifier.
© B. Konradt
Brian Konradt is a freelance writer and founder of FreelanceWriting.Com (http://www.freelancewriting.com), a free web site to help writers master the business and creative sides of freelance writing, and BookCatcher.com (http://www.bookcatcher.com), a free website to help authors promote their books.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Web Measurement Strategies for Small Businesses
I've just returned from presenting at an Internet marketing seminar targeted at small and medium-sized businesses. Preparing for the presentation made me think about how to coordinate an effective digital marketing measurement program when you don't have much of a budget. I'm a great believer Arthur C. Nielsen's quote: "The price of light is less than the cost of darkness." Still, companies must live within their means and small businesses often don't have huge amounts of money to spend on data collection and analysis.
So what's an effective Web measurement strategy for a small company doing business online? It actually doesn't look much different from a large organization's strategy. Just the scale and some tools might be different. A small business still needs a holistic approach to measuring its online channel and the right tools in its toolbox. It must have clearly defined online goals and objectives, which can be translated into a set of KPIs (define). A small business still needs the right processes in place to ensure its data's integrity.
In some cases, it might be easier for small businesses to measure online performance. Defining business goals and KPIs may be easier because fewer people are involved in the process. Managing its processes may be easier to ensure pages are correctly tagged and campaigns are properly tracked, for example. Measurement may be easier because one person might do everything.
Small businesses might find it harder to take a holistic view of measuring their online channel by having multiple tools in their toolbox. An effective strategy for measuring and optimizing site performance has four key components:
- Good market intelligence
- Sophisticated visitor behavior analysis
- Excellent user profiling
- Effective site-performance tracking
Market intelligence provides the context for the business's own performance. While the majority of a digital marketer's time can be focused on the brand and its site, it's important to remember that the neither the brand nor the site operate in a vacuum. External factors and forces are also at play. Larger businesses might buy into third-party data providers, such as comScore, Nielsen//NetRatings, and Hitwise. These services are often out of small businesses' reach and may mot even be suitable for sites with lower traffic levels. However, a small business can still uses online resources, such as government statistics and sites like ClickZ, to keep a breast of trends in the industry.
Visitor behavior analysis comes from Web analytics tools. Some sophisticated reporting packages are available for free or at low cost. Google Analytics is free and will suit many businesses' needs for a long time to come. (Microsoft is launching its own service soon.) For those willing to invest a little bit, other tools are suitable for small businesses. I like ClickTracks for its ease of use and some of its powerful analysis features.
User profiling is the process of getting to know who's using your site and why. The basic principles of marketing are about understanding your customers and meeting their needs. In our online environment, a business must know the following:
- Who is visiting my site?
- What are they trying to achieve? What are their goals?
- Were they able to do what they wanted to do? If not, why not?
This data can be collected from surveys, and there are plenty of cost-effective Web survey services around (SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, etc.) that allow you to create online surveys at a reasonably low cost. Just because a survey is cheap to run, it doesn't mean it's low quality. Pay attention to the type of information you're asking for and the way you ask for it.
Finally, site-performance tracking looks at a site's effectiveness from a technical perspective. It encompasses speed of page delivery, site availability, and responsiveness of transactional processes. A Forrester report on this subject shows that users find slow Web sites are less interesting, less believable, and less trustworthy. If you're a small business trying to cut through the Internet's noise, don't burden your site with these perceptions. Tracking and measuring your site's speed are an important component of the mix. If you can't afford to buy into continuous services such as Keynote Systems or Gomez, find sites to test your site speed for free or on an ad-hoc basis.
For small businesses, the price of light may not be the actual price you need to pay for data services but rather the time you need to spend managing, interpreting, and understanding the data you can get. In this competitive environment, doesn't it make sense to work smarter?
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Apps Us Marketers Can't Live Without
Here at VerticalResponse we have roughly 70% of all employees using Apple computers. Our engineering department refuses to use anything else, and our latest convert was our Vice President of Product Management, Josh, who is on the latest Macbook Pro - where if he really needs to, he can run Windows.
As a side note, check out one of our customers, Due Maternity, talking about us on the Apple website.
We love our Macs and we love web-based software (after all, our product is web-based). I figured I'd share some Apple-specific software that works for us and web-based software that anyone can use. I've asked Alf, our Director of Marcom, and Ivan, our Web Producer, to weigh in on what they like too.
Janine's Picks
 | Typepad - Online tool for blogging. I use it to publish this blog - it's about $5/month and totally easy to use. |
 | Salesforce.com - Online CRM tool for managing contacts and marketing to them. You can use VR from within this application. It has a few limitations with a Mac but still worth it! Just $95/month or $65/month depending on your flavor. The best part? You can use VerticalResponse right from within you salesforce account, then when someone clicks or opens your email, it is reported right back into the lead record. Booyah! |
 | FileMaker - Software to customize and store your database if you aren't into the online thing like Salesforce.com. $299 for the product, and you can totally customize your database. |
 | NewsGator - This is a great online tool for tracking keywords that appear on blogs and in the online world. We use it to see who is talking about us, and better yet, who is talking about our competition. You can really track where your press releases are being picked up more or less, real-time. I think we pay about $15/month. |
Alf's Picks
 | Firefox Extensions - Alone, Firefox is a great browser, but add the treasure trove of extentions available, and it becomes an invaluable tool for marketers and developers alike. On the marketing side, one of my favorites is SearchStatus, it shows me the Google PageRank & Alexa Rank for any page I browse right in my status bar and lets me instantly check a page's keyword density, backlinks & indexed pages in a variety of search engines (among a few other goodies). On the development side Web Developer is da bomb, I know there's been a lot of buzz about FireBug (I have that one installed too) with all its Web 2oh AJAXy Goodness, but my loyalty is still with Web Developer ... it's just too useful. |
 | Apple Keynote (Mac Only) - Them special effects is fantastic. Mac only (you can save to ppt for pc but why?) presentations & slide shows, this app kicks PowerPoint's *#$%. We use it to create the big-screen product presentaions for our trade show booth, and it's as easy as pie to use. Sync it up to a playlist in your iTunes library...click... and you have yourself an instant soundtrack, Rock On! Don't beleve me? Visit us at a tradeshow and see for yourself. |
 | OmniOutliner (Mac Only) - When I need to structure my thoughts on various marketing projects, I find OmniOutliner from the Omni Group to be the simplest hierarchical outlining app around. You can organize almost anything with this app, complex road maps, or simple to-do list. Its super flexibility and scriptability make it an irreplaceable tool. Can't wait to get my hands on Omni's sister app OmniPlan once its out of beta. |
Ivan's Picks
 | QuickSilver (Mac Only) - Remember the LiveStrong bracelet at the apex of its popularity? Being marginally tech-savvy and not having this installed on your Apple is like forgetting to wear your LiveStrong bracelet in 2004. If you are fond of keyboard shortcuts, this is the app for you. Despite its overbearing trendiness, it turns out there is reason it fosters zealotry among its users - if you take the time to learn it, it really speeds up your workflow while simultaneously impressing your haughty, hipster friends. |
 | NetNewsWire (Mac Only) - Just about every site these days has a news feed you can subscribe to, and this gem for OS X is the best way to manage those news feed subscriptions. Subscribe to all your competitor's feeds, industry blogs and publications. Become one with your business' marketplace. There is a free version (NetNewsWire Lite) and one you can purchase ($29.95). The paid version integrates into your NewsGator account, allowing you to synchronize your feed subscriptions across multiple computers, and even access them through a web browser if you are jonesing for an information fix. |
 | Basecamp - This web-based application is a great tool to manage your ongoing projects, streamline communication and enhance collaboration within a team. It came quite in handy when we were re-designing our website and needed to keep track of the seemingly-endless task list. If you're an Apple user, you can also integrate Basecamp into your dashboard with either the Telescope or the Basecamp widget. |
Got any applications your marketing can't live without? Comment and tell everyone!
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Brand equity
Brand equity can be defined in many different ways. I have developed a simple, yet powerful, definition of brand equity. For a brand to be strong it must accomplish two things over time: retain current customers and attract new ones. To the extent a brand does these things well, it grows stronger versus competition, and delivers more profits to its owners.
Breaking down the definition of "brand equity" into its two components, we can more easily determine a reliable way to measure brand equity, and to track changes in brand equity over time. The components of brand equity, retention and attraction of customers, stem from people's experiences with and perceptions of a brand.
The ability to retain customers is largely experiential. High equity brands exhibit stronger levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. History has shown that consumers will continue to buy a brand that offers them "their money's worth."
The ability to attract new customers is largely perceptual. Because customers do not have actual brand experience, they must go by what they hear, see and believe about a brand. The two primary ways the market receives this information is through messages controlled by marketing, such as advertising and PR efforts, as well as uncontrolled messages such as press stories and "word of mouth."
Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding Research firm in Boston, MA.
Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.
This Article may be freely copied as long as it is not modified and this resource box accompanies the article, together with working hyperlinks.
Over the course of his 15-year branding career, Scott White has worked in a wide variety of industries: high-tech, manufacturing, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, banking, restaurants, fashion, healthcare, Internet, retail, and service businesses, as well as numerous non-profit organizations.
Brand Identity Guru clients include: Sun Life Financial, Coca Cola, HP, Sun, Nordstrom, American Federal Mortgage, Franklin Sports and many others, including numerous emerging growth companies.
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Saturday, December 15, 2007
Mini tutorial on SpamAssassin
Here’s a selected list of just a few of the hundreds of terms blocked by SpamAssassin, the most widely used network-level filter.
(Note: SpamAssassin uses open-source technology aimed at UNIX systems. My non-techie interpretation of this is that network administrators can configure SpamAssassin however they want.)
Some common trigger words or phrases:
- subject line starts with “free”
- subject contains FREE in all caps
- the word “free” in certain phrases (free offer, free leads, free access, free preview)
- certain words like “guarantee” in all caps
- words like “unsubscribe,” “leave,” and other list removal phrases
- using font sizes that are 2 + or bigger
- background in an HTML email that isn’t white
- HTML font color is gray, red, yellow, green, blue, magenta or “unknown to us”
- claims compliance with spam regulations or with US Senate Bill 1618 or House Bill 4176
- urges you to call now or claims you can be removed from the list
- the phrases: what are you waiting for, while supplies last, while you sleep
- asks you to click below
- uses a Nigerian scam key phrase such as “million dollars”
- money back guarantee
Eegads...
How can you avoid all of these? The answer is you don’t have to. SpamAssassin uses a rules-based system to filter mail headers and body text.
Basically, it’s a point system that assigns positive (it’s spam) or negative (it’s not spam) scores to a long list of trigger words, phrases and message headers. You have to reach a certain total before your email message is classified as spam and diverted.
If you’re accumulating negative as well as positive points, you may be under the threshold. For example, using the phrase “if only it were that easy” assigns you +2.0 points. “Free preview” gives you +1.7 points while “free trial” gives you only +0.1.
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