Month: November 2008

Elections ARE marketing campaigns

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

And the fine folks at the Harvard Business Review agree with me.  John Quelch puts forth a great article talking about the marketing aspects of this most recent Presidential election going so far as to call it a case study in "marketing excellence."  Quelch lays out eight ways Obama and his campaign nailed it but the final sentence of the article caught my attention:

"But like any brand, he has to deliver now on his promises, both actual
and perceived. In the current economy, that will not be easy."

One of my main concerns about all of this (as a US citizen, not a partisan) deals with the reality that the best packaging, positioning, messaging, and branding might not always generate the best leader for the United States.  And, all this costs money…and lots of it.  According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the spend for the 2008 federal contests will top $5billion when it is all said and done.  That's billion with a 'B' and five of them with the Presidential contest being about half of that.  Wow.

The role of social media in B2B marketing

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

This is a good article via destinationCRM about a recent report from Laura Ramos of Forrester Research on the role of social media and the like in B2B marketing entitled  "Making Social Media Work in B2B Marketing." 

I think it's a good write up and consistent with some of the things I have experienced as I have tried some of the new tools and techniques available.  Of the many good nuggets, I think this one is very telling both in terms of the challenge and stage of maturity of these tools:

Although 25 percent of respondents say that they think
social networks and online communities help to build brand awareness,
they can't connect these tactics to the sales pipeline, which remains a
barrier to adoption.

Life event

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Took a bit of a blogging hiatus to welcome the newest member of our family to the world.  We are now the proud parents of another little girl.  She joined us Friday and everyone is doing well.  Getting reconnected and caught up so will resume posting shortly.

Stay customer focused when building a new product

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment
I have stated my affection for Steven Blank's Four Steps to the Epiphany
 several times on this blog and came across a couple of items relevant to it today via Venture Hacks.  The first is a rather lengthy Powerpoint presentation embedded below that walks through the methodology and process laid out in the book.

As I have said previously, this book is now required reading for my team members because I believe it lays out the challenge and steps for conceptualizing, building, and launching a successful product as an early stage company.

Focus on the customer, iterate often, and be prepared to have your assumptions be wrong are among the key takeaways.

Customer Development Methodologyhttp://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=customer-development-methodology-1225861832082350-8&stripped_title=customer-development-methodology-presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: market customer development)

I’m not sure the ‘good times’ were ever here

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Doom and gloom is pervasive in both press and company outlooks and the venture community as been abuzz about the end of the 'good times.'

Having worked consistently for early stage companies working to penetrate the enterprise for the past decade or so, I'm not sure there have been any recent 'good times.'

I have not found enterprise IT budgets to be lavish nor have I found sales cycles to be short or decision criteria to be lax.  I have experienced quite the opposite.

Building an enterprise focused business is hard and the good times have not been seen since the euphoria of the '98-'01 time frame if you define good times as the suspension of basic business principles and a welcoming market for broad innovation.

Actually, I would argue that there is still a hangover due to all the new, new things enterprises consumed during that period creating significant skepticism and caution in the following years.  The bar has already been high and will only get higher going forward.

A true picture of GDP growth

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

I thought this was an interesting image (via Paul Kedrosky) showing historical GDP growth with and without mortgage equity withdrawals (MEW).  Makes the last 7 or 8 years look pretty artificial in terms of real growth but maybe was initially necessary to get us through the last downturn and subsequent economic impact of 9/11.  Like all things taken to excess, there is a price to be paid and we need to focus on real GDP growth going forward.

GDP

Enterprise lead & demand generation for early stage companies (final post)

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

So I may have killed you with content on this multi-part post by now and I am sure there are some things I glossed over that need further detail and explanation.  Topics for another day…

Here's the final two entries below the full list linked to previous posts as appropriate:

1. Brokered introductions
2. Partner marketing
3. Direct outreach & appointment setting
4. Tele-prospecting/tele-surveys
5. Guaranteed lead generation programs
6. Sponsored email blasts
7. On-line advertising
8. Email newsletter nurture programs
9. Direct mail
10. Events
11. Market awareness – self generated
12. Market awareness – through a PR firm
13. Analysts
14. Print advertising

13. Analysts

  • There are two types of analysts – the large firms (Gartner, Forrester, etc.) and all the rest.
  • The large firms need to be approached and managed much like your prospects with a nurture program of their own – keep them updated on product releases, customer wins, etc and put regular briefings on the calendar.
  • The others are small firms or individuals that cover your space. 
  • Build these relationships, spend some dough on them to write a whitepaper or the like (that you can then use in a campaign per above), and collaborate with them on the challenges you face and ask for their perspective.  They are great sources of expertise and candid feedback. 
  • These are the same ones that will take a reference call, provide a quote, or make an introduction without the hoops required at the larger firms.
  • Analysts are not lead sources in and of themselves, but the large firms are often asked about vendor choices and your prospects will most certainly ask you for the latest analyst research on you.

14.  Print advertising

  • This is last on my list because it:
A.  Costs a lot
B.  Requires a lot of folks to be involved and
C.  Must be either highly focused or build on a brand that you have already established (something early stage companies have generally not done).

Awareness to Advocacy (A2A)

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

While attending the Software Business 2008 conference last week, I sat through a panel discussion by a few venture capitalists entitled "SaaS Steps Up to the Plate."

One of the participants was Gordon Ritter of Emergence Capital and he mentioned the title of this post during the discussion.  "Awareness to advocacy" is a key component of growing and scaling a SaaS company according to Gordon.  Essentially this is nailing the process of having people hear about you, trying what you have to offer, and then telling someone else about it.  This is consistent with traditional approaches to building a pipeline of targets and then making them loyal customers over time.  The difference with an on-demand model is that you can quickly reach a wider group and more immediately get a product in their hands to use and share with others. 

He also talked through the need to be focused on unit economics.  Meaning, how much does it take to acquire a customer or how much do you make on that customer over their lifetime?  Target 2-3x the annual subscriber fee to acquire a customer early on with it ramping down over time to 1 to 1.