Archive for 2007
Pricing for Volume Is Just Hard to Justify
Complimentary analysis spreadsheet provided courtesy of the Wiglaf Journal. At a fast-growing entrepreneurial firm last month, I found myself casually drifting into a dead-serious strategic conversation about pricing. With growing customer interest and booming orders, the company had recently gone through an expansion in capacity. Their new capacity would allow for a 3 fold increase…
Read MoreTop 6 – April 2007
Sales Performance, IP, and Volume Chasing Don’t let inertia or apathy allow poor performance to persist. Make decisions and take action. Specific promotional events that are part of the industry wide annual promotional plan do not necessarily imply bad pricing practices. As the GM case points out, tactical moves should not be confused with strategic…
Read MoreThe Power of Engagement: Making a Case for Business Blogging
It’s a brand-new world and a brand-new internet. You’ve probably heard that obnoxious buzzword, “Web 2.0” thrown around and nodded knowingly, hoping desperately that no one realized that you had no idea what it meant. Relax. Web 2.0 is just a way of referring to the new interactivity and social collaboration emphasized now through new…
Read MoreWhat Does A Marketing Department Do?
Not too long ago, a friend posed the following questions to me…”What should a marketing department do? What should they be responsible for?” After reflecting upon the query, I came to the realization that my friend had asked quite interesting and thought-provoking questions for which there are not simple answers. For starters, the responsibilities of…
Read MoreDon’t Segment Markets – “Hire” the Product
The conventional wisdom is to segment markets by such things as demographics, psychographics, geographics, benefit/usage, buyer behavior dynamics and so forth. Now Harvard Prof. Clayton Christensen and a team of academic and real world marketing practitioners has come up with a novel approach focused on “hiring” the product to perform a specific task. They call…
Read MoreReview of Don Tapscott’s and Anthony Williams’ Wikinomics
Wikinomics explores an emerging business strategy in a world where consumers promote and, to a degree, own your brand. In his latest book, Dan Tapscott argues that you can ignore it to your peril or embrace it and be adored through the work of an unpaid evangelist workforce. Tapscott suggests to adapt, and quickly –these…
Read MoreTop 6 – March 2007
Blocking of Marketing, Investing in your Blog. The blocking and tackling of Marketing remains to Focus on the Customer, Manage Internal and External Partners, and Manage the Budget towards a high ROI on Marketing. Wikinomics suggests that your illusions of control are being replaced with the potential to reap the benefits of using the wisdom…
Read MoreThe “iPhone” Brouhaha
One of the more interesting intellectual property lawsuits in recent years is starting to unfold as two IP behemoths — Apple and Cisco — square off over Apple’s new “iPhone.” The alleged issue is trademark infringement. What make this such an interesting suit is that it really isn’t about trademarks. There are deeper business issues,…
Read MoreBad Prices Kill, Good Prices Sustain. Learn it or Bleed.
Novices to marketing often think that cutting prices to grow market share is a sound strategy. Somewhere between high school and the ranks of senior executives, most people do learn that cutting prices to grow market share may succeed, but at the high cost of profits. Unfortunately, the caveat is “most people”. Some people have…
Read MoreMultifamily Realtors See Benefits of Branding in Driving Internet Sales
Smart national and regional multifamily Realtors are increasingly seeing the value of branding to create an image for properties that are translatable to other properties they own. A by-product of the branding strategy is to drive prospective tenants to the Web where the Internet performs many tasks that individual rental agents previously had to perform.…
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