Software-Marketing-Advisor Blog » technology

Keeping Your Focus…

jlc — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:35:15 +0000

What’s the most important factor in product planning and sales/marketing for a technology startup?

In one word: FOCUS…

As a startup, especially in the technology space, it’s too easy to start thinking up all the exciting new usage models using your technology. Before you know it, you’re running three businesses when you should be focused on getting one off the ground.

How to deal with all those cool ideas that come into your head at the most inopportune moments?

Keep a notebook… that way, when you’re ready to grow the business you have some seeds of ideas to use as a starting point. But when you’re just starting out, it’s key to just pick one and FOCUS on it until it’s a paying business.

Bringing a Service Approach to Technology Marketing

jlc — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:42:26 +0000

On ebizQ, Phil Wainewright’s interview with the CEO of HelpStream, Bob Warfield, focuses on Social CRM and bringing a services ethos to sales and marketing.

With the rapid growth of social media, interacting with your end users and delivering customer-focused services are fundamental to technology marketing today. That’s true whether you deliver an end-to-end solution directly to end users, or are an ingredient technology supplier. Marketing must take a services approach…. in fact, that service ethose must permeate throughout the business.

I highly recommend listening to Phil’s podcasts to learn more.

Interview with David Taber, Author of Salesforce.com Secrets of Success

jlc — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:35:27 +0000

This interview with David Taber, Author of “Salesforce.com Secrets of Success” on the Marketo blog is a worthwhile read for any software marketer, especially those in the CRM space or those who wish to more effectively utilize their own CRM systems.

Key takeaways? They may not be new, but they’re important enough to deserve repeating:

Focus on lead quality, not lead quantity
Have a clear process to drive the sales cycle, and make sure everyone from marketing to sales understands their role in the process
Figure out and track meaningful, quantifiable measures of marketing success

Technology Marketers Should Put Customer Usage Models First

jlc — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:14:26 +0000

Technology usage model

Usage models are commonly used for technology and software products in testing, use analysis, UI design,… But I think one of the most important applications of technology usage models is in marketing.

What is a usage model? Basically, usage models are the ways in which customers use or interact with the technology product, software application, web service… whatever the product happens to be.

Some questions I think are important to ask ourselves are:

Why are usage models important in marketing?
How can we use usage models to improve marketing ROI?
Why don’t technology marketers focus more heavily on usage models?

Too often, technology marketers focus on the features… What cool things can this product do? What cool things can you do using this service?

But that’s thinking about it backwards…

Put usage models first, and that naturally gets you thinking first about the customer’s needs, and second about the features.