- Emerging Consumer Values: Why Brands Must Adjust by Claire Ratushny
Consumer trends come and go. What else is new?
Plenty. We're living in an unprecedented era when several critical elements—consumers' rising debt, higher costs for basic necessities, low savings rates, shrinking assets, and a growing awareness of environmental issues—have gradually come ...
- Software Sales: How to Do More With Less by Tim Keyes
"Do more with less." That is the challenge for software marketers today: to get better results from their marketing programs on increasingly smaller budgets.
It's important for software marketers to analyze the effectiveness of their programs and determine their return on ...
- Affiliate Marketing: How to Boost Sales and Minimize Risk
by Kimberly SmithAffiliate marketing is in a growth stage, strengthened of late by an explosion in the number of bloggers and other site publishers who are recognizing its rewards. But an affiliate program can be catastrophic if they are not well-managed.
- A Three-Step Product Commercialization Insurance Policy: How a GM Can Overcome the Odds by Michael Barr
Bringing a new product to market is one of the most costly and risky activities that any GM faces.
Voice-of-the-customer research and stage gate reviews have improved the odds of achieving success. But do they go far enough?
Three important tasks are ...
- Going Viral With Your B2B Marketing: Q&A With David Meerman Scott by Mack Collier
Viral marketing has been all the rage in recent years: Companies are intoxicated with the idea of creating the next video that spreads across the Internet and becomes a viral sensation.
But for every successful viral effort there are countless attempts ...
- How to Create Marketing Demos That Sell Products by Amy Gesenhues
One of the biggest challenges that marketing departments face is producing marketing tools that actually get used by the sales team.
You want to create marketing tools that help sell products, not collateral that sits on a shelf. So how do ...
- What Social Media Marketing Is Not by BL Ochman
Despite all the talk, the mainstream media coverage, the conferences, courses, and books on social media marketing, there's quite a bit of ambivalence, fear, and (sometimes) outright hostility directed toward social media by CMOs, CEOs, and CFOs.
All of this leads ...
- How to Sell the Experience When Features and Benefits Aren't Enough
by Jonathan KranzSuppose your product features are much like your competitors', and the benefits of using your products or services are similar. Looks like you're on the commodity train.
When a typical approach fails to distinguish your business from the pack, it ...
- Recovering the Lost Art of Product Marketing by Laura Patterson
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 ...
- New Products: The Real Challenge Is in Execution, Not Strategy 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 ...
- MarketingProfs Video: Seesmic Presages Video as a Personal Communication Tool by Matt Dickman
What do you get when you combine video, social networking, micromedia, and a very savvy French entrepreneur? You get Seesmic.
Seesmic is a social network where the primary content is video. Users record video, post it to the site, and other ...
- MarketingProfs Video: Simplifying AJAX for Marketers by Matt Dickman
Complex technical terms are often thrown around in the media or on blogs. Does the average marketer know what half of these terms mean? This series is aimed at illustrating (this is where the whiteboard comes into play) complex terms ...
- Six Steps to Give a Boring Product Some Buzz by Jerry Bader
There is no reason why every company can't deliver an exciting image to its audience; one that generates the kind of buzz and excitement usually associated with companies like Apple, Victoria's Secret, Benetton, Absolut Vodka, and Sony.
It may seem impossible ...
- The Four Pillars of Successful Product Launches by Rick Sklarin
Today's leading companies don't rely on chance for market success. They take a scientific approach -- just as they do for product development -- to align company resources and activities for maximum launch impact.
As margins grow razor thin and competition ...
- Three Ways (and a Free Flash Gadget) to Get Godzilla Ad Ideas by Steve McNamara
Here are three new ways for you, and your creative team, to trigger some gigantic ideas.
- Launching Your Product: Seven Marketing 'Musts' by Gwyneth Dwyer
Whether your launch is for an entirely new product or for a line extension, these seven marketing communication musts will put you on the path to success.
- Product Marketing at Motorola: Q&A With Marketing Champion Wendy White by Roy Young
Wendy White recently came from Intel to serve as Motorola's director of global technology for marketing and communications. She heads up marketing for all R&D, software, and early-stage technology incubation, and what's more, embodies the new-product-development breed of marketing champions.
Here, ...
- Marketing Challenge: Three Ways to Save a Product by Hank Stroll
This week: When you aren't ready to send a product out to pasture, how do you reinvigorate it? How can a company reposition its brand and increase sales?
- The Power of a Great New Product: How LeBron James Rescued the NBA Brand by Alan Sharavsky
How did the NBA overcome the 1999 retirement of Michael Jordan and a variety of black eyes that might have doomed a lesser brand? It launched and supported a new product—one by the name of LeBron James.
The NBA's resurgence ...
- Profile of a Marketing Champion: Unilever's Silvia Lagnado by Roy Young
Silvia Lagnado, new group vice-president at London-based Unilever, embodies marketing championship—in particular, the ability to "span silos" by building bridges between marketing and her company's many other functions to generate cash flow.
Silvia heads a team devoted to "brand development," ...