Posts Tagged ‘ basics ’
Donna Novitzky, CEO of Big Tent
This is a quick video that sums up the basics of marketing a start-up. The key points:
No. I’m not going to list the Top 5 Twits who cried ‘Awesome’ too many times. This post is about time. My time. Your time. My time is very important to me. I assume your time is important to you as well. Regardless of what you do, most people understand the value of time.
Lately, I’ve been noticing an increase in social media traffic with links to articles I “have to check out” or are “must reads for [insert random profession here.]” Let’s not forget the “Top 5 [blanks] for [blanking]” Often the tweet or post is nothing more than a link to their own blog which then links to the article or video. In many cases, the status update or tweet is self promoting their latest blog entry, which is a great way to get a little bump in traffic for your blog. Unless it is coming from a prolific tweeter/updater/blogger who focusses more on volume than value.
I follow people on Twitter because I am interested in their perspective or ideas. I follow people from whom I can learn. Sometimes, I connect with people to engage them in discussion and develop a relationship. But my time is important and so is yours. I don’t post everything I read, or even everything I find interesting. If I did, people would ignore everything I said.
I pay more attention to people who post less, yet still manage to say more. Live blogging an event is the exception to this rule. I love a good live blog from a good live blogger. (Follow @dweinberger Author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and c0-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto for some good live event blogging.)
If you are fortunate enough to have a voice online, have something worthwhile to say and don’t say it too often.
Twelve South Bass Jump Packaging
Packaging is not just an expense line item that can be marginalized and reduced to the lowest cost alternative…like plastic clamshell packages* – if you ship a product in plastic clamshell packaging, you are evil. Maybe you aren’t evil, but you are causing endless frustration to your customers at a time when they should be excited to have your product in hand and relish the “un-boxing”**
“….uh, Pete, you must be mad! Engineers and accountants don’t care about design of the packaging or pretty logos.”
Have your designed your sales funnel? or has it defined the way you do business?
This brings me to designing for revenue. Everything from your brand, messaging, sales team, methodologies and everything else related to how customers become customers, needs to be designed. As in a good architecture, design starts with purpose. What is the purpose of what you are trying to design? In the case of a revenue model or sales and marketing machine, that purpose better be revenue, customers or market share. Before you venture and migrate current processes to the cloud…consider the opportunity presented for a re-design.
Larry attempts to open a vacuum sealed 'clamshell' package.
* evil, lazy and environmentally irresponsible packaging that 90% of the time frustrates the customer and in some cases harms them. I have literally cut myself opening a plastic clamshell package. Larry David had a whole bit dedicated to plastic clamshell packaging on Curb Your Enthusiasm
Hear no evil!
Are you are satisfied with your results and see a history and a future of steadily increasing profits? Then you are golden. Don’t change a thing. If not, you need an audit. Here are a few more audit questions to ask yourself:
SmartCloud is a SaaS application that monitors messaging traffic and strips, tags and automatically saves important attachments to where it is suposed to be... without changing the way you work.
Openera 