On Marketing

Giving Marketing a Bad Name

Carl Strathmeyer — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:15:51 +0000

Last week I received an email from a manufacturer of car racks. (I had purchased one of their products last year.) The email invited me to participate in a customer survey. I figured, “Hey, why not?” So I clicked on the link and started the survey. What an embarrassment! (more…)

We Don’t Sell Cars

Carl Strathmeyer — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:51:05 +0000

I happened to hear a radio ad the other day for a local Boston area car dealership. The tag line at the end of the ad grabbed my attention (as tag lines are supposed to do):

“We don’t sell cars. We help people buy them.”

There must be a zillion businesses that use some variation of this consultative-selling message. But there’s a lot about the message to like, especially in the Internet age. (more…)

Razors and Blades

Carl Strathmeyer — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:16:46 +0000

Chris Anderson, writing in Wired Magazine, reminds us that King Gillette achieved business success in the early 1900s by giving away razors so he could sell razor blades. He finds many more examples of the “give it away free” marketing approach in today’s electronic marketplace. Chris says:

“It’s now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned.”

But I don’t think that’s the lesson we should learn from Mr. Gillette. Or (for that matter) the lesson we should learn from the marketing of cell phones, ink jet printers, or iPods. (more…)

Who Do I Market To?

Carl Strathmeyer — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:05:00 +0000

You’re building a marketing plan for a new product. You are familiar with the product’s capabilities and features. You have identified several key applications with attractive value propositions. You have selected the most promising industry segments and narrowed these targets to specific classes of customers within those segments. You have decided upon a channel strategy and enlisted a few initial channel partners. All you have left to do is commission some brochures, data sheets and other marcom collateral and you’re ready to go. Right?

Nope. Wrong. You forgot something crucially important. (more…)

Interesting Times for Patents

Carl Strathmeyer — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:59:56 +0000

Patent reform got a lot of attention in 2008. Depending on your point of view, the United States patent system is either badly flawed or just fine, thank you. Court decisions have forced inventors and their counsel to reconsider the way patent claims are drawn and even whether certain kinds of inventions - such as business methods and computer software - are patentable at all.

What does this have to do with marketing? Well, before you start to market a product or service you had better figure out your unique position in the marketplace. This may have nothing to do with technology; your unique market position may be more related to something like channel presence or pricing. But if you are marketing a first-of-its-kind product, one element of your uniqueness will likely be technical novelty. And one way to protect that unique position is through the patent system. (more…)

I’m Still Here!

Carl Strathmeyer — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:46:15 +0000

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting new articles for a few months. The reason: last April, my wife and I took in three foster kids — two girls 14 and twelve years old, and their brother, 8. Needless to say, this has kept both of us very busy and I’ve had little time to sit down and write blog posts!

I hope to get back to blogging soon. If you have any topics you would like me to address, just post them as replies to this entry. And wish us luck!

Marketing to Investors

Carl Strathmeyer — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:59:07 +0000

I recently attended another meeting of the Boston Entrepreneur’s Network. The panel this month included Jerry Bird, vice president of the Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation. MTDC is a venture capital firm set up years ago by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and focused entirely on investments in Massachusetts firms.

The program that evening dealt with business plans: How to construct them and how to present them to the investment community. The speakers were all members of the investment community. In other words, they were the people who read business plans and decide where to invest. If you were an entrepreneur looking for funding, that panel was a great source of expert advice!

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Multiple Personalities

Carl Strathmeyer — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:06:14 +0000

I was thinking today about established companies and why they have such a hard time launching products in new categories. Or digesting a start-up that is launching such products. Somehow, the launch effort just doesn’t get off the ground. Sometimes this is obviously due to lackluster marketing effort. But maybe, even with the kind of blockbuster launch only a large company can muster, it doesn’t work.

Why is that? We tend to blame “largeness” or “bureaucracy” or the “politics” of large companies. But I don’t think that’s the real reason. New launches fail in established companies because they require the company to have multiple personalities.

Let me explain.

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Marketing to the Adoption Curve

Carl Strathmeyer — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:11:41 +0000

I recently spent some time with Jane Adamson and Rick McPartlin of The Revenue Game. These folks are consultants who focus on helping their clients (small and mid-sized businesses) figure out why they are not meeting their revenue targets. It seems that most companies in this situation look at simple-minded fixes like changing their sales commission structure or launching a new ad campaign. But Jane and Rick usually find that there are more systemic issues — for example, their client may not be making a clear offer to their prospective customers because they have not clearly defined the offer they wish to make.

Jane and Rick have a number of diagnostic tools that help them dig down to the root causes of revenue shortfall. But one of these caught my eye because it is so relevant to a company’s marketing strategy.

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Social Networking and Marketing

Carl Strathmeyer — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:33:10 +0000

Back in April, Mike Volpe of HubSpot presented an excellent webinar on the potential for using social networking sites as marketing tools. Mike’s presentation changed my view of social networking as a useful business tool. It also confirmed another important marketing trend I’ve been noticing — a trend that may make your current marketing programs totally ineffective (or even detrimental).

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