2423 Posts Found

What seems like a simple purchase decision sits within a larger context in the customers’ lives. And as marketers, that context is critical, because the words in their heads will reflect their situation rather than your product. Therefore, the better we understand that context, the more effective our product and marketing teams will be.

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

What’s in your prospects’ heads? If you could stop people in the middle of their day and snapshot-read their minds, what would you find? You would not find a list of product features or marketing platitudes. You would see anxieties, fears, doubts, hopes, dreams and struggles. Therefore the best way to get past the attention filter is to talk about the stuff that is in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Inflation is painful, for firms, customers, employees, and society. But careful study of periods of “hyperinflation” point to ways that firms can adapt. In particular, companies need to think about how to change prices regularly and cheaply — because constant price changes can ultimately be very, very expensive. And they should consider how to communicate those price changes to customers. Providing clarity and predictability can … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Daniel Levy, Mark E. Bergen, Rose Semenov, Thomas Bergen | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Companies seeking loyal consumers shouldn’t take advantage of their tendency to stick with unwanted subscriptions.

Content: Article | Authors: Avner Strulov-Shlain, Deborah Lynn Blumberg, Klaus Miller, Navdeep Sahni | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Sunil Chopra describes how looking at combinations of product and channel through the lens of return on invested capital (ROIC) allows retailers to design omni-channel portfolios that align their products, service offerings, and pricing. By using each channel to improve invested capital turns or broaden profit margin, these portfolios increase the company’s value. 

Content: Article | Author: Sunil Chopra | Source: Management and Business Review (MBR) | Subjects: Industry Specific, Management, Marketing / Sales, Operations

What we are witnessing, they contend, is the advent of an economy in which data matters far more than capital, a change that represents “a fundamental reorganization of our economy.”

[…]

Up to this point, we’ve used price as the key determinant of how resources are allocated — what we make, how much of it we make, what we invest in, and so on. We’ve done this … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: James Surowiecki, Thomas Ramge, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Management, Marketing / Sales

Done well, content marketing helps businesses build brand awareness, increase visibility, and generate more leads—ultimately driving sales and growth. Yet, many businesses struggle with their content marketing.

Content: Article | Author: Swati Saini | Source: MarketingProfs | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Trying to change someone’s mind often feels like a fruitless pursuit, almost as if it requires waving some sort of magic wand or casting an enchanting spell.

Trying to change someone’s mind often feels like a fruitless pursuit, almost as if it requires waving some sort of magic wand or casting an enchanting spell. On a smaller scale, you might think of a particularly sticky … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jonah Berger | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Marketing / Sales

To provide a full view of marketing’s impact, the authors suggest creating a marketing road map that illustrates: the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns, the role of marketing programs in driving sales and satisfaction, the value of the brand and capabilities, and the impact of marketing-related activities in other functions.

Content: Article | Authors: Christine Moorman, Paul Magill | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Perceptual maps are the only way to understand what your position is in the market and how the market views you vs. your competitors. In fact, if you don’t have a perceptual map, in essence you’re flying blind.

Content: Article | Author: Allen Weiss | Source: MarketingProfs | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Product creators like to think of what’s possible: They dream about how introducing their product into the market might change the world. This is an appropriate framing — as long as it comes with a bit of humble pie. New products don’t succeed because of the wide breadth of features they provide. Facebook isn’t successful because it allows people to build groups, host events or … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Gagan Biyani | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Marketing / Sales

In a digital marketplace, mixing “freemiums” and promotions can actually be a money maker.

Content: Article | Authors: Harikesh Nair, Jonathan Levav, Julian Runge, Sachin Waikar | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

Whenever advertisers build their business around the strategy of talking directly to the customer, they become slaves to the math of interruption marketing.

Content: Quotation | Author: Seth Godin | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Advertising, Marketing / Sales

An analysis of over 1,000 case studies from around the world of successful brand building has found that there are 26 different “approaches” to telling a brand story, each representing a different but proven opportunity to positioning your brand and telling your brand story. Each approach can be summarized by a key question (or set of questions), which I share below.

Content: Article | Author: Ulli Appelbaum | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Understanding how a person wants to view themselves is actually incredibly valuable. It tells you a lot about how you can mirror that feeling back to them with your product while still satisfying their actual preferences.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jane Davis | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Market Research, Market/Investment

Understand the why and the how behind user behaviors, identifying which ones actually demonstrate value and which ones are potential leading indicators of a broken experience.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jane Davis | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Market Research

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Price resets can create significant wins. But if minor changes in price cause massive fluctuations in output-KPIs, there’s a deeper problem: Your product is not working. 

The solution is to build a more diversified, customized product and pricing model — moving away from one-size-fits-all and towards granularity. By doing this, you won’t only improve your unit economics, but your product itself will become … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Dee Sahni | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Pricing

One of the tricks that I learned is that at the beginning of every meeting you have with a potential buyer or someone who might use your product, always let them know the decision they need to make at the end of the meeting. It’s called submarining — you’re breaking up this long, really big decision of whether to potentially make this annual or multi-year … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ryan Glasgow | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Marketing / Sales

You can’t rely on your customers to figure out what to build. They can really only tell you what outcomes they’re looking to achieve.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ryan Glasgow | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation, Market Research