Marketing Targeting: It’s Not Just Where You Fish, It’s What You Put on the Hook
Back in the day I was taught that marketers do three things, memorized via the acronym STP: segment, target, position. Divide the audience into different segments. For example, dividing consumers by demographics or dividing businesses by size or industry. Select the segments that the company wishes to target for its marketing. For example, choosing small […]
Woe is Media: Lessons from Tidemark’s PR
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics” — Benjamin Disraeli. “All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.” – Marshall McLuhan, philosopher of communications theory and coiner of the phrase “the medium is the message.” “Modern business must have its finger continuously on the public pulse. It must understand the […]
Two Rules and One Strong Suggestion
I’ve noticed in briefings with some emerging companies recently that things have gotten too casual. The vendors set up calls but then show up with nothing to say. They almost dare me to interview them and expect that I’ve spent a half hour on their websites learning all about their solutions. I haven’t. You haven’t […]
Best deal I ever negotiated
In the $ 10+ billion of technology contracts I have negotiated for clients over my career, I have been known to do some creative terms and conditions. But I am really proud of what I just negotiated for myself this morning. I get between 15 to 25 PR emails a day. It’s my fault – […]
There’s PR. And there’s Dumb PR. And there’s Even Dumber PR. And No CRM System Can Save Them.
The best CRM system can’t help you if your sales / marketing team is clueless. Here’s a ridiculous email I’ve just received. Name removed to protect the (not-so) innocent X. Y. kindly requests a meeting Hi Zoli, In celebrating our 40th anniversary, I’ve been given the privilege to manage the relationship between your organization and […]
The Thing About Analysts – And PR/Marketing Folks
I was reading Ray Wang’s great post on “The 7 Tenets of Building a Star Analyst Firm” and then Vinnie Mirchandani’s follow up “More Tenets for the Nex Gen Analyst” and it got me to thinking – on a tangent, but on something that might matter to all those PR and marketing people responsible for […]
FUD in the House of SaaS – More on Suites
Recently I wrote about the evergreen Best-of-breed vs. Integrated All-in-One Suite debate again, arguing: Call me “old school”, but I also believe in the value of having one tightly integrated system for most business needs, and I believe it’s true not only for large corporations but much smaller businesses. I don’t have CIO’s to back […]
The Inadvertent Freelancer (Part 3): Pre-Sales Homework
What differentiates one freelancer from another is their brand and how they present. Are you doing everything possible to speak to the prospect’s issues instead of speaking about yourself? Selling doesn’t have to be hard if you sell with your strengths: your subject matter expertise and your knowledge of the prospect.
Oracle Plays with the Fire that Burned SAP
There’s nothing sweeter for a blogger than irony, and the news that Oracle shut down a popular — and perhaps a little too honest — support blog run by an internal Oracle employee provides buckets of blog-worthy irony. Irony is all in the timing, and Oracle couldn’t have picked a worse moment to exercise some […]
SAP Influencer Summit: Best Practice in Real Time Influencer Relations, Twitter, Real Time Web etc
Today I came across a splendid post about corporate communications at last week’s SAP Influencer Summit by Barbara French, of SWAY blog. Barbara is a really smart thinker on new influencer models for business to business communications. The post should be essential reading for anyone that runs events for influencers – whether they be financial […]
