Breakthrough Marketing
(NOTE: I was chatting about valuation and messaging with my great friend Susan Thomas and was reminded of this blog I wrote back in 2008 about my very first consulting client Nimsoft. With Cybersecurity, Cloud and other valuations skyrocketing, it's a really...
Here's a simple way to think about layering your messaging from brand to product. Think of messaging in 4 layers, brand, story product and differentiation and answering 4 WHYs; Why WE exist Why YOU should care Why YOU should buy Why WE are different than the...
Last week proved once again that the cybersecurity market is alive, well and kicking for investment activity and returns. Three transactions of significance happened last week and now that we've caught our breadth, let's take a look at what we can learn. First, in...
A client of my recently lamented, "I was really hoping we'd find a silver bullet". I asked her what she meant. She said, "You know, the ONE thing we could say, the one sentence that would set us apart". I said, "Well, there might not be a silver bullet(yet), but...
Product - Market Fit is an important concept in very early stage start-ups. It is the thing that is perceived by founders and investors alike as THE milestone to signify that customers want the product and it is time to accelerate growth investments. As Marc...
New Math: 7 - 1 = 3. Stick with me here all you quant types! How many times have you seen this drawing in a piece of marketing? And the pitch goes something like this, "We are the only ones who can give you D, which is super amazing, because only we have A, B and C,...
(This is a continuation of a multi-part post on igniting and leading a market Movement. To start at Part 1, go here. ) Purpose or Movement Messaging, as I describe in Part 1 of this series, must either transform or inspire a business issue or society. With the 4...
You have a successful product line, you are a known leader of a meaningful market parade, sales are growing, and so is your valuation. To quote a famous t-shirt brand, "Life is Good". Congrats. THEN you raise the big round, make the big acquisition, start to worry...
(Authors note: It's no secret among my friends and family that I have a preference between the two candidates in this election. However, I have tried to keep politics out of my business communications, and this blog will NOT try to be a case for voting for either of...
I was thinking about, or maybe more the case obsessing about, market leadership on my bike ride the other morning. I had just gotten a tune up and a fix up of my road bike, and was enjoying a early morning ride that was reminding me why I love living in Northern...
You've invested in marketing automation, content marketing people and programs. You've just finished that new messaging project. Now what? Having the right messaging and positioning, no small task in today's crowded buyer centric B2B markets, puts you at the base of...
What does market leadership look like? Faster lead conversion? more visibility and fame? better metrics like leads to revenue? CEO rockstars the conference? competitors on their heels and chasing? All of this and more! What it looks like is a snowball rolling...
In today's highly competitive B2B markets, to be a leader, you must build and run a modern marketing machine that can be thought of like a race car. In fact, market leaders need to be great at three things; Marketing Automation, Content Marketing, and Messaging and...
When I chat with CEOs, CMOs and VPs of Sales in B2B technology companies, it's almost always about "re-messaging" or "re-positioning" their company, product or service or some combination of these. Often I hear, "I know we need to do this, but I am not sure it's the...
When my good friend and colleague and marketing automation guru from Digital Pi Tom Grubb pointed out in this blog, "If you don’t get your messaging right and tight, the revenue you take will rarely equal the marketing investment you make" it got me thinking about the...
I just had the pleasure of spending 2 days helping a client jointly with my good friend and colleague Tom Grubb. Tom, and the company he co-founded, Digital Pi, may be the most skilled marketing automation people on the planet, among other things, Tom used to run all...
Dear Reader, I’m excited to share this preview content of my upcoming book with you. We live in a challenging time for marketing and sales professionals in B2B markets. Information flows freely, markets are crowded, and buyers only engage on their terms, in their...
I do a lot of work with IT Security Vendors. It's a fascinating place to be a marketer. There is no doubt, IT Security is a very technical market. And one that might change more continuously than any other B2B market I know. Of course, we all know that there...
There is no doubt in B2B markets many, if not all companies strive for market leadership, but few breakthrough and achieve it. Why? The reasons are many. Poor product market fit, poor user experience, misaligned pricing to value, the list goes on. But even those...
In my last blog, I wrote about what I consider to be a bold and high return move by GoodData to lead a new segment that they call, "Insight as a Service" . Insight as A Service as GoodData describes it is a much better mousetrap than Business Intelligence in the...
Business Intelligence is a established and growing market. BUT it is a changing and fluid one, being impacted by many many of the trendy words you might hear like Big Data, Hadoop, IOT, Cloud and well others I'm sure. It is also a crowded market, with established...
I've been working on a new model to think about market leadership and how to message at different phases of leadership. I am doing a lot of work on this model, and would love your feedback. Market leaders are created not born. In B2B markets, they will go through 3...
Part 1 – Baseball, SaaS and the Rise of the Data Nerds Baseball really boils down to one stat, score more runs than your opponent and you win, score less and you lose. Do this 90 or more out of 161 games and you will probably make the playoffs. Win 11 or 12 post...
I recently passed my 5 yr anniversary as a B2B marketing consultant in Silicon Valley and beyond. In that time I’ve met some amazing CMOs and CEOs. B2B Marketing is a never ending multi-layered multi-disciplinary challenge. One , as I described to my daughters 4th...
Need feature benefit is the time tested sales and marketing technique that starts with a specific need, links a feature your product or service has to that need, and then proposes an expected benefit to be had. This worked great 10 years ago in what I call the age of...