Guerilla Market Concept Testing: Free White Paper

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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

New products and services are the lifeblood of every company. Many marketers, however, are unaware that fast, low cost guerilla techniques for market concept testing can easily replace cumbersome market research, saving lots of money and time in the process.

Summary:

This paper provides a simple, actionable approach that can be implemented in any business at any time. This is an essential exercise for lean-thinking companies who want to bypass more traditional, cumbersome and expensive market concept testing processes, which often include unnecessary and expensive market research.

Paper deliverables include:

·      A 5-point intuitive model for strategic planning.

·      A process for capturing industry knowledge quickly and inexpensively

·      Internet search suggestions that you can customize

·      A simple process for arriving at an unbiased ‘go’ or ‘no go’ decision for a new idea

·      A case study for a product sold to iApp developers.

Market concept testing is a uniquely interactive experience. This approach gets practitioners off their chairs and puts them squarely into their marketplace. Here, there’s no hiding behind marketing agencies or the internet.

Value to Audience: Helps marketing practitioners by giving them an easy MCT model that works the first time it’s tried. Helps CMOs give strong MCT guidance to the marketing team and delivers a proven platform for pushing back against expensive, and often unproductive, market research.

Social Media Marketing for B2B

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Should we, or shouldn't we? Here's a great guide to social media marketing for businesses marketing to business.

Bottom line is that this is still a nascent marketing channel. But it's not to be ignored, especially since it is ubiquitous and inexpensive. The trick is to just get started, which is relatively easy. Use social media just like you would advertising but make sure you're putting out useful information and not just brand fluff. 

Consulting firm Marketo just put out one of the best guides to B2B social media marketing that we've seen:

Guide to Social Media Marketing for B2B

Nice Thank You From UCSD's Rady School of Management

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Mike,

Thank you for your time to prepare and present the guest talk "Will the Dogs Like the Dog Food" to the Rady School of Management Undergraduate Students in my Innovation to Market (A) class yesterday, February 23rd.

Students from the Class of 2010 at The Rady School of Management

You provided the students an excellent framework (the 5 strategy planning questions, plus "what's your wow" and "how will you prove it") to conduct the required market research for their business concepts.   The two rules:   #1 - Business is a Social Process; #2 - Don't complicate something that's simple - are absolutely on target and great.

The live exercise of developing the "elevator pitch" that was under 25 words for the two team's ideas was absolutely terrific!  I noted that many students were taking copious notes as you were developing it - from the five or six questions that you started with to the actual writing of the elevator pitch.   I am sure that they will put this experiential learning to work immediately!

As you could sense during the class, you were well received by the students - as evidenced by their active participation/engagement in asking clarifying questions.  Also, the fact that there were several students who spoke with you afterwards and solicited your business card - truly speaks to the success of your talk.

Again thanks.

Best regards,
Del

Delbert F. Foit, Jr.
Lecturer
Rady School of Management
University of California, San Diego
Otterson Hall, 9500 Gilman Drive  #0553
La Jolla, California 92093-0553

Advertising: The 2010 Super Bowl and the (gasp) Tim Tebow Commercial

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Great game for a Super Bowl. The Colts and the Saints both were superb in the 2nd half and the Saints' defense showed up to play, much to the surprise of oddsmakers. Hats off to former Charger Drew Brees and his stellar team for gettin' it done.Aside from football, many of the commercials were either tepid or downright bad. Those underwear commercials, which are copycat cheap knockoffs of a truly good Bud Light online commercial [CLICK HERE], were just plain awful. If this is the best that the big agencies can come up with we can expect to hear a big flushing sound coming from Madison Avenue right about...now. No wonder small time agencies are the increasing go-to for savvy marketers. 

And what was all the chatter about the Tim Tebow commercial? Looked benign to me and certainly not worth all the hand-wringing that went on before and after.

Advertising Age's commerical guru Bob Garfield made some unnecessarily negative comments about Tebow and the commercial. Most marketers understand that advertising's purpose is to generate awareness, support conversion and maintain loyalty. It's a shame that a leading marketing publication like AdAge still insists on believing that non-political ads, like the Tebow commercial, are misguided and that, for some unfathomable reason, it's their job to enlighten all the hillbilly marketers out there.

FEB. 2010 STRATEGIC MARKETING UPDATE IS READY

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HCLLC'S strategic marketing update for February is now available. In this issue we look at:

• Tiger Woods' brand value - Fizzle or Sizzle again?
• Mike's latest podcast: "Being A Great Marketing Leader"
  
• Latest trends in media
• New white paper: "How Complicated Marketing Destroys Profits...And What You Can Do About It"
• and more...

CLICK HERE TO READ

Enjoy. 

Marketing and PR flacks have it wrong about Haiti and Royal Caribbean

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Advertising Age today published an article quoting high ranking  executives at major PR firms decrying Royal Caribbean's decision  not to suspend its cruise ship stops at the port of Labadee in Haiti. Labadee is apparently about 60 miles from the horrific devastation at Port-Au-Prince. CLICK HERE for article.

The PR execs were quoted as saying: "this strikes a nerve with people and the brand will take a hit," and "this is a massive debacle and shows absolutely horrible judgment".

The New York Post published an article on same titled "Ship Of Ghouls".

Nonsense. Reading another 15 seconds into the story shows that Royal Caribbean is handling the situation appropriately.

• They took very careful consideration about whether to continue the stops.
  
• They decided that withdrawing the positive economic impacts of tourism from Haiti would only make a bad situation worse.
  
• They're donating $1,000,000 to the rescue and cleanup efforts
• They're donating 100% of net revenue from RC cruise ship stops in Haiti to the relief effort.
• They're using their ships to ferry relief supplies.

We posted this comment in response to all the PR poobah hand-wringing:

"I agree, non-story. However this is a very good example of why traditional PR is in a decline. A lot of old school PR folk way overestimate the value of their personal views and apparently underestimate the ability of people to think for themselves. The new PR calls for a Joe Friday approach: "just the facts ma'am"...plus a heckuva lot of knowledge about how the internet has antiquated the usefulness of PR escalation for the sake of taking beleaguered clients for a ride."

Good job, Royal Caribbean.

Mike Harris's comments published in McKinsey Quarterly

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20 JANUARY 2010

"As a business school graduate, business owner, and guest lecturer at The Rady School of Business at UCSD, I applaud efforts to train business students in policy. It’s clear to me that business people, including myself, have let the country down by allowing this current bunch of politicians practically free reign in shaping ‘policy’ that has the potential for damaging our country irreparably. Hopefully this next generation of both politicians and business men and women can effectively be trained to reach across the aisle far better than their predecessors."

CLICK HERE to see published comments. This was in reponse to an interview with the current dean of The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. The dean suggests that teaching policy to MBA students would help business people understand government better.

Winning The Marketing Game in 2010

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Marketing teams have been decimated in the past two years while the shift from traditional marketing to digital marketing has reached a stage where few individuals can keep up. Startups are buried and have very limited marketing funds. Small companies ($10-250 million annual revenues) have a tough time keeping a current website updated and compelling. Mid-sized companies ($250 million to $1 billion) have money for marketing but are faced with so many options that decision errors are common.

We've developed the following insights from years of managing, and being, marketing managers and executives. We believe these are the critical skills and attitudes needed for 2010 and beyond:

1. Knowledge of web marketing. The #1 criterion for 2010. By now all of your marketing employees and contractors must know web marketing at the detailed level. It is the single most important qualification regardless of age, experience and company rank. It is the most important because, for most companies, it is the greatest determinant of competitiveness or will be soon.  Click here to download web marketing interview questions.
2.  Affinity for sales. There's no more time or resources for tolerating unnecessary friction between marketers and the sales team. Both groups must combine their common knowledge to choose the right markets, compelling products, advertising and sales strategy. Encourage both teams to abandon preconceived notions of each others' boundaries and reward those who show a proclivity for getting cooperative results from the other side. This goes both ways. Check out this excellent article: Top 5 Lies Marketing Tells Sales.
3. Training. For marketers to be at the top of their game they must embrace continuing education. If your people are behind, and you can afford it, send them to relevant marketing seminars and/or pay for courses. If you can't prioritize the money for the more extensive programs ask them to do a self-assessment of where they need to improve. Let them identify online resources or local college courses that will be helpful...and pay for those. Just Google "marketing training courses" and you'll find tons from which to choose . Google also offers great internet marketing training at no cost.
4. Planning. It is critical to your company's profitability that your marketers plan, plan, plan where they're going to invest their time and your resources. The tendency today is for companies to overwhelm marketers with spontaneous requests to pursue the latest and greatest marketing technique. This is guaranteed to achieve the worst results. Instead, work with your marketers to make sure they have a cohesive marketing plan with a concrete budget. Make sure all your anticipated needs are in this plan and can realistically happen with resources allocated. If your team doesn't know where to start try http://paloaltosoftware.com/. They have great, inexpensive planning software.
5. Forecasting. There are lots of ways to improve forecasting skills. Marketers in 2010 must be adept at forecasting campaign results, budgets, downstream impacts of marketing decisions and sales by region, brand, product category and time period. If you make this a requirement your marketing team will be that much more respected by both Sales and Finance because your marketers will be speaking to them on their terms. Some examples of forecasting tools include: http://www.alightplanning.com/, http://www.prophix.com/, http://www.statisticalforecasting.com/, http://centage.com/index.htm and http://www.planguru.com/index.html.

What the heck is Web 3.0 and why should I care?

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The year 2010 will be the coming of age for Web 3.0. A quick look at the chart below will show you the rapid evolution of the world wide web from 'brochure-ware' to 'intelligence-ware'.

One of the best ways to explain this evolution in easy-to-understand language is using a scenario. Suppose in each of the years 1996, 2006 and 2010 you decided to purchase a new Ferrari. Here's how the web would help in each instance:

1. In Web 1.0, pre-Google days, you would pretty much have to know the URLs that could show you what you need to know. Only the most advanced dealers would have a web presence and the information you gleaned would be wildly skewed toward their brands and models. Car And Driver wasn't online in 1996 and there were no blogs.

2. In Web 2.0 you would search "Ferrari" and you'd come up with all dealers, whether they're in Buffalo or Tokyo. You'd also find user reviews, auto expert opinions, blogs, You Tube videos, information on government rebates and stimulus packages for Ferrari purchasers, new car loans and just a huge hodgepodge of information...some of it meaningful to your search, some of it not.

3. In Web 3.0 you text a friend from your mobile phone with a message like "I'm thinking about a Ferrari...know anybody who has one?" Search engines would pick up on your text and deliver to you, with your permission, a list of local Ferrari dealers and contact info, testimonials from owners in your area and banks who specialized in high-end car loans.

In other words, Web 3.0 adds intelligence to your text, search or email to anticipate your next thoughts and next steps. It will then attempt to guide you to relevant, highly targeted information in case you decide to move on to next steps.The various shops, banks and other commercial enterprises will be presented according to the web's assessment of how relative their messaging is to your particular situation and, or course, how much they spend with the search engines. The tricky part in all this is that it must be permission based marketing. Getting a bunch of annoying pop-ups while you're texting, Facebook-ing or Twitter-ing will likely turn you away from those vendors, won't it?

Many, many companies are barely investing in the most basic target marketing and lead generation tools offered by Web 2.0. Marketing departments, or what's left of them, at mid-size and larger companies, are struggling just to learn about using social media for marketing. Most marketing people working for companies are stretched way too thin to even think about the implications of Web 3.0 and are setting their companies up to get blindsided by that one competitor who gets it and puts in the time and effort to wield it effectively.

The big difference between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, that we can see, is that in Web 2.0 the user must exert effort to customize the information needed for his/her particular purchase criteria. In Web 3.0 the information is automatically customized for the user's purchase criteria because the user has been feeding the web personal information, including shopping habits, for years.

And that has HUGE implications for marketing and sales.

The following chart is courtesy of Digital Inspiration.

Marketing in 2010

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• Should I care about Web 3.0? CLICK HERE
• Top 10 reasons to ignore Web 3.0 CLICK HERE
• Marketing teams in 2010 CLICK HERE
• Advertising in 2010 CLICK HERE
• Public relations in 2010 CLICK HERE