Archive for March, 2008
Effective Product Marketing Rules #3
This is the third in a series of posts on Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing Rules.
Effective Product Marketing Rule #3: If you are talking to someone you don’t know, you are not communicating.
At first read, this one strikes me as one of those "can’t possibly be true, can’t possibly be false, quite possibly makes no [...]
A Zappos service story
Will anyone ever write a story like this about your company?
Knowing what’s in it for me…
I was recently asked to review a marketing plan that an outside firm had put together for a potential client. While I didn’t agree with everything in it, the folks who put it together were clearly professional who knew a lot about marketing. If I had to grade the plan, I’d give it a B [...]
The wrong name can make you… crazy?
Weston Hospital, a mental hospital in Weston, West Virginia, closed in 1994. Since then the enormous Gothic revival structure has sat vacant. Now, it’s re-opened as an historic site, and with its old name: the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.
From an AP story about it:
To some, the title acknowledges history by readopting one of the many names [...]
Thinking through the customer contact process
Without going into all of the particulars, or naming names, I’ve been having a minor back-and-forth and with my health insurance provider.
Now, I first have to say that, overall, the service from this insurance provider has been excellent. They pay our doctors’ and hospital bills promptly, don’t seem to reject things willy-nilly, provide very clear [...]
“Do Not Track” - “Do Not Call,” the next generation?
Bernard Lunn at ReadWriteWeb has a good post up about proposed “do not track” legislation in New York. From a New York Times article on the subject:
“Should these companies be able to sell or use what’s essentially private data without permission? The easy answer is absolutely not,” said the assemblyman who sponsored the bill, Richard [...]
Pragmatic Marketing: Effective Product Marketing Rule #2
This is the first in a series of posts on Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing Rules.
Effective Product Marketing Rule #2: Never Confuse Efforts with Results.
Forget product marketing, I can think of few rules that are so applicable across the boards in business, or even in life.
Here’s my life story: Last October, I fractured my arm [...]
Social media for analytics junkies: think soft!
Crossposted from Squarevox, my social media blog.
Debbie Weil argues that we shouldn’t be talking about the ROI of social media, but rather the return on influence. Why? She says:
Short answer: because the return is soft. The benefits of incorporating social media strategies into your marketing are real (and can no longer be ignored) but [...]
Peeps: The Harley Davidson of the Candy World
Well, it’s almost-sorta-kinda Spring, and a marketing person’s fancy turns, quite naturally, to Peeps, the delightful marshmallow chick whose arrival heralds the end of snow season. (Or should.)
I was thinking about Peeps because it’s one of those product brands that has taken on a life of its own, making the Peep a cultural icon. People [...]
Pricing: think structure and transparency as well as amount
People are price conscious. But they’re not just conscious of the total amount you want them to spend with you.
Mary Schmidt, one of my favorite marketing bloggers*, wrote about a $25 magazine subscription that costs $29 (and thus was not purchased). It’s a simple concept: when you tell someone what your product costs, it should [...]
