Does your product stink or is it the recession!

 

The answer, your product stinks! Why, it has to work in the times that were in(period). So you need to reevaluate and maybe repackage or even re-purpose it. Here’s a great little test to see how viable your product, actually is…

1. Is your product under advertised?

2. Can there be a broader target market?

3. Do you have certain disadvantages that you could turn into advantages?

4. Do you have any unused byproducts?

5. Could you be selling your product in a more compelling way?

6. Is there a social trend to exploit?

7. Can you explain your distribution channels?

8. Can you build volume and profit by cutting the price?

9. Does the product have new or extended uses?

10. Have you completed a win/loss sales analysis of the product?

11. How old is your last referral for the product?

12. How are your salespeople compensated for selling the product?

These are just a few of the questions that we go through when were getting ready to do a product relaunch. What is so important in a relaunch is that you do have a community built around the product. I am not talking about someone that believes in the cause like a nonprofit, but actually I am talking about a customer that would advocate the product for you. Relaunches in today’s marketplace, must have the ability to garner direct customer support.

Take a product that is not doing so well right now and see if you would be in that marketplace today, if you are just starting out. If you would not, can you stop? Can you sell it to someone else? I’m amazed at how many resources are lost in products that have absolutely no return on investment. So if you really are thinking about leaning your marketing, I would look at how I would relaunch every product category that I have. Then ask why am I not doing it that way and the investment to do it. And if I cannot afford to do it, can I afford to stay in that product category?Sometimes, the best re-launch is no re-launch at all!

Technorati Tags: product launch,relaunch,lean marketing,markeitng with lean,product marketing

Marketing Plan Pro, Lean Principles Applied

I enjoy using off the shelf standard products, they usually work. and adapt them to my use. Saves a lot of customization cost and the upgrades are cheap. I created this 18 page e-book to let you review my thoughts on using Lean Six Sigma principles and applying them through the Marketing Plan Pro software.

Marketing Plan Pro, Applying Lean

View more presentations from Joseph Dager.

 

Technorati Tags: Marketing Plan Pro,Lean Marketing,Six Sigma,Marketing,Duct Tape Marketing

The Real Joke About Marketing: Lack Of Integration

 

Yesterday I made a joke. It was April Fool's Day and in my April 1st blog post I decided to announce that I would only focus on the "right now" and devote my blog to talking about Twitter. Some people got the joke, while others loved the idea of another blog about Twitter. My point from the beginning of that post was entirely truthful - there is indeed something amiss in the world of marketing. And it cannot be solved by focusing just on what's happening right now, or by focusing on any one tool.

There is a plague facing the marketing world today, and it has to do with lack of integration. Strategy, advertising, PR, direct, interactive, social media, search, and many other marketing functions are all separated by departments or outsourced to a combination of agencies. In each case, internal or external political battles over budget and responsibilities ensue, and the end result is usually a marketing impasse at the expense of effectiveness. Not only does the right hand of a marketing group often not know what the left hand is doing - most of the time they end up arm wrestling.

The mission of this blog will always be to share useful marketing lessons and stories that go beyond just one tool, channel or category. The real power of marketing comes through integration, and the tragedy is how easy that is to forget. So the next time you hear someone suggest a Twitter strategy without talking about anything else around it, don't accept it. Seek more integration and demand it from the people you work with. Here are some tips on how to do it:

1. Think in terms of hubs and extensions instead of single channels for a marketing effort.
2. Respect the fact that marketing tactics you may not understand can actually work as well.
3. Makeintegration someone's job to manage and ensure that it happens.
4. Stop thinking of media consumption as an "either-or situation" - most people use multiple types
5. Haveconsumers settle disagreements - ask them what is more important and focus there.

Now I can officially put the "twinfluential marketing blog" to rest.

This is syndicated from Influential Marketing Blog, and written by Rohit.

Where do you start your job search?

Most people feel uncomfortable when they out of work and start searching in newspapers, online and cold calling. Even though, we have all heard that 805 of the jobs are never advertised. If that many are not, how do you hear about them. It is pretty simple, just do the math. Most people know approximately 300 people on a casual basis. In fact, when not knowing, many wedding planners, funeral directors will use than number as a figure.  So if you know 300, does that mean your wife or husband will know 300 probably not but maybe a 100. What about both of your parents, your siblings, your cousins and people that know you well?

You get the idea. But make sure everyone knows what you do, your capabilities and whether your willing to relocate. You would be amazed at how many people will pre-qualify you and may not think to tell you about a particular job. Also, ask them to tell others about you. Don't give them one business card, give them a couple and make sure you have a page on the Internet where they can learn more.  Ask people to tell others! If you can only get a small portion of these people in the other circles to start looking, you will have the best marketing campaign going for you that money could buy.

How do you start? Start with your family and ask them to give out a few business card. Work at being easy to know and hard to forget. Be quick to understand others and listen to them. But always give them a card. Remember, people like to do business with people they like so work at pleasing others. If you touch your 300 people in a week, just think how many people you may have working for you.

Technorati Tags: job search,marketing,people,referral,employee referral

The Importance of Failed Innovation

I had an interesting dialogue with an innovation practitioner in a large corporation the other day. We were talking about how the high rate of innovation failure can hamstring innovation.

"The failure rate is actually irrelevant," he said. "It's the risk associated with those failures that gets you into trouble."

In other words, failure would be fine, if it wasn't so darn expensive. Because failures cost money (and time), high failure rates can cause corporations to become very gun shy about innovation.

The real answer is to dramatically decrease the cost of failure. A leadership team seeking to achieve this aim has three levers at its disposal:

1. Lower the costs of experiments.
2. Change the order of experiments.
3. Increase the pace of decision making.

Read the entire post from Scott Anthony.