Rocket Watcher Product Marketing for Startups

When Virgin America and Klout teamed up to run an influencer marketing campaign, the goal was to generate online buzz. It worked, but not exactly in the way you might imagine.

In many larger organizations, sales folks are trained to become “trusted advisors” to their accounts. To attain this status, account managers need to demonstrate a deep understanding of the customer’s environment and pains and offer valued advice and support. It strikes me that this is exactly the goal of a great content marketing strategy.

If you are hiring a marketer and you want social media skills, how important is it that they are heavy social media users? Pretty darn important.

Marketers love Twitter these days for a list of reasons including using it converse with customers and influencers, sharing content and driving traffic to websites. There has been so much talk about Twitter in Marketing circles, you would think that everyone would have it figured out by now. I have been a fairly heavy Twitter user for the past couple of years and here are a few things I see folks doing that I believe are just wrong.

The shift in marketing from selling to buying will drive a shift in the way we market and the way we organize marketing departments. Are Messaging, Content, Customer Retention and Visibility getting the focus they deserve from your marketing team?

The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20% . However, many marketing plans are so focused on customer acquisition that they largely ignore customer retention. Here are some ideas to help you kick-start your customer retention marketing.

As marketers we sometimes struggle to balance communicating in a way that’s authentic and yet unoffensive. When it comes to communication, like everything else in marketing, it pays to know your audience.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO made a series of announcements about “Open Graph” which may result in a huge change in the way we experience the internet and a serious threat to Google.

Nearly every startup I have worked with has been nervous about writing press releases. Lack of experience is one reason but people also think there are a set of secret rules to writing one “properly.” I’m also hearing startups say they believe press releases are irrelevant in an age of social media. I disagree. The majority of press releases really suck, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

My mother always said I had a face for radio and lately I’m doing a lot of podcasts.  Here’s a conversation I had with Tom Grant a Sr. Analyst with Forrester Research and the creator of the excellent Heretech podcast.  He calls me a lot of names at the beginning like “ebullient” and “irrepressible” but [...]