Marketing Archives - Shockwave Innovations

Extreme Value-Based Pricing

When we pay for things, we expect to receive a specific value from the purchase. Sometimes that value is obvious, like a bar of soap or light bulb and other times it’s not. When it’s not and if there is too much perceived risk of not achieving the intended value, sometimes the seller has to offer an “insurance policy” in the form of a money-back guarantee or even not get paid until the value is confirmed (ie – contingency or success fee).

Many of us that sell products have learned about value-based pricing and the benefits from pricing our product based on the value the customer actually receives. But I’m still amazed at how infrequent I see this done by startups and early stage tech companies. Whenever I meet with them in an advisory capacity and pricing strategy becomes a topic of conversation, I always launch into an exercise I refer to as “extreme value-based pricing”. In this article I’ll explain the fundamental concept so that you can decide on your ideal pricing strategy and related pricing metric.

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Favorite Trade Show Hacks

Imagine this scenario. You decide to pay $2,500 for the cheapest exhibit option at your industry’s big annual trade show. You know you’ll spend another $2,500 on cheap travel, lodging and meals for you and a fellow employee plus some marketing materials. When you get there you discover that the 6-foot table you’ve been assigned is in the back corner of the exhibit hall near the loading docks and you return two days later with a handful of crappy leads, sore feet from standing hours on end and a big stack of brochures and other marketing material that went unused.

Amazingly, this same general disappointment can happen with spending $20,000 or more. This article describes some of my favorite hacks for gaining legitimate trade show value at EXTREMELY low cost.

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A.I. Will Revolutionize the Marketing Function

The field of marketing has dramatically changed over the past 15 years due to the advent and dramatic proliferation of the Internet. Roles like social media marketing, activities like search engine optimization and tools like marketing automation platforms didn’t exist until the early 2000’s. Some didn’t really become mainstream in business until about a decade later. There is a new technology trend that will dramatically revolutionize the marketing function once again. I’m referring to Artificial Intelligence.

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The New 4 P’s of Marketing

Anyone that took a marketing class in college was taught about the 4 P’s of marketing (product, price, place, promotion). And although the fundamental concepts are still valid, they just seem too out-of-date to teach without a lot of interpretation or translation for modern times. So I’d like to propose an update while sticking with the same letter “P” so we can still call it the “4 P’s of Marketing”.

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Optimizing Demand Generation Using Portfolio Theory

There is one question that haunts every experienced marketing executive as it relates to spending money on demand generation: what is the optimal mix of demand gen marketing campaigns and if we have extra money to spend, where should we spend it and why? Lots of advanced marketing tools are available and new ones are released all the time. But none that I’ve seen exactly answer these questions and the reason is because optimizing your mix demand generation activities is just as difficult as optimizing your mix of personal investments (ie – stocks, bonds, real estate, CD’s, etc). So why not steal a concept from the investing world and apply it to marketing? I’m talking about Portfolio Theory.

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10 Ways to Improve Website Conversion Rates

Regardless of your ideal mix of demand generation programs, I’m willing to bet that most of them are designed to bring prospects to your website in the hopes of later converting them to a paying customer. It doesn’t matter if your solution is hardware or software and it doesn’t matter if your sales model is zero touch or requires full-blown field sales reps. The path to prospect conversion surely passes through your website at least 90% of the time.

If you agree, then also realize that even a perfect mix of demand generation programs can be totally destroyed if your website doesn’t do an effective job of facilitating conversion. In this context I’m using the word “conversion” in a generic sense because for some companies that might mean the prospect downloads a free trial while for other companies it might mean filling out a contact request form. But in all cases, I’m referring to the final desired action a prospect could take from the website along their path to becoming a paid customer.

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Comparing Yourself Publicly to the Market Leader

Market leaders almost never compare themselves to competitors publicly because it gives their competitors legitimacy and potentially shows nervousness about them. But what if you’re #2, #3 or worse in your market in terms of market share or some other important attribute? Is it OK to compare yourself publicly to the market leader? If so, how direct or inflammatory should you be? Let’s explore further.

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Evolution of Marketing Roles in the New Era

Wow has the world of marketing changed with the introduction of social media, marketing automation and other digital capabilities. Not only is the way we “do” marketing different but the organizational structure and roles are different. Just a decade ago, mid-sized and larger companies organized their marketing department along the lines of advertising, PR, partner marketing and product marketing. Now we see Internet marketing, inbound marketing, social media marketing, content marketing and marketing automation functions. Is PR dead, by the way? (see related article titled “PR is Dead – Or Is It?”).

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Increasing Webinar Attendance

Business prospects are now accustomed to taking themselves through 60% of the sales journey (see related article titled “Prospects Take Themselves Through 60% of the Sales Journey“) but at some point they commonly need a legitimate interaction with the company. Videos are more personal and engaging than white papers and case studies and they are certainly are an important asset for customer acquisition. But what else can you do for those prospects that want more interaction than a video but less than a phone call? Invite them to a webinar (aka webcast) and use this article to increase webinar attendance.

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Co-Marketing Explained

Thanks to HubSpot for this valuable explanation of what co-marketing is and what some of the common forms are (article here). One of my blog categories is devoted to business development (BD). BD relationships can take on many different forms but often involve some form of co-marketing as part of the partnership. Startups and early stage companies often don’t have the budget, brand recognition and marketing capabilities of their new-found strategic alliance partners. In these cases, co-marketing can be one of the best value drivers of the relationship.

Here are some of my personal recommendations for optimizing co-marketing opportunities:

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Why Isn’t a Marketing Professional One of Your First 10 Employees?

If you’ve seen my bio or LinkedIn profile, you’ll know I’ve served three stints as a CMO and roughly half of my professional career has been spent in a marketing role. But even with my admitted biases towards the marketing trade, I still must push on this one. I find a lot of startups that only want to initially load up on developers and maybe a couple of sales reps. But I contend that a marketing professional absolutely, positively should be one of your first 10 employees. You don’t need to start with a VP but you also shouldn’t cop out with a marketing intern or junior rookie with only 2 years of experience.

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Infographic with Email Marketing Tips

Courtesy of HubSpot, check out this Infographic with tips and tricks for creating effective outbound email marketing templates.

Check out my other blog posts related to marketing here.

Improving the Quality of Your Marketing Content

I’ve written about how prospects take themselves through 60% of the sales journey (see related article titled “Prospects Take Themselves Through 60% of the Sales Journey“) and have challenged readers to make sure their website is enabling sales (see related article titled “Is Your Website Enabling Sales?”). For either of these concepts to be successful, the quality of your marketing content is key. Violating one or more fundamental quality rules could easily cause the prospect to disqualify you from their consideration list without you ever knowing why or having a chance to talk to them.

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Inbound Marketing Explained (Infographic)

You’ll hear phrases like inbound marketing, digital marketing and Internet marketing used somewhat interchangeably. What is all this newfangled stuff? Prospects commonly take themselves through 60% or more of the sales journey (see related article titled “Prospects Take Themselves Through 60% of the Sales Journey“) and this “newfangled stuff” is what helps them find you and learn as much as needed about you.

The attached infographic from The Whole Brain Group does a nice job of explaining it all to the layman.

Check out my other blog posts related to marketing here.

Prospects Take Themselves Through 60% of the Sales Journey

Customers of all types have an unbelievable amount of information with which to use to decide if they want to buy your product – and all without ever having to talk to your sales staff. In fact, their typical disdain for interacting with sales people is part of what drives this behavior. The other parts are efficiency (at least they assume it will be more efficient) and the opportunity to get more educated before making a decision. So what can you do about this phenomenon? Let’s explore.

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Is Your Website Enabling Sales?

Regardless of your sales model, your website should be the #1 asset when it comes to enabling sales. It is commonly reported that prospects these days take themselves through 60% or more of the sales journey on their own (see related article titled “Prospects Take Themselves Through 60% of the Sales Journey“). And this is for moderately complex offerings that require interaction with a sales person at some point. E-commerce offerings obviously allow prospects to go completely through the sales and fulfillment cycle on their own. But in either case, your website plays a critical role in optimizing sales.

Sales reps are fairly expensive resources on average and field sales reps are very expensive. If your website doesn’t give prospects the information they need to determine if your offering is a fit for their needs, they will either bail out and search elsewhere or if you’re lucky they will proactively reach out to you with questions. But that requires involvement from your expensive sales resources. Instead, make sure your website has the appropriate content, navigation and functionality to get these same prospects all the information they need for their investigation so they can naturally engage you in the next step of the process. This might mean requesting contact from a sales person but depending on your business model it could also mean clicking to download a free trial or buying via e-commerce.

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Vitamin or Aspirin – Which are You Offering?

I don’t know who came up with this analogy but I’d love to thank him/her because it’s a perfect way to think about your offering and its value proposition. Is it a vitamin? In other words, does it create an opportunity for some improvement? Or is it an aspirin? In other words, does it solve a problem?

Both might sound like beneficial offerings, and they are. But there’s actually a big difference when it comes to buyer behaviors. Imagine you have $2 to spend and, for some reason, you need to spend it today. Someone presents you with a vitamin and an aspirin and they each cost, you guessed it, $2. Which do you choose? Well, if you don’t have a headache or other body pain, then you’ll probably go for the vitamin because of its preventative health benefits. But if you have even a slight headache you’ll take the aspirin without even thinking about it. I know, you could substitute a cancer prevention pill for the vitamin and even someone with a headache might go for preventative medicine. But are you offering a cancer prevention pill?

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Is Your Facebook Page Nothing More Than a Second Website?

It’s totally understandable that you will have some duplicated content on both your main website and your Facebook page. But please don’t have your Facebook page simply become a second website. Your Facebook page is for recruiting and developing a community of interested followers. It’s an opportunity for you to connect with them directly and for your followers to connect with each other. So make that its primary purpose both in layout, content and administered use. And cherish the relief from not having to always replicate your various website edits and content updates/additions onto your Facebook page.

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Wait, there’s much more!!!

The information in this article is just a very small piece of what I cover in my Founders Academy Video Library, which includes more than 35 topic-specific modules and 6 themed compilations.

I’m talking about more than 13 hours of educational and advisory content to help you grow a great company. Click Here to Learn More

“The way you convey the material is great and the examples you give makes things clear.” (startup founder)

Disguising PR as Strategic Business Development

I have a lot of pet peeves with business development, having run the function for multiple companies. This one in particular relates to how, too often, a PR-related effort is disguised as business development (BD). An example might be a company that uses the BD team to get a mostly-meaningless MOU with another company just for the purpose of creating a press release that can be posted on the website. Or maybe your BD team got you into some meaningless partner program that cost $5K to play but you have no real intention of doing much with it. It’s not that the resulting press release has no value. But the effort should be recognized as a marketing effort or something you’re doing to facilitate fund raising. It’s just that your BD rep is the best one to deploy in order to secure the relationship compared to someone responsible for marketing. Let’s explore further.

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