Last week I had the good fortune of meeting and speaking with Geoffrey Moore, author of the widely acclaimed books Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado. If you haven’t heard of him before, Geoff writes and speaks about the technology adoption lifecycle and the marketing and business strategies for successfully navigating this lifecycle. His basic premise follows the traditional technical adoption model first defined by Bohlen and Beal way back in 1957 and expanded on by Rogers. Here’s what the traditional adoption curve looks like:

 Read the rest of this post

So, your company is trying to decide whether or not it needs a presence in the social media space. But you’re really not sure if your customers (or potential customers) want you or need you to be involved in the social media arena. Well, maybe the results of a recent survey from The 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study will help you decide what to do. The study presents the findings of an online survey conducted September 11-12, 2008 by Opinion Research Corporation among 1,092 adults comprising 525 men and 567 women 18 years of age and older. The survey focussed on how Americans use or expect to use social media to interact with businesses. Here are some of the key results:  Read the rest of this post

I just don’t understand what’s going these days with the Microsoft marketing team. Their latest ad “I’m a PC” is looking desperate. Let’s face it, Apple played the Cool Mac user card very well. Their ads Mac vs. PC went over really well and have made a definite impact. Now, Microsoft has decided to play the “We’re cool too” game. It doesn’t make sense. Instead of saying we’re not Mac, we’re better, we’re different, we’re unique, you want to be a Windows user, they’re going out their way to say “We’re just like a Mac, we’re cool too”.  Read the rest of this post

Seth Godin recently had a great post about which customers you should listen to in terms of your product. Here’s his take on listening to your customers:

“Here are three common listening mistakes:

- Believing that your customers are monolithic, that they all want the same thing.

- Believing that loud customers speak for all customers.

- Worrying that if you don’t satisfy short-term, loudly articulated needs, you will fail.

There’s an art here, it’s not a science. I’d focus on a few tactics:

- When someone is in pain, recognize it and address it if you can.  Read the rest of this post