Shortly after I got up this morning, I strolled over to Marketing Over Coffee for a quick shot before heading off to work and found this great article, entitled How to restore the faded luster to marketing by Rich Guha.  In my opinion, it’s a “must read” for anyone looking to build a business or aiming to build a career in marketing.

It’s about the big picture

Referencing management heroes such as Peter Drucker and Ted Leavitt, the article discusses what companies have lost as marketing becomes more specialized. Guha advises marketers that wish to add significant value to the business to:

• Step back from tactics and understand the “theory of the business.”
• Understand what are the ways to measure performance which drive market value.
• Understand which levers in the business will increase market value.
• Regard tactics as components that can only be used with an understanding of the entire business plan.
• Understand the customer and end user intimately.
• Focus on Product, how it is priced, presented, and where it is available to customers.

It takes intimacy and integration to hit the mark

In short, he emphasizes the importance to successful businesses of a) understanding customers’ needs across the spectrum (yes, back to the 6 Ps*) and b) understanding which levers in the business will increase market value.  Without these important capabilities, front and center, companies often end up missing the mark and spending way too much on “marketing”.

Guha quotes Drucker as saying, “If Marketing were to do its job perfectly, Sales would not be needed.”  In other words, if you really understand all aspects of a prospects’ needs , products would sell themselves.

This is not the same as “build it and they will come”.  The needs to which Guha and Drucker are referring, go way beyond the product features and benefits.

Upfront investments in market intelligence save money

Nevertheless, Marketing can’t do the job perfectly.  That would require mind reading.   Still, an upfront investment in marketing research can save a lot of money down the road–if either the product, or its promotion and distribution, will cost a lot to accomplish.

There  are many ways to gather prospect  information from surveys to customer shadowing to watching click streams.  The key is knowing what you’re looking for, and how to use the information you get.

Else, you’re likely to miss the market window.  Or, if you’re “lucky” spend a lot of money on  rework until you get it right.

Start with deep customer insights

Therefore, a lot of companies are investing in developing buyer and user personae before making the much larger investments in product development and content. They capture the “voice of the customer” and then create archetypes for the three to five most important roles at the companies in their target market.

To bring these archetypes to life, many companies give them names.  These examples help multidisciplinary teams discuss and figure out “What Jane would do” or how “Mike would like to receive information”.

Test, iterate, refine

The most successful companies do this in an iterative fashion.  They gather information, form hypotheses, test their hypotheses, and then refine their hypotheses until they hit the measures they’ve set as goals.

Use high-fidelity prototypes

In the development world, see Eric Ries and Cindy Alvarez’ work on lean start-ups (although there is broad applicability for other product development groups).  In the usability world, see Jared Spool’s and Carolyn Snyder’s work on high-fidelity prototyping.

Watch customer behavior

As for communications, hypothesis testing is now the province of analysts that study click streams.  There, however, companies are still working out the timing .

Since digital communications are relatively inexpensive to produce and deliver,  many companies delay testing until after they launch.  It’s too early to have definitive data on how early missteps affect branding, or the extent to which upfront research could have prevented extensive rework.

Marketing never stops, always changes

Nevertheless, it’s not a perfect world.  You can’t anticipate all customer needs upfront.

Things are always in flux.  Economic conditions improve. Regulators introduce new rules.

Technology innovations make the improbable possible. Competitors’ actions cause priorities to shift.  For these reasons and others, it’s essential to gather information on an ongoing basis.

Assess which actions will have the greatest impact

As mentioned above, however, it’s equally important to know how to use the information you gather–or as Guha notes know which levers will increase business value.  This is especially important in a tight economy where companies can only afford to take the most effective actions.

Too often, companies focus too much on one of the “P’s”, to the detriment of the overall marketing effort.  Engineering firms will sometimes focus all their efforts on fine tuning the product, while “marketing organizations” expend too much on a particular type of promotion, relative to the return they’ll get on that investment.

Embrace diversity

This is where true marketers, who work with multidisciplinary teams, add their greatest value.  By understanding the whole customer, his/her environment, and impending change, he/she can help the company optimize the resources it takes to unite customer and solution.

Wondering where to start?  Test your preparedness by drawing on your market knowledge to create a compelling value proposition.  Or, learn more about the value creation process, first.

*Product, positioning, packaging, pricing, promotion, placement (sales channels or distribution)

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This morning, I attended a program at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership forum featuring John Lewis, Regional VP of Sales, of athenahealth. John’s presentation centered on his company’s  experiences of selling what he referred to as health care’s first cloud-based service.

Following on the heels of recent conversations, I’ve had with CIOs, about placing confidential patient data in the cloud; I expected John to tell us how he overcomes this objection.  Instead, he spent the morning convincing us that operating in the cloud is his company’s competitive advantage.  John supported this thesis with figures, facts, and logic.

The figures

athenahealth supports 33,000 health care providers and processes $5 billion in collections/year.  The company has a 30% growth rate.  This growth rate is an indication of satisfaction–since as a SaaS provider, athenahealth’s success depends on client renewals.

The company also offers an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) application and a patient portal.   John told us that the majority of recent prospects have been buying both the revenue cycle and the EMR products.

The facts

Health care standardization has been slowly evolving for the last twenty years.  Nevertheless, it is still largely a world of “one off” transactions.

Each patient is different, has different ailments, and therefore requires different treatments.  Each health care provider has a different system for treating patients and recording the services and results.

Some of this variation is attributable to the differences between patients.  Some is an artifact of a largely manual system that has made it difficult to group like patients and develop standards of care.

To complicate matters, each health care payer pays differently.  This is because payers’ rates take into account volume discounts.  Furthermore, health care providers sometimes need to collect payments from more than one payer for a single patient.

Knowledge management

John argues that by providing services in the cloud, one of the main advantages athenahealth offers its customers is simplification of a complex process.   Because the company process claims for thousands of practices, it collects a lot of data and can spot, and respond to, trends quickly.

Visibility leads to continuous improvement

The company’s original goal was to speed up revenue cycle payments and reduce receivables.  They did so by reducing the number of claims that payers reject.

The company constantly analyzes the revenue cycle to identify hiccups in the system.  Each time a payer rejects a claim for any of its practices, athenahealth updates a central rules set.

Anything the company learns on behalf of one practice benefits all the practices.  Today, the company flags most errors before the claims reach the payer.  Because claims go in right the first time, practices also save on small claims that its clients wouldn’t formerly have bothered to reprocess.

Meaningful use

athenahealth also uses knowledge management to help its clients comply with meaningful use criteria.  For example, the company noticed that a lot of clients were falling behind in measuring demographics.  Once it spotted the problem, athenahealth developed a program that taught users to ask patients about their races, so that the practices could then qualify for greater reimbursement.

Streamlining workflow

athenahealth now reviews the data to spot opportunities to streamline practice workflow.  For example, they now batch all their clients’ claims before delivering them to payers.

There’s power in numbers

What struck me as interesting, is that John indicated that because, athenahealth serves so many practices, they are–or will soon be–in a position to negotiate with other parties about the way in which the two entities exchange information.   If so, this may be an important step in accelerating data standardization in health care.

Responding to change

John points out that his company’s cloud-based solution is particularly compelling when you consider how quickly health care is changing.  Since everyone is running on the same instance of software, athenahealth can respond to changing rules quickly–without requiring clients to install new software.  For example, when athenahealth obtained certification for its software, all of its users received certification at the same time.

Readiness for bundled payments

When someone asked whether bundled payments would erode athenahealth’s competitive advantage, John responded that the company already supports capitated practices.  He said that while fees may decrease on the revenue cycle side, the complexities associated with health care payment will merely shift to the clinical side.

Will cloud solutions triumph?

The jury is out.  Hospitals are under pressure to contain costs, but patient privacy remains important.

Even though IT professionals in other regulated industries are also beginning to move data to the cloud, John admits that his is still a missionary sell.    Nevertheless, the facts, figures, and logic that John presented convinced me that athenahealth offers advantages that many practices find appealing.  The bonus will be accelerated data standardization if athenahealth gains sufficient market power to influence some of the parties with which it exchanges information.

See examples of how BB Marketing Plus works with health care clients in the health care marketing section of this website.

Related posts:

1. How will Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) improve quality and reduce costs?
2. Health care reform: people, processes, data, oh my!
3. Health care social media is in its infancy says panel
4. Enabling health care delivery in the community

I bookmarked today’s MarketingProf’s article entitled “Three tips for maintaining a solid voice-of-the-customer program”. And, I recommend that you do the same.

For one, it’s chock full of useful tools that companies can use to find out what matters most to customers–and why.  For another, it provides a link to some great statistics captured by Right Now in their Customer Experience Impact Report 2010 that are a good reminder of the importance of great service.

It’s easy to assume that all customers care about is price

So often, I hear company spokespeople say that all their customers care about is price.  This research argues otherwise.

Nevertheless, I can hear the naysayers’ skepticism.  The report is anecdotal.  It relies on customers’ self-reports–rather than their behavior.  How do we know what customers really did–as opposed to what they said they did?

Also, how do we know that customer behavior doesn’t vary with the type of product or service?  Isn’t it possible that price trumps service in some instances, but not others?

Anything’s possible, but check your assumptions

Sure, it’s possible.  That said Right Now’s report should at least motivate everyone to check their assumptions.

What’s your company doing to ensure that lack of customer enthusiasm isn’t cutting in to your margins?

- Are you secret shopping your own products and services?

- Are you reviewing or sampling the conversations customers have with your service personnel?

If you aren’t, these ideas may offer a good starting point.  If you are, the MarketingProfs article offers more automated tools that you can use to take your research to the next level.

Customer insights drive sales

Then, use that information to your advantage.  Mine it for new product ideas.  Capture testimonials.  Broadcast the fact that your service rocks.

Learning more about what matters to your customers just may be the differentiator that elevates your company’s brand above that of the competition’s.  Our clients find that no matter how well they think they know their customers, there are always surprises.

Even subtle differences in perception can make a big difference.  Think about the impact what you learn could have on your value proposition–or your content strategy….

Have great service?  Modify your value proposition to let others know using our free do it yourself value proposition guide.

Related posts:

1. Value propositon: What’s price got to do with it?
2. The price of creative collaboration

Learn from the past, capitalize on success

At the end of 2008, in Shorten the sales cycle next year:  Year end marketing planning, I advocated taking stock of what worked and what didn’t—so that you can capitalize on your successes and avoid repeating what turned out to be mistakes.   In particular, I suggested focusing on buyers’ perceptions in four areas: the desirability of the solutions, the reputation of the vendor, the effectiveness of the communications, and the responsiveness of the individuals leading the sales or business development effort.

Sales enablement software prods companies to focus on customers’ buying process

Two years later, few companies do the kind of structured analysis I recommended on an ongoing basis.  Yet, prodded by their acquisition of sales enablement software, many more companies are beginning down this path.

They’re developing buyer personas (based on past experiences) and mapping their best customers’ buying processes to identify points where they can influence the ultimate outcome of the sale. So, we’re making progress.

Product teams incorporate customer feedback throughout the development process

On the product development front, product teams are increasingly using a process called “customer development” that calls for learning and iterating rather than linear execution.  This methodology, introduced by Steve Blank in the Four Steps to the Epiphany, and popularized by Eric Ries among others, advocates using minimally viable products (prototypes) to gather customer feedback throughout the development process.  This methodology also requires developers to validate the product market fit–before they launch new products–by finding early customers who will pay for the product under development.

Strategy trumps tactics

Last year, I questioned the seeming emphasis on demand generation and lead gen–at the expense of longer term strategic investments.  At the time, the economy was at its worst and  a lot of companies felt they couldn’t afford to invest in gaining deep customer insights.

Today, with increasing competition, many realize they can’t afford not to invest in learning about their best prospects’ buying processes.  Moreover, automation has dramatically reduced the cost of gaining deep customers insights.  No longer do companies need to invest a lot of money in travel or convening a group of users at a common location to get deep customer insights.  In fact, they have lots of relatively inexpensive options for doing so:  social media, online communities, web analytics, online marketing research, and online usability tests to name a few.

Automation prompts strategic thinking–and makes it affordable

Each of these avenues is:

• relatively inexpensive to administer (the bits travel, the administrators stay put),

• offers greater reach and access than more traditional research methods (anyone with an Internet connection can participate), and is

• more usable (automated tools for compiling and analyzing the data each creates are now accessible the non-statistician).

In fact, one of the experts I interviewed for a blog post, pointed out that digital marketing, by making it so easy to relate behavior to outcomes, has opened the door to strategy.

Customer research has crossed the chasm

I ended last year by asking, “Will 2010 be the year of the customer?”.   Twelve months later, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve crossed the chasm–and that we’re definitely marching in that direction.

Too bad I couldn’t locate that crystal ball.  I’m wondering what the future holds….

Related posts:

1. What are your marketing priorities for 2010?
2. The future of marketing will be all about customer data
3. Inbound marketing starts with deep customer insights
4. Price or customer experience–which matters more?

According to Marketo’s Andrew Spoeth, the average B2B buyer receives 20+ campaign touches per week. What this means is that prospects will only pay attention to that information they deem highly relevant to their situations.

Know  prospects’ priorities

If we want to capture prospects’ attention, engage their interest, and ultimately win their business we need to speak directly to our prospects’ highest priorities.  What that means is that we need a way of determining what these highest priorities are.

There are many ways to find out. Examples include social listening, reading analyst reports, or querying our sales forces.

Go to the source

Nevertheless, I’ve found that the best way to find out what prospects will find most relevant is to ask recent prospects. After all, they’ve just gone through the entire buying process–and likely still remember what information they were seeking at each stage.

Best of all, each of these accounts was a highly qualified buyer for our products or services. Else, we wouldn’t have spent valuable sales time with them.

Perform win loss post mortems

In a clever post yesterday, Jeff Henning made a similar point. He observed that while losing a customer is painful, failing to learn anything from that loss is even worse.

Nevertheless, few capitalize on the opportunity to perform win loss post mortems. In fact, Pragmatic Marketing, a company that trains product managers and product marketing managers on best practices, found that less than 25% of the population they surveyed engages in this process.

Cindy Alvarez, a strong advocate for customer feedback offered a number of reasons why companies rarely solicit feedback in her post The Real Reason Companies Avoid Feedback. Whatever the reason, my advice to companies that want to develop relevant content is, “Get over it”.

The new win loss analysis looks nothing like it did in the past

In a follow up post, I’ll describe how to get the customer feedback you require to develop relevant content. While, I recommend win loss post mortems, these are not your forebears’ win loss reports.

Those analyses started with the point the prospect first connected with Sales. Today, sales comes late to the party so we need to start much earlier.

Ready to start?  Download 5 actions you can take to generate more sales-ready leads.

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1. Content that captures attention

I found her post timely.  I’ve been struggling with articulating the very concepts that she relayed so fluently as I revise own website.

Shorter sales cycles depend on deep customer insights

Like Laura, it’s been my observation that B2B marketers often fail to clearly define who their most promising prospects are–and what matters most to them.  Yet, until they gain deep insights into who decision makers involve in the buying process, what each stakeholder needs to recommend a solution, and how they need to get it–for it to be useful–sales cycles will continue to stretch out.

I have several theories about why many B2B marketers, especially those in high tech marketing and professional services marketing, don’t delve deep into understanding prospects’ buying processes.  I think one reason is that many have come up the ranks. Having started in other roles, such as engineering, marketing, or administration,  many have never had formal training in segmenting markets or profiling prospects or the customer research it takes to understand buying criteria and preferences.

Another reason is that, until recently, B2B marketers haven’t had access to a lot of behavioral data from which they could draw inferences.  This is changing some with the advent of web analytics which provide some insights into buyer behavior.  Nevertheless, there’s still a need,  not just for market research, but also prospect and customer research.

Web analytics help, but direct conversations with customers and prospects are still essential

Web analytics can tell you who came to your site and what they did once they got there.  It’s less useful for figuring out whether you’re reaching your best prospects or helping you determine the factors that trigger a need for your solutions or create a sense of urgency about acting.  It’s hard to get that information without direct conversations with customers, prospective customers, and those who have decided not to buy from you.

Prospect and customer research takes time

That said, in many businesses, no one has the time to get the deep insights it takes to drive sales.  The product managers often report up through Engineering and are under pressure to get products to market.  Although they are usually responsible for identifying customer requirements, their schedules typically don’t permit  them to perform a lot of customer and prospect research outside of what they learn while doing sales support or attending user groups.

The product marketing managers, who are often charged with understanding customer needs, are also responsible for product-related communications and sales support.  Under pressure to support Sales with marketing collateral, training, and lead generation campaigns, they too tend to sacrifice strategic activities to produce the more tangible deliverables others expect them to deliver.

Often, everyone assumes that the company knows enough to move forward–and they end up missing the mark.  Other times, however, product managers and product marketers recognize they need to understand more about those who will buy and use the company’s products– they just don’t have time to do it all.

Fresh perspectives  and marketing systems can add focus and speed the process

At BB Marketing Plus, we work with companies to fill the gap.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of offering a fresh perspective about what it takes to attract better business and increase revenues.

More often, we help companies organize what they know, figure out what they still need to find out, help them get the necessary information, and use that knowledge to help them make the most of their opportunities.  Once we’ve established a framework–and helped them put marketing systems and marketing processes in place–it’s much easier for them to gather relevant data and and make effective use of it, on an ongoing basis.

How does your business get the deep customers insights it takes to drive sales?  Do you know how to use it make the most of your opportunities?  How do you track success?

Related posts:

1. Digital marketing: How B2B marketers can use it to improve their performance against goals
2. Customer research makes gains in 2010
3. The future of marketing will be all about customer data

MITX, under the umbrella of FutureM, organized dozens of  (mostly free) events dedicated to exploring and sharing how the newest technologies and insights are changing the way that marketers think, create, engage, and measure.  It was information-packed, exhilarating, and exhausting.

This post focuses on what excited me most as a B2B marketing consultant.  Hint:  My company’s tagline is “using customer knowledge to increase sales”.

Get it right the first time

Speaker after speaker referred to the fact that many products fail simply because they don’t address a compelling market need–something that companies could have determined prior to building and shipping the product.  Therefore, a lot of talks centered on various techniques that companies can use to gather customer information before and during the development process–and after the product ships.

Gather customer data early and often

While companies talk about being customer-centric, many treat marketing research as “one and done”.  They gather customer data at the outset of a project, perhaps once or twice during the development cycle and right before the product ships, rather than doing so on an ongoing basis.  Moreover, few companies perform research after the sale to find out why they won or lost.

A lot of the speakers, on the other hand, gather customer feedback weekly, others bi-weekly, and still others monthly throughout the development process.  Many recommended getting to market quickly with what Eric Ries referred to, in the Customer Development session, with a Minimally Viable Product (MVP)–and iterating post-launch to magnify the learning.

The point they emphasized is that everything is always evolving:  the surrounding environment, enabling technologies, the competition, customers’ requirements, and a company’s understanding of its customers’ needs.  Therefore, the development and marketing processes must be iterative,  and so must customer research.

Go where your customers are

Conventional marketing research relies on filtered information.  The sieve may be through the lens of particular functions such as Sales or Customer Service or the choice of questions for a survey or focus group.

Panelists encouraged audiences to gather feedback directly–and from multiple perspectives.  At the Customer Development session, they recommended going on site and observing customers’ environments directly, watching them work, and seeing with whom they interact.  At the Product Strategy session, they also recommended involving whole teams, rather than just individuals with a particular perspective (such as design, marketing, development, etc.)

Focus on actions not words

How many times have you seen market researchers ask a prospective user which features matter most–or what they would pay for something?  As we’ve discussed in this blog before, users have no idea–because they don’t fully grasp the circumstances under which they’ll be making the decision.

Instead, panelists at the Digital Marketing session recommended focusing on actions rather than words.  That is, learn from customers clicks.  At the Product Strategy session, Katie Rae suggested putting up PPC ads to see what attracted user attention.

At the Customer Development session, speakers recommended asking for the order, even if the product was not finished yet.  That way, you know that prospects truly value what you plan to deliver.

At the Customer Engagement session, panelists encouraged participants to focus on the big picture.  In addition to finding out why people came to the site, they recommended finding out where people went when they left the site and what they did with the information they got during their visit.

Engagement fosters relationships

At one of the sessions, a panelist pointed out that it’s now up to marketing to build and nurture relationships.  As we’ve noted elsewhere in this blog, by the time they contact a company many prospects have made their buying decision and just want to negotiate the terms of the deal.

Therefore, panelists at the Customer Engagement session noted that marketers must find out where prospects congregate and what they are discussing.  Doing so will enable marketers to engage prospects in a way that prospects find relevant.

At the Digital Marketing session, panelists said that in the future marketers will deliver less content and more utility.  They may engage prospects by facilitating conversations among them, rather than through direct participation.

They may also provide utility by helping improve users’ offline experiences–even those that don’t directly relate to the company’s offerings.  For example, a pharmaceutical company may sponsor an exercise program and a law firm may help hospital inpatients learn from others’ experiences.  When it comes to providing utility, mobile will often be the platform of choice because phones travel with their users.

Analytics are no longer optional

Another recurring theme was the importance of analytics–especially post launch.  Here, panelists focused on some of the related challenges including the rapid pace of change, integrating the various systems, making sense of all the data, and using the insights to empower communicators throughout the organization.

The marketer of the future?

At the Digital Marketing session, the panelists agreed that the marketer of the future must be a strong communicator, love technology, embrace qualitative and quantitative analysis, and adapt easily to change.

Visit these hashtags to see what others had to say #engagem #custdev2 #futuremdigital #prodstratm

Related posts:

1. Customer research makes gains in 2010
2. B2B marketers struggle to reach decision makers and measure marketing results

To illustrate his point, Dr. Fader looked at the data underlying a study that concluded that Hispanics were more likely to purchase DVDs than Caucasians.  He began by acknowledging that the conclusion was accurate–but not particularly useful.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

First he called our attention to the difference in purchases between the two demographic groups which, although statistically significant, was only separated by a couple percentage points.   A difference that he said would not yield enough revenue to justify unique marketing campaigns.

Then he presented a second graph which showed side-by-side comparisons of the two groups’ purchasing behavior.  The curves were identically shaped bell curves–although the level of the curve representing Hispanics’ purchases of DVDs was slightly higher.

In short, the differences within each group–which recorded purchases under varying circumstances–trumped the differences between the two demographic groups.

Data you can use

His point? In the old days, our only option was to segment markets by visible (i.e. demographic) differences.  Today, however, we have access to behavioral data–which is often far more useful–thanks to the web.

His suggestion? Follow the clickstream to learn how your buyers behave, especially the ones that purchase, and plan your marketing campaigns accordingly.  Rather than grouping those in similar demographic categories, group those with similar behavior (e.g. the order in which they do things, the events that trigger action)

The catch? Fader says that other studies show that you can’t predict the behavior of individual participants, only populations, so you’ll need a lot of data to gather enough information to segment your market in a meaningful way.

Takeaway? The principles underlying Marketing 101 remain the same, the execution is constantly evolving. That’s what keeps marketers awake at night…

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In this article, I discussed how one mid-sized company was using market intelligence to maintain its competitive edge and then asked readers if they had made similar marketing investment decisions.   The article concluded with some questions to which I’d welcome your comments.   They are:

How about your company? Where do you turn for market information and why? How do you use it?

How are you reacting to the tight economy? Have you cut back your marketing resources or increased them?

Are you spending more money on pinpointing your most promising prospects and understanding what induces them to buy? Or are placing your bets on extending your reach–and/or reiterating your current messages?

If you choose to comment, please include the size of your company and the industries and geographies you target to help others interpret your responses.

Thanks in advance for any perspectives you can provide.

Related posts:

1. Follow the money: How to capitalize on opportunity in a tough economy

Google Buzz users “organize” to advocate for new features within days of product launch

Google announced Google Buzz earlier this week.  Today, Mashable reported that it had received “just shy of 500 responses” within several hours of  asking followers: “What features would you like to see in Google Buzz?”.

Just think about it.  This is an incredibly inexpensive way to capture market reaction and present supporting evidence to a vendor you’re trying to influence.  Let’s look at two alternatives.

Alternatives for capturing market response to a new product

Before social media, users desiring to influence product development may have chosen to conduct a survey by mail, email, or phone.  To  do so, they’d need to know who had experience with the product and how to reach them.  Of these alternatives, only email has the potential to promise rapid turnaround time.  Nevertheless,  it would be difficult to obtain a large enough list to get this high a response rate.  It also would have taken considerable time and effort to assemble the list and use it to get the message out.

Another alternative would have been to use some sort of broadcast media to get the message out.  This would have obviated the need to get names, but broadcast media–such as print, radio and TV advertising– is generally expensive for that very reason.  Even placements in highly targeted publications are rarely free.

Will blogs that can speak for many succeed in influencing product development?

Using a blog to find out what others want–and letting the world know seems an awfully effective way to influence product developers.  I know that developing a blog capable of attracting 500 responses isn’t free either.  It takes a lot of work to build a following large enough to draw that many responses.   Moreover, only a small percentage of readers of any post tend to actively contribute; and not every follower reads every post.

Still, using a blog to rally support for new features is a lot quicker and cheaper way to influence product developers than the alternatives–and pretty cool.

How do you think Google Buzz will respond?

Related posts:

1. New social media site invites users to review public health care services
2. The search and social media paradox
3. Is social media an oxymoron?
4. How search and social media will shorten the B2B sales cycle.