Peter Rothstein, President New England Clean Energy Council and moderator of today’s Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s breakfast seminar entitled Building the Cleantech Ecosystem in New England, kicked off today’s program by noting that venture capital firms investment in clean tech has increased dramatically over the last five years, from 2% then to 17% today. He added that VCs financed more deals in New England than any other state, although our region came in third in terms of total dollars.
Archive for the ‘Marketing strategy’ Category
Clean energy technology: Building an ecosystem in New England
Thursday, May 19th, 2011Value propositon: What’s price got to do with it?
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
One of my longtime friends, who also happens to be an expert writer and consummate marketing expert, has always been fond of saying “In America, you are what you say you are until proven otherwise.” I love that line because you can apply it to just about any facet of life, politics certainly but also your personal or business life as well. But for me, I always pull it out whenever anyone wants to talk about their value proposition and price.
Money talks
Where Marketing adds its greatest value
Thursday, April 21st, 2011By Barbara Bix
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:
Putting health care EMRs in the cloud
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
By Barbara Bix
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.
Price or customer experience–which matters more?
Monday, March 21st, 2011
By Barbara Bix
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
Good lead generation campaigns are much more than a shot in the dark
Monday, March 14th, 2011
By Barbara Bix
I have a friend with a son who is a sophomore in high school. This morning, she told me that she can’t believe how many money colleges waste precious funds on expensive direct mail communications. She described the quality of the paper, the outsized packaging, and the heft of the packages they’ve been receiving–all of which she tosses in the waste bin.
Direct marketing mail campaigns are often cost-effective
Marketing and doing business in the digital age
Friday, March 11th, 2011
By Barbara Bix
Stimulating? Exciting? Scary? Each of these are words that came to mind this morning as I listened to Google National Industry Manager, Seth van der Swaagh’s presentation to members of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM) on Google’s Digital Vision – The Acceleration of Everything.
Accelerate with AIM
The topic and the speaker were an interesting choice when you consider that AIM represents companies in industries that have been around since the Industrial Revolution. Yet, one of the conversations I had prior to the meeting shed light on how the Digital Age affects everyone.
B2B marketing in the 21st century
Monday, March 7th, 2011By Barbara Bix
B2B marketers will welcome Paul Gillin’s and Eric Schwartzman’s latest book, Social Marketing to the Business Customer
Great overview of B2B marketing
While the book centers on social media marketing, it is really an excellent overview of B2B marketing in the 21st century. In addition to a description of all things social, readers will also find sections on search and content strategy–and examples of how to combine them with conventional activities such as public relations, direct mail, and sales collateral creation for maximum impact. Perhaps the only innovations the authors don’t go into in detail are those of a physical nature (e.g. SaaS and mobile).
Testimonials: Evidence that persuades
Monday, March 7th, 2011While perusing Tweetdeck this cloudy Monday morning, I came across a tweet from @Seltzer Design about a post on Seth Godin’s blog. The tweet reports, “Mr Godin makes a good argument for the social-normative power of testimonials in his post abt evidence-based marketing. http://is.gd/dQWJ09 “.
Evidence is not always persuasive
Testimonials are often more convincing
Inbound marketing starts with deep customer insights
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Kristin Knipp offers great advice in a post previewing Hubspot’s talk at the upcoming meeting on inbound marketing for Medical Device companies. She recommends starting with defining a unique value proposition and then building a content factory to attract humans and search engines.
Value is in the eye of the beholder
Although not stated explicitly, it is essential that marketers define the value proposition with the target audience’s perspective in mind–and that the content directly contributes to the delivery of that value proposition.
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