Intrinsic Strategy

The Software and Information Industry Association has posted a summary of the Ed Tech Industry Summit session on embedded assessment in digital learning products. You can find it, as a PDF, here.

The panelists kindly put up with my PowerPoint-free moderating approach and turned in a lively and frequently illuminating discussion. Thanks to Bob Ginn, Century Consultants; Sue Koch, AutoSkill; and Mike Patterson, Curriculum Advantage.

Those interested in notes from other ETIS sessions can find them posted on the SIIA ETIS Web site. A Twitter stream @FrankCatalano (#ETIS or #SIIA) is here.

Over at TechFlash, I’ve contributed a commentary on the potential value – even for pure Internet companies which produce only digital products – in having a physical world presence.

For more than 15 years, brick-and-mortar businesses have been creating Internet presences for both marketing and e-commerce. But there seems to have been an unspoken hesitancy to promote moves in the other direction, from Web-only to Web-plus-cinder block.

Underlying the hesitancy may be a false assumption that the Internet is the ultimate destination for all business, and that a physical presence is a sign of the past. No company, it’s implied, should go out of its way to create a real-world presence if the business was spawned and is doing fine on the Web.

Yet it does pay off.  (more…)

You might also title this, “How bad customer service kills good newspapers.” For while newspapers across the country are in the fight of their lives to attract advertisers and subscribers, they have frequently been their own worst enemies when it comes to keeping the very customers they’ve worked hard to obtain.

Admittedly, I’m a focus group of one. But I also am predisposed to like newspapers (as a former alternative weekly newspaper columnist), which apparently puts me in the minority. Yet, despite my high newsprint-stupidity threshold, these customer prevention policies stun even me:

(more…)

The downside of book contracts comes when you lose control of your self. And that’s the case now that my name is attached to two “new” Dummies books that I had no direct involvement in writing … and didn’t even know existed until I read about them in a blog.

Let me say upfront this doesn’t mean they’re not good books. But my advice and image — state of the art nearly a decade ago — have been repackaged and represented as current. It’s marketing at its most automatic.

Background: In 2000, Bud Smith and I wrote Internet Marketing for Dummies, a successor to 1998′s Marketing Online for Dummies. The contract I signed allowed for non-U.S. editions, a good idea. IMFD was translated into languages and alphabets I don’t read, or in some cases, recognize. All in all, IMFD was in print for seven years, a good run.

But last year,  I noticed blog posts referencing Frank Catalano’s book, Digital Marketing for Dummies. (more…)

I have just wrapped up my reponsibilities as a first-round judge in one of the longest-running, most prestigious award competitions in technology and education. And what entered companies go through in their efforts to avoid winning amaze me.

In the interests of protecting the clueless (or perhaps in this economy, resourceless), I won’t name the companies. Or even the competition. But if you’d like to waste your award entry money, you do so can very efficiently by following these three easy steps: (more…)

It’s an odd reflection on the bubble the tech industry lives in — and simultaneously a sobering commentary on tech adoption in the education market — that there is still discussion of blogs being “new” in 2009.

But inside the education industry, even among the largest players, there are debates about whether or when to blog. Pros and cons were dutifully outlined for an article I wrote for the Software and Information Industry Association’s new book, The Expert’s Guide to the K-12 School Market, Second Edition. You can find an excerpt that succinctly outlines the pros and cons of companies blogging on the Selling to Schools site.

The full article in the book also includes a nine-step checklist to follow before starting a company or product blog. And, as you’ll note, the pros and cons and checklist apply to any business — not just those in the education market.

So why is this article curious? Because it, like almost nothing else, illustrates the gap between the leading edge and the trailing edge of technology.

Technologists today would be stunned that anyone would even think to ask about whether a company should blog; after all, blogging is a decade old. Not only is everyone blogging now, they’d say in wide-eyed disbelief, but anyone who knows anything has moved on to Twitter or something less, well, ancient.

Yet educators and education companies — a combination of a system developed for a mostly agrarian America and an industry still largely more comfortable with paper than pixels — are just starting, in broad measures, to come to terms with technology tools used in their classrooms and industry.

That’s not to say either extreme of the adoption curve is right or wrong. It sometimes helps to wait a reasonable interval so the pros and cons of any new development are clear, as my article outlines for blogging.

But, in my mind, there is also no better example of the disconnect between those who develop cool new stuff, and those who have to figure out how to use it in a practical manner in existing settings.

(The following first appeared in the Just Enough Strategy series of technology marketing essays in 2003 that can be downloaded here. It seems eerily appropriate today.)

The panic doesn’t usually creep into their voices until we’re nearly done with the coffee.

“I know strategy is important,” the colleague will say to me as we wrap up. “But I can’t spend a lot of time or effort on marketing strategy. I need to do stuff that will generate sales today.”

I’ll nod sagely. And hope he doesn’t waste too much money on misdirected marketing tactics, confusing any motion with forward motion.

Strategy has gotten a bad rap as the tech economy has soured. In part, this is the fault of some direct marketing consultants, Web designers, PR firms, and ad agencies who charged inflated prices for meaningless “marketing strategies” during the boom times as a way to add margin to their basic services.

But marketing is needed to create demand that sales then fulfills. And a marketing strategy is nothing more than a disciplined approach that focuses demand creation efforts. Indeed, as I’d have liked to have told many colleagues over coffee, in a down economy you need focus more, not less, so every dollar spent is well spent.

So how to make marketing strategy fast and fashionable again? Start by demystifying it. A good way is to begin thinking of spelling the word “strategy” with three Cs:

Customers
Who are your firm’s target customers? Most companies think they know, but it’s not enough to say “Fortune 1000 firms” (or, God forbid, “anyone with a computer”). What title do individuals you’re targeting at these companies have? In many cases, the “customer” really is two people — a user and a purchaser (in education, for example, the teacher is the user, but the P.O. may be issued by a curriculum administrator).

Now boil down, briefly in writing, what motivates them: Why do they buy what they buy, why do they avoid certain products, and what larger forces in their industry or company may influence their decisions? Past sales call results and trade Web sites can provide clues.

Competitors
Who are your firm’s top competitors — really? Not the firms that you think you compete against, but your competition from your customers’ perspective.

You may think they’re one and the same. But let’s say that at home you have a ripped couch. Upholsterers and furniture manufacturers think they’re competing for your business. But from your perspective, so may sewing needle and duct tape firms.

Pick up the phone and do a soft sounding of some of your best customers, asking them who they think your competition is.

Course
The third “C” is the course — the strategic marketing direction. Once you better describe who your target customers and primary competitors are, defining your course is much simpler.

You’ve already developed touchstones that can provide a reality check on whether any marketing or sales tactic fits inside those boundaries.

Tempted, for example, to exhibit at a local tech event just for the exposure? If that tactic doesn’t draw or influence a target audience, commit those resources elsewhere.

Of course, if you have time to do the traditional market analysis, SWOT analysis, competitive analysis, target audience identification, key features/benefits grid, positioning statement, and functional strategies of advertising, collateral, distribution, public relations, packaging, pricing, and promotion — by all means do them.

But you shouldn’t embark on any marketing tactics without, at the very least, a firm understanding of the three Cs and how they define a rudimentary marketing strategy.

Anything else could spell, well, disaster.