Why I like FriendFeed, so far

Thanks to Steve Reubel who has been blogging a lot about FriendFeed and how he's using it. I'm liking this application! It is like an "inbox" for all of the social media stuff I'm doing. I have a blog, I use Twitter, I use Diigo and Delicious for bookmarking and YouTube for posting videos. I use these web 2.0 services for work and play.

The problem is they kinda exist separate from each other...so it fragments my "social media" persona and doesn't give readers a fuller picture of what I'm thinking and doing. Now, I can use FriendFeed as an aggregation point for all my digital dialogue. It's also a great tool to bump into people with similar interests and track what their digital dialogue too.

Here's a great video from Tim Steward on how FriendFeed works.

Cisco I-Prize

The Cisco I-Prize contest is a global search for Cisco's next "Billion Dollar idea". This contest started in October of 2007. Over 1100 ideas were submitted from across the globe. I submitted about seven ideas and two made it to the semi-finals (36 ideas made it to the semis). I chose to bet the farm on one idea and thanks to my team of five outstanding and talented individuals we made it to the finals (12 got through)! We expect to hear this month if our team won. UPDATE: Received notice yesterday that the winners won't be announced until late July.

The I-Prize contest has been an amazing experience and kudos to Cisco for doing this. Rumour has it there will be a second contest...give it a shot! If you want to know more watch the video below.

Google Maps, an Idea

I love Google Maps especially the Satellite feature. This picture is the result of an address search. The "pin" indicates where Google thinks my house is however it's actually the house with the red box around it. This got me wondering about how this type of inaccuracy could be corrected. Wikis allow us to make changes to them why not Google Maps?

Update: Thanks Chris Gurney for pointing out that Google already offers this capability. It seems that it is in "limited release" though. The "how to" video is on YouTube but I can't make an address edit.

Tuned In to Product Management

If you develop complex products and "solutions" then the upcoming book "Tuned In" is worth a read. There are thousands of business books produced every year so how is this one special? The folks writing this book are key leaders from Pragmatic Marketing. They provide a product management framework for companies that develop, support and sell technology products. They offer training and consulting services and boast a client list that includes Microsoft, Cisco and SAP to name a few.

I took a seminar a couple of months back and highly recommend any product manager to take a look at Pragmatic's framework. It is geared for the tech. industry but I think any product manager could benefit from using parts of it. Sometimes it's better to look at things outside of your industry to get ideas and alternative thinking.

Introducing ProductCampToronto

Join us this fall at ProductCampToronto! This event is an "unconference" where you get to choose the topics of discussion not sponsors with "planted presentations" and event organizers more interested in the agendas of sponsors. Hey, don't get me wrong, some shows are great to attend and deliver value. However, no show, asks and empowers you the attendee to set the topics and direction. ProductCampToronto is for anyone interested in the art and science of product management. To register visit the "official wiki" and join our Facebook Group. Subscribe to this blog for updates too.

Importance of Strategic References

I've talked about the importance of having a solid reference program in place as part of your overall branding strategy.

I like to segment reference customers into three types: Strategic, Marketing and Service/Solution References.

Strategic References are created because both you and the customer need/want to work together closely to achieve key business outcomes of mutual value. This common interest is key to a long term "profitable" partnership where you work together to develop new solutions and markets. This is accomplished by jointly conceptualizing, implementing and then promoting the solution to generate awareness, word of mouth and to advance each others strategic objectives (translation: competitive advantage, sales, productivity).

Case Study

We recently attended an industry tradeshow with the Michener Institute, a strategic reference customer, who demo'd a virtual microscopy solution. Simply put, this solution replaces glass slides with digitized ones and the computer screen takes the place of the microscope.

This is at the very early adoption stage but it is now being taught to healthcare professionals in classroom settings to teach microscopic (say that three times fast!) diagnosis. We wanted to show this technology to various healthcare stakeholders to demonstrate its potential in improving healthcare during the education and healthcare delivery stages (by the way we put in the communications and storage technologies that enable this solution to perform properly and securely).

The customer gathered feedback and generated awareness about this solution now being used to teach their students. It positioned them as unique and innovative. From our perspective our customer advocated our company as a key stakeholder in developing, implementing and supporting the technology that enables students to learn using this solution. Prospective customers heard firsthand what it is like working with our company and how we are solving their problems and in this case helping them innovate. The results were positive for our customer and my company both during and after the show. In fact two articles will be written about this solution in Canada's largest circulated Healthcare Technology Magazine.

If you're not measuring ROI start now!

Many marketers and more importantly CxOs are familiar with the quote from a former adverstising executive that went something like this:

" I know that 50% of my advertising is working. I'm just not sure which 50%
it is."

If I was to say this to the owner or CEO of a company, I'd better have something to protect myself!

It can be difficult to measure results however you must find a way to do this, and by the way, the results that matter the most are revenue, gross margin and cash. Sure things like awareness, recall and positioning are important but, if a marketer wants to sit at the executive table and be considered a peer .... hard quantifiable results is what matters....period.

So how do you do that? First of all this isn't a discussion about Marketing ROI systems, CRM applications and web analytics. It's about figuring out what you can do to directly generate sales opportunities for your sales reps, distributors and partners.

Here's a "to list":

• The first thing you need to do is come up with a sustainable campaign (should last six to twelve months, but this depends on what you sell, how you sell and the length of your sales cycle. Hint: if it's $50k or more expect a longer sales cycle) that is aligned with what your sales reps need AND ARE incented to sell.
• Get the pieces together, establish your budget and expected ROI
• Socialize the campaign with your reps, sales manager(s) and then the CEO. If the reps see that this campaign will help them retire their quota and make their jobs easier you have a better chance of this being a success and yielding a return.
• Define what a "qualified lead" means to the sales team (don't miss this step).
• Tweak the campaign based on feedback and execute and begin measuring!

In terms of ROI you should aim for a 10-1 return as a minimum. For every dollar spent on marketing $10 should be created in revenue or better still gross margin contribution. The size of the opportunity pipeline would depend on the quality of the leads, average size of a sale and your sales reps closing skills.

Measurement should be as simple as possible and all sales opportunities must be tracked by you! You'll need help from your sales reps to ensure that all eligible sales are tagged to the campaign. This requires diligence, persistance and follow up on your part. If your reps aren't using a CRM system and/or you don't have a public sales pipeline you can review you'll need to create a campaign pipeline and manage it with the sales manager. This is critical. Reps are the engines that close deals. They sometimes keep things very close to the vest. You cannot rely on this approach when measuring a campaign. You need to manage and monitor the campaign pipeline with the sales team.