Posted by
joshua duncan – March 3, 2010
If you are going to be in Austin during the month of March, make sure to check out the upcoming ProductCamp. Here is a summary of the product camp concept:
ProductCamp is a collaborative, user organized unconference, focused on Product Marketing and Management topics. At ProductCamp everyone participates: by presenting, leading a roundtable discussion, helping with logistics, securing sponsorship, or volunteering. ProductCamp is a great opportunity for you to learn from, teach to, and network with professionals involved in the Product Management, Marketing, and Development process from the Austin area!
I had an opportunity to attend the first product camp and led a session at the second (here’s my presentation). Both camps were filled with insightful sessions, great discussions, and wonderful people. I highly recommend attending (you can register now) if you are interested in product management and product marketing.
I am working on a session for the next camp and have an outline started for review. The idea behind my presentation was an event that happened about a year and a half ago. A product I was working on was getting ready to launch and through a series of unfortunate events, was almost canceled at the last minute.
My plan is to share how we recovered from this situation and some practical ideas that you can use during product development to increase your chance of success.
Session outline for ProductCamp Austin spring 2010 presentation:
Any feedback is much appreciated. Hope to see you at camp!
Posted by
joshua duncan – March 1, 2010
Save B2B Marketing – Storytelling in Marketing
Not only are stories a powerful way of illustrating the value of your product, in many cases they are the way that your prospects and customers will explain what you do to others.
The Experience is the Product – Customer Development Interviews How-to: What You Should Be Learning
The important thing about these questions is that they set up an environment where the customer is the “expert”. They avoid yes/no answers, and give people the opportunity to tell a story – one that may trigger them to think of related problems they’re having, or may trigger more questions from you to ask later.
Startup Musings – Positioning statements
To be honest, I’ve never actually seen a positioning statement generated outside product management. I can’t quite grapple with outsourcing such a strategic deliverable to an agency who can’t possibly be as close to the target personas and the product benefits and feature sets as an in house team. More…
Posted by
joshua duncan – February 23, 2010
I stumbled across a gem of a book over the weekend, “It’s Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be: The World’s Best Selling Book“.
It was one of those books that you pick-up off the shelf and within minutes know you have to buy. The book was written by Paul Arden, a famous creative director, as an advertising guide but has a lot of sage advice for business and life in general.
I put together a presentation with a few of the quotes that are worth sharing:
Posted by
joshua duncan – February 19, 2010
I had the following question asked of me last week:
How do you factor in customer complaints during your product development process?
It’s a great question to consider in this day of online product reviews, Twitter, Facebook, etc. A lot of issues that may surface you try to address tactically, but how do you make sure strategically, you are making the right changes?
It was this post on the Smart Blog that really got me thinking about the importance of the process. Derrick Hull writes on being prepared for good, bad, and ugly reviews from a restaurant standpoint but I think there is correlation to product development. While you are back in the kitchen cooking up the next tasty dish, your customers are out front eating your current creations and if they aren’t happy, you need to know about it. More…
Posted by
joshua duncan – February 8, 2010
Todd Sattersten captured this strategy advice during an interview with Evernote’s CEO, Phil Libin:
Make a product that a billion people will fall in love with and use for the rest of their lives.
Make it easy for a single-digit percentage of them to pay you a few bucks a month once in a while.
Make sure your variable costs are low enough that you can make a mountain of profit if you get #1 and #2 right.
Simple enough but that first one sure is a big step.
On a side note, I haven’t given up on Evernote yet but I am still not using it on a daily basis. I do like how they have incorporated a great demo video (see Don’t Hide the Demo Button) on their front page for showing how Evernote can save you from the note monster.
Posted by
joshua duncan – February 3, 2010
Ad Age’s Want to Be a Smarter Marketer? Here’s What’s Worth Learning:
Numbers, schmumbers. The quest to measure the success of new media in marketing has staged a dangerous illusion that massive traffic is the holy grail. Richer veins of loyalty and brand advocacy (with smaller cohorts of consumers) are paying off more handsomely for brands in the near and long term.
Entrepreneur on 10 [and 1/2] Trends to Watch:
Everyone’s eating lower on the food chain these days. Consumer spending is down more than 30 percent from this time last year, to an average of $57 a day, according to a Gallup poll. And even those who can still afford to spend are beset by “luxury shame,” which means high-end retailers are out, and discount shopping is in. Wal-Mart’s earnings increased more than 5 percent this year, while Neiman Marcus reported a 14.8 percent drop in sales.
Gapingvoid’s “selling by giving”, or, “gift economics”:
I could see that in another five years, ANYONE who wants to market ANYTHING successfully- be they small mom n’ pop shops to large companies, will have to be fluent in Gift Economics, to a level that seemed COMPLETELY alien only a few years ago.
Microsoft’s Study on Data Privacy Day:
Our study found 70% of surveyed HR professionals in U.S. (41% in the UK) have rejected a candidate based on online reputation information. Reputation can also have a positive effect as in the United States, 86% of HR professionals (and at least two thirds of those in the U.K. and Germany) stated that a positive online reputation influences the candidate’s application to some extent; almost half stated that it does so to a great extent.
Photo credit: MoreInterpretation’s Flickr
Posted by
joshua duncan – February 1, 2010
I have been looking forward to reading Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin. While waiting for the release, I went back and read my favorite book from Seth, Purple Cow.
Purple Cow was published in 2003, way before Facebook, Twitter, and social media became household names. There are so many gems in this book it is hard to know where to start and the best part is that save for a couple of dated examples, Seth’s points are even more relevant today (the dated examples actually prove another of Seth’s beliefs that it is hard to maintain a remarkable position).
Seth’s thoughts on the end of mass media advertising:
After Advertising, we’re almost back where we started. But instead of product succeeding by slow and awkward word of mouth, the power of our new networks allows remarkable ideas to diffuse through segments of the population at rock speed.
On the new rule:
Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.
and on ideas that spread:
It’s not an accident that some products catch on and some don’t. When an ideavirus occurs, it’s often because all the viral pieces work together.
Read Purple Cow again or for a first time. You won’t regret it.
