Monitoring these online conversations can help you understand changes in customer behavior and product purchase patterns. Lots of data by itself doesn't help in creating a marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy is based on good data. That's why it's important to start the strategic marketing planning process with data about your industry and specific market, and about your customers. Industry and market data. When your industry is growing, your company is probably growing, too. Macro economic trends. Industry size and growth. Competitor size and growth. Online monitoring. MORE >>

So, when you're working on the marketing plan for a new product, budget resources for the market research that can help answer the questions that come after, "What is it?". Every marketer has done market research, even if it's just looking at a competitor's traffic at Compete.com. But, we sometimes forget just how many ways we can use market research. Recently, I found a list of ways market research could be used that included a few I hadn't thought about. customer may have ordered a product that isn't normally purchased by that type of company. How big is it? MORE >>

So, when you're working on the marketing plan for a new product, budget resources for the market research that can help answer the questions that come after, "What is it?". Every marketer has done market research, even if it's just looking at a competitor's traffic at Compete.com. But, we sometimes forget just how many ways we can use market research. Recently, I found a list of ways market research could be used that included a few I hadn't thought about. customer may have ordered a product that isn't normally purchased by that type of company. How big is it? MORE >>

The conference is designed to help high-tech entrepreneurs with issues from business planning and raising startup capital, to marketing and operations. Many people think that marketing is marketing -- that there is one approach to marketing for whichever industry or sector you sell into. They make the mistake of thinking that the consumer marketing done by large companies like P&G or Coke will work for entrepreneurial consumer companies. Not so. In addition, the marketing metrics are different for high-tech startups. MORE >>

Second, marketers need to adopt the relationship techniques used by business development people who learn about -- and experience -- the problems of those who they want to help (i.e., Marketers are always looking for the next hot technique to get in front of prospective customers, which is why there is a continual shift of ad budgets to all things digital. Unfortunately, many marketers are a still a bit behind in fully understanding how to take advantage of today's digital environment to maximize revenues. sell to). This means collaborating with prospective customers. MORE >>