Today, software and Internet companies are driving revenues by exposing every layer of the technology stack as cloud computing products.  Cloud computing has become mission critical for the product strategy of countless high profile companies, including Salesforce , LinkedIn , Facebook , Twitter , Microsoft , Amazon , Google , and on and on. If your product strategy doesn’t already consider the impact of cloud computing, you might just want to keep a close eye on your lunch, because someone’s about to eat it.  Turn infrastructure into products. Sell data. No problem.  MORE >>

Finding the “next big thing” doesn’t mean growing your business incrementally or having new product lines that are profitable.  The history of software and Internet companies is littered with highly successful one-trick ponies whose corporate success hinged on the lifecycle of the one product category they came to dominate.  Then they found the next big thing in the market for office productivity desktop applications when they introduced Microsoft Office.  Google Books and Google Products threaten to sell Amazon’s e-commerce business down the river. MORE >>

In world of high tech product strategy, we have a third option I like to think of as “stack integration.”  Much like vertical integration, a stack integration product strategy means you plan to expand upstream or downstream in the technology stack.  Since products at higher layers in the stack often generate demand for lower layer products, the product strategy implications of stack integration are very much like those of old-school vertical integration. Internal Applications: Productivity-boosting applications, such as CRM, SFA or ERP apps. MORE >>

The original Amazon affiliate marketing program made it easy for anyone with a website to create a link to any of Amazon’s products and earn a commission check for site visitors who clicked through the link to Amazon’s site and bought the product. Today, the Amazon affiliate marketing program now offers website owners a chance to keep their visitors on their own site while still selling Amazon’s products. Amazon even offers a Product Advertising API that lets developers build their own custom software and websites integrated directly into Amazon’s back end systems. MORE >>

The customer lifecycle begins with trading companies’ content for prospects’ attention and then gradually transforms into trading companies’ products for customers’ business. Product-focused marketing content fails to focus on the top priorities of prospects in favor of feature-oriented “show up and throw up” content.  Focus your content marketing from the point of view of the prospect (not your company or products). We all know about the time value of money.  Getting money today is worth more than getting money tomorrow.  Pithy comment from more detailed advice quote”. MORE >>