Marketing Articles About Revenue

Marketing Articles About Revenue Search Results

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Rounding Up Staff Ideas. Business owners are always on the hunt for new ideas — ways to cut costs, increase revenue, and improve products and services. Inc.com reports that often the most cost-effective source of ideas is right in front of you. “More companies are turning first to their employees to tap into those free ideas lying around in [...] (03/02/10 09:00 PM)

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Mobile Location Based Services Ready to Move. A convergence of factors is setting up ideal conditions for the global mobile location based services (MLBS) market to boom by 2014, according to Juniper Research. Global market revenues for MLBS and... (02/24/10 09:01 PM)

The 10 Most Common Pitfalls of Brand Licensing. Combining your product with top brands is an incredible way to escalate growth. If you are looking to drive revenue, enter new markets, or reposition your product, brand licensing can lead to dramatic results. As with any new endeavor, however, pitfalls abound. (02/23/10 09:00 PM)

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Segment Migration: Where Your Customers Were, Where They Went, and Why. Understanding customer behavior is key to creating marketing campaigns that generate high response and revenue. One of the best ways to understand customer behavior is to study customer migration patterns?to learn when and why a customer ends up in a segment different from the one he or she had been ... (02/16/10 09:01 PM)

The Economic Consequences of America’s Morality Police.

Share There is a price to be paid for morality. Laws prohibiting alcohol, marijuana, same-sex marriages and gambling which promote community morals and standards also have another effect -- a major loss of revenue from sales and... Read more

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Revamp to Revenue: Five Ways to Turn on the Profits With Your Website. In the current economic climate, more business owners need to evaluate their website and revamp it to turn it into a presales tool, lead-generation machine, or even a revenue-producing cash cow. Can it be done? It just takes a few tweaks to turn on the profits. (02/02/10 09:00 PM)

How a B2B Company Went From Zero Brand Awareness to 190 Leads With Its First-Ever Direct-Mail Effort. With Q4 looming, along iwth company revenue targets for the year ahead, this company faced the perennial dilemma common to B2B marketers: how to fill the sales funnel with quality leads now to get a jump on sales-cycle activity in January. A classic direct-mail package and a brilliantly simple strategy ... (01/19/10 09:00 PM)

Increase Your Revenue - Become an Outstanding Sales Copywriter. The responsibility of being a Sales copywriter is pretty intense. The words you put together and the way your copy "flows" can define if a product sells or not. Having this burden on your shoulders (o... (12/10/09 09:00 AM)

Podcast: Why sellers don’t have the right tools to help buyers buy. A recent lead generation poll showed that converting leads to pipeline revenue (accelerating sales) was the biggest challenge for marketers. What are we doing as sellers that keeps us from closing sales? It’s a tough question, and it’s one that... (10/15/09 09:00 AM)

Lead Generation Poll shows converting leads-to-sales pipeline is biggest frustration. I recently hosted a poll to ask fellow marketers which aspect of the B2B lead generation frustrated them the most. Overall, 34% of the 94 participants replied that converting leads to pipeline revenue is the biggest issue for them. According... (09/16/09 09:00 PM)

Take the Poll: Which aspect of the B2B lead generation process frustrates you the most?. Which aspect of the B2B lead generation process frustrates you the most? Getting a volume of names Figuring out which names are valuable Passing leads to sales Converting leads to pipeline revenue Closing the loop on every lead Take the... (08/21/09 09:00 AM)

Good advice for growing your company from industry experts. I wanted to pass along a great new resource for any company looking to grow revenue or expand. The book is Professional Services Marketing, and you know it’s good stuff because it’s written by Mike Schultz and John Doerr, the... (08/03/09 09:00 AM)

On Lead generation: Insist on lead quality over quantity. Under increased pressure to help drive revenue in this challenging market, many of us are tempted throw as many leads as we can to our sales team. We can tell ourselves that more leads is better because it lowers the... (07/01/09 09:00 PM)

Top Lead Generation Tips for New Sellers. The faster we can get new sales reps producing revenue the better. So what works? Jill Konrath shares 5 great tips for new sellers on her Selling to BIG Companies Blog and it’s definitely worth a read. I particularity liked... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

5 Lead Nurturing Time Factors to Fine Tune Your Messages. The lack of a strong lead nurturing discipline can cost your organization substantial unrealized revenue. Without lead nurturing in place to capture and cultivate early-stage leads, your marketing funnel misses out on valuable opportunities. The true value of lead nurturing... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

Rainmakers and Lead Generation. In professional services organizations the people who bring in the big revenue clients are often called rainmakers. They’re the one’s that make it all happen and become almost mythical in the process. In today’s challenging business climate, we could all... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

8 Tips for Selling Social Marketing to CFOs. Marketers are usually challenged to justify word of mouth social media marketing programs to the finance department. With economic challenges ahead, your job doesn’t get easier. As someone who’s focuses on both creative and measurement, and as Interim CFO at Bazaarvoice, I started thinking more about the question of what marketers need to sell CFOs on the social marketing opportunity. Ultimately everything comes down to the bottom line – drive revenue, margin or costs down – but every marketing strategy has a different familiarity, timeline to ROI, or measurements that have to tie back to the P&L. So the approach to start, grow and sustain social marketing through the eyes of the finance department will differ from doing business as usual. And the justification needs to span beyond the numbers to get the entire management team to understand the ‘ecosystem’ effect of how customers make purchase decisions in a networked world.I posed a question on LinkediN question to my marketing peers and colleagues: With the economic downturn, how will you convince the CFO that "social" marketing is a priority?I’ve summarized the 25 answers to the question into these 8 tips: Provide financial leaders with hard facts—give numbers representing the anticipated dollar value of social media marketing compared to its cost (ex: anticipated ROI) for your company, cite research on the proven effectiveness of social media (ex: reviews/testimonials turn potential customers into actual customers, which is crucial, especially during an economic downturn) and emphasize that a company should always aim to... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

User Generated Content is Booming for Baby Boomers. A marketer from a manufacturer brand recently asked me if user generated content was relevant to the baby boomer and senior population. Boomers make up of 35% of the Internet population. While it’s true that Millenials (the 13-24 generation) share content at double the rate of Baby boomers (56%), 31% of Baby Boomers share their own user generated content. This could be in the form of reviews, blog posts, comments, discussion forums, etc. Bazaarvoice has several clients with a high percentage of boomers in their base that are getting great results from UGC; such as QVC, Sears, Macy’s, Blair, Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Golfsmith, and many others. The use of search (where 25%+ of results are UGC) and usefuleness of user generated content for a purchase is relevant at any age. Just ask someone you know over 50 if they read reviews when they shop online. Nielsen found 8 out of 10 shoppers used reviews when shopping over the holidays, and that includes 35% of the internet population that are boomers!If you are interested in learning more about marketing and new media strategies for the Baby Boomer generation, consider attending the What’s Next Boomer Summit, March 19 in Las Vegas. There will be an E-Revenue Bootcamp. I will be speaking there and will discuss the impact of UGC and customer reviews for this generation. Also, Guy Kawasaki will keynote. Should be a great conference! (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Small business growth through investing.

Since launching MarketingSavant (my social media/digital marketing consulting company) earlier this year, I've been looking at a number of ways to grow the business, outside of hiring people. By growing the business I mean simply the cash base or revenues from the organization. I was caught off guard when another local consulting business owner asked me "so, what's your exit strategy?" Wow, I just kicked this thing off, what do you mean "exit strategy". Of course, I know exactly what he means, but I'd never really given it that much thought. When you're an entrepreneur or an intrepreneuer (someone with an entrepreneurial spirit inside the corporation), you need to have your own exit strategy. For me, I've chosen to pursue an 'education in investing' strategy to help grow my cash reserves while I grow the business. Yes, I know, the market isn't exactly doing well, but that's precisely the time to get in. I look at the stocks and funds that I'm investing in now and thinking back to when I graduated college in 1999... if I had invested even a modest sum then, I'd be doing quite well now. Which brings us to the one thing that I think investing and marketing have in common (I'm sure there are others...but this one is really important... Faith in the future. As marketers, we're always marketing to the future, with faith in that marketing campaign and it's ability to deliver future value. As investors, we're buying stocks and funds with faith in the company's ability to grow into the future. Marketers and investors unite! Doom and gloom does not serve you...it's the faith in the future that keeps both of us afloat and in business. [Inspired by Kevin's post on 'cracks in the retirement nest egg']
(07/08/08 09:00 AM)

The Gap in Customer Engagement. Late post from the Forrester Marketing Forum Conference I attended a couple weeks ago. The topic was “Customer Engagement”, which is heralded by many publications as the new marketing buzzword. I love buzzwords…they get buzz! Which gets people talking, which gets people trying things, which causes failures, which creates learning, which (hopefully) creates better companies. I digress. The primary research and paper behind customer engagement was conducted by Brian Haven, who’s a great Forrester Analyst. I’ve known him for years and spoken in his workshops on Social networking and UGC. I’m a big believer in the idea of customer engagement. But I have 2 cents to add on where customer engagement comes from and where the gap is in achieving this goal in organizations. The conference was a balance of ideas to measure customer engagement, with tools, principles and experiences that result in more engaged customers. During the show I posted to Facebook “Customer Engagement is a more measured way of defining Customer Experience”. Said another way, Customer Engagement is an outcome…and outcomes (as well as inputs) are measurable. There are a lot of metrics that can point to engaged customers. I don’t think the absolute figures of these measures matter as much as trending to understand if you’re winning or losing customer engagement. But what is a point of customer engagement worth in revenue, margin or saved costs? Some of the metrics for customer engagement – such as time on site, Net Promoter, or Brand awareness -- could track... (04/23/08 09:01 PM)

The Beginning of the Facebook Revenue / Experience Squeeze?. History repeats itself. A social networking site begins pure and unique, entirely focused on what users find cool. In truth, they're building on the backs of VCs. Eventually they are pressured to grow revenue and it's a race against time. The revenue pressure starts to squeeze the original purity of the experience that brought the crowd in the first place. And then the crowd moves on to the next great experience. Remember Tripod and GeoCities? Remember Friendster and Orkut? Remember MySpace? When will we say "Remember Facebook?". Ok, it's not that dire, yet. I'm a Facebook fan. But logging into my profile tonight I saw an ad like I never saw before. See that Car insurance ad? If I start seeing more of these ads in my profile every time I log in, the profile won't feel like 'mine' anymore. Moreover, the ad is crap. Cheesy picture. And I clicked through...sure enough, cheesy company.The difference with Google ads is they are all text, so cheesiness is more hidden from the expeirence. And Google is not my personal page. Which may make advertising on social networks more difficult, for the advertiser and the longevity of the social network. What do I like? I like how people can join brands (see the Apple brand at the bottom), and how I invited in marketplace listings on the right. And I'm ok with ads on the left (not shown) because that seems like a place for ads, not in my news feed. Anyway, they... (02/27/08 09:00 PM)

VP of Marketing Responsible for Shipping & Logistics?. Harry Joiner, a marketing recruiter and good friend, asked me to comment on his blog regarding what a VP of eCommerce or VP Marketing candidate should be asked or should answer regarding shipping & delivery logistics. Here's what I said... As you know, I believe word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing and sustainable growth. So, a VP of marketing candidate needs to have an appreciation for the overall customer experience. Shipping logistics are a huge part of that experience. You can weight the satisfaction and loyalty impact of each part of the customer experience – researching products, buying, receiving and using a product (support). The weight of impact is correlated to the the emotional residual for that part of the experience. Shopping and research is a relatively forgettable experience, unless there is severe frustration. The buying experience is overshadowed with the emotional weight of the receiving and the out of box experience, as well as resolving customer service and support issues (downstream activities). Amazon is consistent with shipping and logistics. Apple and Chumby have great out of the box experiences. So, word of mouth and branding (and thus, top line revenue over the long term) are driven from upstream decisions (great products, packaging) and downstream logistics (shipping, service, support). A great VP of marketing should realize they have to balance between immediate, short term tactics to drive revenue and the sustainable long-term activities that may even be out of his direct control. In this case, marketing... (01/31/08 09:00 PM)

Live Event: Ways to Grow Revenues through Alliances. Statistics show that 70% of all business alliances FAIL. Alliance, channel partner, and joint marketing agreements are not new. They just don't always work very well. Why? Not enough forethought into the goals and deliverables from each party participating. That's... (11/05/07 09:01 PM)

Three Answers from the Web 2.0 Summit. I couldn't make the Web 2.0 Summit a couple weeks ago, but my colleague Jay Hallberg (Co-founder and VP of Marketing for Spiceworks) was there and answered my top three questions: If I were a brand company.... top three things... that would help my business: 1) Web 2.0 is moving into 'adulthood' and changing industries. There was a general feeling that web 2.0 has grown up. In fact, the Red Herring had a great piece on this: "Is Web 2.0 Growing Up?". Collaborative technologies are solving problems for enterprises and entire industries. It's no longer about whether your CEO has a blog or your company has a wiki. You better be paying attention to how Web 2.0 is helping your competitor or turning your company upside down. Half of the companies featured in the prestigious Launch Pad were "B2B": Cleverset optimizes website revenue, ClickForensics analyzes PPC click fraud, and Spiceworks (my company) has introduced free, ad-supported IT applications. Some of the crowd bemoaned the fact that Web 2.0 is no longer about the next YouTube or Flickr -- it's now about how it's impacting the bottom-line or up-ending industries. If you are still talking about blogs and wikis you may have missed the boat. 2) "Online" is everything. Brian McAndrews who runs Microsoft's ad business really nailed it when said that within 5 years online will be the center of all media, marketing and advertising strategies. It's where people should start. Frankly, it's hard to believe that this isn't already... (10/29/07 09:00 AM)

Prioritize Like a P&L. Today I was having lunch with a friend who is VP of Marketing for a local startup. Small budget, lots to do...how to prioritize? In my experience, when you're trying to grow revenue as fast as possible with little time, money and resources, it's important to think about the after-launch resources a program will take. Think about any program or initiative as an ongoing P&L. The best projects will have sustaining value, like a business that has sustaining profits. In fact, you should first think about the projects that have a clear and direct impact on revenue or cost savings. Can you answer the question: "This program/initiative will have an impact on our bottom line because..." The biggest mistake in selecting programs is the costs of sustainment. Usually things get set in motion that take human capital as part of the processes. The ideal projects are those that are set in motion, sustian and/or grow in impact over time and require little resources to sustain. Many projects I've launched that risked failure and often got orphaned are those that required ongoing program management time and processes. If it was part of an existing process it was easier to absorb. Creating new processes, owners, measures, reporting, etc. and sustaining all of this is an investment – COGS and Opex in a P&L. Sometimes it's worth it...but most of the time we underestimate the cost of sustainment. So, look for the projects that can 'blossom' on their own. For example, customer created... (10/19/07 09:00 PM)

Liveblogging TechCrunch 40: Day 2. Here are some highlights from Day 2 of TechCrunch 40 (in reverse-order of appearance): Kaltura: This startup was voted on-stage from the demo pit by the conference attendees. Slick, collaborative video editing software. It's all Web-based. Lets you collectively create a video with your friends. A wiki/peer production platform for making videos. Zivity: User-generated porn. The site shares revenues with the "models"who upload photos. Just what the world needs: a company that is lowering the bar on porn. One of the presenters had this weird handlebar mustache. What's with that? WooMe: Speed dating site where you spend a minute meeting potential mates via Webcam. Real-time social networking. Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom is a backer. Metaplace: Build your own virtual world that can appear on any site as a 3D virtual-world widget. The big idea is that every object in the world can be linked to. "Metaplace is trying to Facebook Second Life," says panelist Loic Le Meur. Yahoo's Brad Garlinghouse argues Second Life has too much traction to be displaced. BeFunky: Turns photos and videos into cartoons. Sort of makes everything look like A Scanner Darkly. Also lets you create "uvatars" that look exactly like you. (They are hand-drawn now, but will soon use the same "Cartoonizer" technology you can already apply to photos and videos). Startup is from Turkey. Cool FX. Panelist MC Hammer thinks its funky. Wixi: Yet another file sharing site. As panelist Loic Le Meur says, "Everybody is doing that." mEgo: Have too many social networks... (09/18/07 09:00 PM)

Imeem is Rocking. Dalton Caldwell is finally finding his groove. His Sequoia-backed social network, Imeem, started out a couple years ago as a standalone, instant-messaging application. He soon scrapped that in favor of a Web-based social music site. But then, a victim of his own success, Imeem was banned from MySpace and threatened with a lawsuit from the Warner Music Group. Caldwell, though, has turned all of that around, and made Imeem into a legitimate, ad-supported music streaming site. He won over Warner Music, which dropped its lawsuit and licensed its entire catalog of songs to Imeem in return for a share of the advertising revenues associated with its music. In fact, Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. found the relationship with Imeem important enough to highlight in Warner Music's most recent earnings conference call. Now, not only can you listen to songs from indie groups like The Essex Green (and embed them on your blog): But you can also also listen to Warner Music acts like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and embed (30-second samples of) those as well: Imeem claims 16 million unique visitors in July, 10 million registered users and more than one million unique logins a day. Third-party measurement site Compete.com puts the number of unique visitors at 4.6 million, but shows that U.S. traffic is growing and beating both Last.fm and Bebo (see graph above). Comscore shows Bebo slightly ahead of Imeem in the U.S., with 4.4 million visitors in July versus 3.9 million for Imeem (and 1.8... (08/20/07 09:00 AM)

Bubble Watch: Glam Media Shops Around a $200 Million Private Placement. How much froth is there in the online ad industry? One market signal comes from a leaked private-placement document for Glam Media, which is trying to raise an eye-popping $200 million (which is very large for a private deal). Allen Company and Bank of America are raising the round on behalf of Glam. According to the leaked document (thank you, TechCrunch):Glam Media is the fastest-growing web property in the United States based on the year over year increase in unique visitors from 782,000 to more than 19.1 million monthly unique visitors in June 2007.Except that it's not. Glam Media owns a collection of women oriented sites, including its flagship Glam.com. But the bulk of those 19 million visitors comes from the ad network that it runs for other sites like MyYearbook.com, QualityHealth.com, and Kaboodle (which was recently acquired). In other words, Glam Media is trying to tell prospective investors that because it serves up ads on a site, the visitors to those affiliated sites should count towards its own total as a web property. Yet, according to comScore, all of Glam Media's sites accounted for only 1.6 million of those 19 million visitors in June. And Glam.com itself only accounted for 654,000 visitors. Some of its lesser sites include Celebrity-Hairstyles.org. The fact is that the bulk of Glam Media's traffic and revenues comes from its ad network, not its web properties. Trying to sell itself as the No. 1 destination on the Web for women is misleading at best. Hyperbole... (08/13/07 09:01 PM)

Disruptors Video: Not Your Typical Rental Car (Zipcar). Most people associate rental cars with airports and travel. But Boston-based Zipcar is trying to turn the car-rental equation on its head. It targets urban dwellers who need a car for a few hours at a time to run an errand, go out on a date, or get groceries. Using the Web, the cellular data network, and RFID cards for entry into the vehicles, Zipcar has created a self-serve car rental business that is targeting not so much the Avises of the world as it is the very concept of car ownership. Since Zipcar members, who now number more than 100,000 in 23 cities, book and pick up their own cars, the company can manage its fleet of cars much more efficiently than incumbent car-rental agencies. (Zipcar can manage nearly twice as many cars per employee as Avis, for instance). It is on track to make $60 million in revenues this year, and says it is profitable in its four largest established markets (Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.) The downside to Zipcar's distributed network of cars sprinkled throughout residential neighborhoods is that there might not be a car available on the weekend when you want it. Or if the car you reserved is broken or dirty, you might be stuck without an alternative. Zipcar is trying to mitigate against such scenarios by clustering its cars together in denser packs. I visited Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith to learn more in this week's episode of the New Disruptors (video).... (08/02/07 09:00 PM)

Links for 2007-08-01 [del.icio.us].

Internet Outsider: Time to Update Those Facebook Revenue Estimates
Blodget thinks Facebook can bring in $1 billion in revenues by 2009. The hype is officially back.
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Freetards in deep denial
Another beautiful rant from Fake Steve about why $3 Windows is better than free Linux.
Comebacks: Business 2.0 gets a stay of execution - Valleywag
"This much is clear, however. Business 2.0 has gone, overnight, from certain death to an uncertain life."

(08/02/07 09:01 AM)

Disruptors Video: An eBay for Manufacturers (MFG.com). Remember all of those B2B exchanges that were supposed to change the industrial landscape before they evaporated at the tail end of the last dotcom boom? Well, at least one of them survived—a small company based in Atlanta called MFG.com. Today, it is a thriving Web marketplace for manufacturers and their suppliers. I talk with CEO Mitch Free in this week’s episode of the New Disruptors. MFG.com is a Website where engineers and purchasing managers from places like Apple or Northrop Grumman can put up CAD diagrams of parts they want manufactured and get bids from suppliers all over the world. In the past twelve months, over $2 billion worth of parts have been sourced over MFG.com. But instead of trying to take a cut of each transaction like eBay does, MFG.com charges a subscription fee of about $6,000 a year to each supplier. Free says the company is on track to pull in $25 million in revenues this year and is running at break-even. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the largest outside investor (he learned about it from one of the engineers at his spacecraft startup, Blue Origin). Germany’s Samwer brothers—their startup Alando became eBay Germany—also own a stake. Free wants to turn MFG.com into an online platform for the manufacturing industry. Last year, he bought Europe’s SourcingParts (a Salesforce.com for purchasing managers), and launched a manufacturing social network last March called MFGx.com. “We’ve borrowed some of the elements from Craigslist, MySpace, and Wikipedia,” he says. But perhaps the... (07/26/07 09:00 PM)

New York Times' Web Growth Doesn't Make Up For Print Decline. In what's becoming an all-too common theme among old-media companies, the New York Times reported a 5.7 percent drop in overall ad revenues and a 59 percent drop in operating profits. The one bright spot: it's Web properties, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com, saw a 23.4 percent rise in revenues. But it's $81 million in revenues only makes up 10 percent of the company's overall sales, and is still not enough to counter the decline in print. Still, operating profits at About.com alone ($8.5 million) represent 38 percent of the company's total operating profits. Web revenues don't have to rise tenfold before Web profits can offset the decline in print profits. But with online ad growth expected to slow at the Times, it could still be a while.... (07/25/07 09:01 AM)

Andreessen Rakes in $92 Million on HP-Opsware Deal. Marc, originally uploaded by Gina Bianchini. Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ) $1.6 billion acquisition of Opsware (OPSW) announced this morning strengthens its hand in the market for automated data center management software. Corporate data centers are getting bigger and more complex, so software to automate it all is a growth area for HP.The big winner in this deal, though, is Marc Andreessen. Yes, that Marc Andreessen. Opsware was his second startup after Netscape (originally dubbed Loudcloud). At HP's offer of $14.25 a share, he stands to make $92 million off the deal personally (according to Yahoo Finance, he owns 6.5 million shares.) Now, all he needs to do is sell Ning (which he also co-founded), and he'll have a hat trick.Opsware has had many ups and downs since it was formed during the dotcom bubble in September, 1999. As Andreessen notes on his blog:Loudcloud took off like a rocketship, raised $350 million in equity and debt financing, went public in March 2001, and was rapidly nearing $100 million in annual recurring managed services revenue when the entire market blew up and virtually all of our competitors and peers went bankrupt.In September 2002, we did a complete restart as a public company -- we sold our managed services business to EDS and turned Loudcloud into Opsware, a software company based on the core intellectual property developed at Loudcloud. Over the next five years, we executed on our original vision -- automation of large-scale modern datacenters and computer systems.We have become the clear market leader,... (07/23/07 09:01 AM)

Apple Takes Its Bite of iPhone Mobile Service Fees. iPod Originally uploaded by stublog In the competition to carry the iPhone in Europe, it looks like Vodafone (VOD) is balking at Apple's demands; The Guardian reports:Apple is understood to be demanding that its European mobile phone partners hand over a significant proportion of revenues generated by the iPhone and restrict the content that users can access.The portion of network revenues demanded by Apple is believed to have been behind Vodafone's decision not to sign up as the exclusive partner for the iPhone in the UK. ... The iPhone is expected to launch in November in the UK through O2, in France with Orange and in Germany with T-Mobile.So not only does Apple (AAPL) keep all the revenues from the $500 iPhones, but it gets a cut of the monthly service fees as well. I guess even (most) hard-nosed telecom execs have a hard time saying No to Steve Jobs. But if this report is true, good for Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin for sticking to his guns. Update: Another tidbit about the economics of the relationship between Apple and the mobile carriers. Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner models iPhone revenues for Apple to include the entire $500 average selling price plus a $100 bounty from ATT. (This is from a June 28 note of his). Gardner does not model in any cut of the monthly subscription revenues, however. (The $100 bounty would be more like a typical subsidy). So if Apple is also getting part of ATT's monthly fees, not to... (07/06/07 09:00 PM)

FeedBurner Drops Subscription Services. Feedburner, the Chicago-based startup recently bought by Google, is now making two of its subscription services free. feedburner is used by bloggers (including this one) to manage all of their feeds, monitor what posts have been read and by how many people. Its Stats Pro and MyBrand services, which you previously had to pay for (with prices starting at $5 and $3 a month, respectively), will now become standard. It's all about the advertising now, folks. Google doesn't need no stinking subscription revenues.... (07/03/07 09:00 AM)

3 Emotions to Drive Execs to Action. Yesterday I was on a panel for a Forrester bootcamp on Social Media. One of the common questions was how to convince senior management to agree to and resource these new emerging channels and marketing strategies. What moves consumers to action? Emotion. It’s not much different than with executives and managers…you just use data to create those emotions! In my experience, there are three emotions I’ve seen drive executive action: Fear – show the competition is having success with a strategy that you are not. I’m putting this first because fear is the biggest motivator in the human psyche. And the first reaction for executives when they see a competitor doing something successful is to react. I’m not suggesting this is always right, but it’s reality. It’s a call to action event. If a competitor is launching an emerging channel strategy, your executives have to decide to do something or nothing. Use this time to drive a recommended strategy. Excitement – show and prove the revenue impact from such a strategy. Changne resistance is typically due to prioritization and predictability. Corporations, and management in them, have a need to drive predictable growth and mitigate risk. Priorities are driven based on familiarity of strategies that drive confident results. Something that can be proved to drive better results and meet or beat forecast excites executives. Pride – most forward-thinking executives want to be first to market, forward thinking, innovative and cutting edge. Some want this because it is right for the company,... (03/22/07 09:01 AM)

How should Chipotle Invest $.26 per Burrito?. I was intrigued by an article in this week’s BusinessWeek regarding Chipotle’s incredible growth (27% YOY last quarter), despite a relatively small advertising budget. McDonald’s spends $820M+/yr in marketing on $21.5B revenue…4% of revenue. Chipotle spends $4.5M on $882M revenue…less than 1% of revenue. I did the math... if you assume the average meal is $8 (with drink, maybe chips), then Chipotle is serving over 110 million burritos (or burrito bowls, as I prefer) per year. If they decided to spend as much as their McDonald’s parent and competitors (4% of revenue), they could spend an additional $29M in marketing. That’s an extra $.26/burrito they could spend on advertising. Or perhaps they should spend it on something else? I’m not suggesting they spend this money. They are growing 26% YOY and pulling in $41M in net income. They are not ‘growth challenged’. More importantly is the positive business results growing on such a small marketing budget? How does Chipotle do it? They create a great atmosphere, built an eco-friendly company, and invest in great food that is served fast. I eat there once a week -- they give me more food than should fit in my stomach for a decent price, and it comes nowhere near the poor quality of first-frozen fast food. As growth slows Chipotle will face the pressures of a public company, typically to reduce costs. Bad idea…see my post on “Marginalizing Quality”. Or, ironically, analysts may ask for them to spend more on advertising. This is... (03/05/07 09:00 PM)

Career Tip #10: Go Where There's Margin Growth. The tabloid paparazzi attacks a story they know will sell magazines. Hence you see five tabloid covers at the supermarket all covering Brad and Jennifer’s break up, for example. Similarly, executives swarm around areas of the company that margin dollars. They will focus there, invest there, and grow that area as quickly as they can. And it is there where you can also find career growth. In any company with multiple product lines or divisions there are some parts of the company that have high margin % and/or high revenue growth (preferably both), and some that don’t. For Dell, for example, there’s high margin and high growth in servers, storage, and service. You find lower margin % and lower growth (yet an unfortunate large % of Dell’s revenue) in workstations, desktops, and consumer laptops. Which divisions do you think will hire more people and the best people? Managers in those high margin divisions are growing their career and learning things other companies want. Are you in a position to help your company grow a high margin category? Can you learn a new skill that helps grow a high-margin category? Remember, the ideal situation is high margin % and high revenue growth. If management is smart, they are trying to grow margin dollars (a.k.a. profits). If only 5% of your revenue has high margin % and is growing slower you’re your overall business that’s not the greatest place to be. But if a high margin % part of your company is... (01/17/07 09:00 AM)

Banks Expand Services, Perks for Small Outfits. Banks Expand Services, Perks for Small Outfits

By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS

"After a Chicago newspaper featured her small pet-food company, Holly Sher was showered with flowers, congratulatory calls and candy. But the attention didn't come from friends or clients -- it came from banks that wanted her business.

'They promised everything,' says Ms. Sher, who had just purchased Evanger's Dog & Cat Food Co., a pet food manufacturer with $6 million in annual revenue. The ultimate winner was Harris Bank, a chain of Chicago banks owned by BMO Financial Group of Canada. Harris sent an account executive directly to Ms. Sher's office with all the paperwork she needed to transfer accounts. The executive gave her his direct phone number and promised to arrange for a substitute contact anytime he went on vacation; he's since brought her Chicago Cubs baseball tickets."

- I have noticed the huge increase in banks catering to small business. Now it makes more sense. Small Business is a growth area for banks and that can only mean good things for Small Business. I recently opened an account at Sovereign Bank that has no maintenance fees, no minimum balance, free online banking and a free ATM/Visa Checkcard. How can you beat that on a business account. Of course there are some limitations (like 100 basic transactions monthly) but in the startup phase it is the perfect way to get set up without incurring expenses. (07/29/06 02:29 PM)

YAD: OpenFos.com. YAD? Oh that's my acronym for "Yet Another Directory". I don't comment on everyone I see, unless there is something to talk about.

Today's YAD is OpenFos.com (named Focus On Sourcing), which I found in my monthly review of referring websites. It was hard to miss, as it was ranked right after Google! A closer look at my stats showed four different directory listings for our company with similar traffic numbers each.

I suspect the high referrals from their site is due to the screen-shot they show on the listing pages. One listing record is interesting because it identifies US Government 'Contract Listings" that we have recently won.

Googling openfos, I started finding sites like Office Supply Leads which offers a (paid) subscription to searches of government bids for certain commodities. Apparently, that is where this company is focused for revenue.

As far as a directory, OpenFos has a long way to go. For the category of three-gas incubators, they list a number of unrelated 'suppliers' like "Affordable Treasures".

Once again my acronym proves true: Yadda, yadda, yadda. (Well, assuming all those hits are junk, anyway.) (07/29/06 02:28 PM)

Managing cancer clients. Do have customers that you wish you didn't? Ones that flip-flop what they need halfway thru the project. Or worse, at the end. The revenue seems hardly worth the effort.

We had one recent client who said that we were complying with their safety rules for the equipment we were building. Until suddenly we weren't complying. "This needs to be resolved now", etc. Ugh!

Well Sean De'Sousa of Psychotactics.com made this suggestion in his recent newsletter titled How To Get Rid of Cancer Clients: The Riot Act:

"'Ms. Client, we have a clause, called the Riot Act. We'll do everything in our power to do all of the above. And you in turn should do all in your power to help us do our job. The moment you run into issues with us, you have the right to fire us. The moment we run into issues with you, we have the right to fire you. Is that fair?'

Watch for the client's eyes to pop.
Watch as her jaw drops.
Watch as the pencil tumbles in slow motion to the floor."

Sean may have more flexibility to fire a services client than we can, because we are building something physical as a one-time project. But his point should be valid: the terms of the relationship need to be more explicit than seems necessary at the beginning.

Quotations, fine print, and unseen 'policies' are often used as CYA tools after the fact. But is there a step in your business process that outlines what you will and won't do?

I think it could be as easy as the salesperson highlighting lines in the quote prior to taking the order. I've felt better when salespeople I am buying from warn me about what will or won't happen 'back at the office'. At least I know where I stand.

But fear of losing a sale may cause them to keep their mouth shut. Then you are stuck with the 'cancer client'. That's why adding the 'riot act' as an explicit step makes sense. Maybe its smarter to have it come after the order, and from the 'home office', to squelch whatever the salesperson may have implied or promised, and to establish a tone of control. (Just don't sound evil when you do it, as I think that's a real risk.) (07/29/06 02:28 PM)

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