About “My Educated Guess”
March 30th, 2006 | Marilou BarsamYou and I face marketing questions every minute of the day – from branding and positioning to lead generation issues. And, you may have noticed by now, that the perfect answer never becomes any clearer. Most often based on actual trial and error, we are just making educated guesses. The more experienced we become, hopefully, the more educated the guesses become as well.
Meeting other marketers, as I often do in my position, we tend to have long discussions and email strings about what works and what fails. I have often wished I could capture these conversations to remember and build on them when a new situation comes up. Now, I think I’ve found a way.
I created this blog with my client consulting team to share some of the decisions we, and our clients, have made in marketing to enterprise IT audiences.
My hope is that by sharing experiences and conversations with you - and reading your responses - we will both make more educated guesses and come up with the right answers.
Enjoy,
Marilou Barsam
April 3rd, 2006 at 4:19 pm
This is a welcome blog! Looking forward to learning and sharing. Eighty percent of our clients are marketing to IT decision makers, and we continuously evolving our methods with the market.
Thanks for lighting this up!
April 20th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
I think that podcasts have a significant value in IT marketing and will continue to grow dramatically in the next 2-3 years. I believe that Marilou is to focused on the device as oppose to the content. Good marketing should focus on key and relative content…and not the end device. Currently, most “podcasts’ are currently listened to on home or work pc’s or laptops, not portable mp3 players. Those portable devices will see huge change over the next few years, so relevant content to fuel that growth will be paramount.
April 21st, 2006 at 10:32 am
Pitch it, get questions, de-brief your team, and then tweak as needed. If you can, pitch it to a room of people (roadshow) so you can judge the impact of your price, positioning, etc against different groups.
It is indeed “trial and error”, but I can’t think of any better way to figure out how to best position your ideas. The key is to not fall in love with your first “best idea” and don’t be shy about going back to early prospects and asking for a second chance at explaining the value proposition.
April 22nd, 2006 at 6:34 pm
GREAT initiative, Marilou!
I would like to submit more posted comments here, going forward, and some real “street experience” (and success) regarding marketing to SMB I.T. users via Channels & Alliances. It is my 25-year I.T. history / experience and love–INDIRECT selling.
In these dramatically “changed times” for I.T., software and services authors / resellers simply MUST find more creativity, leverage, credibility, effectiveness and success for selling their wares to the user. Reaching out to 3rd parties of all kinds, in all ways, for help, IS a BIG part of the marketing future, in my and many opinions.
I would like to know if this segment of I.T. marketing has interest to you and your readers and your TechTarget clients. If so, I would like to bring “street input” about Channels & Alliances indirect selling, to your new forum. It would be very exciting, I feel. Thanks for this forum, again, Marilou!!!
April 24th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Hi back Jimmy,
We encorage you to post comments about indirect selling as we have recently developed a channel strategy here at TechTarget. Feel free to comment and offer your perspective to our marketing audience on Best Practices in channel strategy..I”m sure you will get responses. Thanks for your interest.