Two measures for evaluating marketing content

Crawl, Walk, Run, Race... ... LEARN, PRACTICE, PLAY, WIN!

In writing the first few entries of this blog, I was trying to think of what to actually accomplish. Blogs are a great way to start writing 'free form'. We don't need to even think about what comes out. But them two months later, we realize that maybe we should have thought about it. But getting started is sometimes a high enough hurdle, so 'just do it' Nike style maybe worth a few posts not related to anything in particular.
My view of marketing on the web comes from small organization product management. By that I mean, small product management or marketing teams in medium size technology companies. I have worked in a dozen or so companies with marketing staff of one to five on a product. This is very common in technology products where a product is new or started recently. These are products which from market introduction ($0) would sell up to about $10 million. When products grow beyond the "small" size, more marketing resources are invested. Engineering staff on small products ranged from three to ten core "designers". Sometimes a product would have some supporting staff such as an application engineer or a CAD tools engineer.

Small and medium product marketing is a necessary function in most companies. Start-ups and spin-off companies usually go through the phase of getting a product launched in the market. This is classically the case with new products. Small organizations have been the driving force behind innovation, specially in the technology world. This area has also been the most opportunistic of all, sometimes we forget this simple fact. Not because we get old and jaded, or we are in a small 'bubble' in a big industry. I think we loose perspective because we either forget what it was like to use something truly new, or we don't see anything truly new that can be done in our own little 'bubble'. There could be other reasons, we are all a little different in how we think of new ideas and we are very different in how we proceed to describe them and eventually give them life. Sorry about the wordy introduction, but this is truly going somewhere.

When I started looking for examples of how people describe products, I didn't have a framework. But I did have lots of ideas in my head. Mostly ideas of what I saw and what I discovered. Basically, the dimension of vitality and "freshness" - maybe it is excitement or wonder at a new product, feature or technology. This is a dimension that we do not take into account very often in defining a product. We don't describe this enough in marketing, specially to people who don't know or use a product. To old users, an added feature is just that, another small improvement. But to some people, the new feature could turn a product that was not useful into something very useful. Sometimes this change is not clearly seen by the marketer or the potential new user. The writing here helped me in understanding how to break down two new categories, or what I would define as "dimensions". By dimensions I mean a quantitative or qualitative measure that can be rated. This could be expressed in a rating system 1 to 10 or a ruler for display similar to Google's relevancy indicator. These two dimensions help not just in the marketing content but also in strategy.

Well, this is my instalment for today. It has been an exciting experiment to look at sites and rate their marketing content. It is even more exciting to think of what can be done next. If you have similar resources or want to contribute to writing about marketing content, please e-Mail me. Also if you have any ideas that I should be looking at, please don't hesistate to contact me. Finally, start thinking on a more strategic basis about what you say and how you say it. About what can be said and how to present to different audiance. The web has flexibility in format, presentation and SIZE that we had never had before. Marketing effectively can win big here, but it takes brain and lots of elbow grease. THANKS FOR READING and COME BACK!

They human factor: if you imagine it, will they build?

As I write these stories and look at what is created, specially on the web. I tend to wonder off and think about who creates this. Who had the ideas? who wrote the content? who designed the page and edited the images? who runs the servers and maintains the software? who, who, who... there are lots of hands moving the product, marketing, customers... along. I don't know most of the people who work at Microsoft, Adobe or Netscape (or for that matter the 'open source' developers all over the world working for the most part anonymously). But I do know plenty of technology workers, some are friends, even close ones. As technology keeps on evolving and growing, it seems like more people "stay" where they are and a few move and evolve with the times. But the problem with changing technology, specially at a fast pace, is the people who are slowly dropped off and stay behind. But these people did not lose their skills or even their traits and abilities (creativity, hard work ethic, loyalty, social abilities...). For the most part they just "didn't learn that new language" (perl, java, xhtml) or "didn't use that new application" (photoshop, gimp, frontpage). So these people AND their specific specialization area, fall behind and slowly die off.

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Listings for software QA jobs in the Boston MA area (Nov. '07)
So the "outsiders" of the field simply say: "train them" they simply need to learn new skills. They know how to program in 'C' so what should be so hard in learning 'Java'? After all, the people who designed Java "told everyone that the language was made to follow 'C' and even use the same concepts of 'C++'", who what's the problem? Well, do you remember the beginning of the Japanese car invasion in the US? When people were buying Toyotas, Hondas and Datsuns (the Nissan company was even afraid to use their own name in America!) instead of Chevys and Dodge? When politicians, economists, trade union leaders and management gurus were telling the US car companies: "just make the better, can't you just do that?"

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Oh, if they could 'just do that!' wouldn't they? Well the same old "I will tell you how to fix your problem" pontificators are doing the same thing with 'US' (the techies, geeks, propeller heads, pick your label). All of a while, we go through the most wrenching "business cycle". So back to the things I see... at least five of my closest friends including me, have been under or unemployed. Mostly coming from serious real companies (Lucent, EMC, Digital, Avid Tech, Cypress Semi, Altera) with real careers (programmers, chip designers, software QA engineers, marketing managers). So what's going on here? Can't we figure it out and get on with it? Convince the new technology managers that we have skills, knowledge and desire to build the next 'Netscape browser'? or 'wireless router front end'? or appeal to corporate buyers to look at the new 'application'? Well, the transition to "new" is not as easy as it might seem. But on the other hand, even "new" businesses and technologies lose a huge deal when they don't use available "old" talented workers. Actually, when you take it all into account, pretty much the consensus will be on using more experienced workers than "fresh new ones".

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Well, as we move into new technologies of self publishing, everything "really" online, and dominance of content over programming and application development, things are again changing for everyone. I seems like this is not going to change, but maybe we are more able to change things with the tools we are developing. Even a blog and a wiki is a better way to do things than previously. We had newsgroups for a long time, but the interface, operation and availability is much better with blogs. So, it seems like the 'old' guys who have used newsgroups can migrate to blogs... but maybe they don't want to? or just want to keep on going the old way... even if it means sitting around the basement for a while and playing on the self build machine instead of going off to work in a lab at DEC... or maybe not... anyway, hope this gets people thinking, seriously, about more steadiness, continuity and loyalty in our business. Maybe we can learn something from GM of the 1980's, and not have National Semiconductor ask for a loan guarantee from the next president, the way Lee Iaccoca did... or maybe not.

Is blogging good for business? or is it too hard, expensive, time consuming...?

I just visited a potential client / employer for a short interview. This is a security company that supposedly has a great product. They also claim to have great technology which is very unique. The story is one you and I have heard a few dozen times, maybe even hundreds of times. Small to medium size company, moving along at a decent pace, hit a "bump on the road", fell "off the tracks" and slowed down, coming back from "a setback" but sure to "make it to the big times again" ... OK, OK, OK I am getting a little wordy, but this is a story that we all know. So getting back to the title of this story... this marketing VP was telling me that "we have been thinking about a blog for a year now. We started writing stories and finally realized that we can do it. Now we are not exactly sure if this is something we can "keep up on"..." or something like that. McDonalds sells Hamburgers and Fries and they have a blog. The Democratic Party sells ideas that we are not sure about, and changes it's mind, they have a blog. But this Internet security company ends up spending more money, time and effort on paper brochures to put in their lobby and mail out to customers than inform customers or potential buyers on their updates and new discoveries.

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A static web site for Internet security
So this is a ridiculous example? Not really! Actually, it's a very typical example. It takes a long -> long -> long -> time for technology AND the implication of it's use to BUSINESS (read make money) to be seen. This we all know, not just from Internet applications, but from steam shovels and hydraulic ones of 50+ years ago. But there is also something that may be bigger. Like the 'slower' evolution that is actually a bigger trend, there is something that the 'general business' writers and teachers don't talk about much. Is the communication among new technology community members. Tim O'Reilly has been blogging for a long time. Actually, his blog has turned into a newspaper column more than anything else. I say that because it is no longer a 'off the cuff' personal writing source as much as a well written and well PRESENTED site. But you still see "old school" marketers and business manages make excuses. So what to do? Well, it's a little like the 'who moved my cheese' story (book on Amazon). But it's also a little like moving a little faster to get thing done better.

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I use to make fun of the slow movers when I thought I was the 'early adopter'. Than I realize that just being an early adopter for the sake of trying things out and boxes full of gadgets and software boxes in the basement was not all it's cut out to be. Now I am back to pushing more adoption. Because in some fields we don't have any choice. In Internet technology field and in many business fields that depend on fast information transfer, the blogs, wikis and quick authoring pages are not necessary but they do SELL more. They also change the way customers work with us and the way we work inside the company. For some, new technology is like what was described almost 20 years ago by a co-worker: running down a hill, losing your breath, and the hill keep on getting steeper! Why? I think it's because lots of us all over the world are running on our own little hills, and when we see others having fun before they crash down at the bottom, they start running too. But also, it's the unleashing of a bunch of technologies all at once. Some of them trivial like faster communication and better transport. If computers hardware was not being made so economically in Asia, we would probably not be able to do even a fraction of the software we can do. Well... I can go on and on, but basically the message is: get moving with what you think is "new" sooner than later. Even if it seem hard to 'keep up' right now, it usually turns out that it is not. And if you are not sure, just start small and don't tell the whole world about it... quite yet... which in the end, will make you laugh and seem foolish... but that is the nature of running down a hill that won't stop... there is good news here too... so come back to the next post... good news from the leading edge...

Rating sites for experience, knowledge and gaining competitive advantage

After writing the Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver product page analysis, I wanted to criticize negatively some marketing aspects of these sites. Than I realized that this is not going to be as helpful and explaining what I was disturbed about. So I stopped the negative thoughts and tried to see what was really behind the "not so good marketing" seen here. Like other realms of the business, marketing people think that they 'control' the web media. Well, not really control as much as 'need' it more than others. Well, this is not exactly what you see out there. Marketing has its place, and good marketing helps sales, engineering and even customer support. But the web is a media that is needed by all business aspects. Once that proposition is understood and accepted by all parties, things start getting useful to analyze and discuss.

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So the question of what a good page should be, is restated: What would a good marketing page should be? Ahaa, here we go...

First of all, we could probably simplify things by breaking them into categories. This is helpful because there are many resources out there analyzing, testing and advising you how to 'market' on the Internet. Also, there are non-marketing web and page design experts and more books than you can read in a lifetime. Essentially, we can start working on worksheets and guides to go through the design, creation and integration of a single page. Then move on to the phase of putting together a section or a full product section. Finally, worksheets on specific areas which are general and not necessarily marketing related would be nice to have. This is something I have been looking for in ages. Basically, something to organize our thoughts about how to 'look' and 'read' other people's work. This is specially useful in marketing organizations that continue to improve, innovate and grow their message, content and reach.

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MS Expression page
One of the first "dividing into categories" step seem to be defining some general page categories. In the software product space, I would categorize pages as:

• Information: product packaging, availability, version, license. etc.


• Sales: product price, order information, channel availability, packaging, etc.


• Technical: product operation, features, capability, use model / demos, etc.


• Support: user support, installation, workarounds, tutorial, specific feature operation, etc.


• Marketing: benefits, success stories, solution-packaging, capability, overview, etc.

These categories apply to what I would call "core content". There are other ways of evaluating product information based on organization, content quality, usability and other general web related subjects. At this point I would point you to the many resources available which address general web information subjects.
      In future posts I will go into the sub-categories of each of these, maybe even update or expand the categories. Eventually, product related information could be

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Lets start looking at what I reviewed previously and see if the categorization helps simplify analysis and yields better results. Later on we can look at the way others analyze sites and see how categories we use help in designing, writing content and assembling pages for product marketing. So next time... on deck:

• Adobe Dreamweaver


• Microsoft FrontPage


•  - Microsoft Sharepoint Designer


•  - Microsoft Expression Web


• NVu (Open source)


• Netscape Composer (also Mozilla)

Is this the "innovator's dillema" or just technology "evolution"?

I was listening to a conversation two young web developpers were having. They were talking about the 'advantages' of 'branding'. The Internet is creating a new crop of marketers, some are taking a 'page' from the old marketing hymn book - using old techniques in new ways. So these new business managers are going through a phase of branding which is now a hot new topic. But the good news is there is much more marketing, sales and management knowledge out there which can be recycled. In his now classic book "The innovator's dilemma" Christiansen described the phenomenon of great firms who fail because they do not innovate to the next "stage".

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Christiansen's book made the techies sit-up and take notice...

But there is something more dramatic happening now. Not only single large firms fail, industries actually fail. They fail because of a complete change in the way things are done. So why did I title this post '... or just technology "evolution"'? -- because maybe both cases apply. Lets look back to the current successes in the Internet world. Actually, the businesses that have replaced the 'old school' (I keep on hearing this term in daily use.) Amazon has replaced a great deal of small and medium size stores. The ones hit the hardest are the specialty and technical stores. But, the good news is that some of these stores have been able to 'join' Amazon as an 'affiliate' and sell their books online. The strange phenomena here is the absence of competing small sites. Technical book stores like FatBrain and Computer Literacy were going strong and highly useful, but that was in the 1980's and early 1990's (FatBrain started out as a regular store, I remember it on North 1st in San Jose when working in the area, people use to spend their lunch time browsing and eating). While the sales of computer books is going through the roof, it was not happening in the stores as much. Take a look at the blog entry on Oreillynet.com.

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So in some respects maybe this is an 'evolution' of bigger proportions. I call it an 'evolution' because the whole 'world' of book selling is changing (in the retail book business, has changed already!). Not just in certain areas, but in all aspects. The retail chains and specialty niches are just one aspect. The buyer behaviour is another. The overall structure of the business (you can't get Don Knuth to come out and speak on Amazon -- or maybe you could?) So what do we do to survive this bigger 'evolution'? Christiansen has followed up the 'problem' book with 'The innovator's solution'. But for some reason that has not been taken notice like the 'dilemma' book. The 'solution' issue is a whole lot more complicated than the 'problem statement' alone. It is also much more interesting. Just like the 'dilemma' book with its two examples (steam shovles and disk drives), there are a few good solution examples. Companies that have moved from one technology generation to the next (actually Barnes & Noble and the buying of FatBrain.com is somewhat of an example). Well, here is a nice little lesson in retailing, or is it in sales strategy? Whatever you call it, the 'new web techies' will surely learn something from it and will eventually go out and build another 'Amazon' ~ or will they take over Barnes & Noble? Let's wait out and see....

Thinking about writing - what's worth writing about?

        When I first started writing blogs, it seemed merely as a way to get my story out. Looking around at blogs and sites, we quickly realize that there is a potential to use this as a real professional communication tool. Some like Eckel and Greenspun put up full books with all the knowledge and professional experience. Actually, in a blog its much easier than taking on a full book project. Once I started thinking seriously about writing professionally related articles, I had to think of what to write. My experience is in semiconductor marketing and engineering. I also held field positions in storage networking (Fibre Channel) and EDA. As they advise you in creative writing: "write what you know". So this advice I am going to follow. I plan to research and write about the world of technology marketing. Starting from what to say (outbound marketing and product marketing) to what to actually do (product definition). I also have an opinion about work and business of technology. Which sadly not many people take as seriously as the "core" or "raw" technology itself. While these areas cover a great deal of territory, I will focus on a few specific fields.

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Phil Greenspun's - "Alex" book; first published 'on the Internet' as a revolutionary move!

The ideas I have for writing here span a few areas:


• Marketing in technology: product, strategy, experience, knowledge, etc.


• Opinions and analysis of current events in the technology business.


• Resources in marketing, product management and technology sector


• Personal stories on technology career and work.

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Eckel's - Thinking in Java; author says that the book was much better because of release on the web
Well, like all ambitious or trivial projects, "the proof is in the pudding", so let's get started. Eventually, the work will speak for itself. So enough with that.
      The next area of articles will deal with looking at product web sites. The last articles on Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage are a good start. They are general enough for most people to get the basic concepts. My experience is in Storage, EDA and semiconductor, which tend to be more complex marketing area. The world of technical marketing (i.e. for highly technical markets) tend to focus less on 'simple messages' and much more on competitive technology. I am not sure if this is a correct approach. That's is what is worth looking at. Do marketers and technologies "think seriously about what they say and how they say it?" Do companies put full emphasis on strategies and actual deliverable messages which potential users can use and act upon? Finally, it is interesting how companies and individuals position, direct and eventually deliver their marketing message.
        In general, I believe that marketing is taken seriously by technologists, but I believe that the resources to do match other areas in the mix (engineering, research, operation, manufacturing, etc.) This concept is not new. Others have written and advise on more resources and more professionalism in technology marketing. One of the people who makes this his 'raison d’être' is Ralph Grabowski. His basic tenant: invest in marketing, otherwise you are dead. Others tend to say it with their basic spin: do what I have done: P/R, product definition, positioning, sales strength, etc. Well, all these ideas and resources will come up as we get into the writing.

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Grabowski's diagram of marketing investment vs. product success (actually company success)
       My experience is that in most technology based companies marketing is indeed under appreciated and under funded. Also, it's been my experience that technologies in general do not know what to ask from marketers. Technologies know to ask for customers to "see" or "demonstrate" (try out) their product. But they do not know about the core marketing tasks and what to make of them in their context. This is an area that is also well worth writing and researching here.
        Well, this is a start in explaining the aim and interest of this blog. Hopefully you will find it useful and interesting. Reading other blogs and seeing how people write on the web, its obvious that subject, points of view and strong opinions shift as people comment and get involved. PLEASE leave a comment or e-Mail me. I do not to be controversial to the point of eliciting a comment, but in all these discussions its useful to see what other know and have experienced. Also, when it comes to resources, nobody is a 'master of the Internet' ~ there are always things to know and to find out. So please lend me a hand with resources, comments and information. T H A N K       Y O U !