Search Blog
Moving prospects along the buying process
Patrick Spenner and Karen Freeman recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review on the importance of understanding where a customer is in the buying process and of helping customers simplify the process itself: To keep your customers keep it simple. The article focuses on consumers but parallels exist in B2B markets and we have long championed these ideas among our B2B clients.
Read MoreSometimes your channel is your brand
“There is very little loyalty left. Manufacturer X is mercenary. They just want to make money, and I’m mercenary. In other words, Manufacturer X doesn’t care about me, and I don’t care about Manufacturer X. They just make a good product.” This quote from a recent study sums up the state of many of the channel relationships we see across a range of technology and industrial B2B markets.
Read MoreWhy likability matters
Likability is also one important criterion we use to test advertising. Even as advertising and advertising research have become much more sophisticated over time, likability continues to be a useful predictor of effectiveness.
Read MoreMarketing and selling to the reptilian brain
Tim Riesterer’s recent HBR blog post about stimulating the customer’s “lizard brain” to make a sale correlates with Isurus’ work on messaging and sales effectiveness. Riesterer points out that most sales messages fail to compel buyers to move away from the status quo because our “lizard brain”—the brain stem and other structures responsible for our survival instincts—prefers safety and avoids risk. Implicit in this message is the idea that a purely logical message often isn’t enough to drive change. To make a sale that breaks the status quo, the sales message must appeal to the lizard brain.
Read MoreThe challenges of the strategic IT function
In most industries the IT function is looking to be more of a strategic partner to the business rather than simply a cost center and service provider. CIOs are looking across the business to identify ways they can help the business compete and grow revenue. Many have developed a business liaison function that they place within the business units; a few are even setting performance metrics for their strategic role in the organization. These efforts have met with mixed results given the relatively high hill to climb.
Read MoreFrom the Isurus Archives: Entering new markets
Faced with the need to increase revenue, technology vendors often view expanding the markets they serve as the best opportunity available. Unfortunately, when vendors enter new markets they sometimes overlook the importance of branding and market perceptions and the realities of the new marketplace. Successful market entry requires discipline, resources and a thorough understanding of the new segment.
Read MoreCultural Lenses
Most US based marketers are aware that they need to take cultural differences into account when they extend their products into new regions around the globe. What they sometimes miss is that even with the United States different market sectors often have unique cultures that inform the decisions they make regarding business strategies and investment.
Read MoreYour perceptions vs. market perceptions: How well do they align?
Generalizing one’s own experiences and opinions to the rest of the world has its pitfalls, and is one of the fundamental reasons to do primary market research. Case in point: Heat, a San Francisco based ad agency, recently released data from its own study comparing use of social media among ad agency professionals to “normal people”. The results show a huge difference in use of social media platforms: For example, 92% of ad agency professionals have a Twitter account versus 39% of the general population. Major differences also exist for social media services like Google+, Instagram, Pinterest and others.
Read MoreFrom the Isurus Archives: The strategic IT function
At Isurus, we’ve noticed an evolution in organizational behavior with implications for marketers of enterprise technology. In a growing number of organizations, senior business executives and senior IT professionals are developing a common vision and understanding of the strategic role of technology.
Read More