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From 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 MoreMarketing social business technology
Times have changed since 2000 when Wally remarked to Dilbert “I’m hoarding my knowledge in case I ever need it”. The MIT Sloan Management Review just released a new study, “Social Business: What are companies really doing?” that quantifies trends in adoption of social business initiatives and expectations for their future value.
Read MoreUsing primary market research to create custom content
If you’re thinking about conducting primary market research to support custom content, here are a few recommendations for getting the most out of the investment.
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 MoreEnhancing forecasting with primary research
On February 13, 2012 the Wall Street Journal released its annual rankings of economic forecasters. None fared all that well in a relative sense, Tim Gill, director of economic analysis at NEMA placed at the top of this year’s list but the accuracy of his team’s forecast (based on a methodology developed by the federal reserve) would have ranked 35th in the 2011 rankings.
Read MoreBright spots in technology spending
Despite a relatively pessimistic outlook for the economy as a whole, most CFOs expect to boost their technology spend in 2012 by an average of 10%. The bulk of the spending will be in three distinct but related areas: mobility, business intelligence and cloud computing.
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 MoreUsing market research effectively in product development
In many product development organizations, new concepts are market-researched to the nth degree before being brought to market. And it is true that market research results can kill good ideas because, sometimes, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. While all of these problems exist, market research can still play a critical role in getting new offerings to market more quickly and cost effectively. Here are two recommendations based on our experience at Isurus.
Read MoreSatisfaction, NPS, Share of Wallet and other Holy Grails
At Isurus we believe that the best approach is to keep tabs on many facets of the relationships you have with customers and prospects and use these metrics to help inform business decisions rather than on managing around a set of high level metrics.
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