Technology Marketing Ideas

Marketing thought of the week – The price is right? Think again.

What do you do in an era of diminishing demand? How about slashing prices? Or at least changing your pricing model? There seems to be a lot of this going on.

Although it doesn’t appear to be widely embraced just yet, attorneys are broaching the idea of moving away from the billable hour – hold off on the obit. They, like ad agencies, are looking at value pricing – linking their fees to results. Their one-time deep pocketed clients have seen their revenues diminished to the point they can no longer afford paying big monthly retainers or sky-high hourly rates. The firms either have to consider revamping their fee structures or risk losing clients to less pricey competitors.

For the first time a major league baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, is using software to set game prices – on game day - based on the quality of the competition, the weather, the pitching matchup, and other elements. Just like the airlines they are looking at “load factors” and making pricing decisions on the fly.

Are these types of structural changes to pricing going to last or will we gradually see their use erode as the economy strengthens? I guess time (and results) will tell.

Marketing thought of the week – internal debates over spending during the downturn force creative approaches

An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal recounted stories of clashes taking place amongst board members at various technology start-ups as to whether they should be conserving their limited cash or spending in the hopes of grabbing attention and market share from their competitors. Besides the statistic that VC investment in Silicon Valley start-ups was down 57% from last year, a couple of things struck me about the article.

 

The first was a comment by Ken Comee, the CEO of Cast Iron Systems, a 100-person software company, who I thought had a great line when he said, “Companies can’t save their way to success,” and then went out and fashioned a number of partnerships with prominent firms including Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. What struck me was how little I hear about focusing on creating partnerships during a downturn. The downturn provides an excellent opportunity to build relationships with complementary firms. Everyone is more open to taking steps to build their business – even the big guys.

 

The other thing of note in this article was about the battle to conserve or spend at Jaspersoft Corp., an 80-person software start-up with $15 in cash reserves. The Chief Executive, Brian Gentile, ultimately convinced a divided board to spend by making a presentation that provided data showing a healthy sales pipeline. What struck me was that he also presented a contingency plan on how the firm could scale back spending if sales projections weren’t realized. I wonder how many firms would be open to more aggressive spending during the downturn had they fashioned detailed contingency plans on which they could rely if their efforts failed to meet expectations?

 

You can read the entire article here.

Marketing thought of the week – strategy in the backseat?

For the past two years at least we’ve witnessed many technology firms focus their marketing resources away from strategy toward tactics – especially on-line tactics. When revenues started to decline as the economy tanked ever more attention has been placed on generating revenues quickly – with strategy often the neglected stepchild. There is often-cited statistical evidence that firms that continue to spend on marketing during an economic downturn outperform firms that curtail their marketing spending after the recovery starts. I wonder if we were to examine the marketing expenditures of these “outperforming” firms what we would find regarding a breakdown of their spending between strategy and tactics. I find it hard to believe that static strategy, even with maintaining tactical spending, has resulted in optimum results for these firms over the course of the downturn and through the recovery.