Category Archives: Solution Marketing

October 31, 2011 · 10:43 pm

Netflix: It’s the Customer, Stupid, Part I

Netflix loses sight of their most important asset: the subscriber

If you’ve read The Solution Marketing Blog for a while, you know that business (or consumer) problems tend to remain fairly constant while the technologies and solutions to those problems tend to advance at a more rapid pace. That’s one reason why most problems have multiple solutions. And it’s why dominating a market today does not guarantee dominance forever. Just ask General Cinema (General Who?) or Blockbuster or, well, you get the point.

So, if you’re a savvy solution marketer, you realize that today’s hot technology or medium will eventually be replaced by another. Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Case Studies, Solution Marketing

Tagged as DVD, DVD rental, Netflix, Solution Marketing Blog, Steve Robins, Video

August 23, 2011 · 10:00 am

HP TouchPad @ $99 – Value?

By Steve Robins

No, this is not a good thing

Confession: I enjoy talking about “value” because sometimes, it’s counter-intuitive. For example: how can an expensive solution or product be a better value than an inexpensive solution or product?

Value has been making big news lately, especially in the turbulent world of tablet devices. Take a look at six months of HP TouchPad headlines: Continue reading →

Building Your Solution Marketing Strategy

By Steve Robins

Where Are You in the Solution Marketing Lifecycle?

The obvious part of solution marketing is what gets delivered at the end of the process in the go-to-market phase – materials, web content and more. But the heavy lifting begins well before. Following are highlights of the key phases required to build and implement a successful solution marketing strategy. Continue reading →

Typewriters, Secretaries and Solution Marketing Lessons

By Steve Robins

As I mentioned in Part I, Secretaries, Typewriters and Solutions, secretaries and typewriters are part of a solution. Following are a few lessons:

#1: Problems change slowly; solutions evolve quickly

As I already mentioned, business problems (creating final communications) remain relatively constant while solutions – the way of solving the problem – change at a faster pace. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Solution, Solution Marketing

Tagged as Secretaries, Solution Marketing, Solution Marketing Lessons, Typewriters

April 28, 2011 · 8:00 am

Secretaries, Typewriters and Solutions

This week’s news mentioned 2 intertwined stories, one of which is a hoax.

The Hoax

R.I.P. Typewriter

Last week, India’s Business Standard reported Typewriters about to become a page in history since an Indian typewriter producer was running out of the typewriters they stopped producing in 2009 (sounds kind of inevitable to me but I digress). Subsequently England’s The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal’s India site and no less august an institution than the Huff Post ran the same story.

Just one problem: as it turns out though, the typewriter (at least the electronic version) is far from dead – heck you can even pick one up at Staples according to the Washington Post. (Thanks HuffPost and WashPost for debunking the story).