“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”
Turns out, it takes more than a mousetrap for the world to beat a path to your door. Check out this post on LinkedIn to read more.
Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay
As a solution marketer, you need to stay ahead critical technology trends that may affect your solution and how you market it. For a while, we’ve been hearing that mobile devices would overtake desktop and laptop devices. Yes, more people surf the web using mobile devices than desktops or laptops. And the mobile shift is happening in more and more ways. Let’s take a look at a recent example (as in yesterday!) – Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday is now about 10 years old. Says Wikipedia,
In late November 2005, The New York Times reported: ‘The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked.
That and the fact that you can’t be both at your desk and in a physical store at the same time.
Cyber Monday 2015 saw an avalanche of sales through mobile devices, especially smartphones. Mobile now accounts for 28% of Cyber Monday sales, with smartphones accounting for a whopping 61% of that number. Interestingly, tablets have declined from about 66% in 2012 to just 39% of sales today. What’s more, according to Adobe, some 49% of Cyber Monday online visits took place through mobile devices, up from 29% in 2013. Maybe that’s why IBM and others added the moniker “Mobile Monday” last year.
Of course, the massive switch to mobile is driven as much by increasing smartphone penetration, larger phone screens, secure mobile payments, and an improved mobile shopping experience. Mobile shopping makes more and more sense today.
The shift to mobile won’t happen for all solutions of course. But looking back, say 10 years, who would have thought that so many of us would be shopping on mobile devices today. What is clear is that more and more, solution users will expect a quality mobile experience, even in B2B environments. They’ll expect it both in the way they experience your solution, and in the way that you educate and engage (aka marketing) with them. Mobile is here and of course, it’s not just a fleeting 1-day experience or a consumer-only experience. Rather, we’re living in the era of mobile 365.
What do you think? How is mobile changing your solutions and how you market them?
Today Apple announced additional details of AppleWatch as well as a new, slimmer (!) MacBook line at a media event in San Francisco. Apple is an iconic company and their innovation can provide helpful lessons, many of which apply to solution marketers. Which takes me to the AppleWatch: Needing to be tethered to a iPhone via WiFi, and carrying a not-insignificant price for an optional gizmo, it’s not clear how well this new product will perform I the market. But if anyone can make a go of it, Apple can. Here’s why. Continue reading
In order to offer complete solutions, companies need to come together around a shared vision of the customer, their challenges, and ways that the company can help. Companies like Sony and AOL Time Warner have been hindered by competing divisions often focused on divisional goals at the expense of the company. By contrast, Apple unified around a common vision of the customer, and a view of a complete solution spanning hardware, software and content.
Filed under Case Studies, Solution, Solutions, The Solution Marketing Blog
By Steve Robins
Watching Sunday’s Oscar awards, I was struck by… the importance – “and inconvenience” – of customer feedback in multiple forms:
Customer feedback may seem inconvenient. But not listening to customer feedback delivers the ultimate inconvenience.
The Strategic Role of Product Marketing
Presentation at ProductCamp ON>LINE Friday June 11 at 1:15 pm ET
Register – free to attend. Learn more.
 Steve Robins has been helping companies to transform their marketing focus from technology platforms to customer solutions -- for over 10 years as a tech analyst and marketer at EMC Documentum, KANA and The Yankee Group. More... |
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