The following is the fourth part of a series of posts about high tech marketing strategy based on Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore.

Moore opens with a quote from Yogi Berra: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you probably aren’t going to get there.”

The fundamental principle to cross the chasm is to pick a specific niche market and focus all your resources on achieving the dominant position in that segment.

It sounds simple but most organizations fail.

Why?

According to Moore, it’s a high risk, low data decision.  Read more...

The following is the third in a series about high-tech market strategy based on Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm.

A big, strategic failure that many organizations get into is picking the wrong market. Either, they don’t pick one at all and just see what sticks or else picks a market that is so wide (“everybody with a cell phone,” “mothers over 30,” “all people of a specific religious or ethnic group of a certain age,” “all Java programmers”) that it’s impossible to develop a market penetration strategy.

If your market is everybody, than your market is nobody.  Read more...

The following is the second in a series of posts about high tech marketing strategy based on Crossing the Chasm.

It’s Strategy Stupid.

This should be obvious, but it’s not.

We’re enamored with the next shiny thing to realize that the basic fundamentals are even more important than ever.

Marketing is about markets. Strategy.

Do you remember the four Ps? The core principals of marketing:

• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Place

These principles guide all marketing activities, including crossing the chasm from early adopter to mainstream.  Read more...

The following is the first of several posts about high tech business and marketing strategy, based on the bible of high tech marketing, Crossing the Chasm.

As The Cline Group CEO, Josh Cline likes to say, we frequently put the cart before the horse, developing a plan before engaging in a strategy.

We can’t implement a promotional plan before we understand the decision making cycle and just how technology is adopted. Selling to different audiences require different business strategies.

In order to plan throughout the entire technology adoption lifecycle. In order to develop a plan, first we should understand how technology is adopted.  Read more...

One of the things I’ve always advocated when consulting clients or internally is to measure business outcomes, not just activities.

Digital marketing has actually made tracking actual business results much easier and much more accountable than print or telephone channels.

In digital marketing, this requires web analytics. There are several types of analytics, but the most popular is click-stream, which tracks actual clicks and visits.

Many of us have Google Analytics or other click-stream tracking set up … but many of us probably have never checked it.

This is a huge mistake. By measuring our web data, we can:  Read more...

If you owned a store and no one came to the store, you would worry. You wouldn’t say, “Well, I did my job. I opened up my store. There’s even merchandise here and a semi-functioning cash register. Someone who really wants to buy can.”

If that was the case, you would wonder what was wrong. Perhaps you would invest in a promotional campaign: maybe take out an advertisement, contact local media to try to get a story, give a sales discount, offer a Groupon or Living Social coupon, or pass out fliers in the parking lot.  Read more...